Apologies for absence
Recently: The U.S. government has signed up private firms to hack criminal networks abroad. But how do you really know whose systems you’re breaking into?
Today: Hungary’s new government expels 10 Russian diplomats, the most the country has ever expelled at a go, but hasn’t said what they did. … In England, 60,000 people pull their records from NHS research over concerns about Palantir managing their data. … &c.
For members: Is the world moving off the dollar? Nicholas Mulder on where it’s slipping—and why the U.S. financial industry has so much riding on it.
+ New music from Roy Montgomery x Martha Skye Murphy …
Developments / U.K. & Europe
Delays expected
The far-right Alternative for Germany won 39 of Saxony-Anhalt’s 83 seats—three short of making Ulrich Siegmund the federal state’s minister-president—and every other party has ruled out putting him there. Now what? After two failed ballots, the state constitution counts only votes cast, not abstentions—and the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance says its five deputies will abstain, unless it runs its own candidate. That leaves 39 for Siegmund and 39 against. A tie, says Michael Kilian, a former state constitutional judge, means voting again until someone wins. If the five abstain, Siegmund doesn’t need anyone to change their mind; he just needs one opponent, on one ballot, to be somewhere else—a train cancelled, a child sick—and Saxony-Anhalt will have a hard-right premier, chosen by whoever didn’t turn up.
Nothing to add
On Friday, the U.K.’s House of Commons will take up assisted dying in England and Wales again. Lauren Edwards, a Labour member of Parliament, has reintroduced, word for word, the bill MPs passed in June 2025—which died when the parliamentary session ended with the House of Lords still working through more than 1,200 proposed amendments. So why no amendments now? Per the Hansard Society, the Parliament Act of 1911 lets the Commons make a bill law without the Lords’ consent, but only if MPs pass the identical bill in two sessions running. Governments have used this provision of the Act only seven times since. Here, the Lords agreed to three of the 1,200 amendments, and the Hansard Society says it’s unclear whether even those could go into Edwards’s bill without losing the protection of the Parliament Act.
Name withheld
On Tuesday, Hungary’s foreign minister, Anita Orbán (no relation to Viktor Orbán, the prime minister voters removed in April after 16 years), ordered 10 Russian diplomats out—the country’s largest expulsion ever. Why now? In May, the investigative outlet VSquare, citing several government sources, reported that Hungarian counterintelligence had identified a Russian diplomat, Artur Sushkov, as a spy who had spent years gathering information on institutions close to Viktor Orbán. Hungary sent him home on May 4, 22 days after the election. The foreign ministry hasn’t said when it learned what the 10 had done. The only real public clue is via VSquare: Viktor Orbán’s government had blocked Sushkov’s expulsion in February, mid-campaign. For that, VSquare has cited just one person, unnamed—in its words, “a government source.”
Still on file
About 60,000 more people in England have opted out of National Health Service data sharing in four months. The U.K.’s minister for health innovation, James Frith, informed MPs in a letter reported this week that he’s “concerned about mistrust of Palantir,” the American company behind the NHS Federated Data Platform. What are they opting out of? The NHS website tells them: “The National Data Opt-Out does not apply to the NHS Federated Data Platform,” because “your data is being processed for your direct care.” So someone who opts out over Palantir takes their records out of medical research. If their hospital uses the Palantir platform, their records are still on it.
Meanwhile
Serbia’s President Aleksandar Vučić, in his second and constitutionally final term as president, has called a snap election to run for prime minister instead; delaying the vote, he says, “would threaten the survival of democracy.” … After American envoys left Kyiv, Russia resumed bombing the Ukrainian capital on Tuesday, killing at least five people. … Italy’s wholesale electricity price hit €218.90 a megawatt-hour on Monday; Germany’s was €137. … Alex Sobel, the U.K.’s member of Parliament for Leeds Central and Headingley, has proposed banning artificial superintelligence. … & Around 4,000 years ago, to build the Devil’s Arrows in Yorkshire—Britain’s tallest stone row—people hauled 25-tonne rocks at least 18 kilometers, despite the availability of stone closer by. Anthony Clarke of Curtin University says the Arrows’ place of origin “likely held meaning” for the builders.
Thoughts? concierge@thesgnl.com.
Feature
‘They’re going to need it in spades’
Is the world moving off the dollar? Nicholas Mulder on where it’s slipping—and why the U.S. financial industry has so much riding on it.
Leaders of the BRICS countries—Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, plus newer members from Egypt to Indonesia—meet in New Delhi on Saturday. Their finance ministers are there this week to talk about settling more of their trade with one another in their own currencies. India, the host, keeps insisting this isn’t “de-dollarization.” U.S. President Donald Trump has threatened 100 percent tariffs on any BRICS country that backs a currency to “replace the mighty U.S. Dollar.”
In Washington, the U.S. Treasury is working to hold down what it costs the government to borrow. In August, investors were demanding more to lend to it for 30 years than at any time since 2007, so Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent doubled the Treasury’s buybacks of its own long-term bonds, starting this week. Japan, the largest foreign holder of U.S. government debt, usually defends its currency by selling dollars—which can mean selling U.S. bonds. On July 31, the Americans bought yen alongside it—for the first time since 1998.
Russia’s President Vladimir Putin is headed to New Delhi, too. His spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, says Russia isn’t out to get rid of dollars: “No, no, to the contrary.” Under Western sanctions, Russia already settles about 90 percent of its trade with BRICS partners in national currencies. “If they don’t let us use their money,” Peskov says, “we use our own money.”
So how much ground is the dollar losing?
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Music
‘Cloudburst’
Roy Montgomery, an experimental guitarist in New Zealand, and Martha Skye Murphy, a British singer, recorded Nebular in separate hemispheres, trading parts by email …
