What the IAA is On 4 March 2026 the European Commission published its proposal for an Industrial Accelerator Act (IAA), COM(2026) 100 final. The instrument is, at first glance, one more entry in the now-crowded catalogue of EU industrial-policy regulations that began with the Net-Zero Industry Act, the Critical Raw Materials Act, and the Chips Act. But
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On 30 September 1938, after returning from the Munich Conference, Neville Chamberlain addressed the British public first at Heston Aerodrome and later outside 10 Downing Street, where he declared that he believed it was ‘peace for our time. “This morning I had another talk with the German Chancellor Hitler and here is the paper which
Continue reading On 30 September 1938, after returning from the Munich Conference, Neville Chamberlain …
The Italian National Security Strategy, as defined by Article 5 of the Prime Ministerial Decree of 22 April 2026, constitutes the central framework for identifying, protecting, and advancing the State’s fundamental security interests. It operates as a high-level strategic guidance document, designed to address the full spectrum of threats and risks affecting national security, while
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The Decree of the President of the Council of Ministers of 22 April 2026 establishes the implementing regulation for Article 7-bis, paragraph 5, of Decree-Law No. 174 of 30 October 2015, concerning the management of crisis situations involving aspects of national security. In practical terms, the decree reorganizes and clarifies how Italy’s highest governmental security coordination body,
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The latest judicial setback for presidential tariff power did not come from the Supreme Court. It came from the U.S. Court of International Trade, in a case involving the Trump administration’s attempt to repackage a global tariff program under a different statutory authority: Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974. The case, commonly reported
Continue reading After the Supreme Court rejected IEEPA tariffs, the administration turned to Section 122 of the Trade Act.: The Court of International Trade was not persuaded.
Financial markets are neither a casino nor a church. They are better understood as a distorted mirror in which human beings project what they think, fear, and hope about the future. To understand markets, therefore, is not only to understand numbers, interest rates, balance sheets, or economic models. It is also to understand human behaviour:
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In the United States, one of the oldest constitutional arguments is also one of the most practical: who gets to decide when the country uses military force? The Constitution does not place all war-related authority in one branch. Congress has powers such as declaring war and funding the armed forces, while the President is designated
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Robert H. Jackson, “The Challenge of International Lawlessness,” American Bar Association Journal, Vol. 27, 1941, pp. 690-693. https://www.jstor.org/stable/25713307 Writing in 1941 as World War II shattered European order, Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson confronts American disillusionment with international law. He rejects both idealistic faith in global organizations and isolationist trust in distance, arguing instead
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Philip C. Jessup’s article “The Reality of International Law” was published in Foreign Affairs, Volume 18, Number 2, in January 1940. Jessup’s central argument is that international law is real, even though it is weak, often violated, and imperfectly enforced. He rejects the common claim that international law does not exist simply because states break it. For him, violations do not
Continue reading “The Reality of International Law” by Philip C. Jessup, Foreign Affairs, Volume 18, Number 2, in January 1940.
At a moment when international law is routinely described as ineffective, selective, or even obsolete, Not Dead Yet – International Law in an Age of Uncertainty offers a deliberately counter-intuitive intervention. The 2025 International Law Report was prepared by Lex International, a philanthropic initiative dedicated to reinforcing the international legal order by reshaping narratives and supporting new
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Deterrence is a concept that refers to the ability to prevent an action through the threat of negative consequences. This mechanism appears in several contexts, including international politics, psychology, economics, and social behavior, to influence the choices of individuals or groups. The main goal of deterrence is to encourage a different decision from the one that might be taken in the
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The United States supported China’s accession to the WTO primarily because policymakers believed it would advance three interrelated objectives. Yes, there is a substantial literature on this. Useful studies include work by Nicholas Lardy at Brookings and later at the Peterson Institute, which defended accession mainly in terms of market opening and Chinese economic reform;
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On April 24 in Washington, the European Union and the United States signed a Memorandum of Understanding launching a strategic partnership on critical minerals. Signed by EU Trade Commissioner Maros Sefcovic and U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the agreement is more than a diplomatic marker. It reflects a broader shift in how both sides
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According to the paper published in January 2026 by Ambrogio Cesa-Bianchi, Andrea Ferrero, Luca Fornaro, and Martin Wolf, titled Industrial Policies, Global Imbalances and Technological Hegemony, industrial policy is not just about helping domestic firms grow. It can also reshape trade balances, redirect global capital flows, and ultimately change which countries lead in technology. The paper
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Debate over Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act is often framed too vaguely. The standard defense is familiar: the provision authorizes the collection of foreign intelligence by targeting non-U.S. persons reasonably believed to be located abroad. That statement is accurate as far as it goes. But it does not identify the constitutional pressure
Continue reading Section 702’s real problem is not foreign collection. It is domestic access without a warrant.
A recent CEPR study “The European Union under pressure? Exploring Chinese trade deflection,” examines whether US tariffs on Chinese goods have caused a redirection of Chinese exports toward third markets, with a particular focus on the European Union. Using highly disaggregated monthly trade data and a difference-in-differences framework, the authors compare product categories hit by US
Continue reading According to CEPR, trade deflection to Europe is real — but not evenly distributed across the economy
The United States is now moving into the first operational stage of refunding certain duties collected under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA). Beginning April 20, 2026, eligible importers and authorized customs brokers can submit Phase 1 refund requests electronically through the new CAPE function in the ACE Portal, which is designed to consolidate
Continue reading U.S. Customs opens First Phase of IEEPA duty refunds: $160 Billion Coming Back?
Edward Fishman’s “How to Fight an Economic War” is a sharp and timely analysis of how globalization has been transformed from a system of mutual gain into a field of strategic competition. The article argues that states now weaponize the very structures that once underpinned economic integration—currencies, payment systems, export controls, critical minerals, and supply
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The United Nations addresses the threat of international terrorism through several key bodies and committees, primarily concentrated under the Security Council and the Secretariat. The number of people working within these organizations varies significantly depending on whether you are counting diplomats (Member States) or technical staff (International Civil Servants). Overall, the UN counter-terrorism “architecture” is relatively small compared
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The Opinion of Advocate General ?apeta in Elisa Eesti (Case C-354/24) of 19 March 2026 is one of those cases that looks, at first glance, highly technical, almost niche, and then suddenly reveals itself as something much larger. On the surface, the dispute concerns an Estonian authorisation regime for telecom equipment. In substance, it is about a
Continue reading Elisa Eesti: Security Exceptionalism in EU Electronic Communications Law
The joint U.S.–Israeli strike on Iran at the end of February 2026 has triggered a profound shock in the global energy system. What initially appeared as a military escalation in the Middle East has quickly evolved into a broader energy confrontation, affecting supply chains, strategic reserves, diplomatic alignments and global markets. The immediate epicenter of the
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Independent authorities are public bodies that exercise regulatory, supervisory, or guarantee functions while remaining at a certain distance from the ordinary political-administrative circuit.Their main purpose is to entrust technically complex or sensitive matters to bodies that are less exposed to party politics. This is especially relevant in areas such as market regulation, competition, privacy, public
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The Supreme Court’s decision in Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump (607 U.S. (2026)) confronts a question that is at once technical and deeply structural: can an emergency economic statute be read to authorize the President to impose sweeping tariffs on imports from virtually any country, at virtually any rate, for virtually any duration? The Court’s answer is
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Natalie Alkiviadou’s presentation highlights how freedom of expression, a cornerstone of democracy, is currently facing political “weaponization” and an inconsistent approach from the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). Although the Court established in 1976 that free speech includes ideas that “shock, offend, or disturb,” Alkiviadou argues that this principle has significantly deteriorated. A major issue is the
Continue reading Hate speech, free speech, and the European Court of Human Rights: the challenge of consistency and the low-threshold hatred paradigm
The Perseus Digital Library, developed at Tufts University, is one of the most important digital humanities projects devoted to the study of the ancient world. Founded in the late 1980s, it began as an ambitious attempt to use digital technology to make Greek and Latin texts more widely accessible to students, scholars, and the general public. Its
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Understanding in science is often invoked as though it were a single, self-evident achievement. In reality, it refers to at least two fundamentally different levels of explanation, and confusing them is one of the most common sources of misunderstanding about what science can and cannot offer. Richard Feynman famously captured this tension through two apparently
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On 7 November 2025, the first SPHERE Space Policy Forum took place at LUISS Guido Carli University in Rome. The Forum was organised by the SPHERE Unit (Space Policies, Humanities and Exogeographical Research Ecosystem) of the LUISS Research Center for International and Strategic Studies (CISS), under the patronage of the Italian Ministry of Enterprises and Made in Italy, the Italian Space Agency, the British Interplanetary Society,
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Overview: The year 2025 brought significant changes to Germany’s intelligence community, driven by an intensified threat environment and a shift in political leadership. A new governing coalition (led by Chancellor Friedrich Merz) embarked on major reforms affecting all three federal intelligence agencies – the Federal Intelligence Service (BND) for foreign intel, the Federal Office for the Protection of the
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The system of UN Special Rapporteurs stands or falls on credibility. These mandates have no coercive power, no enforcement machinery, and no democratic mandate of their own. Their authority depends almost entirely on method, restraint, and the perception of independence. A Special Rapporteur is not a politician, not an activist, and not a campaigner in
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According to the 18 December 2025 Report, the European Parliament’s Security and Defence Committee puts a blunt proposition on the table: Europe is entering an era in which drones are not a “capability”, drones are the environment. Drones as the new operating system of conflict The report does not treat drones as a niche procurement
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On January 7, 2026, the White House published a Presidential Memorandum directing U.S. executive departments and agencies to take “immediate steps” to withdraw the United States from a set of international bodies that, in the Administration’s view, no longer align with U.S. interests. The Memorandum places the decision inside a review process launched by Executive
Continue reading The White House moves to withdraw the United States from selected international organizations and UN entities
Joshua Rovner’s Strategy and Grand Strategy offers a sharp analytical lens for understanding why states so often fail to connect military action with long-term security. The book begins from a deceptively simple premise: strategy and grand strategy are not the same thing, and confusing them leads states into avoidable crises. Strategy is a theory of
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According to a document from December 2025, the American Bar Association’s Task Force on Law and Artificial Intelligence has published its Year 2 Report on the Impact of AI on the Practice of Law, and the document reads less like a victory lap and more like a carefully managed moment of transition. The report closes the
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Europe keeps circling the same question, as if it were a delicate philosophical puzzle: can the EU touch Russia’s central bank reserves without violating immunity? Europe keeps acting as if the only thing at stake is doctrinal elegance, plus a vague fear of “retaliation”. Russia has already answered the retaliation question. Russia has already done the damage,
Continue reading Compensation, Not Confiscation: Turning Frozen Russian Assets into a Balance Sheet for European Losses
In a rare and wide-ranging interview with Corriere della Sera, Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito paints a picture of a U.S. government at a constitutional crossroads. As the nation approaches its 250th anniversary, the “separation of powers” is being tested by political gridlock and executive expansion. The Legal dilemma: a summary Alito argues that because Congress is increasingly polarized and
Continue reading The “Great Friction” of American Democracy: Justice Alito’s Insights
The most unsettling twist in today’s AI race is that the United States may not be slowed by a shortage of brilliant researchers or cutting-edge chips, but by something far less glamorous: electricity. Your briefing frames this as an “electrical bottleneck” that could downgrade American technological leadership if the grid cannot power the next wave
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The contemporary governance of digital life sits inside a triangle that never quite closes. International law produces norms between States. Platforms produce rules over users. States produce rules over platforms, and often do so while using platforms as intermediaries for enforcement, surveillance, and even public communication. The result is not a tidy hierarchy. The result is a dense,
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Artificial intelligence has not merely added a new layer to foreign interference. It has altered its grammar. What was once slow, costly, and often clumsy has become scalable, adaptive, and disturbingly precise. A recent report by the French National Assembly offers a rare, comprehensive mapping of this shift, and its findings should unsettle anyone still
Continue reading Artificial intelligence and foreign interference: when democracy becomes a system under attack.