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With the release of Pope Leo XIV’s encyclical Magnifica Humanitas, mankind’s foremost moral authority—a Chicago-born priest and the absolute monarch of the longest-running institution in history—addressed a technology so advanced that even its creators struggle to comprehend it.

One of those creators appeared alongside the Holy Father: Chris Olah, co-founder of Anthropic, the leading AI model provider and a company publicly feuding with the government of the pope’s home country over battlefield use of its algorithms.

The remarks of both men were scrutinized the world over by public officials, executives, theologians, technologists, believers, and non-believers alike. The consequences of their attention remain to be seen. For now, as historian T.R. Fehrenbach said of the Korean War, the lesson of Magnifica Humanitas’s unprecedented release is that it happened.

The lessons of the document itself, however, are harder to summarize.

A Servant, Not a Master

The American Mind’s ‘Editorial Roundtable’ podcast is a weekly conversation with Ryan Williams, Spencer Klavan, and Mike Sabo devoted to uncovering the ideas and principles that drive American political life. Stream here or download from your favorite podcast host.

Trump Reopens the Trade War | The Roundtable Ep. 327

President Trump this week has announced a set of 50 percent tariffs on various Canadian goods, with a 30-day window to negotiate before they are imposed. In retaliation against Canada’s quotas on American cars and alcohol, Trump proposes to levy tariffs on wine, hockey sticks, and cement. But does it serve America and the Right ahead of midterms? Meanwhile, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche’s confirmation hearings, following the dismissal of Pam Bondi, give a snapshot of the Right’s shifting composition ahead of midterms. Plus: Lindsey Graham, RIP.

19th Annual E. L. ‘Ted’ Wheelwright Memorial Lecture

When: 17 September, 5:15-8:00 pm (drinks and canapés from 5:15pm, lecture starts 6 pm)

Where: Lecture Theatre 200, Social Sciences Building (A02), University of Sydney

Speaker: Professor Geoff Mann (Distinguished Professor, Simon Fraser University)

Registration: Attendance is free but spaces are limited, please register through this LINK.

Climates of Uncertainty

Numbers have their limits, but by every metric currently in use, global uncertainty has accelerated in the last decade, and the future is more uncertain, for more people, than at any time since measurement began just after World War II. How high will the cost of living rise? How will AI and other technologies impact our jobs? What will life be like in a world 3° hotter? When and where will the US start another war? Where is populist radicalism taking us? No one knows. For a host of reasons—from economic insecurity to climate change, political instability to technological change—there is a sense, shared by many living otherwise very different lives, that we have reached a point where we can neither know what happens next nor trust history as our guide. It is as if the past and the future have become untethered.

On this episode of Follow the Money, Dr Emma Shortis joins Glenn Connley to discuss the upcoming midterm elections in the United States, how the Trump administration has been chipping away at the guardrails of American democracy, and whether the Australian government is prepared for the possibility of disputed elections in its major alliance partner.

This episode was recorded Tuesday 21 July.

Guest: Emma Shortis, Director, International & Security Affairs, the Australia Institute // @emmashortis

Host: Glenn Connley, Senior Media Advisor, the Australia Institute // @glennconnley

Show notes:

After America: Australia and the new world order by Emma Shortis, Australia Institute Press (May 2025)

Trump administration chips away at independent media, faith in democracy, After America, the Australia Institute (July 2026)

Lingering fears of United States domination over Canada’s economic and political institutions, concerns about rapid technological advancement and the surges in alienation and unemployment it entails, youth-led protests against US atrocities supported by Canadian funds and arms, and a resurgent Canadian left are familiar crises and movements to different generations. In the late 1960s, Canadian political economists Mel Watkins and James Laxer organized left-wing members of the New Democratic Party to publish a document entitled Manifesto for an Independent Socialist Canada, responding to the era’s pressing questions and to push the NDP to become a vehicle for the policies they believed were necessary to avoid US domination over Canada. To move the country beyond the post-war welfare capitalist state, they introduced a program that focused on workplace democracy and public ownership of the “commanding heights” of the Canadian economy.¹ The Manifesto and the so called “Waffle” movement behind it were not widely well-received. Many NDP members were hesitant to accept these radical proposals from their perspective. Labour leaders feared reprisal, with many of their members working for the US “branch plants” that the Waffle’s manifesto critiqued.

Prime Minister Mark Carney’s election in 2025 reflected a period of heightened uncertainty in Canadian politics. Only a few months before the federal election, at the time of the Inauguration of the second Trump Administration in the US, polls indicated a strong desire for change from Canadian voters. Amid escalating pressures from the cost-of-living and the looming economic stagnation due to the start of a US Trade War, Canadians sought stability under uncertainty. Carney’s clearly neoliberal orientation is a departure from the nominally progressive aesthetic of the preceding decade under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, but voters understood a Carney-led government as a hold on the status quo in the face of ongoing political and economic challenges with the US. This shift from surface-level progressive policy under the Trudeau-era, to policies that fully embraces a renewed and unapologetic emphasis on fiscal discipline, economic competitiveness, and private-sector engagement signals a return to open neoliberalism not seen in Canada since the 2008 Global Financial Crisis.

A version of the article was originally published on June 23, 2026 by the Centre for Industrial Policy, an initiative of the Transition Accelerator.

Prime Minister Mark Carney’s “nation-building” agenda has thus far largely focused on resource megaprojects. This is not a new thing. The policy agenda risks repeating a very old Canadian development pitfall that created the dependence on the larger empires of the world that leaves us vulnerable today. Rather than repeating the pattern of seeking salvation in megaprojects, the current moment calls for a public sector-led agenda to develop diverse, multi-sector economies that can adapt to changing economic circumstances.

I live in Loudoun County, Virginia, about a mile from the largest concentration of data centers on earth, which has given the online discourse around them a vaguely odd character. At worst, they are large concrete squares that are indistinguishable from any other industrial park, except that they produce less noise or pollution. My utility bill is ordinary, if slightly below the national average, and my roads are as nice as any in the country. But to hear online activists talk, my community should be on the verge of running out of water.