About Global Tantrum! with Steve Palley and Prof. Galen Jackson
Two International Relations PhDs help you make sense of the post-postwar era.
globaltantrum.substack.com (https://globaltantrum.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast)
Two new papers point toward different strategic futures. Eli Sanchez argues that emerging technology is unlikely to make the oceans transparent (https://www.belfercenter.org/research-analysis/seeing-through-transparent-oceans-emerging-technology-submarine-vulnerability-0). Steve Palley and Galen Jackson discuss what that means for submarine survivability, nuclear deterrence, and the political conflicts that a stable balance of terror cannot settle.
Erik Sand’s study of the new missile age (https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09636412.2025.2604503) presents a more unsettling prospect: precision conventional ICBMs could become militarily relevant within a decade. What happens if distance stops protecting bomber bases and other vulnerable targets? We examine the incentives to strike first and the danger of mistaking a conventional launch for a nuclear attack.
Missile defense offers another complication. The physics of intercepting an ICBM does not become easier because its warhead is conventional. We consider what renewed investment might achieve, what it could do to nuclear stability, and why a successful test or a theater-defense system (https://www.congress.gov/crs_external_products/IF/HTML/IF10541.web.html) cannot settle those questions. The discussion also draws on reported threats against US bombers in Britain (https://www.nytimes.com/2026/10/05/us/politics/iran-drone-attack-us-uk-base-fairford.html) and the implications of drones reaching aircraft far from a frontline.
Can nuclear deterrence remain robust while conventional warfare becomes more tempting? We close with that tension and a recommendation for The Myth of Military Victory, by Stephen Biddle, Sam Winter-Levy, and Yuri Zhukov (https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/myth-military-victory). Military capabilities shape the bargaining environment; whether they resolve the political dispute is another question.
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit globaltantrum.substack.com (https://globaltantrum.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)
3 Oct 2026
Who Can Control AI?
The White House has brought leading AI companies together around voluntary safety commitments. But what does self-policing mean when the same companies are racing to build more capable systems? Steve Palley and Galen Jackson look at the promises, the incentives, and the gap between corporate oversight and public control. The administration’s new terminology order (https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2026/09/inaugurating-the-era-of-super-intelligence/) adds another wrinkle: calling everything superintelligence does not settle what the technology can do.
Anthropic’s analysis of GLM-5.3 (https://www.anthropic.com/research/glm-5-3-and-the-spread-of-advanced-cyber-capabilities) sharpens the problem. A downloadable model can develop sophisticated cyber exploits, while its safeguards can be weakened or removed. We discuss what those results establish, what they leave uncertain, and why the spread of capabilities changes the choices facing governments and defenders.
We then take up Hal Brands’s argument about America’s superintelligence dilemma, listed in his Foreign Affairs bibliography (https://www.foreignaffairs.com/authors/hal-brands): pursue supremacy, seek shared development, or try to suppress the technology. Each route has costs. Nuclear and biological arms control offer useful comparisons, but AI’s civilian benefits and wider accessibility make the analogy incomplete. Recent US-China trade arrangements (https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2026/09/fact-sheet-president-donald-j-trump-advances-a-fair-and-reciprocal-relationship-with-china-while-hosting-historic-state-visit/) do not amount to an AI governance regime.
Finally, we separate the risks of human-directed attacks from models acting outside their assigned limits. OpenAI’s Hugging Face incident account (https://openai.com/index/hugging-face-incident-and-the-road-ahead/) and Australian incident review (https://openai.com/index/how-we-will-do-better-for-australia/) make containment a practical question. Alongside the Council on Foreign Relations’ cyber resilience report (https://www.cfr.org/reports/the-cyber-gap), these cases raise a harder question: can institutions improve fast enough to handle the systems they are already building?
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit globaltantrum.substack.com (https://globaltantrum.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)
26 Sept 2026
Saudi Arabia's Worst-Case Scenario
The Houthis have rapidly expanded their control along Yemen’s western coast, seizing Mocha and strategically important Red Sea positions. That advance gives them more leverage around the Bab el-Mandeb just as a reported Iran-aligned militia attack put Saudi Arabia’s East-West oil pipeline (https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/9/12/saudi-arabia-shuts-critical-oil-pipeline-after-drone-attack-what-happened) under pressure.
Riyadh wants help. Mohammed bin Salman reportedly asked Donald Trump to intervene against the Houthis, but the White House held off (https://www.axios.com/2026/09/21/trump-houthis-yemen-saudi-bin-salman). Saudi Arabia still has money, reserves, and time, but its reliable ways to move oil around the Strait of Hormuz are narrowing.
Andrew Leber joins us to explain why the Houthis are a harder problem than a conventional Iranian proxy. They receive Iranian support, but they have their own political goals, their own local base, and their own reasons to push for control of Yemen. That independence makes a broader deal with Tehran harder to translate into a durable settlement.
The episode also looks beyond the immediate crisis. The new Makkah defense agreement (https://my.gov.sa/en/news/2835346) links Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Turkey, but it does not guarantee that either partner would fight Iran. The United States remains powerful in the region, yet its military capacity and political appetite are both more limited than Gulf allies once assumed.
We ask what Saudi Arabia can still do, whether a renewed bombing campaign would change anything, and whether the least bad option now runs through another uneasy accommodation with Iran and the Houthis.
Further reading: Andrew Leber and Lesley Anne Warner, “The Impacts of the Houthis’ Advance Could Extend Well Beyond Saudi Arabia” (https://carnegieendowment.org/emissary/2026/09/houthis-bab-al-mandeb-impacts-saudi-arabia-somaliland), Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, September 23, 2026.
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit globaltantrum.substack.com (https://globaltantrum.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)
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