Why JansBrief exists
Jan Stenbeck was the smartest person I ever met. Not smart in the way academics are smart. Smart in the way that changes the world. He saw what nobody else saw. He understood that mobile telephony would revolutionise countries that hadn't even laid copper wire yet. He broke state socialist monopolies when everyone said it was impossible. He built empires out of ideas.
Every day Jan received a binder. Two people read all the world's important newspapers and magazines for him and pulled out what mattered. The things others missed. The faint signals that foreshadow great change.
I worked with Jan. I learned from him. And I have never forgotten that binder. JansBrief is my tribute to him, a modern version: global, AI-driven, available to everyone with ambition.
In memory of Jan Stenbeck
1942 — 2002
Jan Stenbeck
Tele2, Millicom, MTG, Metro
In today's edition · 29 July 2026
Rathlin Island, a windswept outcrop off the northern coast of Ireland with fewer than 150 human residents, appears to have completed one of the most successful rat eradication campaigns ever attempted on an inhabited European island. After years of baiting, monitoring and painstaking ecological fieldwork, conservationists now believe the brown rat — which devastated ground-nesting seabird colonies for over two centuries — has been functionally eliminated.
The achievement matters far beyond ornithology. Invasive rats are the single largest cause of island bird extinctions worldwide. They consume eggs, kill chicks, and outcompete native species for food. On Rathlin, populations of Manx shearwaters, puffins and razorbills had been in freefall. Conventional wisdom held that eradication on an island with a permanent human population, working farms and a regular ferry service was too complex. Bait stations would poison pets. Residents would resist. Rats would return on supply boats.
What Rathlin's team did differently was social engineering as much as pest control. Every household was consulted. Farmers were given custom bait boxes that kept livestock safe. Ferry operators agreed to rat-proof cargo holds. A biosecurity protocol — inspections of all incoming goods — was adopted voluntarily by islanders, not imposed by government diktat. The community became the enforcement mechanism.
The ecological results are already visible. Seabird breeding pairs have increased sharply in monitored colonies. Native plant species suppressed by rat foraging are re-emerging. The island's tourism economy, built on birdwatching, has seen a measurable uptick.
Rathlin now joins a small but growing list of inhabited islands — including South Georgia in the South Atlantic and Lord Howe Island in Australia — where eradication has succeeded. But those were vastly better funded and supported by national governments. Rathlin's budget was modest, its workforce largely local, and its political backing inconsistent. What it had was a population that decided the island's ecology was worth fighting for and did the work themselves.
The model is being studied by conservation teams in the Azores, the Canary Islands and the Scottish Highlands. If it can be replicated on islands with larger populations and more complex supply chains, the implications for global biodiversity are enormous. There are more than 100,000 islands worldwide where invasive mammals threaten endemic species. Most eradication attempts fail not because of biology but because of logistics, politics and human resistance. Rathlin suggests the bottleneck is persuasion, not poison.
Source: New Scientist · 28 July 2026
Now — Wind and solar overtake fossil fuels in Germany for the first time: Germany — the EU's largest economy and most powerful industrial engine — generated more electricity from wind and solar than from fossil fuels for the first time in 2025. The milestone, confirmed by Carbon Brief analysis, marks the crossing of a threshold that seemed implausible a decade ago when Angela Merkel's government was shutting down nuclear plants and critics warned the Energiewende would collapse without baseload gas and coal. It did not collapse. It restructured. The implications ripple outward: if Germany can cross this line while running heavy industry, the argument that renewable-dominant grids cannot power manufacturing economies loses its last credible example. Every country still building coal plants now does so against German evidence, not German theory.
Soon — Europe's wildfires are no longer the worst case — they are the baseline: The fires tearing across southern Europe this summer are not an aberration. Analysis in The Economist confirms what climate scientists have warned for years: the conditions producing these fires — prolonged heat, dried soils, volatile wind patterns — are not a "new normal" but a transitional phase. Worse is expected. Fire seasons are lengthening, pyrocumulonimbus clouds are forming over Western Europe for the first time, and the Mediterranean biome is shifting toward a fire regime that historically belonged to California and Australia. The policy implications are enormous: Europe's firefighting infrastructure, insurance models and land-use planning were all designed for a climate that has already departed. Adaptation now means rebuilding civil protection from the ground up — not tweaking it.
Later — The economics of island restoration rewrite conservation finance: Restored islands generate tourism revenue, fisheries recovery and carbon sequestration. If Rathlin's seabird colonies recover to historic levels, guano-driven nutrient cycling alone could measurably boost surrounding marine productivity. Impact investors and biodiversity credit markets are watching these experiments closely. The question is whether island restoration can be financialised without losing the community-driven ethos that made it work. Sources: Carbon Brief · 28 July 2026; The Economist · 29 July 2026; New Scientist · 28 July 2026 ---
South Korean stocks tumbled for a second day after SK Hynix's quarterly results disappointed, but the deeper story is a talent drain reshaping the semiconductor industry. Engineers at Samsung's chip division are systematically applying to rival SK Hynix, sharing job-application tips with colleagues and clocking out on time rather than putting in the discretionary hours that once defined Samsung's culture. The shift reflects SK Hynix's dominance in high-bandwidth memory chips critical for AI — and Samsung's failure to match either the technology or the workplace morale. When engineers vote with their feet, no amount of corporate strategy can compensate. Source: MIT Technology Review · 29 July 2026
Peru's first elected female president was sworn in on 28 July and immediately announced that armed forces would assume internal security duties during states of emergency to combat organised crime. At 51, Fujimori carries the weight — and the polarising legacy — of her father's authoritarian presidency. Her meeting with Argentina's Milei hours before the ceremony signalled alignment with Latin America's right-populist axis. The militarisation of policing in a country with Peru's history of military abuse will be the first true test of whether her presidency is democratic or dynastic. Source: Mercopress · 28 July 2026
West Africa is becoming a major node in global synthetic drug production. A BBC investigation reveals that Mexican cartels have established methamphetamine laboratories in Nigeria, exploiting weak precursor-chemical regulation, porous borders and a large pool of young men willing to work for a fraction of Mexican wages. The finished product is exported to East Asia and Europe. It is a grim inversion of globalisation's supply-chain logic — and it threatens to entrench narco-economics in a region already struggling with governance failures. Source: BBC World · 28 July 2026
A powerful earthquake struck Japan's Kyushu island on 28 July, killing at least thirteen people. Among the most devastating scenes: a recently reopened Aeon shopping mall collapsed, trapping shoppers. Video from across the region showed violent shaking in homes, offices and public transport. Japan's disaster infrastructure — the most advanced in the world — limited casualties but could not prevent structural failures in buildings that had only just been cleared for public use. The collapse of a commercial structure that had presumably passed post-quake inspection raises uncomfortable questions about the adequacy of Japan's rapid-reopening protocols after seismic events. Source: BBC World · 28 July 2026; South China Morning Post · 29 July 2026
Caracas summoned Iran's ambassador over what it called inappropriate public remarks — an extraordinary chill between two oil-rich states that have been among the world's most reliable anti-American allies. The specifics remain opaque, but the timing, amid Iran's active military conflict with the US, suggests Maduro may be recalculating the costs of alignment. A Venezuela that distances itself from Tehran would reshape both Latin American diplomacy and Iran's already-shrinking network of international support. Source: Straits Times · 28 July 2026
Data security firm Cyera has agreed to acquire Oasis Security for $1 billion — its third acquisition this year — in what amounts to a bet that the rapid proliferation of autonomous AI agents across enterprise systems is creating an entirely new attack surface. Oasis specialises in safeguarding non-human identities: the machine credentials, API keys and service accounts that AI agents use to move through corporate infrastructure. As companies deploy thousands of AI agents that can act independently, the risk that a compromised agent credential could cascade through an organisation's systems is no longer theoretical. Cyera's acquisition spree signals that the cybersecurity industry sees agent security not as a niche but as the next foundational layer. Source: TechCrunch · 29 July 2026
Malian forces and their Russian auxiliaries have used Shahed-136-type long-range kamikaze drones in the country's north — the first verified deployment of this weapon system in the Sahel. Verified by Jeune Afrique and Bellingcat, the two incidents in early July mark a significant escalation in the junta's war against separatist forces. The drones' origin is unconfirmed, but the design is Iranian. If Iran's drone supply chain now extends to West Africa via Russia, the proliferation implications for every conflict on the continent are severe. Source: The Africa Report · 28 July 2026
Aliko Dangote, whose Nigerian refinery has already reshaped West Africa's fuel markets, is planning a massive refining complex in Kenya that would turn East Africa into a petroleum products hub. The announcement raises as many questions as it answers — land acquisition, crude supply, regulatory alignment, and whether Kenya's grid can support the energy load. But if Dangote delivers even a fraction of the project, it would reduce East Africa's dependence on imported refined fuel and shift the continent's industrial centre of gravity southward. Source: The Africa Report · 28 July 2026 ---
India's electric vehicle makers are not trying to build the fastest, sleekest or most luxurious cars. They are trying to build the most efficient ones — and they are winning.
A new global ranking of battery efficiency places Tata Motors and Mahindra at the top, ahead of Tesla, BYD, and every European manufacturer. The metric is simple: how many kilometres can the car extract from each kilowatt-hour of stored energy. India's EVs lead not because of superior battery chemistry or software wizardry but because of what the industry calls "frugal engineering" — the relentless pursuit of doing more with less.
The vehicles are lighter. Their drivetrains are simpler. Their climate-control systems are designed for hot markets where heating is irrelevant. They sacrifice charging speed and driving range — metrics that obsess wealthy Western consumers — in favour of the one thing that matters to the 400-million-strong Indian middle class: cost per kilometre.
This is not a consolation prize. It is a strategic advantage. In markets across South Asia, Southeast Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, where grid electricity is expensive and unreliable, energy efficiency is not a nice-to-have — it is the difference between a viable product and an unsellable one. Tesla's Model 3 is engineered for Californian highways and supercharger networks. Tata's Nexon EV is engineered for Pune traffic and a 15-amp household socket.
The global EV industry has been defined by a race for range, speed and prestige. India's manufacturers ignored that race entirely. They asked a different question: what does a family earning $15,000 a year actually need from an electric car? The answer turns out to be radically different from what Detroit, Shanghai or Stuttgart assumed.
There is a pattern here that extends beyond cars. When the incumbents define the competition, they set rules that favour themselves. When an outsider redefines the competition around a different customer, the incumbents' advantages become irrelevant. India's EV makers did not beat Tesla at Tesla's game. They changed the game.
Source: Rest of World · 28 July 2026
A jaguar dubbed Gaspar has completed a 2,100-kilometre journey across the Amazon basin, crossing farms, roads and fragmented forest — one of the longest terrestrial movements ever recorded for the species. Researchers tracked him via GPS collar but cannot explain why he undertook the journey. Gaspar's route maps the reality of Amazonian connectivity: he survived because enough forest corridors still exist. His path is now being used by Brazilian conservationists to argue for the legal protection of specific wildlife corridors before they are cut. Source: New Scientist · 28 July 2026
Thailand's shopping centres are social infrastructure. A Monocle report documents how Bangkok's malls function as co-working spaces, gyms, temples of air-conditioned relief, food courts that rival any restaurant district, and community gathering points — with actual retail as almost an afterthought. The model inverts the Western mall's decline narrative. In a tropical megacity where public space is scarce and heat is oppressive, the mall becomes the town square. Developers compete not on anchor tenants but on programming, events, and the quality of their food floors. It is urbanism by commercial proxy, and it works. Source: Monocle · 28 July 2026
Hasan Dhaimish — known in Libya as "The Cleaver" — made his name drawing savage satirical cartoons of Muammar Gaddafi. After the revolution, he landed in Burnley, Lancashire, where he discovered a second obsession: American blues and jazz. A profile in Middle East Eye traces the strange, lovely arc of a dissident artist whose sensibility bridges North African political cartooning and the musical traditions of the Mississippi Delta. Dhaimish sees no contradiction. Satire and the blues, he argues, share the same root: the art of telling the truth when the truth is dangerous. Source: Middle East Eye · 28 July 2026
Brazil has listed the tambaqui — the Amazon's most culturally and economically important freshwater fish — as a threatened species. Small-scale fishers who depend on the catch fear a total ban will favour industrial aquaculture farms over their communities. The tension is archetypal: conservation policy designed in Brasília risks punishing the people who have managed the resource sustainably for generations while rewarding the industrial operations whose farming practices contributed to the species' decline. Source: Mongabay · 28 July 2026
After seven years of construction and decades of political wrangling, the Gordie Howe International Bridge between Detroit and Windsor, Ontario, has opened to public traffic. Its cable-stayed towers were inspired by a hockey slapshot — a nod to its namesake, the Canadian-born Red Wings legend. The bridge is the first new crossing over the Detroit River in 96 years and was financed entirely by Canada after the private owner of the existing Ambassador Bridge spent years blocking a competitor. Infrastructure as power politics, resolved at last by a country that simply built the thing itself. Source: Dezeen · 28 July 2026
The massive blooms of sargassum seaweed choking Caribbean beaches have become a self-sustaining disaster, according to new research. Nutrient runoff from agriculture and shifting ocean currents have created a feedback loop: more sargassum produces more decomposition, which releases more nutrients, which feeds more sargassum. Communities across Mexico, the Dominican Republic and Barbados are experimenting with turning the biomass into bioplastics, fertiliser and building materials — but the scale of the problem dwarfs every entrepreneurial solution so far. Source: The Conversation Global · 28 July 2026 ---
Mark Zuckerberg has publicly argued that the United States should not ban Chinese artificial intelligence, warning that such a move would amount to "regulatory capture" — handing American AI companies a protected market and removing the competitive pressure that drives innovation. The statement is notable for its source: Meta's chief executive has been among the most aggressive advocates of open-source AI, and a ban on Chinese models would in theory benefit his closed competitors more than his own open-weight approach. But the argument has a harder edge than Silicon Valley self-interest. Zuckerberg's implicit point is that American AI dominance depends on outcompeting Chinese models in the open market, not on shielding US products from comparison. If American AI can only win behind a tariff wall, it is not really winning. The political reception will be hostile — banning Chinese anything is bipartisan sport in Washington — but the strategic logic is difficult to dismiss. Source: Financial Times · 28 July 2026
A laboratory profiled by Noema Magazine is engineering bacteria with mutations that allow them to survive in extreme environments — not for space colonisation, but for terrestrial bioremediation. The organisms are designed to break down industrial pollutants, sequester heavy metals from contaminated soil and restore degraded ecosystems from the microbial level up. The work sits at the intersection of synthetic biology, environmental engineering and what the researchers call "planetary maintenance." The ethical questions are familiar — engineered organisms released into the wild carry unquantifiable risks — but the team argues that the ecosystems they are targeting are already so damaged that doing nothing is the greater hazard. If the approach works, it could provide a biological alternative to the mechanical and chemical remediation techniques that cost billions and often fail. Source: Noema Magazine · 28 July 2026
The Indian EV story in Rest of World contains a subtler technology lesson. Tata and Mahindra did not achieve battery efficiency leadership through AI-optimised powertrains or machine-learning-driven aerodynamics. They achieved it through decades of engineering culture built around constraint — designing for a market where every watt matters because the customer cannot afford waste. The lesson for AI-driven design tools: optimisation algorithms trained on data from wealthy markets will converge on solutions for wealthy customers. Efficiency in the Indian sense — radical resource minimalism — requires a different objective function entirely, one that most Western-built AI systems are not yet calibrated to pursue. Source: Rest of World · 28 July 2026 ---
84
84%
That is the share of nations that missed the 2025 deadline to identify all government subsidies harmful to biodiversity, according to a Carbon Brief analysis. The target — agreed under the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework in 2022 — required countries to catalogue subsidies that damage ecosystems: agricultural payments that incentivise deforestation, fishing subsidies that drive overharvesting, fossil fuel supports that fund habitat destruction. Only 16 percent of countries completed the exercise. Most did not even begin.
The failure is not surprising. Identifying harmful subsidies means publicly admitting that governments pay their own citizens to destroy nature. It means putting a number on politically sacred programmes — EU farm payments, Indian fertiliser subsidies, Japanese fishing fleet support. No finance minister wants to produce a document that says: here is the precise amount we spend making biodiversity loss worse.
But the 84 percent figure matters because the next step — reforming or redirecting those subsidies — was supposed to begin in 2026. You cannot reform what you have not identified. The entire biodiversity framework's financial architecture rests on the assumption that harmful subsidies would be redirected toward conservation. That assumption is now functionally dead for most of the world. The framework's credibility survives only in the handful of countries that did the homework.
Source: Carbon Brief · 28 July 2026
In perspective
That is the share of nations that missed the 2025 deadline to identify all government subsidies harmful to biodiversity, according to a Carbon Brief analysis. The target — agreed under the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework in 2022 — required...
8 — Today's Wisdom
Rathlin Island has 150 residents, a ferry, and a rat problem that was on the verge of wiping out the island's seabird colonies. They solved it. Not with billions in government funding or EU directives, but by every household deciding that this was their problem and that they were going to fix it themselves.
It's a small story, but it contains a big truth that I've seen repeated in every successful project I've been part of. Change doesn't happen when someone at the top says it should. It happens when the people closest to the problem decide to own it. The farmers on Rathlin designed their own bait stations. The ferry operators rat-proofed their cargo holds voluntarily. Nobody forced them. They saw a problem, understood the consequences, and acted.
There are more than 100,000 islands in the world where invasive species threaten native ecosystems. Most eradication efforts fail, not because of biology but because of bureaucracy, politics, and a lack of local buy-in. Rathlin shows that the bottleneck was never the poison — it was getting people to want to use it right.
I believe in that principle beyond conservation. The best solutions never come from those who sit the farthest from the problem. They come from those who live with it every day and who decide to stop waiting for someone else to act.
Johan Staël von Holstein
Serial entrepreneur · wakopa.ai