Water is the most commonly exchanged resource in the world. The “virtual market” of blue gold is four-hundred times that of petrol. But the water crisis is one of the main emergencies of our time, especially since technological acceleration requires a constant use of water. For every twenty prompts given to ChatGPT, we consume half a liter. In order to train the third generation of GPT, it took 700 thousand liters. The revolution of artificial intelligence requires enormous amounts of H₂O to...

A few days ago, a Delaware court suspended the payment of Tesla’s compensation package to founder Elon Musk, which was originally decided in 2018. The package was worth about 56 billion dollars, which is unprecedented even for the fantastical world of tech companies. And this sanctions the entrance of capitalism into the age of digital feudalism. The seven tech giants - Apple, Microsoft, Google Alphabet, Amazon, Nvidia, Tesla and Meta – form a new aristocracy that demands absolute authority...

Moscow, 26 September 1983. It’s a few minutes past midnight, when lieutenant colonel Stanislav Petrov looks the apocalypse right in the eyes. On the screens connected to OKO - a satellite system which signals the launch of nuclear warheads from the USA – five missiles have appeared on their way towards the Soviet Union. Protocol requires calling the Kremlin to prepare a counterstrike. But Petrov doesn’t believe in the attack and instead decides to report a system error. A few minutes later,...

“Rebuilding Trust in the Future»” was the theme of the latest edition of the World Economic Forum, held like every year in Davos. This title immediately sounded vague when considering our present time of constant crises and the earthquake that is shaking globalization itself. Despite this, the meeting continued to show its “good side”: a cavalcade of abstract rhetoric, incapable of grasping the challenges of our time – from the environmental emergency to the crisis of global production...

In the last few weeks, we’ve seen a new danger for global markets. The raids of the Houthi, a Yemenite rebel militia supported by Iran, have blocked one of the arteries of global commerce: the Red Sea route on which 12 percent of global wares and about one third of containers travel. Several shipping giants have suspended the passage of ships in the area. The price of oil is rising, while the costs of transport between Asia and Europe are soaring. The latest emergency is worsening the crisis...

Looking at the main financial indicators, the situation at the start of 2024 looks better than the most optimistic predictions. Inflation is dropping, American growth is constant, unemployment is stable under 4%. The equity sector and Big Tech shares are all booming. The markets are telling the fairy tale of the best of all possible worlds, but reality is quite different. On our planet Earth, we can see the shadows of a looming third world war and a ruinous environmental crisis, while the...

"2023 was the year in which the State regained control of economic policy with so-called de-risking: a risk reduction strategy by which the West wishes to move away from reliance on the Chinese market in strategic sectors such as technology and renewable energy. Some of the crises have since subsided. The central banks have proven that they can manage the growth of inflation and they can contain the earthquake that we saw in March with the fall of Silicon Valley Bank. Other emergencies,...

The latest earthquake to shake Silicon Valley was last Friday 17th November. The epicenter was at 601 Mission Street, San Francisco, headquarters to OpenAI – the leader of the AI sector. In less than a week, the CEO was first ejected and then reinstated on his chair. The tremors at the top of OpenAI are the final act in a secret war between the two factions of techno-optimists and techno-critics, who fear humanity’s loss of control over AI. But the real plot twist is the entrance on the board...

It’s called Artificial Intelligence as a Service, and it’s the AI of our near future. It’s practical, easy to use, and available to all: just like electricity. It seems to be a revolution, but the debate is raging, and many are starting to push back against it. The doomsayers on one side – warning against the risks of unbridled growth of AI, and the ultra-optimists on the other – such as American entrepreneur Marc Andreessen and his “Techno-Optimist Manifesto”. It might seem impossible to...

The debate surrounding artificial intelligence is dominated by the concept of “existential risk”, or the fear that we as humans feel that an invention can get out of our control. Humanity is facing the dangers of a sudden technological paradigm shift, just like at the times of nuclear energy and the Bomb. Unlike the Cold War, though, there’s no logic of deterrence and no principle of containment. Artificial intelligence is the brainchild of a few choice individuals in Silicon Valley, but it...

They call it the “Gig Economy”. It’s the field of short-term services, such as private drivers, deliveries, and food couriers struggling to complete as many tasks as possible within the shortest time. As they do so, they get points and go up in their ranking, just like in videogames. But this is no game, it’s the tragic reality of a world that has cancelled worker rights. Digital platforms are in charge of it all. Recently, the employment tribunal of Palermo has sentenced that to rank workers...

Recently, the court of Milan has seized 779 million euros from Airbnb, the largest web service in the short-term homestay market. According to investigation, the digital goliath failed to pay its taxes for the Italian market in the years 2017 to 2021. Many things have changed since Airbnb was celebrated as the magic pill for putting renters directly in touch with travelers, benefitting both. Nowadays, the Californian company is losing control of its own narrative, as it finds itself at the...

It’s called Coltan, and it’s a precious mineral used to make electronics and computers. Essential to build smartphone capacitors and batteries, mostly extracted in Africa. In the last year and a half, the map of central Africa itself has been riddled by violent state coups. This map of political unrest is almost identical to that of the mines where coveted materials such as Coltan are extracted. It’s a map of wild exploitation, violence and wars for the control of resources, in the name of...

In 2023, the price of gold has almost reached a historic high, and rising. The greatest safe-haven asset, the most coveted metal, is the answer to the great crises that have been battering us incessantly, shaking global assets and panicking markets. While its price reaches two-thousand dollars an ounce, central banks are rushing to increase their gold reserves. The world is once more seeking out Eldorado, but the new gold rush is marked by the contradictions of a never-ending state of alert.

30th of October 1998, the Court of Rome officially declares the presumed death of Federico Caffè – the economist who disappeared without a trace one morning in April 1987. Professor of Economic and Financial Policies at the University of Rome, uncompromising Keynesian. Caffé literally vanished after his school of thought was defeated by the Conservative revolution of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. Thirty-seven years later, many things have changed. The State is once again guiding the...

The specter of inflation is back in the western world, and the Central Banks are struggling to keep it under control. The war in Ukraine and the Middle East, the return of supply chains after thirty years of unbridled offshoring, and the demand for higher salaries in the USA are all factors in the recent price fever. On the horizon, we can see that structural inflation is only going to get worse. Central banks are going to be like a high-wire walker, managing a delicate balancing act, because...

The conflict between Hamas and Israel may have repercussions on the world economy (already weakened by the Sars-Cov-2 pandemic and by the war in Ukraine). The price of oil and energy are the main concerns: the USA reserves of crude oil are at their lowest in recent memory, and prices are reaching dangerously high levels, just as the 2024 Presidential election gets closer. Across the pond, Europe is risking yet another rise in inflation - just as the cycle of interest rate hikes was coming to...

La sera del 9 ottobre 1963 uno tsunami di milioni di metri cubi d’acqua, provocato dalla caduta di una valanga in un bacino idroelettrico, si abbatta su una valle al confine tra Veneto e Friuli-Venezia Giulia, cancellando il paese di Longarone e provocando più di 1.900 morti. Da quella notte di autunno, la tragedia del Vajont è diventata simbolo dell’«ingegnerizzazione della natura», delle trasformazioni che l’uomo impone all’ecosistema fino a comprometterne gli equilibri. Sessant’anni dopo,...

With more that 32 trillion dollars in public debt, the United States are the country with the largest debt on earth. China and Saudi Arabia are no-longer buying American government bonds, and as the next Presidential election looms, many are starting to fear a new government shutdown: where federal activities are put on hold because the government can’t pass a budget legislation. The considerable increase of public debt in the USA and in the West as a whole, is going to cause serious expense...

The United States are apparently in turmoil. While the American public debt is growing at a frightening pace, and the dollar’s supremacy as currency of the world reserve is in doubt, a dark sickness grips its people. In 2022, the United States saw a record 50,000 suicides. Never before, in the last fifteen years, did so many people decide to take their own lives. Despite these weaknesses, the USA is still unparalleled in its capacity to attract and utilize talent. Also in 2022, American...

Xi Jinping’s absence at the recent G20 summit, and the catastrophe that hit China’s real-estate sector just this August, may be deeper signs of change in the global balance. Meanwhile, in the West economists are divided: those that follow the school of Keynes see Beijing’s difficulties as caused by a crisis in internal demand. They don’t dramatize the possible repercussions of this downturn, and they congratulate the Biden administration on its public support towards the economy, seeing in it...