At the close of the Second World War, the United States represented almost a third of world GDP and an even larger share of manufacturing. The proportion is stark: the UN’s World Economic Report for 1948 breaks a chart of global manufacturing down into two roughly equal halves: the United States and “Other”. At the time, it was unquestionable that if there were to be a global reserve currency, it would be the U.S. dollar. At the Bretton Woods conference in 1944, this was codified into a...| Palladium Magazine
Ever since John Winthrop declared from Southampton in 1630, “We shall be as a city upon a hill, the eyes of all people are upon us,” there has been a moral and moralizing dimension to the way Americans view their role in the world. The American exceptionalism that was, for the future governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, a Christian missionary pronouncement, would ebb and flow over the next almost four-hundred years down to the present. But it has never gone away.| Palladium Magazine
This article will feature in our next print edition PALLADIUM 13: Global Empire, subscribe to receive your copy on March 21, 2024.| Palladium Magazine
Palladium Magazine is a San Francisco-based, non-partisan publication that explores the future of governance and society through international journalism, long-form analysis, and social philosophy. Palladium was founded in 2018.| Palladium Magazine
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It was almost midnight in Kabul. I was in a Turkish-style café on the top floor of Afghanistan’s only shopping mall with a few young Afghans, waiting for green tea and rice pudding. My Afghan friends were chatting loudly, in a fluid blend of Pashto and English. I, only half-understanding them, was puffing away at a cigarette while I watched Terminator: Dark Fate subtitled in Persian on the television above us. A few tables away, some Talibs were talking quietly and occasionally glancing ov...| Palladium Magazine
PALLADIUM 12: Silicon Nemesis is now available to all Palladium members. Subscribe today to receive your copy of our winter 2023 print edition featuring Grimes as the inescapable agent of humanity’s downfall, hauntingly photographed by the inimitable Brian Ziff and interviewed in long-form by Samo Burja on human civilization, the universe, and the dawn of AI.| Palladium Magazine