The Strait the Superpower Could Not Keep Open (Infographic)

Geopolitics · Maritime · michelerovatti.com

The Strait the Superpower Could Not Keep Open

On 28 February 2026, the US and Israel struck Iran. Within 48 hours, the Strait of Hormuz — 25% of the world's seaborne oil — was effectively closed. What followed was not just an energy crisis. It was a lesson in the limits of American power that every rival in the world took notes on.

25%

World oil trade through Hormuz

10

Ships/day transiting (was 88–130)

3×

Larger than 1973 oil embargo

140+

Days of crisis (ongoing)

The Weaponized Dollar: US Sanctions 1963–2026 (Infographic)

Geopolitics · Finance · michelerovatti.com

The Weaponized Dollar: US Sanctions 1963–2026

Every active US sanctions program as of 2026, sorted by severity. When you sanction this many countries, the weapon starts to lose its edge — and the world starts building alternatives.

30+

Active programs

4

Full embargoes

20+

Targeted programs

63

Years — Cuba embargo

Each square is one sanctioned country or program

Comprehensive embargo

Heavy targeted

Targeted program

Strategic rivalry

China's Military Actions Abroad 1950–2026 (Infographic)

Military History · Geopolitics · michelerovatti.com

China's Military Actions Abroad 1950–2026

Every major People's Liberation Army deployment, border conflict, and military intervention beyond Chinese soil since the founding of the People's Republic. Sorted by outcome. Beijing calls all of them defensive.

14

Actions abroad

6

Won

4

Lost or drawn

4

Ongoing

Each square is one conflict or action

Won

Lost or drawn

Backed down

Ongoing

NATO Expansion 1949–2026 (Infographic)

Military History · Geopolitics · michelerovatti.com

NATO Expansion 1949–2026

Every nation admitted to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, from the founding twelve to the most recent members. Sorted by accession date. Each card is one country.

32

Member states

12

Founding members

20

Joined after 1949

77

Years of expansion

Each square is one member state

Founding 1949

Cold War 1952–1982

Post Cold War 1999

Eastern Enlargement 2004–2020

Ukraine War era 2023–2024

 

Essay  /  michelerovatti.com  /  2026

AI Sovereignty, Democracy, and the Club That Left Britain Out

The guardrails are not being voted on. They never were. What is new is who is no longer in the room.

Michele Rovatti  ·  July 2026

There is a phrase that gets repeated in every AI policy summit, every white paper, every op-ed calling for "responsible governance": we must govern this technology democratically. It sounds unimpeachable. It is also, on inspection, mostly untrue — and worth being honest about why.

§

The guardrails are not being voted on

The frontier of AI — the models capable enough to matter geopolitically — sits inside a handful of companies, which sit inside one or two jurisdictions. The rules that govern what those models can do, who can access the chips that train them, and which countries get cut off from the supply chain are decided by executive action: export control lists, safety frameworks issued by agencies, bilateral arrangements between a small number of governments. None of this passes through a legislature in any meaningful sense, let alone a referendum. Calling it "democratic governance of AI" is closer to branding than description.

This is not a scandal so much as a pattern. It is the same pattern that produced the postwar order.

§

We have seen this movie before

America at War Abroad: Every U.S. War Won and Lost, 1798–2026 (infographic)

 Military History · United States

America at War Abroad

Every major U.S. war and military intervention fought beyond American soil, sorted by strategic outcome. Stalemates and ambiguous endings are counted as losses.

19

Conflicts abroad

12

Won

7

Lost & drawn

63%

Win rate

Each square is one conflict

WON

LOST OR DRAWN

2001 · The turning point

The unipolar moment begins to close.

Within months of 9/11, the United States walked away from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and China was admitted to the World Trade Organization. Together these marked the end of unchallenged American dominance — and every war the United States has entered since has ended in defeat or stalemate.

3 of 7

losses came after 9/11

100%

of post-9/11 wars lost or drawn

Essay  /  michelerovatti.com  /  2026

The Mirror Facing the Mirror

On the neverending present, the death of historical consciousness, and what Justin Bieber pulling up YouTube at Coachella has in common with veterans of twenty years of war who feel their wars never happened.

Michele Rovatti  ·  June 2026

At his 2026 Coachella headlining set, Justin Bieber performed some of his older hits by pulling them up on a laptop via YouTube. Not by playing them. Not by performing them live. By finding the videos — the existing recordings, the already-produced content — and playing them to the audience as part of the show. A concert in which the performance of previous performances replaces performance. A video of a video, played to a crowd who filmed it on their phones to post as a video. The mirror facing the mirror, the reflections receding into a vanishing point, no original anywhere in the sequence.

It would be easy to dismiss this as a curiosity, an artist in uncertain health taking the path of least resistance at a high-stakes event. But the gesture is too precise to be accidental, and its precision reveals something about the era we are in that a more conventional concert would have hidden. What Bieber did at Coachella is what the content economy does to everything: it replaces the live event with the circulation of previous events. It substitutes presence with reference. It converts the unrepeatable moment into a loop of already-existing material. The neverending present does not generate new events. It recycles the ones it already has.

Essay  /  michelerovatti.com  /  2026

The Prancing Horse and the iPhone Designer

On Ferrari, the Luce, and how to destroy a brand in one presentation.

Michele Rovatti  ·  May 2026

There is a particular kind of corporate failure that only happens to great brands. Not the failure of incompetence — any company can fail through incompetence. This is the failure of people who are too clever, too connected, too convinced of their own vision to notice that they are dismantling the thing they were entrusted to protect.

Ferrari had that failure on May 25th, 2026, in Rome.

Saggio  /  michelerovatti.com  /  2026

Il Cavallino e il Designer dell'iPhone

Su Ferrari, la Luce, e come distruggere un marchio in una sola presentazione.

Michele Rovatti  ·  Maggio 2026

Esiste un particolare tipo di fallimento aziendale che accade soltanto ai grandi marchi. Non il fallimento dell'incompetenza — qualsiasi azienda può fallire per incompetenza. Questo è il fallimento di persone troppo intelligenti, troppo connesse, troppo convinte della propria visione per accorgersi che stanno smantellando ciò che erano state incaricate di proteggere.

Ferrari ha avuto quel fallimento il 25 maggio 2026, a Roma.

Essay  /  michelerovatti.com  /  2026

Why Autocracies Won

We tried to change them, they are changing us.

Michele Rovatti  ·  May 2026

In September 2019, Boris Johnson prorogued the British Parliament. Five weeks of parliamentary session, suspended by executive decree, justified by the constitutional convention that governments may seek a prorogation at any point. The Supreme Court ruled the action unlawful in a unanimous judgment — eleven judges, zero dissents. The Prime Minister had attempted to bypass the legislature because the legislature was in his way. The courts stopped him. The system, on that occasion, worked.

The River Does Not Have Preferences - An Analogy on the Logic of Capital

Essay  /  michelerovatti.com  /  2026

The River Does Not Have Preferences

In December 2025, Xi Jinping brought Emmanuel Macron to a two-thousand-three-hundred-year-old irrigation system in Sichuan province. He was not offering a lesson in hydraulic engineering.

Michele Rovatti  ·  May 2026

The Dujiangyan irrigation system was built around 256 BC by Li Bing, governor of Shu under the Qin dynasty. It is the oldest functioning irrigation infrastructure in the world — continuously operational for over two thousand three hundred years. It works by cutting a channel through a mountain to divide the Min River into an inner channel for irrigation and an outer channel for flood control. No dam. Not blockage but division. Not opposition but redirection. The river's own force is the instrument of its management. It is a UNESCO World Heritage site. It still irrigates the Chengdu Plain today.

The Fear of Ideas - Democracy, Cultural Hegemony, and the Politics of Thought

The Fear of Ideas

The controversy surrounding the Italian government’s proposed revision of secondary school philosophy guidelines is not merely academic. It reveals a deeper anxiety about culture, ideology, and the fragility of democratic legitimacy in an age of political exhaustion.

The Dream of Never (Book)

 

🛒 Buy on Amazon

Culture, Capital and the Refusal of limits

The Proportions Are Perfect for the Space — On Banksy, Westminster Council, and the End of Transgression

Addendum  /  The Bud That Never Blossomed  /  May 2026

The Proportions Are Perfect for the Space

On Banksy's Waterloo Place statue, Westminster City Council's warm welcome, and what it means when the institution congratulates the gesture that was supposed to unsettle it.

Michele Rovatti  ·  May 2026

This is an addendum to The Bud That Never Blossomed, which argued that the system no longer represses cultural threat — it absorbs it before it can mature. What follows is a case study, delivered by events ten days ago.

On the morning of 29 April 2026, Londoners walking through Waterloo Place found a new statue among the monuments to King Edward VII and the Crimean War dead. A suited man, holding a large flag. The flag blows back into his face, covering his eyes. He steps forward confidently off the edge of the plinth. He cannot see where he is going because the thing he is carrying for pride has blinded him. The base of the plinth bears a signature. Banksy had installed it overnight.

By the following morning the BBC had confirmed the attribution. Galleries went live. Commentators gathered. The piece was identified as a critique of blind patriotism — timed, the press noted, to coincide with King Charles III's state visit to Washington, where he addressed Congress in defence of NATO. The placement was observed to be pointed: Banksy's anti-establishment gesture installed among the monuments of British imperial and military history, the subversive work taking its place in the civic landscape of St James's.