Under the blood-red moon
Recently: Why the spread of major crime within the U.S. Special Forces? Seth Harp on a dark legacy of America’s war on terror.
Today: An FBI mole tips Chinese targets. Thailand’s dynasty flees. South Africa postpones war games for diplomatic tea. The Pentagon becomes the “Department of War.” & The Moon turns red for billions.
In this week’s member’s despatch—up now:
How Trump’s chronic boundary-testing points to a specific political vulnerability. What Beijing’s military parade shows about the American president’s view of the world. How Indonesia’s massively popular strongman learned the hard way that even his devoted supporters won’t tolerate conspicuous corruption—a striking development with implications far beyond Southeast Asia. & more …
+ John Jamesen Gould on developing pattern recognition in an overwhelming media environment.
& New music from Kathleen Edwards ...
The China connection in the FBI
According to a new U.S. Justice Department Office of the Inspector General report, the jailed former FBI counterintelligence official Charles McGonigal “intentionally damaged an important criminal case” by tipping off a Chinese firm under investigation.
The 23-page report details how McGonigal, already serving six years for secretly working with a Russian oligarch, compromised a major investigation into China Energy Fund Committee—the same firm with extensive business ties to Hunter Biden.
McGonigal engaged in “disgraceful conduct” and “violated the public trust,” the inspector general found, again illustrating how corruption networks originating in autocratic countries—in this case, though a Chinese energy conglomerate and extending even into FBI counterintelligence—extend into and help corrupt democracies.
- Get The Signal’s print extra Altered States.
Thailand’s dynasty crumbles
Thailand’s parliament elected Anutin Charnvirakul as prime minister on Friday with 311 votes, while Thaksin Shinawatra—the billionaire former prime minister whose family has dominated Thai politics for two decades—fled to Dubai hours before the vote.
The victory is another blow to the Shinawatra clan, as Thaksin faces a Tuesday court ruling on whether his extended hospital stay counted as legitimate prison time or whether he should return to jail for abuse-of-power and corruption convictions.
The 58-year-old Anutin’s election caps a week of institutional upheaval that saw Thailand’s third prime minister in two years—after the Constitutional Court removed Paetongtarn Shinawatra for ethics violations from a politically compromising phone call with Cambodian Senate President Hun Sen related to a border dispute between their countries.
South Africa’s diplomatic balancing act
South Africa’s Department of Defence announced it’s in discussions about postponing joint naval exercises with China and Russia scheduled for November, citing logistical conflicts with the G20 Leaders’ Summit in Johannesburg.
It’s a sign of the diplomatic constraints facing some BRICS countries—Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa: the emerging-economies bloc that positions itself as an alternative to Western-led institutions—as they navigate between competing great-power blocs of China-Russia and the U.S.-led West.
U.S. President Donald Trump has been invited to attend the G20 summit but said in July he was considering skipping it, accusing South Africa’s government of adopting “very bad policies”—specifically land expropriation from white farmers and what Trump calls violence against the Afrikaner minority.
‘The Department of War’
Trump has signed an executive order initiating a rebrand of the U.S. Department of Defense as the “Department of War,” calling it a more “appropriate” name given the state of the world.
Trump is making this symbolic shift—returning the Pentagon to its pre-1947 designation—as his administration embarks on broader expansions of military authority, from urban deployments to striking alleged South American drug boats.
The rebranding raises the question of whether Trump’s escalating military actions and rhetoric represent strategic political messaging or intentional preparations for broader conflict.
Blood Moon over billions
A week after the unusual alignment of Jupiter, Venus, and Mercury, there will be a total lunar eclipse on September 7, visible to more than 5 billion people across Africa, Europe, Asia, and Australia—lasting 82 minutes, making it the longest total lunar eclipse since 2022.
The event offers a rare moment of shared global experience—an estimated 76 percent of the world’s population will be able to see it—as Earth’s shadow turns the Moon copper-red in a phenomenon visible from Johannesburg to Jakarta. For a moment, we can look up at the same sky rather than across contested ground.
Our second limited-run print magazine, Altered States, runs down the question of the influence dictators have over democratic life in the world today.
This edition, produced in partnership with the Human Rights Foundation, features conversations—with Ben Freeman, Miranda Patrucić, Justin Callais, and Josh Rudolph—on how authoritarian states build political influence in the U.S., why dictators keep disrupting so many other countries, why autocratic corruption is such a problem for democratic life, and what democracies can do about it.
Currently available in the U.S.A. To register interest in ordering internationally, or with any questions, please be in touch: concierge@thesgnl.com.
Talking to the right people
Another strange week in America: Federal judges block the domestic deployment of U.S. military troops while the president continues the operations anyway. His administration fires agency officials who resist radical policy reversals. Congressional investigations now target the investigators of the circumstances surrounding the January 6 riot. All in the same week. Each commanding attention as a separate emergency that demands immediate reaction—along with some tense music and a chyron at the bottom of the screen.
Step back from that screen, though, start talking to the right people, and something else might come into view: For all the endless, sometimes breathless descriptions of Donald Trump’s governing style as “unprecedented,” it actually follows a historical pattern some good scholars have been able to recognize. The Signal’s contributor Stephen Hanson identifies it as patrimonialism—a political tendency to build personal power and authority, at the expense of democratic institutions and standards, by treating government like a family business where loyalty matters more than rules—or much of anything else.
Why does that matter? Because the “achilles heel” of patrimonialism, as Steve has put it, is corruption. It’s how patrimonial politics gets done, and it’s how patrimonial politics can come apart. This week, Indonesia’s President Prabowo Subianto discovered, to his immense surprise and consternation, what happens when patrimonial corruption becomes too much for the people his legitimacy depends on: Housing allowances for Prabowo-friendly legislators worth 10 times Jakarta’s minimum wage triggered deadly protests that forced the popular strongman into immediate retreat. Prabowo’s corruption may be relatively simple to see and understand, but it raises a question no patrimonial authority operating in a democracy can entirely answer: How long can I get away with this?
This week’s member’s despatch explores what makes patrimonial politics vulnerable—and why understanding corruption as one of its defining means, and inevitable ends, might change how we see what happens next.
Meanwhile
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‘Say Goodbye, Tell No One’
