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.
Empress of luck
Feature: Why is betting everywhere now? Gerda Reith on how it became so mixed up in sports—and then everything else.
One more great power
Feature: As America pulls back from global development, is China taking over? Pritish Behuria on what doesn’t change when the lender does.
