The open files

Living Cases

A case is not a finished article. It carries the evidence, forecasts, disagreements, and the author’s ruling on one question, and it shows you exactly what changes our mind.

Case No. 6The New Gilded Age?Open

AI could transform the economy, wipe out many of its builders, and still produce one or two industrial giants. Five histories explain who profits, who fails, and what government decides.

v2.2 · updated September 5, 2026 · Sep 5: revised from the v1.9 manuscript around five histories, with two paragraphs each and deeper narratives and advice in disclosures. Financing now compares cash and maturities; Insull informs the product argument; Perez, Wu, and Thompson precede the ruling. Production graphics retained.

Case No. 5Extremes Travel in PairsOpen

MAGA holds one party outright and the DSA is taking the other's future. Across 2,400 years the record shows extremes rising in pairs, and it shows the middle escaping exactly once, from power, with an assassin's help.

v1.2 · updated September 1, 2026 · Sep 1: the proceedings recut as a story with the five histories told in full, each followed by the person who lived it; the comparison table, the claim map, and the first monthly readings on all nine signals added. The ruling is unchanged.

Case No. 4The Second Tidal WaveOpen

An incumbent whose revenue model is a derivative on human headcount, facing suppliers turned competitors who sell headcount reduction, while holding the distribution, data, identity, and compute assets the attackers need.

v1.1 · updated September 1, 2026 · Sep 1: converted from the proceedings into a Living Case. The chapters are unchanged; the editorial pass, listed on this page, is pending.

Case No. 3Memories or MicroprocessorsOpen

A capital-intensive quality race in which the core product commoditizes on a known schedule, the challengers give their version away as strategy, and the incumbents must decide each quarter which layer of the stack they are in.

v1.1 · updated September 1, 2026 · Sep 1: converted from the proceedings into a Living Case. The chapters are unchanged; the editorial pass, listed on this page, is pending.

Case No. 2The Rose at the GatesOpen

An insurgent faction whose members profit from the leader's punishments, inside a coalition that needs the faction's energy in the cities and bleeds from its brand in the suburbs, facing two leaders whose own city has already fallen and whose deadline is fourteen weeks away.

v1.1 · updated September 1, 2026 · Sep 1: converted from the proceedings into a Living Case. The chapters are unchanged; the editorial pass, listed on this page, is pending.

Case No. 1The Hormuz TrapOpen

A no-exit middle position on peripheral terrain, entered without a defined end state, sustained by fear of humiliation, and hardening this week into a published rate war.

v1.1 · updated September 1, 2026 · Sep 1: converted from the proceedings into a Living Case. The chapters are unchanged; the editorial pass, listed on this page, is pending.