And not a word about Saudi Arabia's de facto ally - Israel.
Israel prefers its neighbors remain monarchies, corrupt, tribal, backward and with weak state institutions and little claim on the loyalty of their citizens.
Cool, lots of stuff that anyone that didn't go to school in the US already knows and all that without a single mention of "the poor guy with the hardest job in the world" having a fable for murdering journalists.
Thanks for such a detailed and thoughtful synthesis. I wrote this short piece on Jan 13 and my thesis is quantitatively supported by your excellent research.
Thank you for spotting that. The map was illustrative, but the AI rendering appears to have misplaced Yemen and Iraq. That is my oversight.
I am still refining how I constrain AI image tools to prevent geographic drift. If you have suggestions for improving cartographic accuracy, I would welcome them.
Fascinating article, thanks!
Adds a lot of context to T.E. Laurence's book, Seven Pillars of Wisdom: A Triumph -- one of the few books I've read 3 times.
Excellent summary! Learned a lot!
And not a word about Saudi Arabia's de facto ally - Israel.
Israel prefers its neighbors remain monarchies, corrupt, tribal, backward and with weak state institutions and little claim on the loyalty of their citizens.
Israel belongs to the next article on how Saudi Arabia wants to approach its future.
But I wonder, 5,000 words on Saudi Arabia in which Israel is not mentioned and your comment is a criticism of Israel?!
Not a criticism of Israel, simply a gap that I found interesting.
Cool, lots of stuff that anyone that didn't go to school in the US already knows and all that without a single mention of "the poor guy with the hardest job in the world" having a fable for murdering journalists.
Very interesting, about a country I didn't know much. Thanks!
Thanks for such a detailed and thoughtful synthesis. I wrote this short piece on Jan 13 and my thesis is quantitatively supported by your excellent research.
https://alkoch55.substack.com/p/super-shia-state?r=kmlt&utm_medium=ios
Thanks!
Just a heads up: I followed your link and it looks like your map is AI-generated and placed at least Yemen and Iraq wrong?
Thank you for spotting that. The map was illustrative, but the AI rendering appears to have misplaced Yemen and Iraq. That is my oversight.
I am still refining how I constrain AI image tools to prevent geographic drift. If you have suggestions for improving cartographic accuracy, I would welcome them.
Yeah AI is not ready for cartography because carto requires precision and these are probabilistic. They’re basically hallucinating too much