A stunningly beautiful novel, The Leopard (1958), by Giuseppe Tomasi, 11th Prince of Lampedusa, 12th Duke of Palma, shows us truths that are echoed today when we hear Silicon Valley magnates explain a future that has already arrived.
The Leopard tells the story of Don Fabrizio Corbera, the Prince of Salina, head of an ancient Sicilian family, as he slowly comes to realize that the world he once ruled is collapsing around him. The family has a gorgeous villa, Donnafugata, with hundreds of rooms that he cannot afford to repair or heat. The paint is chipping. Leaks are springing. But he dines with a full silver service. Italy’s old world is no longer generating any cash flow, and the new world is dominated by uncouth, enterprising upstarts who will soon be known as The Middle Class. The Prince of this Sicilian Kingdom has a nephew, Tancredi, who falls in love with the daughter of the local mayor, Don Calogero Sedàra, the quintessential commercial “Jackal/Hyena.” Calogero is “New Money”. He is greedy, shrewd, and lacking any moral fiber, but he has the cash liquidity that the prince lacks. So, he lets Tancredi marry Angelica. Tancredi knows the old world but also sees the new one, and realizes that if the aristocracy fights the revolution, they will be effectively deleted. So, he joins Garibaldi’s rebels. He utters the famous line: “If we want everything to remain as it is, everything must change.”
Tancredi decides to install a “New UI” on the same old power structure to ensure the Salina family keeps its “Admin Privileges” in the new Kingdom of Italy. We are going through a similar systems update right now, with warfare as violent, chaotic, and consequential as that of Italy's Risorgimento, the period of the novel. Like then, the fight is over new technologies and new operating systems versus old hardware, old hardwired thinking, and an old OS.
The Risorgimento (meaning “Resurgence”) was the 19th-century political and social movement that consolidated different states of the Italian peninsula into the single Kingdom of Italy. We can think of the Risorgimento as a “Forced System Merge.” It was the process of taking a fragmented, legacy hardware environment, comprising regional kingdoms, duchies, and the Papal States, and overwriting it with a unified, nationalist “Operating System.” Italy’s Risorgimento was a geopolitical refactoring that shifted borders but failed to update the incentive structure. It replaced a ‘Lazy King’ with a ‘Greedy Bureaucrat. Don Fabrizio, the Prince, perfectly diagnoses the “System Update” of the Risorgimento, realizing it isn’t an upgrade to abundance, but merely a change in the type of predator. He spoke from deep personal experience. He was a Prince in real life, witnessing what happened to Europe after the 2nd World War. He said,
“We were the Leopards, the Lions; those who’ll take our place will be little jackals, hyenas; and the whole lot of us, Leopards, jackals, and sheep, we’ll all go on believing ourselves the salt of the earth.”
How interesting that President Trump just released a shocking tweet about jackals and hyenas. He wrote, “The Fake News Media and the Deep State are the Jackals and Hyenas of our time. They scavenge for lies while the Lions and Leopards are building a great future for our country. They couldn’t stop the show last night, and they won’t stop the Abundance Transition. We have the code, we have the light, and we have the TRUTH! MAGA 2026!” I am not arguing that Trump is a literary master, citing a great novel. I am arguing that we are going through a similarly violent and consequential transition. Many symptoms of this transition are right in front of our eyes, but without understanding the context, it is hard to see why these symptoms matter.
For example, the White House registered alien.gov and aliens.gov. The disappearance and murder of many of the top military nuclear scientists, like General McCasland. The strange behavior of the troops of the old system, including the dramatic suicide of Matthew Livelsberger and now Cole Tomas Allen, the shooter at the Hilton. There’s a through line here that is important for us all to understand.
A New Operating System
Go back in time. Understand the transitions humanity has already made. We went from:
From hunting to farming.
From sails and wind dependence to steam ships and coal dependence.
From coal to oil.
From carving materials to meet a need to crafting materials from the atomic level.
From healing wounds to editing genomes
From writing code to allowing code to write itself.
All this is part of a long progression of human evolution where we have moved from our early apelike tendencies of smashing bones (captured by Stanley Kubrick in the opening of Space Odyssey: 2001) to studying bones, to today’s 3D printed scaffolds from CMFlex, which makes Hyperelastic Bone D-printed synthetic bone graft made of hydroxyapatite (the mineral in your bones) and a biodegradable polymer. As of 2026, it is being used in patient jaw surgeries. Surgeons “print” (at the nano level) the exact shape needed, and once implanted, the body’s own cells move into the “mesh,” turning it into real bone while the synthetic scaffold dissolves. Titanium-ALON hybrid lattices for skull and facial reconstructions. These are not solid blocks; they are printed with specific porosities that allow blood vessels to grow through the metal, “merging” the machine and the organism. As of March 2026, a new biomedical trend involves depositing Titanium Aluminum Oxynitride (TiAlON) thin films onto 3D-printed titanium implants. This creates a “hybrid” material that combines the toughness of titanium with the extreme hardness and corrosion resistance of the oxynitride ceramic. We’ll come back to ALON, Aluminum Oxynitride, a crystal-clear substance like glass, but which is almost impossible to break. The point is that today, thanks to innovation and transition, there is a cocktail of engineered proteins and “Bio-ink” that can be injected into a fracture or bone lesion, creating an instant, hardened bridge that recruits local stem cells to “patch the hole” in weeks rather than months.
All this means that now we treat the body like software. We don’t “fix” the bone; we reinstall the growth protocol. We have moved from “Smashing Bones” (orthopedics) to “Architecting Osteogenesis” (bone-coding). Only Neanderthals, mobsters, old-school political leaders. Notice that those who want to suppress certain voices and technologies want to smash bones these days (go to war, beat up their opponents). But, modern wars are increasingly fought by disabling the infrastructure or causing the soldier so much pain that they can’t reach for a gun. Bullets are becoming very yesterday.
Humanity keeps evolving. Yet, humans keep resisting change. The question is who of us is a leopard, a lion, a jackal, a hyena, or a sheep? The sheep, by the way, will continue to have absolutely no idea what I am talking about.
Elon Musk put the situation starkly. The only way we can outrun a $35T deficit is to adopt a whole new operating system for society. We are not just talking about upgrading to AI and robotics. We are talking about moving from linear to exponential, from control to contributor architecture.
North Korea and China
I just got back from China and a trip up to the North Korean Border. It made me realize the global nature of the transition. China’s economy is vastly worse than I realized. The ghosted malls where every single shop is shut are not imaginary. There are pockets of activity. Shenzhen is booming. But Shenzhen stays afloat only because it has effectively “co-opted” Hong Kong’s remaining capital. It is the one place where the public can still afford to play with the new “code” because of the constant influx of HK dollars and international visitors looking for $ 100-a-night deals at a Rosewood Hotel and high-tech but cheap consumer electronics.
Beijing is fine too because so much capital is stored there, and it is, therefore, a resource allocation center. China is also innovating at the highest level and with epic speed. But the average person is feeling too much pain. This helps explain the sudden uptick in arrests, firings, and events, which indicate there is a major argument over how to resolve all this, especially since President Trump will be arriving in Beijing in mid-May.
The problem is not just oil. Yes, the US has blocked the flow in the Straits of Hormuz. The IRGC amusingly tweeted that they controlled the Straits, not the US, effectively saying, “blocking the Straits is our job.” The Iranians see clearly that the new operating system of the world economy is an American code that doesn’t need Iranian oil. The world will soon be powering itself with atoms, via stars in a box – small modular nuclear reactors and soon, nuclear fusion. Yes, China has substantial oil reserves, more than most. But there’s still a timeline. What has Trump done? He is shortening China’s timeline by threatening to close the Strait of Malacca. The deal he’s just done with Indonesia, the Major Defense Cooperation Partnership (MDCP), increases his ability to control and potentially close this critical choke point. The Strait of Malacca is the carotid artery of the old world. Over 23 million barrels of oil pass through it daily, and nearly 60% of China’s maritime trade flows through this narrow needle. The agreement potentially allows America to have “Omniscient Visibility” over the Strait, even though Joint Special Forces training and Autonomous Systems, as mentioned in the Pentagon statement (April 13), are already in place.
North Korea
North Korea has been suspiciously quiet lately, considering that all the other members of the “Axis of Evil” are starting to cooperate with the Great Satan (the US). Cuba is negotiating its way into the US. Venezuela is already co-opted into cooperation. Iran’s few remaining IGRC members are fractured and without centralized command. They do not represent the government. President Trump and China are quietly collaborating on removing the IRGC stragglers from holding the global economy ransom. Yes, China opposes the US action in Iran, but they more deeply oppose being “Shanghaied” by the very people they’ve been supporting. The tolerance for the IGRC hurting China is zero. America’s tolerance for China supporting the IGRC is zero, too, hence the Treasury Department’s letters to Chinese Banks and Secretary Bessent’s sharp tone. What’s China’s tolerance for some random act by N Korea that destabilizes a fragile situation with the US in the run-up to the Trump/Xi meeting? Zero.
What’s the story in North Korea? It’s basically the last member of the “Axis of Evil” still standing. It has all the features of a disaster: zero productivity, zero protection of humans, and an enclave for off-grid, non-USD transactions. The US wanted to shut Iran down, not only because of the nuclear issue, but also because it was a way of circumventing the USD system. Iran was a loophole. N Korea is a bigger loophole. The US is closing all the exit doors and forcing all parties to use USD.
This means North Korea is now the Ransomware Bug. It’s not just a glitch; it’s a piece of malicious code sitting on the System BIOS. If you touch it the wrong way, the whole motherboard bricks. After a flurry of tests on April 19, 2026, where they launched SRBMs armed with cluster-bomb warheads, Pyongyang has gone remarkably quiet. In the world of “Code,” silence usually means one of two things: a system crash or a major background update. The “Malware” Logic of Kim Jong Un’s new “hostile two-state” doctrine (formalized in February) may mean he has deleted the “Reunification.exe” file entirely. He isn’t bargaining anymore; he’s trying to “brick” the U.S. alliance by making nuclear war an operational warfighting tool. This is the “Ransomware” threat: “Pay me in legitimacy and space-tech, or I delete the whole world economy”. We need North Korea experts to pay close attention now.
Russia
Russia has everything to lose, too. They are the epitome of the old old/gas OS. A new nuclear future of abundance based on transparency is not what Russia’s current leadership aspires to. Russia is bogged down in a 20th-century “Old Oil/Gas” war—relying on massed artillery, trench lines, and physical territory—the true theater of power has shifted to the Digital OS. Their “bullets vs. code” strategy is hitting a wall because modern warfare isn’t just about hardware; it’s about the code that runs it. You can build 1,000 tanks (hardware), but a single software update to a drone’s targeting AI (code) can make those tanks obsolete overnight. Russia uses a top-down, “analog” command structure. Their opponents are increasingly using mesh networks and AI-driven “Uber for Arty” apps that allow soldiers to call in strikes via a tablet. You can blow up a server farm, but if the code is backed up in a distributed cloud (like Starlink), the military's “brain” keeps functioning. Also, by operating on the Old Oil/Gas OS, Russia is tethered to physical geography. Pipelines and refineries are massive, stationary targets for precision, code-driven strikes (such as long-range autonomous drones). Their entire economy is a “legacy system.” It doesn’t scale or pivot like a digital economy. When the “Gas OS” gets hacked or sanctioned, the whole country’s “hardware” starts to rust.
What’s The Ask?
The US is “The U.S. isn’t trying to ‘defeat’ China or even Russia; it is trying to ‘administer’ both. By controlling the straits and offering swap lines (via the UAE), the U.S. is telling the CCP: ‘We both know you can’t smash your way into the future by breaking bones. You must code your way in—and in this system, the code only runs on Liberty and Dollars.” By telling Russia that the US will help end the war in Ukraine with China’s help, it is also signaling that Russia will have access to the newfound abundance, too.
Think of it this way. When I was in China speaking at HSBC’s big annual client conference last week, everyone wanted to know “who is winning the technological race”. The US or China?” My answer is both. Genius is distributed evenly throughout humanity. The brilliant scientists and technologists in the US and China are watching each other like hawks. Innovations by one will quickly be copied by the other. Humanity is sure to get ahead as a result. But, as Jenson Huang said last week, winning is not about how many chips you sell. It’s about compelling customers to join your ecosystem, your operating system, your code, not the other guy’s code. US GitHub or Chinese GitHub. This is a battle of operating systems. But, not just between Chinese and English. But, between an old approach and a new one.
The old approach involves centralized command control. It’s not working for China, as is clearly evidenced by the condition of the economy despite its enormous technological advances. It’s not working for the US either, given the debt and fraud situation the US now faces. Here’s the key. If China crashes out, it bricks the whole world economy. If the US defaults, it bricks the whole world economy. If the US and China, or the US, China and Russia, were to ever enter a kinetic conflict, it bricks the whole world economy. So, let’s not go to war over Taiwan, the US says. But all rests on whether China decides to be more like Taiwan or decides to repeat Hong Kong. Trump’s view, arguably, is that if China doesn’t become more like Taiwan and accept the “Taiwan Update,” that too will brick the system. Let’s end the war in Ukraine because it too is bricking the system. And I suspect both the US and China share a common interest in managing the rising risks posed by North Korea.
The impasse requires a solution that lifts all these nations (and many more). Happily, we live in a moment when new technological solutions make this possible: new forms of energy, new materials, and new capacity to manufacture and deploy intelligence, which means record-fast problem-solving. At any other point in history, the only way to deal with a global debt problem of this magnitude would be to go to war. Raze everything. Eliminate all the Capex. Destroy the ownership records. Make the debt vanish. Issue new currency. Marshall Plan the future and start again (unless the war destroys Earth, which these days, given technology, it probably would.)
Think of it this way: The blockade of the Straits isn’t just an act of war; it’s an Access Denied message to the old world. As energy moves from oil to SMRs and money moves from the Iranian dark web to USD convertible Stablecoins, the ‘smash bones’ logic of extraction and dark money vanishes. But, to enter the Abundance OS, the only way to profit is to contribute to the Code.” Being a bug is glitching the system. You must become a feature. You must accept a centralized world where the state no longer holds the keys. In this new decentralized world, the protocol holds the keys. This is not because the US controls the protocol. It is because the US, and everybody else, will be subject to the same protocol.
By shifting to a world with abundant energy, materials, internet connectivity, and transparency, there is no longer any need to worry about choke points like the Strait of Malacca, the Strait of Hormuz, or North Korean nuclear threats. Ever since Ras Laffan and Saudi facilities got hit and damaged by Iran, we’ve seen a strange spate of fires and explosions at major refineries and processing centers: Port Arthur in Texas, Tuapse in Ukraine, Viva in Australia, BP Cherry Point in Washington, HPCL in India, Pemex Olmeca in Mexico. Naturally, this has given rise to conspiracy theories.
By putting the world economy on a public rail, no one can be deleted – not a country, not an individual, not a refinery – without the whole world seeing it. We all move into a glass house together.
ALON
But the new glass is not breakable or fragile. It’s ALON. It’s a perfect example of the future to come. ALON isn’t glass; it’s a polycrystalline transparent ceramic that’s four times harder than fused silica glass and 85% as hard as sapphire. It can stop a .50 caliber armor-piercing bullet, yet you can see right through it. It was perfected by the U.S. Army Research Center and Raytheon. They found the new material by adding a nitrogen patch, moving away from traditional sintering techniques that involved baking powders, and instead architecting its atomic lattice. New materials, as I keep saying, are now being created atom-by-atom-by-atom.
The invention of ALON proved that you don’t need a different material to get a different result; you just need a better arrangement of the atoms. Similarly, we don’t need a ‘new’ humanity to achieve abundance; we just need to ‘re-arrange’ our financial and energy systems into a more transparent, cubic structure. ALON wasn’t found in a mine. It was debugged in a lab at the foundational atomic-lattice level. We can do this for everything now with the new Universal GitHub/OS.
The core issue here is that the new operating system requires an alignment of intent and values. These innovations must be used for good, not for war. When the world is fully “co-opted” into the USD-Abundance OS, starting a war is like deleting your own hard drive. The interconnectedness is so deep that the aggressor “deletes” themselves the moment they pull the trigger. Note that the internal American war and the “Invisible Grift” of the American Military-Industrial Complex become a Visible Error in the new protocol as well.
Mutually Assured Disconnection (MAD 2.0)
The idea here is revolutionary. Perhaps war isn’t a fundamental law of physics; it’s a bug in the scarcity-era code. By architecting the world at the foundational, atomic, and financial lattice levels, we (the US, China, and everybody else) aren’t just ‘winning’ a war. We are un-writing the possibility of it. We are coding war out of the system and abundance into it. This is arguably the most profound “merge request” in human history. It’s a fork in human evolution. It’s a binary moment in the history of humanity - fork to abundance or get f**ked.
The IGRC is the test case. Operation Epic Fury proved that the old “I control this” approach is now a suicidal strategy. When the IRGC tried to “control” the Strait of