The Centaur Weekly | AI acceleration, geopolitical risks, and economic disruptions are converging at the same time. This newsletter, curated by Cenk Sidar, breaks down the major news, analyzes why it actually matters, and highlights the risks and opportunities shaping power, markets, and technology.
U.S. attack on Iran seen as imminent
As global attention focused on Greenland, Iran’s foreign minister issued his most explicit warning yet to the US following Tehran’s deadly crackdown on protesters, saying the Islamic Republic would respond with “everything we have” if it came under renewed attack. Regional governments, particularly Gulf Arab states, have urged Washington to avoid military action. Iran last week closed its airspace, a move widely seen as precautionary amid fears of a U.S. strike. The U.S. aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, which had been operating in the South China Sea, transited the Strait of Malacca by Tuesday, ship-tracking data showed. A U.S. Navy official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the carrier and three accompanying destroyers were heading west.
A U.S. military strike on Iran is likely within the next ten days. The signals are converging, and the window is narrowing. President Trump’s statement that “help is on the way” creates a credibility trap. In the current environment, words without follow-through would be read in Tehran not as restraint, but as weakness. Iranian officials understand this dynamic. A rebel-linked figure from Iran’s Interior Ministry put it bluntly: if Trump does nothing, public hostility toward the United States—and toward Trump personally will harden quickly. An American aircraft carrier strike group is moving west from Asia toward the Middle East. Washington is demonstrating operational tempo, not caution. An Iran strike would come as Western cohesion looks unusually fragile, distracted by political noise and symbolic disputes—including the high-profile Greenland episode—which has absorbed disproportionate diplomatic bandwidth. That distraction may be accidental. It may also be deliberate. Strategic misdirection has precedent, and Tehran will be forced to assume the worst. From Iran’s perspective, the danger is not just the strike itself but the uncertainty around it. From Washington’s perspective, delay only increases the political cost of action later. That alignment points toward near-term escalation, not prolonged signaling. If there is an alternative path, it is not visible yet.
Rupture in the World Order
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney delivered a stark warning about the global balance of power on Tuesday, telling political and business leaders at the World Economic Forum that the era of U.S.-led global order was coming to an end. Speaking to a packed hall in Davos, Carney described the current moment as a “rupture,” saying the rules-based international system was eroding amid intensifying rivalry among major powers. His remarks drew a rare standing ovation from the audience. “Every day we are reminded that we live in an era of great power rivalry,” Carney said. “That the rules-based order is fading. That the strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must.” His comments came as tensions between Washington and its European allies intensified. The U.S. administration has threatened to impose escalating tariffs on European nations unless they agree to U.S. control over Greenland, a move that diplomats say has strained the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and unsettled allies. European officials privately expressed concern that the dispute could weaken NATO cohesion and embolden rival powers, according to people familiar with the discussions. Signs of friction surfaced during side meetings in Davos. European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde abruptly left an invitation-only dinner after U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick launched a sharp critique of Europe, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Trust is the central currency of alliances, and it is eroding rapidly across the transatlantic relationship. That erosion is not incidental. It is structural and it is being watched closely in Moscow and Beijing. Make no mistake: Russia and China benefit directly from a West that no longer operates as a coherent bloc. As confidence in U.S. leadership weakens, middle powers are forced to recalibrate. Some move toward strategic autonomy. Others hedge eastward. Few remain fully aligned by default. Trump’s second-term foreign policy reflects a clear break from values-based alliance management. The organizing logic is transactional “ownership” politics: pressure, leverage, and threats applied to extract concessions. Allies are treated less as partners than as assets to be managed—or coerced. The risk is not inconsistency. The risk is blowback. This is a coherent power-and-assets strategy, but one that trades legitimacy, alliance cohesion, and long-term influence for short-term wins. The pattern is visible across regions: Venezuela, Colombia, Canada, Mexico, Greenland, NATO. Coercion may work tactically. Strategically, it compounds isolation. Power exercised without principle corrodes the very systems that make power durable. When alliances weaken, the United States does not gain freedom of action—it loses multiplier effects. Influence shrinks even as force is displayed. The consequence is a faster rise of middle powers acting outside Washington’s orbit. Not because they oppose the United States, but because they can no longer rely on it.
Wealth concentration in the United States has reached its highest level since World War II. The top 1% of U.S. households controlled 31.7% of total national wealth in the 3rd quarter of 2025, according to Federal Reserve data—roughly $55 trillion, nearly equal to the combined wealth of the bottom 90%. After stabilizing in the late 2010s and early 2020s, inequality has resumed its upward climb, driven primarily by three consecutive years of strong stock market gains. The divergence is most pronounced at the very top. This is not a cyclical anomaly. It is a structural trend that is accelerating. Asset-driven wealth accumulation increasingly dominates income-driven growth. When markets rise, those with large equity exposure compound gains at a scale the rest of the economy cannot match. The result is not just inequality, but divergence: capital pulling away from labor. Artificial intelligence will intensify this dynamic. AI disproportionately rewards capital owners, platform builders, and data holders while compressing or displacing large segments of white-collar and service labor. Productivity gains will be real. Job dislocation will be faster. Wealth capture will be narrower.
📰Europe draws a line on Greenland
The Economist argues that Europe must stop accommodating Washington’s coercive posture over Greenland. The dispute is less about territory than credibility: indulging transactional pressure weakens NATO cohesion and signals strategic drift at a moment of systemic stress.
📰The Palantirization of state power
Andreessen Horowitz examines how intelligence-grade software is becoming embedded across governments and institutions. What began as counterterror tooling is evolving into default infrastructure, concentrating power while outpacing democratic oversight.
📰Silicon Valley fears the American Dream is closing
The Wall Street Journal reports on a growing belief among tech elites that AI is compressing, not expanding, the window for generational wealth creation. The urgency to accumulate now reflects expectations that future returns will concentrate even faster.
📹Demis Hassabis on the next phase of AI
Speaking in Davos, the DeepMind CEO outlines how advances in foundational models are colliding with real-world deployment risks. The subtext is clear: capability is accelerating faster than governance or institutional readiness.
🧠Scott Galloway’s 2026 outlook
A wide-ranging forecast touching AI, demographics, markets, and geopolitics. Uneven by design, but useful as a barometer of how elite sentiment is shifting toward tighter capital concentration and higher systemic risk.