Pen Thoughts

  I want to start by correcting something I almost got wrong myself. Cruise control is not, by itself, a sign of a failing organization. Some of the best-run institutions I have ever encountered work exactly like cruise control: a founder, or a generation of leaders, built a system so well designed that it began running itself, delivering results without needing a hand on the wheel every hour of every day. That is not failure. That is craftsmanship. The danger is not the system. The danger is time. Since the 1990s, the environment around every organization has been changing at a pace that keeps compressing: every few years, then every few semesters, now every few months, sometimes every few weeks. A system built for the road of 1995, however well engineered, was not built for the road of today. It can keep running, and keep delivering, for a long time after it has stopped fitting the world it operates in. That is the trap. The most dangerous organizations are not the ones that ...

I was born on a Wednesday in July 1981, in Saint Joseph Hospital, a short drive from the shelter where I would spend much of my childhood. On paper, Lebanon's civil war was six years old that summer. Growing up, I learned it had been rehearsing its provocations long before its official date. My family likes to say I was born in a shelter. It is a metaphor, but only barely. The first nine years of my life kept making it true. The shelter was the minus-one of my grandparents' building: a warehouse of perhaps two hundred square meters, cleaned out and claimed by the families above it. It had two entries, one from the parking, and one from the lobby, where you stepped over a concrete lip and climbed down a ladder someone had built by hand. We strung electric lamps against the dark. When the battles intensified, bread could vanish for weeks at a time. During the worst sieges, it reached us only rationed, passed down through the militias that held the area. My grandmother Teta Victo...

I was watching a report about KPMG Australia recently, and the irony was too heavy to ignore. The case, as reported, is not about a collapsed country, not about people losing their life savings, not about a national currency evaporating, and not about an entire population being thrown into poverty. It is about the alleged misuse of confidential information: board papers from Lendlease, reportedly used to gain an advantage in audit bids for major clients such as Westpac and Dexus. Still, look at what happened. The CEO resigned. The chairperson resigned. The head of audit resigned. Partners directly involved stepped down. Parliamentary hearings took place. Regulators moved. The whistleblower, after being badly treated, became part of the public discussion. In short, a professional misconduct scandal was treated as a scandal. Now, let us look at Lebanon. The World Bank described Lebanon’s financial collapse as possibly among the three worst economic crises globally since the mid-nineteent...

In this video from June 17, 2026, geopolitical analyst Peter Zeihan reacts with sharp criticism to reports of a proposed deal between the United States and Iran . Zeihan characterizes the leaked terms as a total strategic capitulation by the U.S., questioning whether the agreement was born from government incompetence, a lack of focus, or the health of leadership. Key terms of the rumored deal cited by Zeihan include: Financial Concessions: Immediate release of all frozen Iranian funds and the creation of a $300 billion restitution investment fund. Sanctions Relief: The immediate removal of all U.S. sanctions, covering nuclear, militant, and weapon export restrictions. Strategic Retreat: The U.S. would withdraw all military forces from the vicinity of Iran , while granting Iran the right to regulate the Strait of Hormuz , potentially including the collection of fees. Lack of Oversight: The agreement allegedly contains no provisions for Iran ’s missile program or its regional mi...