Gideon Rachman

I missed my flight back to London yesterday because my Amtrak Acela to Newark Airport got stuck outside Philadelphia for four hours. It wouldn't happen in China. Thinking nostalgically of the bullet train I took out of Shanghai last month.

The scramble for Europe is just beginning As the EU struggles to defend its interests, outside powers play divide and rule

We also need to find our hard power, fast, as @gideonrachman.bsky.social recently argued, and find a way to make big decisions in a more agile manner, like our adversaries. More power needs to be delegated to joint decisionmaking, even -- especially! -- in core areas like foreign policy & defence.

Gabrielle Giffords • @GabbyGiffords • 3h X My husband @CaptMarkKelly is a 25-year Navy combat pilot veteran. He served our country with strength, courage, and integrity, dedicating his career to protecting us and upholding our constitution. Today, the President of the United States called him a traitor and demanded he be Show more Captain Mark Kelly @CaptMarkK...• 3h I've had a missile blow up next to my airplane, been shot at dozens of times by anti-aircraft fire, and launched into orbit — all for my country. I never thought l'd see a President call for my execution.... • 3.7K {7 2.3K 8.9K thl 461K 企 Janette Fenway @LeesLemmas • 43m @elonmusk Why is my feed suddenly flooded with lefty lawmakers spouting nonsense? 276 • 69 贝 Elon Musk * X @elonmusk X.com Because we are failing very badly with the recommendations algorithm. Doing my best to address this. 3:49 PM • 11/20/25 • 6.3K Views

An X user asks Elon Musk why they’re seeing tweets from left-wing lawmakers.

Musk: “Because we are failing very badly with the recommendations algorithm. Doing my best to address this.”

Europe’s triple shock: Putin, Trump and Xi

My conversation with @gideonrachman.bsky.social about the European crisis – And how to get out of it
open.spotify.com/episode/4Isz...

🚨🚨 "Brussels is a bureaucracy. It is good at process and law. But it is incapable of acting quickly and ruthlessly like the European great powers of the past, or like the US and China today." Excellent piece by @gideonrachman.bsky.social on the "Scramble for Europe".

Lots of talk recently about an AI bubble. But the crypto bubble has been going on longer; is more obviously purely speculative; also involves trillions of dollars of “assets”
And it’s currently deflating fast. And what if they both pop simultaneously?

We were in the same boat. Now we're in a smaller, leakier boat right next to the EU - facing the same turbulent seas. The myopia in both London and Brussels about the urgent need to act together and repair the Brexit rift is depressing.

Anyone lacking an FT subscription can register and read three articles monthly free at www.ft.com/register

In 1977, Tom Robinson was TRB. Now it’s Tommy Robinson. Makes me want to be a Pallas cat

Good work by COURIER @couriernewsroom.bsky.social

One of many examples of the new journalistic models evolving to fill existing-journalism voids.

Epstein is not going away The issue is Trump’s Achilles heel — and the US president knows it

That @edwardluce.bsky.social ! He must have a crystal ball. Here's his prescient column for today. www.ft.com/content/0fd7...

This is the march the Polish president chose to grace with his presence today.

I feel seen.

Looks like the BBC has lost the Kremlin 👀

Hiking tax is much more than merely the breach of a manifesto commitment. It is the death of the idea at the heart of Starmer’s project: that Labour would leave its comfort zone and govern by reform and growth, not tax and spend.
economist.com/britain/2025...

Quick thread on the BBC and the political and societal significance of recent developments:

One of the main reasons the UK has historically been so much less polarised than the US, is that Britain has a shared source of information, consumed and trusted by most people regardless of their politics.

Reading this @gideonrachman.bsky.social piece, I am reminded that Nena's '99 Luftballons' described the type of accidental incident that almost triggered nuclear war in Operation Able Archer (referred to here) a couple of months later. www.ft.com/content/3c30...

I think we all need to agree before we can do that

The fact that the BBC has made serious culpable errors does not negate the point that there is a real and concerted right-wing media campaign to destroy it. Both points can be true at the same time and the campaign would not end even if the errors did.

it is very strange that BBC chair Samir Shah is hiding this morning. He should by rights be on the Today programme presenting himself as in charge and hands on the tiller. I wonder if he is frightened for his position

JUSTICE GORSUCH: Yeah. So Congress, as a practical matter, can't get this power back once it's handed it over to the President. It's a one-way ratchet toward the gradual but continual accretion of power in the executive branch and away from the people's elected representatives.

Yeah Gorsuch is on fire a bit. /13

"They're looking for someone with a thick skin and recent experience of flagship BBC news programming."

So the BBC director general has had to resign because Panorama suggested that Trump tried to overturn the result of the 2020 presidential election? Because obviously that never happened …

Amen to that.

Don Moynihan on "Purge, Merge, and Surge" "Instead of surging in Iraq, it’s happening here in American cities."

“More and more cabinet members — Rubio, Miller, Noem — live on military bases now, & it's another parallel to Iraq, where the administration lived in the Green Zone. There’s something deeply unhealthy about a society where leaders are literally shut off from the communities that they govern.”

Death of KitKat, a beloved San Francisco cat, reignites fury over robotaxis A Waymo taxi struck the brown tabby, a Mission District fixture, raising questions about the role of self-driving cars in the neighborhood.

The death of KitKat, a brown tabby cat, has reverberated throughout San Francisco after a Waymo struck the cat and continued driving.

But mourners’ grief has been complicated by who, or what, should be held accountable.

Serhii was brilliant on the Rachman Review recently. @gideonrachman.bsky.social
So looking forward to this.

Anne in typically excellent form.

Burmese are the best!