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This week we talk about the Pacific Palisades, Hurricane Katrina, and reinsurance.We also discuss developed property values, arsons, and the cost of disasters.Recommended Book: The Data Detective by Tim HarfordTranscriptNatural disasters, whether we’re talking about storms or fires or earthquakes, or some combination of those and other often related issues, like flooding, can be incredibly expensive.This has always been true, both in terms of lives and material damage caused, but also in terms of raw currency—the value of stuff that’s destroyed and thus has to be rebuilt, replaced, or in some rare cases partitioned off so that similar things don’t happen in the future, or because the space is just so irreparably demolished that it’s not cost effective to do anything with the land, moving forward.The four most expensive natural disasters that we’ve been able to tally—so this doesn’t include historical disasters that are far enough back that we can’t really quantify the damage, due to an inability to directly compare, or insufficient data upon which to base such quantification—the top four that we can line up against other such disasters and compare the numbers for are all earthquakes.The earthquake in Japan in 2011 that, in addition to causing a lot of damage unto itself, also caused the disaster at the Fukushima nuclear plant tops the list, with a cost at the time of around $360 billion, which would be nearly $490 billion in today’s dollars.The second most expensive natural disaster is also an earthquake in Japan, this one hitting a region called Hanshin in 1995, causing about $200 billion worth of damage in mid-90s money, which would be about $400 billion, today, and the third was an earthquake not too long ago, the 2023 quake that struck along Turkey and Syria’s border, causing something like $160 billion in damage.The fourth costliest natural disaster hit China in 2008, causing around $130 billion in damage, which is about $184 billion in today’s money.These disasters also caused a lot of casualties and deaths; about 20,000 people died in that most-costly, nuclear-incident-triggering quake, while nearly 88,000 were killed in that fourth-most-costly, Chinese one.The Great Hanshin quake, in comparison, lead to somewhere around 6,000 deaths: which is still just a staggering human loss, but it’s an order of magnitude less than in those other comparable disasters; which hints at the trend we see with these sorts of events—the scale of wounded and killed doesn’t necessarily correlate with the scale of costs associated with damaged and destroyed infrastructure and other assets.The costliest natural disaster in US history, as of the first week of 2025, at least, was Hurricane Katrina back in 2005, which all but destroyed the city of New Orleans and much of the surrounding area, causing around $125 billion in damage, which is equivalent to about $195 billion, today, but it only led to around 1,400 deaths: again, all of those deaths absolute tragedies, and any disaster that causes that many deaths is an historical event. But looking at the raw numbers, that’s a shockingly low figure compared to the sum of the monetary damages tallied; it’s actually remarkable as few people died as they did, looking at this storm and it’s impacts through that lens.What I’d like to talk about today is another natural disaster, this one ongoing as I record this, that looks primed to take the record of most-costly, in terms of money, US natural disaster from Katrina, and some of the implications of this disaster.—Part of why disasters in the US, natural or otherwise, tend to result in fewer fatalities than those that occur elsewhere is that the US is a very wealthy country with relatively high-quality and widely dispersed infrastructure.There are quibbles to be voiced about that claim, as many recent reports indicate that said infrastructure isn’t terribly well maintained, and that the country’s healthcare setup and relatively low pay and support for the sorts of people who save lives and rescue victims in the midst of such disasters raise questions about how long this will continue to be the case; some of these high-quality systems are somewhat fragile, in other words, and won’t always perform at the level they arguably should.That said, in general, when need be, US government institutions—federal and regional—are capable of throwing money at issues until they mostly go away, and they have a lot of decent resources to leverage when need-be, as well. Americans in general also have reasonable amounts of resources to call upon, on average at least, when they need to flee town and stay elsewhere for a while until a storm subsides, for instance.This is all on average, and we tend to see the gaps in that generality when disasters hit, and Katrina is a perfect example of this disaster illuminated dichotomy, as a lot of the country’s least well off people, who have arguably been let down by the system and their government in various ways, were unable to do what everyone else was capable of doing, and were thus stuck in ramshackle and dangerous accommodations, and in some cases weren’t rescued because of the nature of the infrastructure that was meant to help protect them, but which was ultimately incapable of doing so. Other people were shuttled by those entities to other parts of the country while the disaster was being handled, and some were never brought back—it was all a pretty big scandal.Looking at the averages, though, the US tends to experience disasters that are more expensive in terms of money than lives because there’s more costly infrastructure in place, more valuable assets owned by pretty much everyone, compared to many other nations around the world, at least, and folks are generally capable of getting out of the way of stuff that might kill them—at least when we’re talking about things like storms and fires.Case in point is the ongoing, as of the day I’m recording this, jumble of wildfires that are menacing, and in some cases demolishing, parts of the Greater Los Angeles area in Southern California.As of the day I’m recording this, a day before this episode goes live, there are two primary fires still spreading, designated as the Eaton and Palisades fires, those names based on the regions in which they started to flare out of control, and several smaller ones called the Kenneth, Hurst, and Lidia fires.The Palisades fire is currently the largest, having burned about 24,000 acres, followed by the Eaton, which has consumed around 14,000 acres. The Kenneth, Hurst, and Lidia fires have burned around 1,000, 800, and 400 acres, respectively.That’s…not huge. Tens of thousands of acres is a decent sized plot of land, definitely, but for comparison, the Smokehouse Creek Fire that burned through parts of Texas and Oklahoma in 2024, and which became the largest wildfire in Texas history, consumed more than 1,100,000 acres.The Park Fire, which plagued Northern California in mid-2024, is the state’s largest-ever arson-caused fire, and it consumed nearly half a million acres.So a total of just of 40,000 acres or so for this new collection of fires is piddly, within that context.The difference here is that both of those other fires consumed mostly, though not entirely, undeveloped land. And such land, while not value-less, is not the same kind of asset, in terms of dollars and cents, as heavily developed, with homes and businesses and electrical cables and roads and other such infrastructure, land tends to be.These new, Southern California fires are smaller than those other, big-name wildfires, then, but they’re also consuming some of the most expensive real estate, and the properties and other assets build atop that real estate, in the world.As of right now, the Kenneth and Lidia fires are completely contained, and the Hurst is getting there. The Eaton and Palisades fires, the two largest of the group, are still mostly uncontained, however, due in part to wild and dangerous winds that are making containment efforts difficult, in some cases preventing aerial efforts, and in others making conditions extra risky for people on the ground, due to the dynamic and quick-moving nature of things.Given all of this, and again, given that these fires are burning homes worth tens of millions of dollars, located on coastal land that’s in some case worth around the same, it’s perhaps no surprise that analysts are already projecting that these fires could cause something like $50 to $150 billion in economic losses; and for comparison, the aforementioned Camp Fire in Northern California, which also consumed some fairly expensive homes and real estate, in addition to the undeveloped park land it consumed, only tallied about $30 billion in damage, all told, while the fires that hit Hawaii in 2023 added up to just $5.7 billion.Of that $50-150 billion total, it’s estimated that around $20 billion will be covered by insurance, which represents a staggering loss for those without any, or without the proper insurance, but also potentially represents a huge loss for residents of California, as the state has an insurance of last resort scheme called the FAIR Plan, which is a privately run, but state-created entity that serves those who can’t find insurance via conventional, private insurers. And often, though not always this means those customers are in areas that are too expensive or too risky for traditional insurance companies to operate in.In practice, that usually means insurers of last resort have a portfolio full of risky bets, and the plans they offer are more expensive than usual, and tend to provide less coverage and benefits than the conventional stuff.In these sorts of situations, though, we have a whole lot of risky bets than have suddenly come up snake eyes, this FAIR Plan suddenly having to pay out billions of dollars to their customers in these risky areas. And between 2023 and 2024, the number of homes in the very expensive Pacific Palisades area, which is high-risk for wildfires, nearly doubled to around $6 billion of covered assets in that zip code, alone. It’s been estimated that the plan could have something like $24 billion in total losses from this cluster of ongoing fires.The FAIR Plan isn’t government-funded: instead, if it runs out of money because of high levels of payouts, private insurance companies foot the bill, which will place further strain on those insurance companies, which are already expected to be staggered by losses across the region, but also then raises insurance prices for everyone in that area, moving forward, which could further inflate expenses for the state’s tens of millions of residents, while also possibly incentivizing businesses to move elsewhere, which would reduce taxflows to state coffers, and over time cause even more financial problems.Reinsurance claims could muddle some of this math—reinsurance being basically insurance plans for insurance companies, bought from other, specialized insurance companies—as sufficient reinsurance coverage could help the FAIR Plan, and other insurers operating in these areas, weather the storm without being forced to raise prices excessively. But those companies, too, might then raise their reinsurance rates substantially, and those increases would then ripple across this same economic landscape.Lots of potential long-term financial damage, either way, on top of the assets lost and damage caused directly, and of course, the human losses, which as of the day I’m recording this, totals 24 people confirmed killed, dozens of people missing, and a still unquantified number of injuries and lives completely, perhaps permanently disrupted or upended.This whole situation—these fires—are complicated by many factors.The climate is one, as 2024 was the hottest year on record, the first one we’ve experienced, as a species, above that now-famous 1.5 degrees celsius-beyond-pre-industrial-levels milestone. That figure will fluctuate day to day and even year to year due to all sorts of variables, but the big picture here is that the global water cycle has changed because global average temperatures have been nudged upward, and that’s causing a lot of upsets to local infrastructure and ecosystems that have always, since we’ve been here, at least, relied on that cycle functioning in a certain way, within a certain spectrum of operation.Now that we’ve defied that spectrum, we’re finding ourselves with more extreme disasters of all kinds, but also more extreme and dangerous and damaging and deadly repercussions from those disasters, because the things we did to ameliorate them previously no longer work the same way, either.So California, especially this part of California, has been even drier than usual, and the way the state used to prevent the spread of wildfires no longer works the way it used to work; a climactic issue compounded by issues with the systems we’ve clung to, despite the problems they’re meant to address having evolved substantially since they were originally developed and deployed.This situation is also complicated by the fact that southern California, and especially the LA area, is a hotbed for global entertainment, and that means a lot of wealth concentration.Lots of people scrambling to buy and build homes with beautiful coastal views, and the fact that these areas are high-risk for wildfires and increasingly other disasters, as well, doesn’t really matter, because rich people want to be in this area, around all this activity and wealth, and it’s generally understood that wealth can make you immune to these sorts of things, at least most of the time.That immunity is no longer such a given, and that high concentration of expensive assets means that even a relatively small fire can cause a heck of a lot of damage in a relatively short time.The same general collection of properties also means this region has a lot of landmarks that are at high-risk of destruction, and which are increasingly expensive to maintain and protect and repair, and it means the world is watching, to a certain degree—as celebrities flee their homes and influencers report the beat-by-beat of their evacuations—which in turn means there’s plenty of incentive to spread misinformation, either out of a desire to participate in the situation, or because of honest ignorance, or for political and ideological reasons: wanting to paint the local governance as incompetent, for instance.At the moment, folks in the area are suffering from periodic power outages, largely due to local utilities shutting down some of their service areas in order to avoid starting new fires, their power cables and high winds sometimes sparking such things even in less pressure-cooker-like moments. And the air quality is absolutely abysmal, leading to localized health issues.Some areas have run out of water, apparently due to issues with reservoir infrastructure, and one of the two firefighting planes the local authorities have been using to douse the fires when the wind conditions allow has been grounded for repairs, after colliding with an illegally flown drone, the operator of which was apparently a paparazzi trying to capture photos of celebrity homes, either being consumed by fire or somehow avoiding such a fate.Again, this is a fast-moving story, and a lot is changing day by day, but at the moment it’s looking like this could become the most expensive natural disaster in US history, and while local authorities are making progress in halting these fires’ spread, the damage that’s been done has already been substantial, and could have a lot of knock-on effects, for individuals and for the state’s and country’s economy, for years to come.Show Noteshttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Park_Firehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smokehouse_Creek_Firehttps://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2025/01/09/los-angeles-wildfire-economic-losses/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_FAIR_Planhttps://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/08/climate/california-homeowners-insurance-fires.htmlhttps://www.sfchronicle.com/california-wildfires/article/fair-plan-insurance-losses-20025263.phphttps://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/01/08/weather/los-angeles-fire-maps-california.htmlhttps://www.wsj.com/finance/wildfire-insurance-homeowners-costs-3889531fhttps://www.newyorker.com/news/the-lede/the-insurance-crisis-that-will-follow-the-california-fireshttps://archive.ph/Inso5https://www.npr.org/2025/01/09/nx-s1-5252837/will-there-be-enough-money-to-pay-out-insurance-claims-from-the-la-wildfireshttps://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2025/01/09/california-wildfire-palisades-homeowners-insurance/https://arstechnica.com/health/2025/01/public-health-emergency-declared-amid-las-devastating-wildfires/https://apnews.com/article/los-angeles-wildfires-southern-california-c5826e0ab8db965cb2814132ff54ee6fhttps://apnews.com/video/fires-wildfires-los-angeles-los-angeles-area-wildfires-california-574351467d2142ad958c212a0413ad96https://www.reuters.com/world/us/san-fernando-valley-under-threat-los-angeles-fire-rages-2025-01-12/https://www.wsj.com/us-news/los-angeles-wildfires-social-media-rumors-44d224b4https://www.wsj.com/style/los-angeles-hollywood-fires-celebrities-homes-paris-hilton-d1e3a7dehttps://www.vulture.com/article/hollywood-paparazzi-los-angeles-fire.htmlhttps://www.theguardian.com/us-news/live/2025/jan/12/california-fires-death-toll-expected-rise-ucla-threatened-winds-latest-updateshttps://www.reuters.com/business/environment/2024-was-first-year-above-15c-global-warming-scientists-say-2025-01-10/https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/09/us/los-angeles-fire-water-hydrant-failure.html?unlocked_article_code=1.oE4.OUQs.lcdCoSSeQBtLhttps://www.axios.com/2025/01/11/los-angeles-fire-insurance-losses-billionshttps://www.latimes.com/california/story/2025-01-08/palisades-fire-devastation-scopehttps://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2025/01/11/los-angeles-fires-california-updates-palisades-eaton-kenneth/https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2025-01-09/drone-collides-with-firefighting-aircraft-over-palisades-fire-faa-sayshttps://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/11/us/los-angeles-calfire-firefighters.htmlhttps://www.axios.com/2025/01/12/la-fires-climate-change-drought-extreme-weatherhttps://www.axios.com/2025/01/12/california-wildfires-loss-mental-healthhttps://www.nytimes.com/live/2025/01/12/us/los-angeles-fires-californiahttps://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/12/us/trump-los-angeles-fire-newsom-bass.htmlhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Katrinahttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Sichuan_earthquakehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Turkey%E2%80%93Syria_earthquakeshttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Hanshin_earthquakehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_T%C5%8Dhoku_earthquake_and_tsunamihttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_disasters_by_cost This is a public episode. 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This week we talk about Luigi Mangione, VAW attacks, and mass shootings.We also discuss stochastic violence, terrorism, and Cybertrucks.Recommended Book: Some Desperate Glory by Emily TeshTranscriptThe terms “Lone Wolf,” “Lone Wolf Actor,” and “Lone Wolf Killer” are interchangeably used in many countries—though most commonly and prominently in the United States—to describe someone who commits a mass-killing or other mass-casualty event, but who is not part of an organization like a terrorist group or other criminal network like a gang.The term is hotly contested in the scholarly world, as it’s applied loosely and inconsistently, and the definition varies somewhat by location, government, law enforcement entity investigating said killings, and the press reporting upon it. But in general, to be defined as a mass-casualty event or mass-killing, a collection of murders must occur in public—so it can’t be a person killing their family at home, for instance—it must involve at least four victims—so someone killing or injuring three strangers in a public place will typically not be categorized in this way—and it must not occur as part of another crime, like a robbery gone wrong, or as part of a larger conflict between two rival gangs.Within this context of mass-killings and mass-casualty attacks, a lone wolf is someone who acts solo, the term originating with the concept of a wolf that has been separated from, or perhaps outcast from its pack.Someone who kills a bunch of people at the instruction of a terrorist organization like ISIS, then, would not be considered a lone wolf, even if they committed the act without any direct aid from that group; though this definition is wobbly even in that regard, as someone who takes inspiration from a group like ISIS, committing a mass-killing to support that group’s cause, but not directly connected to the group, might be labeled a lone wolf, or not. And there’s no hard-set rule as to which definition is correct.This was a somewhat common issue back in the late-20th century, when many so-called lone wolf terrorists were committing acts of violence in support of anarchist ends, but the anarchist groups from which they derived their inspiration, and in some cases with which they collaborated, were leaderless by nature—so it couldn’t really be said that they were instructed to carry out these acts, they were just inspired by these fellow ideological travelers, and that made determining whether they acted on their own behest or not a tricky and perhaps impossible undertaking; a lot of it is semantics.Also confounding the simple categorization of such killers and attacks is the concept of stochastic terrorism, which is a type of violence that is almost always political or ideological in nature, as opposed to being revenge-driven or otherwise personal, and it’s generally incited by someone with a public persona—a politician or other leader—who creates an environment in which violence is more likely to occur, that violence seemingly random, but on average directed in a specific direction.So a politician who says something like “Man, people from the opposing party really believe some horrible stuff, I wouldn’t be surprised if something happened to them, considering how evil they are,” while at the same time stoking the flames of potential violence throughout the population by increasing animosity between political parties and maybe even religious groups, might be aiming to spark stochastic terror that would benefit them and their ambitions.By riling up their base in this way, by sowing the seeds for potential attacks against their perceived enemies, violence in their favor, aimed at those enemies, is more likely to happen, but in a way that’s deniable for them—just a random act of ideological murder that they can denounce, despite arguably having asymmetrically instigated it.Is stochastic terror an example of planting seeds for violence that makes the resultant killings something more like directed attacks, and therefore not lone wolf in nature, then? Or are all lone wolves arguably inspired by something they’ve learned or experienced or been told, and thus arguably stochastic in nature—no direct guidance or instruction, but still inspired by someone or something, somewhere along the way?What I’d like to talk about today are three instances of recent supposedly lone wolf attacks, and why some experts are predicting we’ll see more such attacks, especially but not exclusively in the US, in the coming years.—There were nearly 500 officially recognized mass-shootings in the US in 2024—and again, that means 4 or more people injured or killed in public, and not as part of another crime being committed.That’s down from previous years, the preceding four of which have each had more than 600 mass shootings, and on average a little less than 10 people are killed in these shootings—though that figure is nudged upward by the largest of these mass killings, like one in Las Vegas in 2017 that saw 60 people killed and more than 800 wounded, many in the resulting stampede, by a 64-year-old seemingly lone wolf gunman who fired on an open-air music festival from the 32nd floor window of a nearby hotel.Gun homicides in the US are rampant beyond mass-killings: there were about 21,000 murders committed with guns in the country in 2021, alone—and notably, self-inflicted gun deaths, suicides using these weapons, eclipse that number, tallying more than 26,000 that same year.That means more than 50 people are killed by guns in the US every single day, and about 4 out of every 5 murders are committed using guns in the country; which makes sense, as guns are very effective at what they’re meant to do, which is killing something, and there are a lot of guns in the US: about 120 of them per 100 people, as of 2018.And to be clear, that doesn’t mean everyone owns a gun: that average is driven sky-high by the gun-enthusiasts who tend to buy a lot of the things, though gun ownership has continued to increase in scope in recent years, as political and economic uncertainty, especially in areas where perception of crime levels, if not always actual elevated crime levels, increases, tends to drive more widespread gun sales.Given all of that, it’s maybe not a huge surprise that many apparent lone wolf attacks in the United States are committed using firearms; sometimes assault rifles, sometimes guns that have been augmented using bump-stocks or similar add-ons to make a normal gun into basically an assault rifle, and sometimes just using a pistol, which can be easily pocketed and carried around pretty much everywhere in this country.On December 4, 2024, the CEO of UnitedHealthcare, which is part of the largest health insurance company in the United States, UnitedHealth Group, Brian Thompson, was gunned down in front of the Midtown Manhattan Hilton Hotel.The alleged killer, who was later identified by law enforcement officials as Luigi Mangione, was captured on nearby CCTV cameras, was wearing a hoodie and an expensive backpack while shooting Thompson, and used a pistol with a suppressor—a silencer—to shoot him multiple times, the bullet casings left behind inscribed with the words Delay, Deny, and Depose; terms that have been associated with the US health insurance industry for legal tactics they lean on in order to pocket more money, allegedly at the expense of their customers who have their claims denied or long-term delayed, in some cases leaving them without the care they require, and in some cases leaving them in crippling debt following a necessary medical procedure that the insurance company says they won’t pay for.The response to killings of any kind, even in a gun-happy country like the US, tends to be fairly grim and sad; the endless mutterings of “thoughts and prayers” by politicians and other public figures has become so common and toothless as to be near-satire at this point, but generally the tone is antagonistic toward whomever committed the killing, before then swinging toward calls for more security and policing if you’re on the political right, and more gun regulation if you’re on the political left. And that’s generally where we leave things until the next headlines-capturing shooting; and we typically, unfortunately, don’t have long to wait.Thompson’s murder, though, was almost immediately met with celebration across the political spectrum; working class folks, Democrats and Republicans and everyone in between and on the furthest political extremes basically muttering about how it serves him right, before realizing everyone else was muttering the same thing, and that led to outright enthusiasm, especially online, and even calls for more of the same across the social media landscape—many normal people doing the politician and ideologue thing by basically posting their hopes that someone will knock off other CEOs as well, seemingly aiming to spark more stochastic violence in their favored direction.The wealthy and especially the CEO class were horrified at this response, perhaps understandably, and there was pushback from mainstream journalistic and political entities across the board, with lots of tut-tutting and finger-wagging at anyone who dared celebrate what looked to be the cold-blooded murder of another human being.But the nature of American healthcare and especially health insurance being what it is—massively imperfect at least, and by some assessments borderline abusive or even outright evil—this was seen by many as just desserts for someone who himself had committed millions of dollars worth of fraud and gotten away with it, and who was running UnitedHealthcare in such a way that it denies more claims than any of its peers, which in turn has allowed itself to massively enrich itself and its shareholders at the expense of its customers.There were many cries of “serves him right,” then, alongside some requests that other CEOs be next; many of these requests couched in memes and jokes, but also seemingly earnest.The nature of the alleged killer, who was eventually shown to be a good-looking young man of privilege who had maybe suffered under the auspices of the American healthcare system, due to chronic ailments and an insurance system that didn’t even serve someone like him, who grew up with substantial advantages, further fanned those flames, and as of the day I’m recording this he’s in custody, has pleaded not guilty, and is facing eleven state and four federal charges, including first-degree murder and a terrorism charge, the former of which could lead to the death penalty.Just shy of a month later, in the early morning hours of January 1, 2025, a new year’s celebration on the well-know and well-traversed, and on that night, incredibly crowded Bourbon Street in New Orleans was attacked by a man in a large pickup truck, who plowed the vehicle into a crowd of revelers, driving at high-speed across three blocks that were partitioned-off for the celebration.The driver was apparently trying to hit as many people as possible, and then, after crashing into a utility vehicle, he stepped out of the truck and started firing a gun into the crowd.Police fired back at him, but he was wearing body armor, and two of them were injured before they managed to kill him, recovering an assault rifle and a semi-automatic pistol from his body. They also found a pair of explosive devices in coolers he had planted around the area before the attack, and further investigation led to the discovery of more bomb-making materials where he was staying in New Orleans.At least 35 people were injured and 14 people were killed in the attack, alongside the killer, who was later identified as 42-year-old Shamsud-Din Jabbar: an American-born Army veteran and Texas resident who had apparently been recently radicalized, possibly by online content posted by ISIS, and who had posted videos pledging his allegiance to the group mere hours before he drove into the crowd, an ISIS flag adorning the vehicle.More guns in this attack, then, but much of the damage was caused by the truck, and similar so-called “vehicle as a weapon,” or VAW attacks have been committed around the world in recent years, raising concerns especially in places where firearms are harder to come by, though also at large, open-air events where vehicles might cause more deaths and injuries in a short period of time than even an assault rifle, as seemed to be the case here.This attacker seemed to be self-radicalized, based on testimony from his friends and family, who were shocked at the change in his personality and expressed beliefs. The FBI has said they’re pretty confident he acted alone, though they’re looking into recent trips he took to Egypt and Canada, in case he met up with someone from ISIS or a similar group, while traveling.And apparently while he initially planned to kill his family—he’s had several divorces that led to financial problems, due to many child support payments that exceeded his means—he didn’t believe killing his family would have provoked enough of a response to spark a “war between the believers and the disbelievers.” Jabbar was brought up Muslim but left the faith for years, before apparently adopting a more intense and violent reinterpretation of it just recently, and that seemingly helped him justify and perhaps even inspired these acts.This has been called a lone wolf attack, then, but it was apparently heavily influenced by ISIS ideology, despite Jabbar possibly never having been in contact with anyone from that group.Just a handful of hours later, that same morning, at 8:49 January 1, 2025, a Tesla Cybertruck that was parked outside the front lobby of the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas exploded—its occupant apparently having died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head right before a bunch of fireworks and gas canisters placed in the trunk were detonated.That occupant was Matthew Alan Livelsberger, who was also American-born, and like Jabbar, had been in the US military, though Livelsberger was an active-duty Special Forces soldier from Colorado who was on leave at the time.The blast didn’t kill anyone, and while it hurt a few bystanders, no one was seriously injured. But the intention, according to two letters recovered from his phone by the FBI, was apparently to make a political statement related to alleged clandestine US military operations, and advanced technologies the US and China allegedly secretly possess; though he was also apparently in the midst of a serious mental health crisis, including significant PTSD episodes and what might have been paranoid delusions.The vehicle also contained an assault rifle and two pistols, though none of these weapons were used, as while Livelsberger was seemingly intent on escaping across the Mexican border following the attack, based on what he said in those aforementioned letters, he seemingly decided to kill himself instead—which may support the assertion that this was primarily, if not exclusively, a mental health crisis issue.Livelsberger also apparently had family issues, due in large part to his support of president-elect Trump and his family’s opposition to that support, and he was apparently suffering from untreated depression, that lack of treatment possibly the result of stigma toward such things within the military, which sometimes results in people not getting treatment that they might benefit from, because they worry doing so will see them sidelined by their superiors.A manifesto penned by Livelsberger that was sent to a retired Army Intelligence officer claims that he was being monitored by the military because of his knowledge of war crimes and those aforementioned military advanced technologies, and that he didn’t intend to self-harm, the divulgence of which has led to some conspiracy theories about this not having been a suicide.That said, this attack is being investigated as potential terrorism, and while it was initially being explored as part of a larger wave of such actions, since that attack in New Orleans happened just hours earlier, and both attackers used the same online car rental service to procure the vehicles they were driving, investigators have since indicated they don’t believe these attacks were connected.Interestingly, Livelsberger’s letters also criticized income inequality, though with a politically conservative bent, basically saying that the country had become too liberal and effeminate, and that Trump, Elon Musk, and Robert Kennedy Jr needed to take control and make the US more masculine so that it could compete against entities like China, Russia, and Iran.Experts on ideological violence and political fracturing have warned that we may see more lone wolf and lone wolf-esque violence in a more polarized society, in which people are less likely to consider those on the opposite side of the aisle to be people they disagree with, and more likely to think of them as bad or evil or even subhuman, which makes violence more thinkable.That’s not ideal, as these sorts of attacks are difficult to prevent, their solo nature meaning there’s no network to track and pluck apart, nothing to infiltrate and fewer easily accessible data points to aggregate and in which to recognize a pattern. Lone wolf attackers tend to cause less damage than groups can, then, but they’re often almost invisible, to the organizations that hope to stop them, anyway, right up till the moment they start killing and injury people.We’re also entering an era in which trust in authority has degraded substantially, new technologies have made the research, hardware procurement, and implementation of such attacks a lot more attainable to more people, which means folks suffering from different sorts of psychological or physical torments, or those who simply have strong opinions and a lot of perceived enemies, are more likely to be able to act on that confusion or those hatreds, in some cases at a moment’s notice, and in many cases without anyone beyond their immediate friends and family recognizing that something might be up.We may be entering a period of heightened threat, then, in the US especially, because of the number and wide distribution of highly effective weapons throughout the population, and because of the period of political polarization and animosity we seem to be wading through, but also throughout the rest of the world, to some degree at least, because of those same political and ideological factors, and because of how big and weapon-like vehicles have become, and how relatively easy it is to get one’s hands on information that allows for the construction of things like bombs and the technologies required to 3D-print and otherwise manufacture deadly implements of all shapes and sizes.Show Noteshttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luigi_Mangionehttps://www.vox.com/politics/390438/luigi-mangione-healthcare-shooting-ghost-gunhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Brian_Thompsonhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Las_Vegas_shootinghttps://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-41488081https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_New_Orleans_truck_attackhttps://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c205ek63433ohttps://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/03/us/new-orleans-victims-truck-attack.htmlhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_International_Hotel_Las_Vegas_Tesla_Cybertruck_explosionhttps://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/04/us/matthew-livelsberger-las-vegas-cybertruck.htmlhttps://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/05/us/new-orleans-attack-travel.htmlhttps://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/04/us/new-orleans-attack-shamsud-din-jabbar-isis.htmlhttps://scholarlycommons.law.northwestern.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1257&context=nulr_online&preview_mode=1&z=1519320539https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stochastic_terrorismhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lone_wolf_attackhttps://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/lone-wolf-terrorism-americahttps://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1088767917736797 This is a public episode. 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This week we talk about Yoon, martial law, and impeachment.We also discuss the PPP, chaebol, and dictators.Recommended Book: Starter Villain by John ScalziTranscriptIn the wake of WWII, Korea—which was previously held by the recently-defeated Japanese Empire—was split into two countries, the north backed by the Soviet Union and the south backed by the United States and its allies.North Korea had a guerrilla fighter and staunch Soviet-style communism activist, Kim Il Sung, placed at the head of its new government, while South Korea was to be led by a longtime local politician named Syngman Rhee, who had run the country earlier, from 1919 until 1925, at which point he was impeached, and then again in 1947-1948, as head of the country’s post-war provisional government.Rhee was a hardcore Korean independence activist during a period when the Japanese were clamping down on their mainland holdings and doing away with anyone who caused trouble or sparked anti-colonial protests, so he spent some time in exile, in China, returned to the US, where he was educated, for a bit, and then the US military returned him to Korea to run that provisional government once the dust had settled and the Japanese had been ousted from the area.Rhee was an ideal representative in the region by American standards, in some ways, as he was vehemently anti-communist, even to the point of killing and supporting the killing of something like 100,000 communist sympathizers during an uprising on South Korea’s Jeju Island. He was president when North Korea invaded, sparking the Korean War, and then refused to sign the armistice that would have formally ended the conflict in 1953, because he believed the only solution to the conflict between these nations was a military one, and he held out hope that the South would someday conquer the North and unify Korea as a nation, once more.Rhee then won reelection in 1956, and changed the country’s constitution to allow him to remain in office, getting rid of the two-term limit—which was not a popular move, but it worked, and he was able to run uncontested in 1960, because his opponent died of cancer in the lead-up to the election—though his opposition protested the results, claiming a rigged voting process, and this led to a huge movement by students in the country, which became known as the April Revolution; students were shot by police while protesting during this period, and that ultimately led to Rhee stepping down that same year, 1960.So Rhee was a western-educated, christian conservative who was vehemently anti-communist, though also living in a part of the world in which an aggressive communist dictatorship recently invaded, and was threatening to do so again—so it could be argued his paranoia was more justified than in other parts of the world that had similar frenzied moments and governments during the cold war, though of course the violence against innocent citizens was impossible to justify even for him and his government; his authoritarian rule was brought to an end following that shooting of student protestors, and that left a power vacuum in the country, and South Korea saw 13 months of infighting and instability before a General named Park Chung Hee launched a coup that put him in charge.Park positioned himself as president, and he did pretty well in terms of economic growth and overall national development—at this point the South was way behind the North in pretty much every regard—but he was also an out-and-out dictator who ruled with an iron fist, and in 1972 he put an entirely new constitution into effect that allowed him to keep running for president every six years, in perpetuity, no term limits, and which gave the president, so himself, basically unlimited, unchecked powers.The presence of a seemingly pretty capable, newly empowered dictator helped South Korea’s economy, manufacturing base, and infrastructure develop at an even more rapid pace than before, though his nearly 18-year presidency was also defined by the oppression he was able to leverage against anyone who said anything he didn’t like, who challenged him in any way, and who spoke out of turn against the things he wanted to do, or the constitution that allowed him to do all those things.In 1979, he was assassinated, and there’s still a lot of speculation as to the why of the killing—the assassin was in Park’s orbit, and was seemingly doing okay as part of that all-powerful government entity—but alongside speculation that it might have been planned by the US, in order to keep South Korea from developing a nuclear weapon, that it might have been the result of political jealousy, and that if might have been just an impulsive act by someone who was done being pushed around by a bully, it’s also possible that the perpetrator was a democracy activist who wanted to get a successful and long-ruling dictator out of the way.Whatever the actual catalyst was, the outcome was more political upheaval, which by the end of the year, we’re still in 1979, led to yet another military coup.This new coup leader was General Chun Doo-hwan, and he implemented martial law across the whole of the country by mid-year, as he ascended to the role of president, and he cracked down on democracy movements that erupted across the country pretty violently.Chun held onto power for nearly 8 years, ruling as a dictator, like his predecessor, until 1987, when a student democracy activist was tortured to death by his security forces.This torture was revealed to the country by a group of pro-democracy catholic priests in June of that year, and that sparked what became known as the June Democratic Struggle, which led to the June 29 Declaration, which was an announcement by the head of the ruling party—so the head of the party the dictatorial president belonged to, the Democratic Justice Party—that the next presidential vote would allow for the direct election of the president.That party leader, Roh Tae-woo, very narrowly won the election, and his term lasted from 1988 until 1993; and during his tenure, the country entered the UN, that was in 1991, and his presidency is generally considered to be a pivotal moment for the country, as while he was technically from the same party as the previous ruler, a dictator, he distanced himself and his administration from his precursor during the election, and he abided by that previously enforced two-term limit.By 1996, things had changed a lot in the country, the government fully recalibrating toward democratic values, and those previous rulers—the dictator Chun and his ally-turned-democratic reformer, Roh—were convicted for their corruption during the Chun administration, and for their mass-killings of pro-democracy protestors during that period, as well. Both were pardoned by the new president, but both were also quite old, so this was seen as a somewhat expedient political maneuver without a lot of downsides, as neither was really involved in politics or capable of causing much damage at that point in their lives.In the years since, especially since the turn of the century, South Korea has become one of the world’s most successful economies, but also a flourishing example of democratic values; there are still some remnants of those previous setups, including the government’s tight ties with the so-called chaebol, or “rich family” companies, which were business entities propped up by government support, which were often given monopoly rights that other businesses didn’t enjoy, as part of a government effort to pull the country out of agrarianism back in the mid-20th century; companies like Hyundai, Samsung, and LG thus enjoy outsized economic power, to this day, alongside a whole lot of political influence in the country, as a result of this setup, which is a holdover from those earlier, dictatorial times.But South Korea has generally erred toward rule of law since the late-1990s, even to the point of punishing their most powerful elected leaders, like President Park, who was accused of corruption, bribery, and influence-peddling, by removing her from office, then sentencing her to 24 years in jail.What I’d like to talk about today, though, is a recent seeming abuse of power at a pretty staggering level in South Korean governance, and the consequences of that abuse for the country and for the abuser.—In March of 2022, Yoon Suk Yeol, a conservative candidate of the People Power Party, who was hoping to oust the incumbent Democratic Party from office, won the narrowest victory in South Korea history.In his previous role as the chief of the Seoul Central District Prosecutor’s Office, Yoon was partly responsible for convicting former President Park for her abuses of power, and his public disagreements with President Moon, who appointed him as Prosecutor General of the country in 2019, led to his popularity in conservative circles, in turn leading to his ascension as a candidate in 2021.Yoon ran on a conservative platform that’s become familiar in elections around the world in recent decades; basically deregulation paired with culture-war issues, like doing away with government support for gender equality and other often politically liberal efforts of that nature.He won the election by less than a percentage point, and his tenure is office has not been favorably reviewed by democratic watchdogs, which have noted various sorts of corruption and democratic backsliding under his watch, and economic and policy analysts consider his administration to have been a somewhat ineffectual one.Yoon’s tenure, like his candidacy, was also plagued by gaffes and seeming missteps.He tried to raise the country’s maximum weekly working hours from 52 to 69, though he pulled back on this idea after a huge wave of backlash from young people.He was also criticized for having just three women in his government, and two among his vice-ministerial level officials. He added two more after those criticisms, but one of them quit about a month after being appointed, following her attempt to implement massively unpopular school system revisions—and the entire government’s approval rating collapsed around this time, due to that proposed revision, which was criticized as being half-baked and nonsensical, but it was also partly the result of her ascension to the government in the first place, as she had a record of drunk driving and academic plagiarism; the president brought in a woman to placate the masses, basically, despite that woman being just a really, really bad choice for the position, which by some estimates further demonstrated his disdain for and ignorance about the whole conversation about women in government.Yoon also tried to create an agency that would provide more oversight of the country’s police force, but this led to protests by police, who saw it as an attempt to take control of law enforcement and use it against the president’s enemies; the president’s office then worsened matters threatened to punish protesting officers.By 2024, leading into the country’s parliamentary elections, Yoon’s government was incredibly unpopular with just about everyone, because of those and other decisions and statements and gaffes. Even his wife has been under investigation for accepting bribes and having undo influence on who takes positions of power, alongside comments she’s made about seeking revenge against people who say not nice things about her, including journalists.The opposition swept that 2024 parliamentary election, which had the practical impact of making Yoon’s government something of a lame duck, unable to get anything done, because his party only controlled 36% of the National Assembly. He then boycotted the inaugural session of this new National Assembly, seemingly because he didn’t like the outcome, becoming the first President to do so since democracy returned to the country in 1988.All of which leads us to what happened on December 3, 2024.Late that night, President Yoon declared martial law, which would give him, as president, wartime powers to do all sorts of dictator-like things.He said he declared martial law to unfreeze a frozen government that was paralyzed by his opposition: Assemblymembers had stymied a lot of his efforts to pass laws favored by his party and constituents, and had tallied a large number of impeachment efforts against people in his administration, while he, in turn, used more vetos than any other democratically elected president in the country’s history—so the executive and legislative branches were at a standoff, and this was freezing the government, so he says he declared martial law to basically get things done.The opposition, in contrast, says his move was unconstitutional, and that he tried to launch a coup.That latter claim seems to be backed by the fact that Yoon accused his political competition of collaborating with North Korean communists and engaging in anti-state activities, which he said were intended to destroy the country—this seems to be based, again, on the fact that they didn’t approve the stuff he wanted to get approved.As part of this martial law declaration, he also declared a prohibition on all political activities and all gatherings of the National Assembly and local representatives, and he suspended the freedom of the press.He apparently also ordered the arrest of many of his political opponents, alongside some people within his own party who might oppose him and his seeming power-grab.Both parties, his own included, opposed this proclamation, and there were some dramatic standoffs following his announcement at 10:30pm local time, as protestors took to the streets and legislators gathered at the National Assembly Proceeding Hall, where they do their job, because members of the military were ordered to stop them; there are videos of these soldiers standing in the way of these politicians, trying to keep them from entering the building where they could vote to do away with the martial law declaration, and in some cases pointing assault rifles at them. The legislators didn’t backing down, and in a few cases wrestled with the soldiers while thousands of citizens protested behind them against the military action.Eventually, the Assembly members made it inside and voted to lift martial law; this happened at 4:30am that morning. And over the next few days they began impeachment proceedings against the president, saying they would keep doing so until he resigned.A bunch of people resigned from Yoon’s administration following his seeming attempt at a coup and, and on December 7, a few days later, he issued a public apology, saying that he wouldn’t try to do that again, though on the 12th he backtracked and defended his declaration of martial law, saying that he had to protect the country from these anti-state forces, accusing his opponents, once more, of being on North Korea’s side.On December 14, Yoon was impeached and booted from office, following another, failed vote; his party sticking with him for a while, though seemingly distancing themselves from him, following his doubling-down on the “my political opponents are communists” stance.The leader of his party the PPP, stepped down shortly after that successful vote, having changed his vote from being against impeachment to supporting it, saying basically that there was no other way to remove Yoon from office, and Yoon’s Supreme Councilmembers all stepped down, as well.South Korea’s Constitutional Court will now have to decide, within the next six months, whether Yoon will be formally and permanently removed from office, or if he’ll be reinstated.In the two previous instances of a president being impeached, the court has taken 2 and 3 months to make their decision, and they reinstated one president, while allowing the impeachment to stand for the other.If Yoon is removed by the court, the country will have to elect a new leader within two months, and in the interim, the country’s Prime Minister, the number 2 person in the government, is serving as president; Yoon has been stripped of his powers.Yoon has a broad swathe of immunity against criminal charges due to his position as president, but that doesn’t apply to rebellion or treason, which could apply in this case.He’s been banned from leaving the country, but there’s a good chance if he tries, he won’t be stopped, due to a potential conflict between state security forces and presidential security forces—it would be a bad look to have them fight and maybe kill each other.Yoon’s presence was requested by prosecutors over the weekend, but he didn’t show up to be questioned, and there’s a chance that if this happens again, him deciding not to show up and ignoring these requests, he’ll be arrested—though that same issue with presidential security fighting with police forces applies here, too, so it’s an open question what will happen if he just ignores the whole process and keeps claiming he did nothing wrong.A preliminary court hearing date has been set for December 27, and though the court only has six of its total nine members at the moment, it has said it’s fine to move forward with an incomplete court, though the government has said they’ll likely be able to get another three judges approved by the end of December.So things are complicated in South Korea right now, the former president disempowered, but seemingly refusing to participate in the proceedings that will help a new government form, if his dismissal is upheld by the court, that is, and that means the interim government is even more of a lame duck than he was, at a moment in which the world is very dynamic, both in the sense of geopolitics and North Korea becoming more active and antagonistic, and in the sense that economics and tech and everything else is roiling and evolving pretty rapidly right now; a new paradigm seems to be emerging in a lot of different spaces, and South Korea is in a terrible spot to make any moves in any direction, based on that—and that seems likely to remain the case for at least a few more months, but possibly longer than that, too, depending on how the court case plays out, and how the potential next-step election turns out, following that court case.Show Noteshttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_South_Korean_martial_law_crisishttps://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/03/world/asia/south-korea-martial-law.htmlhttps://www.yahoo.com/news/heres-whats-going-south-korea-213322966.htmlhttps://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/12/03/martial-law-south-korea-explained/https://apnews.com/article/south-korea-protesters-photo-gallery-yoon-b17f96063a2635ebc87f35ed9ab5ac5bhttps://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/14/world/asia/south-korea-president-impeached-martial-law.htmlhttps://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/12/04/world/asia/south-korea-impeachment-vote-president-yoon.htmlhttps://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/13/world/asia/south-korea-protest-feliz-navidad.htmlhttps://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/12/14/world/asia/skorea-yoon-timeline.htmlhttps://apnews.com/article/south-korea-martial-law-yoon-impeach-6432768aafc8b55be26215667e3c19d0https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/south-koreas-yoon-faces-second-impeachment-vote-over-martial-law-bid-2024-12-14/https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/dec/14/south-korea-president-yoon-suk-yeol-downfall-analysishttps://www.wsj.com/world/asia/south-korea-president-yoon-suk-yeol-impeached-49b0779chttps://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/12/14/south-korea-yoon-impeachment-vote/https://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_national/1054103.htmlhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yoon_Suk_Yeolhttps://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/01/world/asia/south-korea-first-lady-dior.htmlhttps://www.economist.com/europe/2024/12/12/why-romania-cancelled-a-pro-russian-presidential-candidatehttps://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20241215050041https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2pl4edk13ohttps://www.cnn.com/2024/12/14/world/video/south-korea-yoon-second-impeachment-watson-cnntm-digvidhttps://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/dec/15/south-korea-president-yoon-suk-yeol-reportedly-defies-summons-in-martial-law-inquiryhttps://apnews.com/article/south-korea-yoon-martial-law-investigation-constitutional-court-8ec38d61f0ea5c48b3bd1f683b5e9c8dhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syngman_Rheehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Koreahttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Park_Chung_Heehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coup_d%27%C3%A9tat_of_December_Twelfthhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaebol This is a public episode. 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This week we talk about coups, the Arab Spring, and Bashar al-Assad.We also discuss militias, Al Qaeda, and Iran.Recommended Book: The Algebraist by Iain M. BanksTranscriptIn the early 2010s, a series of uprisings against unpopular, authoritarian governments spread across the Middle East—a wave of action that became known as the Arab Spring.Tunisia was where it started, a man setting himself on fire in protest against the nation’s brazenly corrupt government and all that he’d suffered under that government, and the spreading of this final gesture on social media, which was burgeoning at the time, amplified by the still relatively newfound availability and popularity of smartphones, the mobile internet, and the common capacity to share images and videos of things as they happen to folks around the world via social media, led to a bunch of protests and riots and uprisings in Jordan, Egypt, Yemen, and Algeria, initially, before then spreading to other, mostly Arab majority, mostly authoritarian-led nations.The impact of this cascade of unrest in this region was immediately felt; within just two years, by early 2012, those ruling Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Yemen had been toppled, there were attempts to topple the Bahraini and Syrian governments, there were massive protests in Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Morocco, Oman, Algeria, and Sudan, and relatively minor protests, which were still meaningful because of the potential punishments for folks who rocked the boat in these countries, smaller protests erupted in Djibouti, Western Sahara, Saudi Arabia, Palestine, and Mauritania.Several rulers and their ruling parties committed to stepping down soon, or to not run for reelection—some of them actually stuck with that commitment, though others rode out this period of tumult and then quietly backtracked.Some nations saw long-lasting periods of unrest following this eruption; Jordan had trouble keeping a government in office for years, for instance, while Yemen overthrew its government in 2012 and 2015, and that spun-out into a civil war between the official government and the Iran-backed Houthis, which continues today, gumming up the Red Sea and significantly disrupting global shipping as a consequence.What I’d like to talk about today, though, is another seriously disruptive sequence of events that have shaped the region, and a lot of things globally, as well, since the first sparks of what became the Arab Spring—namely, the Syrian Civil war—and some movement we’ve seen in this conflict over the past week that could result in a dramatically new state of affairs across the region.—In 1963, inspired by their brethren’s successful coup in nearby Iraq, the military wing of the Arab nationalist Ba’ath party of Syria launched a coup against the country’s post-colonial democratic government, installing in its stead a totalitarian party-run government.One of the leaders of this coup, Hafez al-Assad, became the country’s president in 1971, which basically meant he was the all-powerful leader of a military dictatorship, and he used those powers to even further consolidate his influence over the mechanisms of state, which meant he also had the ability to name his own successor.He initially planned to install his brother as leader when he stepped down or died, but that brother attempted to overthrow him when he was ill in 1983 and 1984, so when he got better, he exiled said brother and chose his eldest son, Bassel al-Assad, instead.Bassel died in a car accident in 1994, though, so Hafez was left with his third choice, Bashar al-Assad, which wasn’t a popular choice, in part because it was considered not ideal for him to choose a family member, rather than someone else from the leading party, but also because Bashar had no political experience at the time, so this was straight-up nepotism: the only reason he was selected was that he was family.In mid-2000, Hafez died, and Bashar stepped into the role of president. The next few years were tumultuous for the new leader, who faced heightened calls for more transparency in the government, and a return to democracy, or some form of it at least, in Syria.This, added to Bashar’s lack of influence with his fellow party members, led to a wave of retirements and purgings amongst the government and military higher-ups—those veteran politicians and generals replaced by loyalists with less experience and credibility.He then made a series of economic decisions that were really good for the Assad family and their allies, but really bad for pretty much everyone else in the country, which made him and his government even less popular with much of the Syrian population, even amongst those who formerly supported his ascension and ambitions.All of this pushback from the people nudged Bashar al-Assad into implementing an increasingly stern police state, which pitted various ethnic and religious groups against each other in order to keep them from unifying against the government, and which used terror and repression to slap down or kill anyone who stood up to the abuse.When the Arab Spring, which I mentioned in the intro, rippled across the Arab world beginning in 2011, protestors in Syria were treated horribly by the Assad government—the crackdown incredibly violent and punitive, even compared to that of other repressive, totalitarian governments in the region.This led to more pushback from Syrian citizens, who began to demand, with increasing intensity, that the Assad-run government step down, and that the Ba’athists running the dictatorship be replaced by democratically elected officials.This didn’t go over well with Assad, who launched a campaign of even more brutal, violent crackdowns, mass arrests, and the torture and execution of people who spoke out on this subject—leading to thousands of confirmed deaths, and tens of thousands of people wounded by government forces.This response didn’t go over super well with the people, and these protests and the pushback against them spiraled into a full-on civil uprising later in 2011, a bunch of people leaving the Syrian military to join the rebels, and the country breaking up into pieces, each chunk of land controlled by a different militia, some of these militias working well together, unifying against the government, while others also fought other militias—a remnant of the military government’s efforts to keep their potential opposition fighting each other, rather than them.This conflict was officially declared a civil war by the UN in mid-2012, and the UN and other such organizations have been fretting and speaking out about the human rights violations and other atrocities committed during this conflict ever since, though little has been done by external forces, practically, to end it—instead it’s become one of many proxy conflicts, various sides supported, mostly with weapons and other resources, though sometimes with training, and in rare instances with actual soldiers on the ground, by the US, Turkey, Russia, Iran, the Iran-backed group Hezbollah, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Britain, France, Israel, and the Netherlands.This conflict has demanded the country’s full attention for more than a decade, then, and it’s had influence even beyond Syria’s borders, as groups like the Islamic State, or ISIS has been able to grow and flourish within Syria, due to all the chaos and lack of stability, refugees from Syria have flooded across borders, fleeing the violence and causing all sorts of unintended disruptions in neighboring and even some further-afield countries where, in some cases, millions of these refugees have had to be taken care of, which in turn has influenced immigration-related politics even as far away as the European Union. Also due to that lack of internal control, crime has flourished in Syria, including drug-related crime. And that’s lets to a huge production and distribution network for an illegal, almost everywhere, amphetamine called Captagon, which is addictive, and the pills often contain dangerous filler chemicals that are cheaper to produce.This has increased drug crime throughout the region, and the Syrian government derives a substantial amount of revenue from these illicit activities—it’s responsible for about 80% of global Captagon production, as of early 2024.All of which brings us to late-2024.By this point, Syria had been broken up into about seven or eight pieces, each controlled by some militia group or government, while other portions—which make up a substantial volume of the country’s total landmass—are considered to be up in the air, no dominant factions able to claim them.Al-Assad’s government has received a fair bit of support, both in terms of resources, and in terms of boots on the ground, from Iran and Russia, over the years, especially in the mid-20-teens. And due in large part to that assistance, his forces were able to retake most of the opposition’s strongholds by late 2018.There was a significant ceasefire at the tail-end of 2019, which lasted until March of 2020. This ceasefire stemmed from a successful operation launched by the Syrian government and its allies, especially Iran, Russia, and Hezbollah, against the main opposition and some of their allies—basically a group of different rebel factions that were working together against Assad, and this included groups backed by the Turkish government.On March 5, 2020, Turkish President Erdogan and Russian President Putin, which were backing opposite sides of this portion of the Syrian civil war, agreed on a ceasefire that began the following day, which among other things included a safety corridor along a major highway, separating the groups from each other, that corridor patrolled by soldiers from Turkey and Russia.This served to end most frontline fighting, as these groups didn’t want to start fighting these much larger, more powerful nations—Russia and Turkey—while trying to strike their enemies, though there were still smaller scuffles and attacks, when either side could hurt their opponent without being caught.In November of 2024, though, a coalition of anti-Assad militias launched a new offensive against the Syrian government’s forces, which was ostensibly sparked by heavily shelling by those forces against civilians in rural areas outside Aleppo, the country’s second-largest city.On the 29th of November, those forces captured most of Aleppo, and then plowed their way through previously government-held towns and cities at a fairly rapid clip, capturing another regional capitol, Hama on December 5, and securing Damascus, the capitol of the country, on December 8.This ended the 13-year civil war that’s plagued Syria since all the way back in 2011; Bashar al-Assad fled to Russia, according to Russian and Iranian officials, and he resigned before he hopped on that flight; Russian state media is saying that Assad and his family have been granted asylum by the Russian government.This is a rapidly developing story, and we’ll know more over the next few weeks, as the dust settles, but right now it looks like the Syrian government has been toppled by rebel forces led by a man named Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, a 42-year-old child of Syrian exiles who was born in Saudi Arabia, and who spent the early 2000s fighting against US occupation forces in Iraq as part of Al Qaeda.He apparently spent a few years in an Iraqi prison, then led an Al Qaeda affiliate group, which evolved into its own thing when he broke ties with Al Qaeda’s leadership.This new group that he formed, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, tried to differentiate itself from groups like Al Qaeda by saying they didn’t want to play a role in the global jihad, they just wanted to reform the government in Syria. As part of that pivot, they started governing and building infrastructure across the chunk of Syria they claimed, even to the point of collecting taxes and providing civilians with identity cards; though throughout this period they were also known for ruling with an iron fist, and for being hardcore authoritarians, dedicated to implementing a hard-line version of Islamist ideological law.In the midst of their blitz-like capture of Syria, though, representatives from this group have said they’ll implement a religiously tolerant representative government, and they won’t tell women in the country how to dress.Following the capture of Damascus, Syria’s Prime Minister said that he would remain in the country, and that he was ready to work with whomever takes the reins as things settle down, happy to make the transition a smooth and peaceful one, essentially, whatever that might mean in practice.The US military has taken this opportunity to strike dozens of Islamic State facilities and leaders across the country, marking one of the biggest such actions in recent months, and military leaders have said they would continue to strike terrorist groups on Syrian soil—probably as part of an effort to keep the new Syrian government, whatever its composition, from working with IS and its allies.Russia has requested a closed-door meeting with the United Nations Security Council to discuss Syria’s collapse, and it’s been reported that they failed to come to Assad’s aid because they’re too tied up in Ukraine, and they weren’t able to move forces from North Africa rapidly enough to do much good; though there’s a chance they’ll still shift whatever chess pieces they can to the area in order to influence the composition of the new government, as it’s forming.Iran has said they welcome whatever type of government the Syrian people decide to establish, though it’s likely they’ll try to nudge that formation in their favor, as Syria has long been an ally and client state of theirs, and they are no doubt keen to maintain that reality as much as possible, and bare-minimum to avoid the establishment of an enemy along their border.And Israel has entered what’s supposed to be a demilitarized buffer zone in the Golan Heights because this zone is on the Syrian border; they’ve also captured a buffer zone within Syria itself. They’ve launched airstrikes on suspected chemical weapon sites in Syria, to prevent them from falling into extremist hands, they’ve said, and Israeli leaders said they want to keep any issues in their neighbor from impacting Israeli citizens. And Iraq’s government has announced that they’re doing the same along their shared border with Syria, so the whole region is bulwarking their potential weak points, just in case something goes wrong and violence spreads, rather than being tamped down by all this change.Israel’s prime minister, and other higher ups in the government, have also claimed responsibility for Assad’s toppling, saying it was their efforts against Iran and its proxy forces, like Hezbollah, that set the stage for the rebels to do what they did—as otherwise these forces would have been too strong and too united for it to work.Notably, the now-in-charge rebel group has been a longtime enemy of Iran and Hezbollah, so while there’s still a lot of uncertainty surrounding all of this, Israel’s government is no doubt generally happy with how things have progressed, so far, as this could mean Syria is no longer a reliable corridor for them, especially for the purposes of getting weapons to Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, along Israel’s northern border.That said, this same group isn’t exactly a fan of Israel, and is backed by Turkey, which has been highly critical of Israel’s actions in Gaza and Lebanon.So it’s an incredibly tumultuous moment in Syria, right now, and in this region, as a whole, because the conflict in Syria has been super impactful on everyone thereabouts, to varying degrees, and this ending to this long-lasting civil war could lead to some positive outcomes, like Syrian refugees who have been scattered across neighboring countries being able to return home without facing the threat of violence, and the release of political prisoners from infamous facilities, some of which have already been emptied by the rebels—but especially in the short-term there’s a lot of uncertainty, and it’ll likely be a while before that uncertainty solidifies into something more knowable and predictable, as at the moment, much of the country is still controlled by various militia groups backed by different international actors, including Kurdish-led forces backed by the US, and forces allied with Turkey in the north.So this change of official governance may shuffle the deck, but rather than stabilizing things, it could result in a new conflict catalyzed by the power vacuum left by the Assad government and its allies, if rebel forces—many of which have been labeled terrorists by governments around the world, which is another wrinkle in all this—if they fail to rally behind one group or individual, and instead start fighting each other for the opportunity to become the country’s new dominant force.Show Noteshttps://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/08/world/middleeast/syria-hts-jolani.htmlhttps://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/06/briefing/syria-civil-war-assad.htmlhttps://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/assads-rule-collapses-in-syria-raising-concerns-of-a-vacuum-95568f13https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/02/world/middleeast/syria-rebels-hts-who-what.htmlhttps://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2024/12/07/syria-rebels-biden-intelligence-islamists/https://apnews.com/article/turkey-syria-insurgents-explainer-kurds-ypg-refugees-f60dc859c7843569124282ea750f1477https://apnews.com/article/israel-hamas-war-gaza-lebanon-news-7-december-2024-53419e23991cfc14a7857c82f49eb26fhttps://apnews.com/article/syria-assad-sweida-daraa-homs-hts-qatar-816e538565d1ae47e016b5765b044d31https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/08/world/middleeast/syria-damascus-eyewitness-assad.htmlhttps://www.nytimes.com/article/syria-civil-war-rebels.htmlhttps://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/12/08/world/syria-war-damascushttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ba%27ath_Partyhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1963_Syrian_coup_d%27%C3%A9tathttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hafez_al-Assadhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syrian_revolutionhttps://www.cfr.org/article/syrias-civil-warhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syrian_civil_warhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bashar_al-Assadhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fenethyllinehttps://carnegieendowment.org/research/2024/07/border-traffic-how-syria-uses-captagon-to-gain-leverage-over-saudi-arabia?lang=enhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northwestern_Syria_offensive_(December_2019_%E2%80%93_March_2020)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Syrian_opposition_offensiveshttps://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c8j99447gj1ohttps://apnews.com/article/syria-assad-rebels-war-israel-a8ecceee72a66f4d7e6168d6a21b8dc9https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/12/09/world/syria-assad-rebelshttps://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/09/world/middleeast/israel-assad-syria.htmlhttps://apnews.com/article/iran-mideast-proxy-forces-syria-analysis-c853bf613a6d6af7f6aa99b2e60984f8https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/09/briefing/irans-very-bad-year.htmlhttps://apnews.com/article/syria-hts-assad-aleppo-fighting-2be43ee530b7932b123a0f26b158ac22https://apnews.com/article/syria-insurgents-aleppo-iran-russia-turkey-abff93e4f415ebfd827d49b1a90818e8https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/06/world/middleeast/syria-rebels-hama-homs.htmlhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syrian_civil_warhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_Spring 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