Surrendering Our Role In The World — But Beanie Babies March 9, 2025 Fareed Zakaria: Trump is helping Russia and China by upending the world order. . . . The United States spent eight decades building an international system of rules, norms and values that has produced the longest period of great power peace and global prosperity in human history. Its alliances are the greatest force multiplier for its influence around the world. The United States has been the greatest beneficiary of this system, even now, decades later, still setting the agenda and dominating the world economically, technologically and militarily. As that world unravels, America’s privileged position [and the immense advantage we get from the dollar’s being the world’s reserve currency] will also decline, creating a more dangerous and impoverished world — and a more isolated, mistrusted and insecure America. . . . So sad. Entirely self-inflicted. Must reading. Elon’s Grok Chatbot Calculates Probability That Trump Is a Russian Asset Elon Musk’s supposedly “anti-woke” chatbot, Grok, keeps spewing outputs that are hilariously opposed to the billionaire’s views — including that newly-minted President Donald Trump is likely a Russian asset. Responding to a prompt from Arizona Republic columnist EJ Montini, Musk’s “maximally truth-seeking” AI, which is built into X, said after an analysis that the probability of the president being in the pocket of Vladimir Putin is between 75 and 85 percent. . . . Grok said that although there is no “smoking gun [that] proves direct control,” there’s a good chance that Trump is a “useful idiot” for Putin — especially given that “Trump’s ego and debts make him unwittingly pliable.” CRYPTO STRATEGIC RESERVE Crypto investors within the Trump administration, like Trump and Musk themselves, are pushing the idea of a “strategic crypto reserve.” It would be like our well-established, well thought-out “strategic oil reserve” . . . . . . only completely stupid. More like setting up a Strategic Beanie Baby Reserve.