A Relentless publication · Biweekly since January 2023

The Relentless Dispatch

Fortnight by fortnight: what took the headline in technology and the world, read next to what we were building at the time.

Front Page · No. 95

Four months after it "ended," the war still sets the price of oil and the risk of the sea The Iran war stopped in April. In August it is still here: tankers struck in the Strait of Hormuz, a planned American attack cancelled at the last moment, Iran and Oman negotiating shipping lanes through contested water. The war that was declared over keeps deciding the world's oil, its shipping, and its economy, which is what "over" means for a war of this size.

The Column

A fortnightly column by Alosh Paul, reading each fortnight's biggest story against the practical work of building software. The Ledger, alongside, keeps an honest account of the calls that aged badly.

The Archive

95 fortnightly issues, No. 1 (2 January 2023) to No. 95 (10 August 2026), plus special editions. Standing trackers on AI, data centres and power, rates, real estate, healthcare and India tech.

Read No. 95 → Browse the archive
The Archive

Every issue since No. 1, dated Monday, 2 January 2023. Each is written as of its date. The Column is by Alosh Paul.

2026
No. 95
August 10
Four months after it "ended," the war still sets the price of oil and the risk of the sea
The year the physical came back
No. 94
July 27
The economy sours, the president's numbers sink, and the midterms come into view
The bluntest instrument, and the last one standing
No. 93
July 13
The republic marks its semiquincentennial, in a year that tests what it is
If you can keep it
No. 92
June 29
A killing heat wave settles over Europe, and the toll climbs past two thousand
The catastrophe with no villain
No. 91
June 15
The globe's game opens across three nations, a fragile gathering in a fractured year
Bread, circuses, and the balance sheet
No. 90
June 1
The war leaves the front page while the region still burns
The states of not-knowing
No. 89
May 18
Russia's oil revenues surge to a wartime high, funded by a Gulf war it never fired a shot in
The blow that lands somewhere else
No. 88
May 4
The oil shock arrives in the real economy, and an airline is its first casualty
Installation, and the crash that sorts it out
No. 87
April 20
After forty days, the guns fall quiet, and the reckoning begins
The battles won and the war lost
No. 86
April 6
Both sides bleeding, the first ceasefire signals appear through the smoke
The knowledge we let ourselves forget
No. 85
March 23
The promised quick blow becomes a grinding war, and the "days" stretch into weeks
The war power that Congress gave away
No. 84
March 9
The United States and Israel go to war with Iran, kill its supreme leader, and set the Gulf on fire
The strong do what they can
Special Edition
March 3
Why a special edition, now
Build the thing you are
No. 83
February 23
The fleet is in place, the rhetoric is total, and a war with Iran now looks not possible but planned
The bomb that guarantees the bomb
No. 82
February 9
Shots in the Strait of Hormuz, and the last nuclear treaty quietly dies
The race with no finish line
No. 81
January 26
The imperial presidency goes to the mountain, and lays out the program in full
The things that should not be for sale
No. 80
January 12
American forces capture the president of Venezuela, and the age of open empire returns
The empire that stopped pretending
2025
No. 79
December 29
2025: the strongman's year, the checks that bent, and the machine that runs the economy now
What the year of the strongman taught us
No. 78
December 15
America squeezes Maduro toward the exit, and the region holds its breath
The calm that builds the storm
No. 77
December 1
A "peace plan" written in Washington and Moscow, and handed to the victim to sign
A peace that rewards the war is a lesson, not a settlement
No. 76
November 17
The voters deliver a rebuke, and a 33-year-old socialist wins New York
The circular river of money
No. 75
November 3
Trump and Xi meet, and the world's two giants step back from the brink
The monoculture underneath everything
No. 74
October 20
The guns fall silent in Gaza, the last living hostages come home, and a war of two years ends, for now
The stopping is not the reckoning
No. 73
October 6
A peace plan for Gaza, and the first real hope of an end
The end of the evidentiary image
No. 72
September 22
A conservative activist is assassinated, and a grieving country reaches for retribution
After the killing, who gets blamed
No. 71
September 8
Pushed away by America, India walks toward China, and the world tilts
The friend you push away
No. 70
August 25
Trump rolls out the red carpet for Putin, and gets nothing for it
The wolf gets the carpet, and the world takes the lesson
No. 69
August 11
America hits India with punishing tariffs, and a courtship of two decades sours
Breaking the instrument that tells you the truth
No. 68
July 28
Famine descends, the images break through, and Western opinion finally turns
Fast enough to lose control of
No. 67
July 14
A river rises 26 feet in an hour before dawn, and the flood takes the children first
Whose children get a siren
No. 66
June 30
America bombs Iran's nuclear sites, and then, abruptly, the guns go quiet
The check that was disarmed, not defied
No. 65
June 16
Israel launches all-out war on Iran, striking its nuclear sites and killing its commanders
The enemy within is always someone
No. 64
June 2
Smuggled drones destroy Russia's bombers, a thousand miles from the front
The cheap and the many
No. 63
May 19
India and Pakistan fight their sharpest conflict in decades, and step back from the brink in four days
The office and the man
No. 62
May 5
A massacre of tourists pushes India and Pakistan toward the brink again
The line you do not cross, even in war
No. 61
April 21
Pope Francis dies at 88, on the day after Easter, having spent his last strength on mercy
A Muslim woman mourns a Christian pope
No. 60
April 7
"Liberation Day," and the deliberate demolition of the global trading system
The plan was the point
No. 59
March 24
The president deports men to a foreign prison, a judge says stop, and the administration does not stop
Whose rights were ever more than a promise
No. 58
March 10
A shouting match in the Oval Office, and America cuts off the country it armed
The rules of the game, and what happens when they dissolve
No. 57
February 24
America turns on Ukraine and courts Russia, and 80 years of the Western order crack in a fortnight
The umbrella that was always built on someone else's rain
No. 56
February 10
A cheap Chinese model humbles Silicon Valley, and $600 billion vanishes in a day
The wall that trained its own defeat
No. 55
January 27
Trump returns to power and governs by decree from the first hour
Five hundred billion dollars, and the question hiding inside it
No. 54
January 13
The second city of America burns, and the hydrants run dry
The referee leaves the field
2024
No. 53
December 30
2024: half the world voted, the machines learned to talk, and the strongmen rose and fell
What the year taught us, and what we keep refusing to learn
No. 52
December 16
The house of Assad falls in eleven days, and 50 years of dynasty end in a weekend
The cheer that should frighten every institution
No. 51
December 2
A ceasefire finally silences the guns in Lebanon, as Syria's frozen war suddenly thaws
The regime that looked solid until the week it wasn't
No. 50
November 18
Trump wins, decisively, and the country that feared him hands him everything
The comfortable and the price of eggs
No. 49
November 4
On the eve of the vote, a nation stands at a coin-flip it cannot bear to lose
The thing the market cannot price
No. 48
October 21
Israel kills Hamas's leader in a chance encounter, a year of war reaches its architect
Good Muslim, bad Muslim, dead Muslim
No. 47
October 7
A year after October 7, the war becomes the regional inferno everyone feared
The word "both"
No. 46
September 23
Thousands of pagers explode at once, and a new and terrifying kind of warfare is born
The supply chain of trust
No. 45
September 9
Six hostages are found dead in a tunnel, and the country turns its fury on its own government
Booming is not the same as priced for a miracle
No. 44
August 26
Harris accepts a nomination that did not exist a month ago, and a race reborn
The founder in the dock, and the question the internet never answered
No. 43
August 12
A strongwoman who ruled for 15 years flees in a helicopter, toppled by the students she tried to crush
Fear is the cheapest thing to rule with, and the most expensive to lose
No. 42
July 29
Biden steps aside, and hands his party, and history, to Kamala Harris
Normal accidents, and the market that manufactures them
No. 41
July 15
A gunman's bullet grazes Trump at a rally, and a nation braces for what political violence unleashes
The image that arrived before the truth
No. 40
July 1
Biden falters on the debate stage, and a party that had no plan B falls into open panic
The plan B nobody built
No. 39
June 17
The voters humble a government that thought it was invincible, and India's democracy surprises the world and itself
The territory the map could not see
No. 38
June 3
A jury convicts a former president of 34 felonies, and the country discovers it does not know what happens next
A verdict is only as strong as the belief that it binds
No. 37
May 20
The machine learns to talk like a person, and the uncanny valley of the voice arrives
The voice that said no
No. 36
May 6
The war comes to the campuses, and the tents go up, and then the police move in
The students would not be quiet
No. 35
April 22
Iran fires 300 missiles and drones at Israel, the region holds its breath, and then, mostly, exhales
The ban that will not do what it promises
No. 34
April 8
A ship loses power for sixty seconds, and a bridge that stood for 47 years is gone
The one thing we can still predict perfectly
No. 33
March 25
Gunmen slaughter concertgoers outside Moscow, and Putin blames the enemy he was already fighting
The largest act of democracy in human history is about to begin
No. 32
March 11
Super Tuesday makes the rematch official, and a country that wanted neither gets both
The gate in the wall
No. 31
February 26
Alexei Navalny dies in an Arctic prison, and Putin removes the last face of the opposition
Whose world does the machine draw
No. 30
February 12
A prosecutor declines to charge Biden, calls him "an elderly man with a poor memory," and detonates the campaign
The old men who will not go
No. 29
January 29
The computer was wrong for twenty years, and it took a television drama to make anyone believe the people it destroyed
The computer said so, and no one was left to disagree
No. 28
January 15
Missiles close the world's busiest shortcut, and the West strikes back at the Houthis
The world still runs through a few narrow places
No. 27
January 1
2023: the year the machine learned to talk, three banks fell, and two wars redrew the map
What a year of writing this down taught us
2023
No. 26
December 18
Europe agrees the world's first comprehensive law on artificial intelligence
Decarbonise, and compute: pick two
No. 25
December 4
A week of quiet, hostages and prisoners coming home, and then the bombs again
The safeguard that lasted a hundred hours
No. 24
November 20
OpenAI fires the man who made ChatGPT, and by the weekend nobody knows who runs the most important company in AI
Who actually controls the machine
No. 23
November 6
Israel's tanks roll in, the phones go dark, and a ground war begins in the most crowded place on Earth
The governments woke up, and I want to be fair about it
No. 22
October 23
A hospital blast, two irreconcilable stories, and a war that the whole world is now fighting over the truth of
The arithmetic of grievable lives
No. 21
October 9
Hamas launches the deadliest attack in Israel's history, and Israel declares war
Before the vengeance
No. 20
September 25
Two dams that everyone knew were failing burst in the night, and a Mediterranean city is washed into the sea
An assassination, an alliance, and the price of being courted
No. 19
September 11
An earthquake in the High Atlas kills thousands, and the mountain villages wait for help that struggles to climb to them
The two arrivals
No. 18
August 28
Chandrayaan-3 lands near the Moon's south pole, and a nation that built it for $75 million allows itself to cheer
The discipline of enough
No. 17
August 14
Lahaina burns, and the deadliest American wildfire in a century leaves a town of ash
The disqualification, undone, and what it says about the machine
No. 16
July 31
The Knesset passes the first piece of the judicial overhaul, and half the country calls it the end of something
The model you can hold in your hand
No. 15
July 17
The actors join the writers, and for the first time since 1960 the whole industry stops
Threads and the thing that is actually scarce
No. 14
July 3
Wagner's men march on Moscow, stop 200 kilometres short, and expose the hollow at the centre of Putin's state
The arrogance that the deep rewards
No. 13
June 19
Trump is charged by the federal government over the classified documents, and pleads not guilty
The headset and the shrinking bet
No. 12
June 5
The debt-ceiling deal passes with days to spare, and the world exhales at a crisis that never had to happen
The crisis we scheduled
No. 11
May 22
Sam Altman asks Congress to regulate him, and Congress is charmed
The incumbent's favourite word is "licence"
No. 10
May 8
First Republic fails and is sold to JPMorgan before dawn; the Fed raises rates and hints at a rest
Too big to fail, and now bigger
No. 9
April 24
Two generals turn their armies on each other, and Khartoum becomes a battlefield
A twenty-one-year-old had the keys to everything
No. 8
April 10
Donald Trump is arraigned in a Manhattan courtroom, the first former president ever charged with a crime
The six-month pause that was never going to happen
No. 7
March 27
Credit Suisse, 167 years old, is sold to UBS over a weekend; the Fed raises rates anyway
The chatbot got hands, and I have a list of eleven systems
No. 6
March 13
Silicon Valley Bank fails in 48 hours; on Sunday night Washington guarantees every deposit
Trust is the infrastructure
No. 5
February 27
A year on: Biden walks through Kyiv, Putin suspends the last arms treaty, and the front barely moves
Four hundred and seventy aeroplanes and one operating system
No. 4
February 13
Two earthquakes, nine hours apart, and a death toll past 33,000 and climbing
The demo that cost a hundred billion dollars
No. 3
January 30
Microsoft cuts 10,000, Google cuts 12,000, and Microsoft makes its OpenAI bet official, all in one week
The week Big Tech stopped being the safe job
No. 2
January 16
Amazon and Salesforce cut 26,000 jobs in a day, and the year's story is set
Benioff's memo, read from Bengaluru
No. 1
January 2
Southwest cancels more than 15,000 flights as its own scheduling system buckles under a storm
The people who keep the lights on