How Peter Thiel’s Secretive Data Company Pushed Into Policing
A look at how Peter Thiel’s company Palantir is being used in law enforcement – the result of an in-depth investigation involving multiple freedom of information requests.
Where oil rigs go to die
A piece tracing the final journeys of oil rigs destined for ship breaking yards.
Is Amazon getting too big?
A searching piece about Amazon and monopoly, published in a newspaper owned by Amazon’s CEO. If you have the time, it’s also worth dipping into the elegantly wrought 28,000 word ‘note’ in The Yale Law Journal that inspired the piece.
Bugs are coming soon to your dinner table
A piece examining the growing insect farming industry, with around 1,900 species worldwide already part of human diets.
Tesla, software and disruption
Benedict Evans is a partner at Andreessen Horowitz, a leading venture capital firm based in Silicon Valley. This piece is a deep dive into the automotive industry, comparing the incumbents (Ford, GM, et al) with the disruptor (Tesla), and searching for insights in other industries that have already seen disruption (mobile phones, desktop and laptop computers).
A Kingdom from Dust
A profile of the biggest farmers in the US “a married couple working in partnership” and the story of their extraordinary rise via floor cleaning, security, plastic figurines, advertising, and philanthropy. Their story is also now the story of water in California as the yields from their crops continue to increase just as the water supply has declined through nearly a half-decade of drought.
Not the end of The World: the return of DubaiÕs ultimate folly
Dubai’s iconic / infamous reclaimed offshore property development went bust during the financial crisis and was left empty for years (apart from a solitary beach club in Lebanon). A few developers stayed the course and are now imagining ever more ambitious architectural smorgasbords to entice the global elite.
Libor scandal: the bankers who fixed the world’s most important number
A look deep inside the Libor scandal that reads like a Hollywood clich of corporate malfeasance.