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Any Asian conflict involving China would in a few months destroy Apple's value, CEO's would change quickly, and Apple policies change to shift entire production to India and the US in a rapid shift. Tim Cook would be seen as having gambled against America's interests, unresponsive and failing after repeated warnings.  Apple's goal of sourcing from India by 2027 a mere 26% of its iphones, means that a decade after USTR Lighthizer and DJT started the task of reshoring manufacturing to US and allies in 2016, the No. 1 outshoring company would still be making 75% of its dollar value iphones in China. A degree of overconcentration that would make no sense considering that Apple's 75% of manufacturing would be entirely at risk in 2027 after repeated warnings and inaction. The only option for Tim Cook in 2025 is to come up with new goals of shifting a minimum of 50-60% of its dollar value product manufacturing for iphones to India by 2027. . Tim Cook as Apple CEO has done little to prevent the overconcentration of manufacturing in China since 2016. About 10 years after DJT was elected to bring manufacturing back to India or close allies the simple idea of diversification was not implemented. Why? Having set up this system starting in 1998, a system that did not exist before that tiem when Steve Jobs hired Tim Cook with a winning formula to Make in China, a country just emerging from its Communist phase of failed state economy. By 2008 in 10 years the infrastructure was built in a backward largely agricultural economy that was rapidly modernizing under a market economy with state run capitalism under the Communist Party experiment. The Bush Obama 16 years were ones with America not responding to the challenge posed by this new system which could create huge surges in production capacity with focus on key technologies and flood markets. The next decade after 1998-2008 was one of rapid growth of this experiment which combined with design and engineering in the US generated few jobs in manufacturng in the US, but huge profits with huge margins fro a low cost base with a high image and technology innovation product. Lighthizer, Navarro, Jamieson had already sounded the alarm for American manufacturing and loss of jobs in 2016.  America's deindustrialization was becoming a bigger challenge by 2020 so that president Biden continued the policy of reindustrializing. In 2025 China 2025 Plan that was a warning in 2016 is already a reality with China flooding the world in solar panels, and ready to flood the markets overseas with electric cars. Apple may only get a reprieve, this exemption is not the same as the last one. National security is an issue, key technologies need to be protected. There is only one more opportunity to rebuild American manufacturing and keep promises.     ...

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Neelakurinji deep blue flowers on India's western ghats mountains in western India, this time of the year, as shown in The Hindu. A UNESCO Heritage site since 2012. 

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U.S. Federal Reserve governor Daniel Tarullo tells the Council on Foreign Relations that so much remains to be done four years after the financial crisis. The law firm of Davis Polk says 67 percent of deadlines were missed for new rules required to be set in place by the Dodd-Frank legislation, including the Volcker Rule. Tarullo said: "It is sobering to recognize that more than four years after the failure of Bear Stearns began the acute phase of the financial crisis, so much remains to be done." Tarullo fears that crucial momentum may be lost because of the long delays stemming from resistance by the banks. Tarullo met with bank CEO's in April 2012. Banks have protested that Fed stress tests have not revealed the parameters for the testing. Tarullo's response given at a recent Fed conference in Chicago were that this would let banks game the exercize by running the Federal Reserve model and not improving risk management and capital planning, making this a mechanical compliance exercize. Banks have particularly opposed a requirement that limits the risk in business between two banks to 10% of their credit risk....

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The sense of a forgotten American soldier as the war winds down in Afghanistan and Iraq.

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Israel's military chief told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz he did not think the Iranians will go the last mile and build a nuclear bomb. This takes some of the hysteria and escalation out of the crisis. The chief of staff of the Israeli Defense Force, Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz, said: "I think the Iranian leadership is composed of very rational people." He said about Ayatollah Khamanei- "I believe he would be making an enormous mistake, and I don't think he will want to go the extra mile."

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William Leitch says of this show in Spartanburg, South Carolina by Bob Dylan- it is about art and resilience and about just putting one foot in front of the other and continuing to be who you are and providing people of the world, what you alone can provide with what is your own unique product. Dylan cites in "To Ramona" as Leitch cites his motto- "Everything passes, everything changes. Just do what you think you should do." Dylan's concerts are smaller and in a simple format, not like Springsteen's. There is something perennial about him.

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Satya Nadella - "we have to get society's permission" for what is done with AI. Nadella has an approach to AI to keep each company's human knowledge capital separate from AI, as its most valuable component of its operations. In the world he visualizes AI frontier models OpenAI, Gemini(Google) and Anthropic's Claude won't just keep saying they will use up all the resources they can use leaving little for education, healthcare and public services or infrastructure, and keep saying it will destroy all entry level and other white collar jobs, and the world will put up with that. His approach is to bring AI at a cost level that is much lower,including incorporating Chinese models for cost effectiveness. And at the same time making AI supplement each company's human capital working side by side so that jobs can be enhanced not destroyed willy nilly, in a careless random, disorganized way whether people like it or not because a few frontier AI models and their companies (Google, Anthropic and Open AI) have decided to do that. Nadella's thinking is worth listening to and reading about as it offers the first intelligent approach to making AI do what we want it to do for healthy societies. After all the destruction in world trade by shipping out supply chains by the US and Europe, after uncontrolled migration, after the loss of manufacturing and the good jobs that went with it, and the decision to reverse this and regain manufacturing and supply chains under both US presidents Biden and DJT, Nadella is right to conclude that society will not tolerate any more losses, and society is determined to retrieve losses from past mistakes. By preserving each company's human capital independent of AI Nadella is calling on individual leaders at all startup, midisized and large companies to have a clear idea of their precious human capital and set up AI independent of it at the company level to work alongside human capital. We at Lyrarc think this will give better results than no conscious approach that allows willy nilly the AI frontier models to shrivel the company's human capital and do what they are clearly incapable of doing in our view, which is to run companies or the principal functional areas of societies such as healthcare, transportation and public services. That even though Nadella does not say this is going to look good at first, then lead the company to catastrophic consequences of losing control of its own individual company's future and lead it to make huge mistakes that will be costly to correct and cause much damage to the Nation and its people. This is anew proposition that Nadella makes and should be grasped for a new approach, and constructive confrontations on this issue of how to incorporate AI at each company's level for hundreds of thousands of companies, alongside separate and supplementing the core strength of human capital, not displacing it to cause huge problems in future years. A company bereft of its human capital is a company bereft of what gives it life and vitality. ...

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Iranian response to Memorandum of Understanding shows reality of 2 factions in Iran, the IRGC military faction, and the elected president Pezeshkian plus Turkey /Pakistan/Egypt and Qatar as the second faction. With IRGC military rejecting the Memorandum on opening Hormuz and discontinuing nuclear weapons programs. This was true at the time Vance conducted negotiations and the Memorandum appears to have been accepted by IRGC only under great pressure from Turkey, Pakistan, Egypt, and Qatar, and the faction under Iranian elected president Pezeshkian. Where IRGC thinking could have been to give  agreement to the Memorandum that they had no intention of keeping, as its policy on nuclear weapons remains unchanged, and its goal is to use Hormuz for leverage and extend its control of Hormuz channel. The cost of sanctions and not being able to export oil, the effect on its economy, on cost of living with rampant inflation, may be of little concern to the people who run the IRGC military who suppressed all dissent and protests in 2026. Protests across different parts of society to the deteriorating economy. How could the US respond? The US used the time of the ceasefire to create a new status quo by using open navigation of the seas as the principle behind opening and protecting the Omani side of the Hormuz for oil shipment. This is a principle accepted by all countries. There is a backup plan of the US, China, India, Japan and other countries and this is to prepare rapidly to do without Hormuz so that the economies of these nations are not affected. The US also supported efforts by Saudis and Kuwait, UAE, to increase oil exports through channels outside of Hormuz, UAE's decision to increase oil supplies and lower prices by leaving OPEC, and US creating alternative supplies for India through Venezuela. Most important is China's decision that it no longer needs the 5 million barrels of oil from Hormuz for its economy to operate using alternative supplies and increasing efficient use of its oil resources. The world is also building up oil supplies and inventories so that Iran cannot threaten a cutoff from Hormuz because all nations have made other arrangements. Attacks by Iran on oil shipping on the Omani side protected by the US breaking the principle of open navigation of the seas, can then be considered Iran disrupting an open seas navigation route which it no longer is allowed to do under international law. This is something the world public opinion would support. The NYT has been critical of the DJT action in Iran, the WSJ and other media had joined in criticism. The situation in July 2026 is that the criticism of the US by NYT and other media, and from Europe and other countries in Asia will now be muted, because the US has tried all the options and is now finding ways to be able to bypass Hormuz altogether, and a backup plan or strategy to minimize the impact on oil prices. So that oil price of $70 may be kept at level around 10-20% higher not much more as Iran's military IRGC continues to disrupt the Hormuz supplies.  ...

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Veterans of the Iraq conflict see a decade of efforts in Iraq being undone in 2014 with increasing sectarian conflict and the spillover from the war in Syria.

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This report in The Times remembers Alex Ferguson, manager of soccer team Manchester United for the wonderful way he motivated his players, by appealing to players hearts. One player who went through that period under Alex remembers Sir Alex talk about the work ethic of shipyard workers and miners, the culture of Manchester United, the importance of making your family proud, and not "letting yourself down."

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Christine Armstong gives this excellent story in The Times on how difficult it is for women to maintain work-life balance in today's work and business environment that gives little allowance for things like raising a family and children. In interviews with many women she describes each situation with insights and what it means for working women and for dads.

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Studies at the University of Padova in Italy and by France's research agency INSERM show higher risks of dementia from retiring early. The INSERM study shows that for every additional year worked we reduce the risk of dementia by 3.2 percent. Retiring at age 50 is considered very, very poor decision, and before 60 very poor decision, as cognitive development, mood, and active engagement with work offering complexity, all relate to good mental health. Countries like U.S. and Denmark where people tend to work for longer than in France and Austria are shown to be doing significantly better in cognitive performance in a 2010 study published in the Journal of Economic Perspectives. The Italian study shows the longer you spend in retirement the higher the risks of cognitive decline.

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Yale 58 page look at America today and the harm happening to western civilization's achievements. Yale's 58 page report on harm done by "cancel culture," "holistic admissions," and "political bias," and a general tendency found- especially in Democrats- to object to anything that refers to "western civilization" or the founding fathers of America, and the foundations of western civilization in Christianity, the Renaissance, and the Scientific Revolution. Major universities are now pursuing academic activities in western civilization and its influences, understanding its value and significance for America. A quiet transformation is already taking place, says The Washington Post.