Get this on your reading list | A Brief History of Intelligence

Get this on your reading list…

A Brief History of Intelligence: Evolution, AI, and the Five Breakthroughs That Made Our Brains by Max Bennett

This book helped me immensely with my understanding of human and artificial intelligence.

Three data points:

1) The simulation gap explains why AI can beat a chess grandmaster, but it can't load a dishwasher: A human brain has a neocortex, which allows it to simulate possible outcomes of actions before taking them. Think planning, recalling past events, and more efficient learning by imagination. Bennett argues that current AI systems lack this.

2) Reinforcement learning is 500 million years old; AI just rediscovered it: Human life acquired the capability to learn to repeat behaviors that lead to good or bad outcomes. AI reinforcement learning is just beginning, but the brain does it with far less data and energy; a human is far more energy-efficient.

3) AI can't read the room: Humans have developed the ability to track what other individuals know, want, and intend. Humans understand context and have high EQ. Current AI lacks this ability.

Bennett concludes that AI systems' evolution won't be constrained by biology the way ours was, so that the next breakthrough could compress millions of years of evolutionary time into years of engineering.

Enjoy the ride + plan accordingly.

-Marc.

You can always reach me @ marc@caracal.global.

*****

Marc A. Ross is a geopolitical strategist and the founder of Caracal Global, a fractional Chief Geopolitical Officer service for Fortune 1,000 companies and private equity firms. He publishes the Caracal Global Daily — what a Chief Geopolitical Officer monitors every morning. Subscribe at caracal.global/contact.

The Hormuz calculation your board hasn't made

There's a line buried in today's Bloomberg Hormuz analysis worth reading aloud in your next board meeting. The energy crisis triggered by the US-Israel conflict with Iran will get worse gradually, then suddenly.

That's Hemingway's formulation for bankruptcy. The parallel is intentional and exact.

Here's what the Strait of Hormuz looks like from a Chief Geopolitical Officer's seat right now. The military and diplomatic storylines are capturing most of the oxygen. Vice President Vance is reportedly worried the US is running dangerously low on weapons. Germany's Chancellor Merz says the US has been "humiliated" and has no convincing strategy. Iran is maneuvering for separate negotiating tracks — one for Hormuz, one for nuclear issues — and the Trump administration is skeptical of both. France is demanding major concessions at the UN. None of that is the story your board needs to be scenario-planning around.

The story is energy infrastructure. And it is moving faster than most corporate planning cycles can absorb.

Goldman Sachs now puts Brent crude at $90/barrel for Q4 as a base case. The most likely scenario is that the conflict extends into summer and oil hits $120. Asian refineries are already slashing jet fuel and diesel output because they cannot source crude at workable prices. Economist Michelle Brouhard warns that the aviation fuel situation is dire, and even more canceled flights will follow. In developing economies, the cascading effects will reach emergency services and basic utilities. Twenty thousand seafarers are stranded on cargo ships in the strait. UK Prime Minister Starmer is telling Britons to rethink their holidays and reconsider what they buy at the grocery store.

This is not a geopolitical story. It is a supply chain, energy procurement, and logistics story — and it is landing directly on Fortune 1,000 balance sheets.

Three things your leadership team should be doing this week.

First, stress-test your energy exposure — and not just your direct fuel costs. Model second and third-order effects: freight rate escalation, supplier disruption in Asia, logistics delays, and the cost of alternatives. If your scenario planning does not include a $120/barrel environment sustained through Q3, you are working from outdated assumptions.

Second, brief your board on timeline ambiguity. The diplomatic signals are contradictory, and there is no visible off-ramp. Iran wants a partial deal that preserves leverage. The Trump team is skeptical. Do not let your board assume this will be resolved in 30 days. That assumption is not supported by the evidence.

Third, map your most Iran-exposed counterparties. Airlines, shipping companies, petrochemical suppliers, Asian manufacturing partners, any business whose unit economics depend on pre-crisis fuel prices is now a credit and delivery risk. Map that exposure before it maps you.

The Hemingway formulation is useful because it describes timing. The gradual phase is already underway. Companies that wait for the sudden phase to respond will not be managing risk. They will be managing a crisis.

Caracal Global provides fractional Chief Geopolitical Officer services — Intelligence, Strategy, and Communications — for Fortune 1,000 companies and private equity portfolio companies.

If the Hormuz crisis is now on your board's agenda and you don't have a geopolitical officer in the room, that is the conversation we should be having. Four tiers of service: Advisory | Representative | Senator | Presidential.

Enjoy the ride + plan accordingly.

-Marc.

You can always reach me @ marc@caracal.global.

*****

Marc A. Ross is a geopolitical strategist and the founder of Caracal Global, a fractional Chief Geopolitical Officer service for Fortune 1,000 companies and private equity firms. He publishes the Caracal Global Daily — what a Chief Geopolitical Officer monitors every morning. Subscribe at caracal.global/contact.

No war. No peace.

The Pakistan peace talks are dead. Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner were scheduled to travel to Islamabad on Saturday. Then they weren't. Iranian officials had already departed. Trump formally pulled the plug. What we're left with is a phrase that sounds like diplomacy but functions like paralysis: "no war, no peace."

Here is what that actually means for your business.

The Strait of Hormuz remains blocked. Brent crude is at $107 and climbing. The UK government is warning that food and fuel prices will stay elevated for at least eight months after the Strait reopens. That's not a post-conflict recovery scenario. That's a multi-year cost environment, and it assumes the war ends soon. Nothing in today's news suggests it does.

The pattern matters. Iran believes it can outlast American public pressure, and Trump's declining poll numbers on the economy give Tehran a plausible case. Washington believes maximum economic pressure will eventually crack the Iranian resolve. Each side is betting that the other will fold first. That is not a negotiating strategy. It is a structural stalemate, and structural stalemates have a history of producing accidents.

For Fortune 1,000 CEOs, three things are now true that weren't true six months ago.

First, energy is no longer a line item. It is a strategic variable. Every company with logistics exposure, manufacturing operations, or global distribution has had its cost structure repriced. The question isn't whether energy costs are higher — they are. The question is how long, and the honest answer is: longer than your Q2 guidance assumes.

Second, the dollar's global role is being quietly questioned. The FT's analysis today on the petrodollar deserves more boardroom attention than it's getting. Gulf energy exporters are recalculating currency preferences. This is a slow-moving shift — the dollar's reserve status rests on far more than oil denomination — but the Iran war has accelerated the conversation among the people who matter most to it.

Third, NATO's credibility gap is now public. The Trump administration is openly labeling Spain, France, and the UK as "paper tigers" for failing to stand with Washington during the Iran conflict. The UK is sending its king to smooth things over. That is not a posture of strength. For companies with heavy European operations, the question is no longer whether transatlantic cohesion is fraying. It's how fast, and what that means for regulatory alignment, defense procurement, and supply chain architecture across the continent.

The "no war, no peace" framing gives executives a false sense of containment. It isn't. A stalemate without a deal is a sustained disruption event. An event that compounds over time rather than resolving.

What does this require? Intelligence on where the negotiating pressure points actually are. Strategy for operating in a high-energy-cost, low-alliance-reliability environment for the next twelve to eighteen months. And communications architecture that keeps your board, your investors, and your government relationships connected to a world that is not going back to where it was.

That is exactly what Caracal Global does.

Enjoy the ride + plan accordingly.

-Marc.

You can always reach me @ marc@caracal.global.

*****

Marc A. Ross is a geopolitical strategist and the founder of Caracal Global, a fractional Chief Geopolitical Officer service for Fortune 1,000 companies and private equity firms. He publishes the Caracal Global Daily — what a Chief Geopolitical Officer monitors every morning. Subscribe at caracal.global/contact.