The Realignment: America's "One-Click" Future + Exploring a Future War with China
Plus a special Bookshop list on China, the future of war, and foreign policy
Thanks for checking out our Substack!
If you’re new, hit subscribe to get future issues in your inbox every Friday.
Welcome Back to The Realignment
We released two episodes this week: ProPublica’s Alec MacGillis on what Amazon’s rise and dominance during COVID-19 says about the state of America; and Admiral James Stavridis on his apocalyptic warning about a future between the U.S. and China.
Episode 111: Admiral James Stavridis: What Could a War with China Look Like?
Note: Wired published a special excerpt series of Admiral Stavridis and Elliot Ackerman’s book, 2034: A Novel of the Next World War. If you’re not sold on the book yet, check it out.
In this interview with Wired, Admiral Stavridis and Elliot Ackerman listed out recommended books for understanding the future of warfare, U.S.-China relations, and broader foreign policy.
We built a special Bookshop list with all of their recommendations, plus the books they’ve both published.
The recommendations included The Three-Body Problem, Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap?, and On China by Henry Kissinger.
Episode 110: Alec MacGillis: Winning and Losing in Amazon’s “One-Click” America
Alec’s new book, Fulfillment: Winning and Losing in One-Click America is available now, also via our Bookshop.
Clubhouse
We’re continuing to host our weekly Clubhouse show (also co-hosted by friend of the show Alex Kantrowitz), The News, around 8:00 PM EST, 5:00 PST every Thursday. This week, we brought Alec MacGillis on to discuss Fulfillment.
The Realignment’s Bookshop.org Storefront
As a reminder, we’ve created a Realignment podcast affiliate shop for guest books at bookshop.org. The shop features our guests’ books, including books from Michael Lind, Scott Galloway, Reeves Wiedeman, Ross Douthat, Matt Stoller, and Lisa Napoli.
We’ve built out three Bookshop lists:
1) Our list of the best books we read in 2020
2) All of the books we’ve read so far in 2021
3) Books written by Realignment podcast guests
If you purchase a book using our link, we get a 10% commission, a local bookseller gets supported, and you get an awesome book! Watch this space for new uploads and future lists by topic.
Regarding your show with Alec MacGillis, and his statements about the lockdown overkill we've all experienced in the past 12 months, and how badly it's affected the 40% of Americans who are not able to cut it in this hyperactive ratrace we have created - I believe that the international reaction to the Covid pandemic took the Chinese template for a model, a model that was based on confinement, not of the virus, but of information about the virus. It would have been better to base our model on our own assessment of the situation. A lost opportunity which will become glaringly obvious when the next pandemic rolls around.