Newsletter #445 — April 13, 2026

by Guy Burgess and Heidi Burgess

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Highlighted Links

A few suggestions about links that we think are especially interesting.

• Interstate War
  Mutually Automated Destruction: The Escalating Global A.I. Arms Race — An exploration of the parallels between the ongoing race for AI supremacy and the earlier nuclear arms race.
• Interstate War
  A New Era of World War Has Arrived — Reason to believe that we have entered into a period where violent conflict and war has become one of the first, rather than one of the last, strategies used to advance the interests of nations (and their leaders).
• Interstate War
  Trump Is Tearing at the Soul of the American Military — Important reflections on the deeply disturbing and far-reaching implications of President Trump's threat to erase a civilization (including the everyday people that we were supposedly trying to help).
• Developing a Unifying Vision
  What Do Americans Think They Owe Each Other? — An important reminder of the shared obligations that we have to one another -- obligations that our ever-present partisan struggles have caused us to forget.
• Civil Society
  Ayaan Answers: You Cannot Restore the West Without Restoring Citizenship — In conjunction with her campaign to restore the best parts of Western Civilization, important reflections on the role of citizenship.
• Israel, Hamas, Iran, and Related Wars
  This Post Won't Save the World — In the context of reflections on the Iranian war, an example of a sensible and complexity-oriented way of thinking about chaotic social events.
• Interstate War
  How do you win a war in 2026? — Amid all of the efforts to put a positive (or negative) spin on military campaigns, a primer on what it takes to actually win (or lose) a war.

Reader Suggested Links

Highlighting links suggested by our readers. Please send us links to things that you find useful.

• Israel, Hamas, Iran, and Related Wars
  The War in Iran Is Not Over — Perceptive food for thought for those trying to anticipate the future of ongoing Mideast violence.
• Networking
  Introducing ProDemStack: An Interactive Network Map of Pro-Democracy Substacks — Micah Sifry explores the tilt and the dynamics of the pro-democracy Substack eco-system.
• Israel, Hamas, Iran, and Related Wars
  How Pakistan Secretly Forced America and Iran Into a Ceasefire Washington Never Wanted — From a negotiation perspective, a look at Pakistan's efforts to convene talks aimed at ending the Iranian war.
• Israel, Hamas, Iran, and Related Wars
  The Iranian Opposition’s Urgent Task — For Iranian victims of last January's brutal repression, thoughts on what they need to do to escape the clutches of their country's murderous regime.
• Authoritarianism
  Trump as Alexander the Great: A Theory That Explains Iran (And Everything Else) — An argument that President Trump represents just the latest manifestation of leadership problems dating back at least to Alexander the Great.
• Climate / Environment / Health
  The Legacy of Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" 20 Years Later — A look at the long shadow cast by one of history's most consequential PowerPoint slide shows.
• Israel, Hamas, Iran, and Related Wars
  Defending Israel in an Age of Madness — An especially good overview of how Israel sees its ongoing wars and the many threats that it faces -- an overview that helps us understand Israel's actions.

Colleague Activities

Highlighting things that our conflict and peacebuilding colleagues are doing that contribute to efforts to address the hyper-polarization problem.

• Developing a Unifying Vision
  Decency is about to make a comeback. — A hopeful argument that our politics is passing through the period of "peak disrespect."
• Peacebuilding
  Peacecrafting: Turning conflict into collaboration — Peaceful coexistence isn't idealistic -- it's practical. Dr. Paul Zeitz draws on deliberative democracy and neuroscience to show how communities can move from division to collaboration.
• Theories of Change
  How Small Innovations Shift Systems — Systemic change rarely announces itself with a single dramatic shift. More often, it spreads gradually, through relationships, practice, and persistence.
• Bridge Building
  Conflict Profiteers are Wrong: Revealing Common Ground, the Conditions for Dialogue, and the Opportunities Ahead for Bridging Differences Between Citizens — A Living Room Conversations report showing that the U.S. is far less polarized than imagined, and that there is still considerable trust in the election system -- a report with big implications for the bridging movement.
• Developing a Unifying Vision
  Stories from a Liberated Future — A series of group writings considering different ways to describe shared liberation.  These are creative explorations meant to be understood as a portal to our shared liberated culture.
• Theories of Change
  The Lexington Experiment, Part II — Richard Young of CivicLex on why local democracy efforts are hard to scale because "scaling" is the wrong goal.
• De-Escalation Strategies
  "When I first saw your work, I rolled my eyes." On skepticism about reducing us-vs-them thinking. — Zach Elwood notes that serious conflict inevitably leads to a widespread instinct to scoff at conflict-reduction efforts. To escape the toxic conflict spiral, we must see that instinct as part of our problem. Zach quotes a reader who does that.
• Civic Education
  The Center for Civic Education's FY 2025 Annual Report — The Center for Civic Education helps students gain an increased understanding of the institutions of constitutional democracy and the fundamental principles and values upon which those institutions were founded.
• Developing a Unifying Vision
  Using Civic Imagination to Shape Our Next 250 Years — A virtual conversation with three leaders on building a fair, inclusive future for our democracy. You'll gain inspiration for local civic action, practical steps to practice democracy in everyday life, and a network of people doing just that. 
• Psychological Complexity
  Dignity in America — Dignity is not agreement. It is the discipline of how we show up when disagreement is real. In a self-governing society like ours, that responsibility sits with each of us.
• Media Reform
  What Are the Politics of a Platform? Users on X/Twitter — Jonathan Stray investigates how Elon Musk's interventions, or lack thereof, have favored one set of politics over another on X.
• Media Reform
  A Search Engine That Wants You to Disagree Smarter: The FreeSpoke Mission — FreeSpoke founder Kristin Jackson claims their search engine ends polarization by balancing left/right views and protecting privacy -- an exploration of its design and core challenges.
• Developing a Unifying Vision
  Beyond MAGA: The Emergent New Traditionalism that could Reshape American Politics — A new traditionalism is emerging, particularly among younger Trump voters, driven by dissatisfaction with the economy and the cultural status quo.
• Saving Democracy
  Terms of Engagement – Behind a Bipartisan Bid to Protect Election Integrity — A video about a bipartisan initiative to oppose efforts by the Trump administration and Republicans in Congress to impose new rules on election administration.

News and Opinion

From around the web, more insight into the nature of our conflict problems, limits of business-as-usual thinking, and things people are doing to try to make things better. (Formerly, Beyond Intractability in Context.)

• Developing a Unifying Vision
  The Solution to the Liberal Conundrum is Hiding in Plain Sight — In what ways has liberalism failed us? This article helps us answer this question by giving us a richer understanding of human nature -- one that centers our need to contribute, not just consume.
• Saving Democracy
  In 1990, a bipartisan Congress passed historic bills. Then it cracked apart. — A retrospective look at that critical time in the 1990s when Congress's ability to actually get things done collapsed.
• Disinformation
  How Fake People Became Real Influencers — An explanation of how much more influential and accomplished synthetic social media personalities have become.
• Social / Economic Complexity
  The Trump Administration Is in a Psychotic State — A perceptive and terrifying argument that, under Trump, the US government has developed a "personality" that is, in many ways, genuinely psychotic.
• Interstate War
  Victor Davis Hanson: The War—and the War on the War — Reflections on what happens when political differences within the United States transform the political unity that usually surrounds military operations into just another opportunity for partisan gain.
• Interstate War
  Elon Musk’s Starship Heavy Could Revolutionize Warfare — The really surprising story about the dramatic way in which Musk is lowering the cost of putting massive payloads into orbit -- a technology with astonishing military implications.
• Artificial Intelligence
  Worried About A.I. Taking Your Job? That’s Not Very ‘Agentic’ of You. — In the context of AI, an essay on an interesting new word "agentic" -- a cross between the rejection of victimhood and aggressive, personal aggrandizement.
• Social / Economic Complexity
  The Intellectual Right Is Mad at the Mess It’s Made — From a right-leaning perspective, an exploration of the way in which carefully considered political critiques are transformed as they move into popular political discourse.
• Communication Complexity
  Forget the A.I. Apocalypse. Memes Have Already Nuked Our Culture. — More thinking about the complex way in which smart phones are altering the way we think -- both individually and as a society.
• Communication Complexity
  Against the Smartphone Theory of Everything — A useful effort to get us to re-examine a big part of today's conventional wisdom -- the notion that smart phones are the principal reason why we increasingly do dumb things.
• Effective Problem-Solving
  A broken system is costing America trillions. I see it in Wyoming. — From the "Red Tape" newsletter, an explanation of one of the big reasons why US society has so much trouble building much of anything (or solving pretty much any problem).
• Education
  How Humanists Helped Wreck the Humanities — From the Chronicle of Higher Education, an example of the kind of introspection that efforts to restore the public's trust will require.
• Saving Democracy
  An unpardonable abuse of presidential power with only one solution — An overview of the new book, "The Presidential Pardon: The Short Clause with a Long, Troubled History," that provides important insights into one of the Trump administration's most worrisome practices.
• Culture and Religion
  Scientific Inquiry Is a Keystone of Western Civilization — An analysis of the critical role that science has played in the astonishing rise and the many successes of Western Civilization.
• Left / Right Conflict
  Do the Democrats Know What Time It Is? — Thoughts about what happens should Trump become so unpopular that Democrats can win without ever having to articulate a governing agenda.
• Left / Right Conflict
  How to Understand the Well-Being Gap between Liberals and Conservatives — Yet another perspective on the all important question of how liberals and conservatives differ from one another.
• Psychological Complexity
  Why Politics Makes Us Bend Our Own Values — A psychological explanation of how conflict dynamics lead us to change our moral beliefs.
• Social / Economic Complexity
  See How the Average U.S. Worker Has Changed Over 250 Years — As we look at the prospect of massive AI-induced changes in the nature of work, helpful perspective from past periods of radical change.
• Interstate War
  Niall Ferguson: How Great Powers Lose Wars They’re Winning — Thought-provoking reflections on the many ways in which societies have figured out how to snatch defeat from the jaws of military victory.
• Interstate War
  Three Times the Mossad Did the Impossible — Astonishing real-world spy stories that explain how the actions of a few unsung individuals can dramatically change the course of history.
• Saving Democracy
  Voting in California: All in Favor, Say ‘Arf’ — An article that explains why reasonable people on the right can have concerns about the fairness of elections in states controlled by Democrats.

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About the MBI Newsletters

Two or three times a week, Guy and Heidi Burgess, the BI Directors, share some of our thoughts on political hyper-polarization and related topics. We also share essays from our colleagues and other contributors, and every week or so, we devote one newsletter to annotated links to outside readings that we found particularly useful relating to U.S. hyper-polarization, threats to peace (and actual violence) in other countries, and related topics of interest. Each Newsletter is posted on BI, and sent out by email through Substack to subscribers. You can sign up to receive your copy here and find the latest newsletter here or on our BI Newsletter page, which also provides access to all the past newsletters, going back to 2017.

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