Why does the Pope have one of the best intelligence networks on Earth?

September 17, 2026 in Europe

The Catholic Church wields one of the oldest and widest intelligence networks in the world. But it’s not like the Pope is ordering assassinations or operating a network of spies. So if Vatican City doesn’t even have an intelligence agency, why is it so good at collecting intelligence?

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October 26, 2026

How did Japan end up controlling China’s gateway to the Pacific?

October 26, 2026

Japan controls a 1200km chain of islands that sits across the Chinese navy’s main routes to the Pacific. In peacetime, Chinese warships sail through the gaps legally, but in a war, the Ryukyu Islands could become a giant wall. With China historically sensitive to being hemmed in by foreign powers, how has Japan managed to control the Ryukyus, and what impact does this have on geopolitical strategy?

October 26, 2026

October 23, 2026

Why does North India have the votes while South India has the money?

October 23, 2026

North India and South India share a country, but they speak unrelated languages and grew up on very different land. Today the south holds a disproportionate share of India’s wealth while the north holds a growing share of its people, and India’s first census in sixteen years could shift the balance of power between them. So how did these two Indias form, and what does the tension between them mean for India’s place in the world?

October 23, 2026

October 22, 2026

How does war risk insurance shape geopolitics?

October 22, 2026

We all know that wars cost money and damage economies. But you probably don’t know that insurance has a shocking amount of influence on conflicts. Imagine if your car insurance charged you extra every time you drove through a dangerous neighborhood, and could raise that charge overnight or refuse to cover you there at all. That’s roughly how ships are insured in war zones, and it can decide whether a shipping company sails through a conflict or goes around it. But how exactly does this influence geopolitics?

October 22, 2026

October 21, 2026

Why couldn’t Ukraine keep its nuclear weapons?

October 21, 2026

When the Soviet Union collapsed, Ukraine inherited custody of roughly 1900 strategic nuclear warheads. But they gave these up in exchange for security assurances from Russia, the US, and the UK, including a pledge to respect Ukraine’s borders and never use force against it. So would Ukraine have been invaded if they hadn’t given up those nuclear weapons?

October 21, 2026

October 19, 2026

How does France riot so much without collapsing?

October 19, 2026

France protests more often, and more disruptively, than almost any other wealthy democracy, with strike days per worker in its private sector alone running about five times Germany’s rate. But while French cabinets come and go, all those riots and fires have never brought down the Fifth Republic itself. So why does France have so many protests, and why are they seemingly not a threat to the country’s overall stability?

October 19, 2026