Donald Trump has appointed New York Representative Elise Stefanik as his incoming Ambassador to the UN. Once widely seen as a rising Republican star, Stefanik at the time became the youngest woman ever elected to Congress at the age of 30, ten years ago. Back then, she championed a more conventional brand of GOP moderation. In 2016, she issued strong denunciations of Donald Trump but has since become one of his most loyal and ardent supporters. Following Trump’s consolidation of […]| UN Dispatch
The UN General Assembly met this morning to mark the third anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Under normal circumstances, Europe and the United States would join forces to advance a resolution that firmly denounces Russia’s aggression and forcefully defends Ukraine’s territorial integrity and sovereignty. But today’s vote was anything but normal. There were essentially two competing texts—one drafted by the European Union and Ukraine, and the other by the United...| UN Dispatch
It’s official. The United States is seeking to withdraw from the World Health Organization (WHO). Though this move had been rumored for a while, it was never abundantly clear that the Trump administration would actually move forward with it, especially on day one. To be sure, Trump tried to pull out of the WHO back in 2020. However, that decision at the time reflected the politics of the moment: Trump very transparently sought to shift blame for his own incompetent […]| UN Dispatch
When the Syrian civil war erupted in 2011, it had all the makings of a monumental catastrophe. The Secretary-General at the time, Ban Ki-moon, was not the same kind of jet-setting international peace negotiator as his predecessor, Kofi Annan. So Ban made a wise decision: he tapped the former Secretary-General to be his special envoy for Syria. At the time, Annan was riding high as an ex-diplomat, having successfully negotiated a political settlement to a deadly and high-stakes internal confli...| UN Dispatch
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) released its annual assessment of global humanitarian needs today. It’s a grim document. The report, known as the Global Humanitarian Overview, surveys the dozens of man-made and natural disasters around which the UN has mounted a response over the current year. It also projects the crises expected to demand international attention in 2025. The report estimates that 305 million people across 32 countries and 9 r...| UN Dispatch
The key question for the Euro-Atlantic states is whether they can adapt to the new multipolar global reality where they are no longer the self-appointed arbiters of other region's security orders.| The Institute for Peace and Diplomacy - l’Institut pour la paix et la diplo...
Snowflake’s consumption business continues to feel pressure as large enterprise customers look for ways to optimize usage. While it seemed that management had a handle on forecasting the impact of this effect when they lowered guidance back in Q4, they still underestimated the trend. With the Q1 report, they once again brought down the full […]| Software Stack Investing
Datadog stock surged 45% over the month of May, following their earnings report on May 4th. The results aligned with the common theme of “better than expected”, shared with several other software companies reporting results recently. This outperformance appears to have set a baseline across the software sector, with upward momentum building as more companies […]| Software Stack Investing
Following a disappointing Q1 earnings report highlighted by challenges in the go-to-market effort, Cloudflare demonstrated renewed momentum in Q2. The sales reorganization is progressing well. Large enterprises expanded spend, adding to multi-product subscriptions across several categories. In parallel, profitability measures continue to improve with growing operating margin and cash flow. With a mission statement to […]| Software Stack Investing
After delivering favorable results in Q1, Confluent continued on largely the same trajectory in Q2. Sequential growth rates even imply stabilization around 30% annually, after almost 2 years of deceleration from Covid highs. This growth is being led by rapid adoption of Confluent Cloud, with the licensed Confluent Platform offering for on-premise deployments demonstrating surprising […]| Software Stack Investing
Headwinds from workload optimization may have peaked in Q2. After nearly a year of negative drag on revenue growth for the hyperscalers, it appears that cloud infrastructure customers are shifting their focus away from workload optimization and back towards the deployment of new ones. At least that is what Amazon’s CEO told us in the […]| Software Stack Investing
AI has crashed onto the investing stage in 2023, driving significant stock price gains for several companies. Some, like Nvidia and Microsoft have already projected a direct revenue benefit as part of recent earnings reports. Others have indicated they expect AI to drive demand tailwinds going forward as part of management commentary. Eventually, most software […]| Software Stack Investing
After guiding for a sequential 4% drop in revenue for Q1, MongoDB delivered a strong beat. More importantly, their preliminary estimate for Q2 revenue would achieve a reacceleration of annual growth if they outperform at the same level as Q1. The revenue projection for Q2 even leapfrogged past the analyst consensus for Q3. While the […]| Software Stack Investing