Dear Colleagues,

I’m feeling slightly nostalgic these days for the times, not so long ago, where one could still read about a fairytale “Grand Global health convergence by 2035” in a top medical journal or other merry “cosmopolitan moments”  on the horizon. In the year 2026, things feel slightly different.  Earlier this week, an EV alumna put it aptly on Whatsapp:  “Since some time, I’ve been wondering whether this is how people lived before WW II. Living ‘normal lives’ and keep doing regular things while the global craziness just keeps increasing. Something happens and then I think, “Well, this is the worst that can happen. But global super powers surprise me over and over again.”    And not in a good way, obviously.

Indeed, whenever you think we’ve reached rock bottom, Darth Donald and some of the other people currently in charge ‘trump’ it again in the new and largely lawless ‘Age of Resource Competition’.  Americans in particular must have felt super proud of their...