Shadow state
Feature: Why did the Mexicans kill El Mencho? Benjamin Smith on the state losing control over the cartels.
An Orwellian war
Feature: Will Ukrainian democracy survive the Russian assault? Serhii Plokhy on the historical clues.
Code black
Feature: How did a criminal industry worth tens of billions entrench itself in Cambodia? Jacob Sims on the nexus of organized crime and autocracy in Southeast Asia.
Copper rush
Feature: Why is there so much of it—and yet not enough to go around? Adam Simon on the “huge stakes” of global competition for the metal.
Lone and level sands
Feature: How could an unexpected event transform a work of art? Bryan Singer on a secret monument in Southern Lebanon, its tangled politics, and his first film in seven years.
Hollowed-out in Hollywood
Feature: Why is Los Angeles’s entertainment industry in such crisis? Andrew deWaard on the shape-shifting effects of financialization and monopoly.
‘The Chernobyl parameter’
Feature: Why are so many countries rethinking their nuclear strategies? Serhii Plokhy on the emerging dangers of a new arms race.
‘Dependencies have become liabilities’
Feature: Why is Silicon Valley fighting with the EU? Anu Bradford on how American tech companies are enlisting the White House against European regulation.
‘A casino in your pocket’
Feature: What’s online gambling doing to American society? Gerda Reith on the new “ecosystem” tech, finance, and marketing firms are cultivating together.
‘Profiting from incuriosity’
Feature: How did the open web go into such “rapid decline”? Michael Socolow on why search engines have gotten worse, old links no longer work, and the internet is increasingly siloed.