In a world where NATO members are infighting, alliance networks are fraying, and crises are flaring on nearly every continent, the question of who benefits from global instability has never been more urgent. This week’s Situation Room AMA tackled some of the most pressing questions facing the international order: whether the current moment of Western disarray is incentivizing wars of conquest, why mid-tier powers like the UAE are projecting force far from home, which defense industries are capitalizing on global instability (and which are falling behind), and whether any good news exists amid the relentless drumbeat of conflict. The discussion also ventured into media bias, the economics of covering peace versus war, and the editorial decisions behind covering politically charged events. Here is a comprehensive breakdown of the key themes and insights from the session.
The Terror of Crumbling Alliances: Why This Is the Moment to Strike
The Situation Room addressed a pointed question from a viewer: if you were a dictator with territorial ambitions, would this be the time to act? The answer was an unequivocal yes. The analysis pointed to Russia’s decision to fly drone swarms into Poland as a case study in opportunistic timing.
At the precise moment those swarms launched, France was in political crisis, Britain and Spain were experiencing unrest, America’s allies were losing faith in Washington, and Europe’s rearmament programs were still in their infancy. Israel had bombed Qatar just hours before, and a major display of solidarity among non-Western leaders — Putin, Xi, Modi, Kim Jong-un, and others — had taken place only weeks prior.
Key Takeaways
- The current period of Western political instability and alliance fragmentation is creating windows of opportunity for both major and minor powers to pursue territorial and strategic ambitions they previously could not.
- Defense stocks globally are surging — companies like Rheinmetall, Hyundai Rotem, and Aselsan have seen their valuations multiply several times over in 2025 — but American defense giants like Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and Northrop Grumman are underperforming their global competitors, largely due to eroding trust in the US as a defense partner.
- The UAE’s deep involvement in Sudan is part of a broader ‘New Great Game’ among regional powers — including Turkey, Iran, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia — each competing to become a regional hegemon in a rapidly fragmenting international order.
- Good news in global conflict does exist — such as the Azerbaijan-Armenia peace pledge signed at the White House — but algorithmic incentives and human psychology ensure that peace stories receive a fraction of the attention given to war and crisis.
- The return to a multipolar world, after 80 years of superpower dominance, is driving increased competition not just between great powers like the US and China, but among mid-tier nations flush with oil money and new weapons.
But the discussion went further than Russia. The argument was made that these moments of Western distraction and disarray are precisely when smaller powers feel emboldened to act on ambitions they would otherwise suppress. The precedent cited was Azerbaijan’s escalation against Armenia in 2022 and 2023, culminating in the capture of Nagorno-Karabakh while Russia was consumed by its own war in Ukraine. Azerbaijan correctly calculated that Moscow would not intervene.
The list of potential flashpoints is long and sobering: Netanyahu’s strike against Qatar, Erdogan’s crackdowns on domestic opposition in Turkey, the UAE’s support for the RSF in Sudan, restarting wars in the Congo and South Sudan, Venezuela’s pledges to annex roughly two-thirds of Guyana, and Serbia’s efforts to suppress its national protest movement. While it would be premature to single out any one of these as certain to escalate, the analysis emphasized that the threat of escalation is rising across all of them simultaneously — a compounding risk that makes the current moment uniquely dangerous.
Good News for a Change: Peace Stories the Algorithm Buries
In response to a viewer’s plea for news that isn’t ‘extremely bleak,’ the Situation Room offered a genuinely important meta-observation about how we consume information about conflict and peace. The core argument: it is not all doom and gloom, but the structure of modern media — social media algorithms and human viewing habits — ensures that positive developments in global conflict are systematically underrepresented in public awareness.
The primary example was the August peace pledge between the leaders of Azerbaijan and Armenia, signed at the White House. While not a full peace agreement — Armenia still needs to amend its constitution and hold a referendum to formally relinquish claims to Azeri-controlled territory — it was described as a landmark moment that would have been inconceivable just two years earlier. Yet the story gained remarkably little traction. The channel’s own video on the subject received only 67,000 views, compared to more than three times that for a video released after Azeri forces overran Nagorno-Karabakh in 2023.
The pattern was reinforced with another example: a March video covering the PKK’s announcement that it would disarm and end its multi-decade insurgency against Turkey barely scraped 100,000 views. Two days later, a video on the possibility of war reigniting in Ethiopia’s Tigray region pulled in a quarter of a million. The conclusion drawn was stark — for whatever reason, most humans appear to find bad news more appealing than good news, and algorithms amplify this tendency by serving conflict content to more people.
The discussion also acknowledged that peace stories are rarely unambiguously positive. The Azerbaijan-Armenia peace pledge came only after multiple conflicts over Nagorno-Karabakh that ended with the enclave being conquered and ethnically cleansed. Still, the assessment was clear: peace is usually the better option. On the question of which current wars might end peacefully, the analysis noted that Puntland appears to be on the verge of defeating the Islamic State in Somalia.
Watch on WarFronts
Watch the full video analysis on the WarFronts YouTube channel, presented by Simon Whistler.
Defense Industry Bonanza: Who’s Winning and Who’s Falling Behind
The global defense industry is experiencing a historic boom, and the numbers are staggering. Since the start of 2025, Rheinmetall in Germany and Hyundai Rotem in South Korea have nearly quadrupled in value. Aselsan in Turkey has almost tripled. Korean Aerospace and BAE Systems have essentially doubled.
Airbus has grown almost fifty percent. Fincantieri Shipbuilders have more than tripled. The trend shows no signs of slowing — a world mired in crisis is, as the analysis bluntly noted, exceptionally good for business.
But the most striking finding was the relative underperformance of American defense giants. Lockheed Martin has been mostly in the red since last October. Boeing, Northrop Grumman, and RTX (formerly Raytheon) have grown at a far slower pace than their global competitors. General Dynamics only recently worked its way out of an almost year-long dip, while Booz Allen and Honeywell have been dropping consistently.
A few newer American companies — Kratos and Palantir — have been exceptions, but the broader trend for US defense has been negative since November.
The explanation is straightforward: since the Trump administration took office, trust in the United States as a defense partner has been dropping rapidly. The collateral effect of telling Europe to handle its own defense is that Europe is actually doing so — and buying from its own manufacturers. Trump recently threatened Canada to prevent it from canceling its F-35 purchase, while both Spain and India rejected the F-35 within the last couple of months. The bottom line: globally, defense is thriving, but that progress is increasingly coming at America’s expense.
The New Great Game: Why the UAE Is in Sudan and What It Means
A viewer asked why mid-tier powers like the UAE are so deeply involved in conflicts far from home, like Sudan — the kind of power projection that only superpowers could afford decades ago. The answer, according to the analysis, mirrors the same logic that has always driven great power involvement in proxy conflicts: a combination of opportunity and rivalry.
In Sudan specifically, the UAE appears to have several goals. First, establishing a port on the Red Sea — a strategic necessity if Abu Dhabi is to seriously compete with its frenemy Saudi Arabia. Second, backing the faction that presents itself as more secular.
While the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) may be conducting a genocide in Darfur, the Sudanese army is perceived as too close to the Islamist elements that dominated the former dictatorship of Omar al-Bashir, and the Gulf monarchies view political Islam as one of the greatest threats to their systems. Third, Sudan possesses vast natural resources — gold mines and swathes of agricultural land — that the UAE would benefit from accessing.
But the Sudan intervention is only one piece of a much larger puzzle. The analysis described the emergence of a new Great Game among regional powers — the UAE, Turkey, Iran, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia — each angling to become the undisputed regional hegemon. Victory in this competition means creating a strategically useful set of alliances and dependencies across the region to lock opponents out.
The UAE isn’t just backing the RSF in Sudan. It is also bankrolling Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, funding ports in Somaliland, annexing Yemeni islands, striking trade deals with Kenya, and meddling in South Sudan and Chad. Meanwhile, Iran is backing the Houthi rebels in Yemen and funneling arms to the Sudanese army.
Saudi Arabia is investing in Eritrea and trying to broker peace in Sudan. Turkey is making overtures to Egypt after a decade of animosity and reaching out to General Haftar in Libya, reportedly hoping to leverage Libya as a strategic counterweight to Greek-Cypriot-French efforts to isolate Turkey in the Eastern Mediterranean.
The broader point is that these nations are now in a position similar to the European Great Powers of the 19th century — each competing for regional dominance, with smaller nations used as pawns or, in Sudan’s case, as the board itself. This dynamic is expected to intensify as the post-war international order continues to break down. After 80 years of living in a world dominated by first two and then one superpower, the international system is returning to the multipolar era that existed before World War I.
This means not only increased competition between superpowers like the US and China, but growing tensions between mid-tier nations that could never challenge Beijing or Washington directly but could realistically become local hegemons. Flush with oil money and new weapons, and with no one around to restrain them, these mid-tier powers are flexing their muscles — a tragedy for nations like Sudan that find themselves caught in the middle.
The Algorithm Problem: Why Peace Gets Ignored and War Goes Viral
One of the most thought-provoking threads running through the entire AMA was the structural problem of how conflict and peace are covered in modern media. The discussion revealed a deeply counterintuitive dynamic: the better the news, the less attention it receives. When a video appears in someone’s feed announcing that two obscure countries have made peace, the vast majority scroll past.
The algorithm detects low engagement and suppresses the content further. Conversely, a video announcing that two countries have declared war generates clicks, which boosts the video into more feeds, which generates more clicks — a self-reinforcing cycle that systematically overrepresents conflict in public consciousness.
The net result is a distorted impression of the world. People see wars, atrocities, killings, and assassinations — all of which are genuinely important — but they don’t see the counterbalancing developments: leaders pulling nations back from the brink, peace deals ending cycles of violence that once seemed permanent. This isn’t a problem unique to any one platform or outlet; it’s a structural feature of how algorithmic content distribution interacts with human psychology. The implication is that public perception of global affairs is systematically skewed toward pessimism, which in turn can influence policy debates, public support for interventions, and even the willingness of populations to invest in diplomacy over military solutions.
How the Media Tilts Toward Bias — and How to Fight It
A viewer asked how the team manages to remain unbiased and separate fact from opinion, unlike media channels that have deteriorated into political affiliation over time. The response was notably candid: the team is not unbiased, and in fact, it is literally impossible for any person to be unbiased. Human understanding of the world inherently forms biases that change how new information is learned and processed. People recognize patterns — often unconsciously — and those perceived patterns bias future behavior.
Even the attempt to become unbiased is itself biased by one’s understanding of one’s own biases.
Rather than claiming objectivity, the team described their approach as pursuing an unattainable ideal with the understanding that the pursuit itself is what produces better work. By chasing a standard they know they will never fully reach, they become more aware of the ways they risk falling short and can notice and correct mistakes more consistently. The practical methodology involves a series of checks applied during information gathering and script writing: Where did the information come from?
What assumptions were made while learning it? How quickly was new information slotted into pre-existing frameworks, and were alternative angles or perspectives missed? How can the information be presented in a way that represents reality as accurately as possible?
The key insight offered was that any outlet will eventually deteriorate into partisan hackery unless it is constantly putting in the work to avoid it. The trap is complacency — assuming that a track record of good coverage provides a free pass to let one’s guard down. The team’s stated goal is to avoid that trap by maintaining perpetual vigilance over their own analytical processes.
Editorial Decisions Under Fire: The Charlie Kirk Question
The AMA addressed significant viewer criticism over the team’s decision not to produce a rapid-response video following the assassination of conservative political activist Charlie Kirk on September 10th. The team acknowledged the controversy directly and offered a transparent explanation of their reasoning.
The first consideration was what the team would actually be contributing to the conversation. The editorial philosophy for their sister channel PoliticalFronts — where such coverage would have appeared — is not to produce breathless reactions to the daily news cycle or to generate hot takes by default, but to add context, nuance, background, or a helpful framework for understanding an issue. In the immediate aftermath of the Kirk assassination, very little was known about the shooter, the motive, or the full scope of the response. The team felt that an immediate reaction would not have been particularly helpful — they could have produced twelve to fifteen minutes of introductory context for non-Americans, but little more.
The second consideration was timing and tone. Based on the team’s observation of global reactions, the immediate aftermath did not seem like the right moment to wade in. The assessment was that things were too raw and too intensely polarized for a level-headed analysis to be received as intended. There was, in the team’s judgment, no combination of words and phrases that could have described the incident and provided context on Kirk’s life without the video becoming another venue for the flame wars that dominated online discourse in the first couple of days.
The team emphasized that this does not mean the topic should never be covered — they indicated they may still produce such an episode — but that releasing it the day after the assassination was not the right choice. They invited viewers to share their perspectives, asking them to consider a specific litmus test: would the coverage have been more helpful released as soon as possible after the assassination, or a few days later once the immediate response had time to cool down?
The discussion concluded with an unequivocal condemnation of the act itself: a man armed only with his opinions went to debate and was murdered by someone with a gun. The question the team is wrestling with is whether their platform could have added anything meaningful to the global reaction beyond that basic moral clarity, and whether doing so immediately would have been useful.
Acts of God That Altered Battles
In a lighter segment, the team’s writers shared their favorite examples of natural events that altered the course of military conflicts. Staff writer Evan chose the original kamikaze — the typhoon of 1274 that swept away Kublai Khan’s Mongol invasion fleet as it attacked Japan, an event so perfectly timed it saved feudal Japan from conquest. Remarkably, the same thing happened again seven years later during the Mongols’ second invasion attempt.
Editor-in-chief Morris selected the Spanish Armada of 1588, where strong winds disrupted the fleet as it sailed north toward England, again during the battle itself, and then massive storms wrecked dozens of ships during the retreat. While the weather alone didn’t save England from invasion, it conspired to make Spain’s goals far harder to achieve and devastated what remained of their fleet on the journey home.
The Multipolar Future: What Comes Next
Threading through nearly every topic in the AMA was a unifying theme: the post-World War II international order is breaking down, and the world is transitioning back to a multipolar system not seen since before World War I. This shift has profound implications at every level. For great powers, it means intensified US-China competition. For mid-tier powers, it means an unprecedented opportunity to pursue regional hegemony.
For smaller nations, it means the risk of becoming pawns in other countries’ strategic games. For defense industries, it means a historic boom — though one that is redistributing wealth away from American firms and toward European and Asian competitors. And for ordinary people trying to understand the world, it means navigating an information environment that systematically amplifies the worst news while burying the best.
The overall picture painted by the AMA is one of a world in flux — dangerous, unpredictable, but not without hope. Peace deals are being signed, insurgencies are ending, and some conflicts are moving in the right direction. The challenge is ensuring that these positive developments receive the attention and support they deserve, even as the structural incentives of modern media push relentlessly in the opposite direction.
The Bizarre Quirks of Absolute Power
In one of the more entertaining segments of the AMA, the team shared their observations about the sheer strangeness of leaders who accumulate unchecked power — and the bizarre personal quirks that seem to follow. Editor-in-chief Morris noted that covering dictators and presidents-for-life on a regular basis has revealed a recurring pattern: many of these figures develop eccentricities that would mark them as deeply odd in any normal workplace, but which go entirely unchallenged in the halls of absolute authority.
The examples offered were vivid. South Sudan’s President Salva Kiir is never seen without the cowboy hat gifted to him by George W. Bush — a sartorial choice that has become inseparable from his public identity.
Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro, meanwhile, has personally signed off on a state-produced superhero cartoon in which he appears as a musclebound character called ‘Super Moustache’ who defeats America with his bare fists. Morris’s wry conclusion was that the old adage might need updating: rather than ‘absolute power corrupts absolutely,’ perhaps it should read ‘absolute power will make you act like an absolute tool.’
Staff writer Evan took the theme in a darker direction, citing a recent hot mic moment between Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping in which the two leaders were caught discussing the continuous transplantation of human organs into themselves as a means of extending their lifespans indefinitely. Evan described this as ‘genuine supervillain behavior’ and perhaps the most unsettling thing he had encountered in his research — made all the more chilling by the fact that these are two individuals whose decisions carry extraordinary power to shape the trajectory of global affairs.
While the segment was lighter in tone than the rest of the AMA, it underscored a recurring theme in the team’s coverage: the human element behind geopolitical decision-making. The leaders steering wars, alliances, and proxy conflicts are not abstract strategic actors — they are individuals with egos, insecurities, and, in some cases, profoundly strange personal fixations. Understanding those quirks, the discussion implied, is not merely entertaining but can offer genuine insight into why certain leaders make the decisions they do.
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Simon Whistler
Simon Whistler is one of YouTube's most prolific educational creators. WarFronts is his deep dive into military history and conflict analysis.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is the current moment of Western disarray a genuine opportunity for powers with territorial ambitions?
Yes. The analysis argues that Western political instability, NATO infighting, and alliance fragmentation create real windows of opportunity. Russia’s drone swarms into Poland, Azerbaijan’s capture of Nagorno-Karabakh while Moscow was absorbed in Ukraine, Netanyahu’s strike on Qatar, the UAE’s backing of the RSF in Sudan, and Venezuela’s pledges to annex parts of Guyana are all presented as examples of leaders calculating that global disarray reduces the cost of acting on ambitions they would otherwise suppress.
How is the global defense industry performing, and why are American firms lagging?
The global defense industry is in a historic boom. Since the start of 2025, Rheinmetall and Hyundai Rotem have nearly quadrupled in value, Aselsan has almost tripled, and Fincantieri has more than tripled. American giants like Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, and RTX are underperforming because trust in the US as a defense partner has dropped sharply since the Trump administration took office, and Europe is increasingly buying from its own manufacturers — a direct consequence of Washington telling Europe to handle its own defense.
Why is the UAE so deeply involved in Sudan?
The UAE has at least three goals in Sudan: establishing a Red Sea port to compete strategically with Saudi Arabia, backing the RSF faction that presents itself as more secular against an army perceived as too close to political Islam, and gaining access to Sudan’s gold mines and agricultural land. The Sudan intervention is one piece of a broader New Great Game among the UAE, Turkey, Iran, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia — each competing for regional hegemony through networks of alliances and proxy engagements across the Middle East and Africa.
What is the ‘New Great Game’ and why does it matter?
The New Great Game refers to the competition among mid-tier regional powers — the UAE, Turkey, Iran, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia — each angling to become the undisputed regional hegemon. These nations resemble the European Great Powers of the 19th century, competing for dominance with smaller states used as pawns, or in Sudan’s case, as the board itself. The dynamic is intensifying as the post-WWII international order breaks down and the world returns to the kind of multipolar competition that existed before World War I, but now among states flush with oil money and modern weapons.
Why do peace stories get so much less attention than war stories?
When a video about two countries making peace appears in someone’s feed, most people scroll past; the algorithm detects low engagement and suppresses it further. A video announcing war generates clicks, boosting it into more feeds in a self-reinforcing cycle. The team’s own data confirms the asymmetry: their Azerbaijan-Armenia peace pledge video got 67,000 views, while a video on Azeri forces overrunning Nagorno-Karabakh drew more than three times that. A PKK disarmament announcement video barely reached 100,000 views, while a video on the possibility of war reigniting in Ethiopia’s Tigray pulled in 250,000 two days later.
