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 · 9 May 2026
You bought the phone. You pay the bill. You carry it everywhere — to the bedroom, the bathroom, the hospital, the protest. But the device in your pocket was not designed for you. It was designed to watch you.
That is the core argument of philosopher Carissa Véliz, whose new essay in Aeon strips away the comfortable fiction that digital devices are neutral tools. Her thesis is deceptively simple but structurally radical: things have jobs. A pillow's job is comfort. Scissors are made to cut. And your smartphone, your laptop, your smart speaker — their job is to track your every move, because that is the business model they were manufactured to serve.
This is not another privacy hand-wringing piece. Véliz is making an ontological claim — one about what these objects are, not merely what they do. A surveillance device that also makes phone calls is still a surveillance device. A tracking beacon that also plays Spotify is still a tracking beacon. The function that pays the manufacturer's bills is the function that defines the object. And in the case of virtually every consumer digital device sold today, that function is data extraction.
The timing matters. Across the world, governments are scrambling to regulate AI, social media, and data brokers — but almost always at the application layer, the software, the algorithm. Véliz's argument targets something deeper: the hardware layer. If the physical objects in our lives are purpose-built for surveillance, then no amount of cookie-consent banners or algorithmic auditing will solve the fundamental problem. You are regulating the symptoms while the disease is soldered into the circuit board.
Consider the trajectory. In the past 18 months, the EU's Data Act came into force, India's Digital Personal Data Protection Act began enforcement, and Brazil tightened its LGPD rules. All of them focus on what companies do with data after collection. None of them meaningfully address the fact that the devices themselves are optimised to collect as much as physically possible. The design incentive is baked in at the factory.
Véliz's framework also explains why privacy-first hardware startups — companies building phones, routers, and home devices with data minimisation as a design principle rather than a software patch — remain a microscopic market share despite years of consumer surveys showing people "care deeply" about privacy. The objects we buy are not broken. They are working exactly as intended. We just misunderstand what they were intended to do.
The weak signal here is not that surveillance exists — everyone knows that. It is that the philosophical ground is shifting beneath the regulatory debate. When thinkers start redefining the ontology of everyday objects, policy follows, usually five to ten years later. The question is no longer "how do we regulate data use?" It is "should we permit the sale of objects whose primary purpose is to watch their owners?"
That question has no comfortable answer. But it is the right one.
Source: Aeon · 8 May 2026
Short term (now–12 months): The EU is already mid-review of its Cyber Resilience Act, which mandates security standards for connected devices. Véliz's framing — that devices have an inherent "job" of surveillance — gives ammunition to MEPs pushing for data-minimisation requirements at the hardware level, not just software. Expect this language to appear in European Parliament debates before year-end. In India, the newly empowered Data Protection Board is looking for test cases; a challenge to a hardware manufacturer's default data-collection settings could be the first.
Medium term (1–3 years): If the ontological argument gains traction, it reshapes the competitive landscape for consumer electronics. Companies already positioning themselves as privacy-first — Fairphone in the Netherlands, Murena in France, Purism in the United States — could find regulatory tailwinds that transform them from niche curiosities into credible alternatives. Meanwhile, the giants face a dilemma: redesigning hardware for data minimisation would undermine their advertising revenue models. The tension between regulatory compliance and business model survival becomes acute.
Long term (3–10 years): The deeper implication is a fork in the global technology market. Jurisdictions that adopt hardware-level privacy mandates — likely starting in the EU, possibly followed by India and Brazil — could create a class of "clean devices" that function differently from those sold in markets without such rules. We have already seen this with emissions standards for cars creating distinct vehicle markets. The same could happen with phones, speakers, and home devices. A world where the object in your pocket is genuinely designed to serve you, rather than to report on you, is technically feasible. It has simply never been commercially attractive. Regulation could change that equation. Source: Aeon · 8 May 2026; Carbon Brief · 8 May 2026 ---
While the world watches Hormuz, a quieter conflict grinds on. Cambodian families displaced by fighting along the Thai-Cambodian border are living in limbo under a fragile ceasefire, with children pulled from schools and livelihoods shattered. The dispute — rooted in overlapping territorial claims near ancient temple sites — has received almost no international attention. Families report fear of renewed clashes and say education has been the single greatest casualty. ASEAN, typically allergic to member-state disputes, has been silent. Source: Al Jazeera · 8 May 2026
The Venezuelan government has finally confirmed the death of Víctor Hugo Quero Navas, a 51-year-old merchant who died in state custody. His 82-year-old mother, Carmen Teresa Navas, had spent over a year submitting petitions to the prosecutor's office and the Ombudsman after her son was forcibly disappeared. The confirmation came ten months after his actual death. Quero is one of hundreds of political prisoners detained during the crackdown following the disputed 2024 elections. The Maduro regime continues to deny systematic abuse. Source: Mercopress · 8 May 2026
Despite the Strait of Hormuz disruption driving up energy and shipping costs, China's exports surged 14.1 per cent year-on-year in April to a monthly record of $359.44 billion. The number, well above the 6.96 per cent consensus forecast, suggests that Chinese manufacturers have absorbed the energy price shock through efficiency gains, currency advantage, and sheer industrial scale. The figure will intensify the trade debate ahead of the Xi-Trump summit, where tariffs and trade imbalances are expected to dominate. Source: South China Morning Post · 9 May 2026; Nikkei Asia · 8 May 2026
Brazilian President Lula da Silva and Donald Trump sat down for nearly three hours at the White House on Thursday and emerged declaring a relationship reset. The meeting addressed tariffs, trade access, and what Trump called "many subjects." The encounter follows months of diplomatic frost — Lula had been one of Trump's sharpest critics in the Global South. The rapprochement matters because Brazil is the United States' largest trading partner in Latin America and a swing vote on Iran sanctions at the UN. Source: Mercopress · 8 May 2026
Japan's Mogami-class frigate is pulling ahead in the competition to supply New Zealand's next-generation warships, replacing ageing ANZAC-class vessels launched in the early 1990s. The deal would be another milestone for Japan's defence industry, coming weeks after Tokyo lifted its long-standing ban on weapons exports. Wellington's 2025 Defence Capability Plan prioritises modern, capable platforms, and the Mogami's combination of stealth, sensors, and modularity reportedly impressed New Zealand's navy. If finalised, the contract would mark a significant expansion of Japan's security footprint in the Pacific. Source: South China Morning Post · 9 May 2026
Colombian inflation ticked up in April, moving further from the central bank's target and raising the likelihood of renewed interest rate hikes after an unexpected pause last month. The acceleration complicates President Petro's economic agenda, which has depended on falling rates to stimulate investment. With the Iran-driven energy shock rippling through Latin American supply chains, Colombia's central bank faces the unenviable choice between fighting inflation and supporting growth in an already fragile economy. Source: Bloomberg · 8 May 2026
Press freedom across Africa is entering what the Daily Nation calls a tipping point — not because of old-fashioned repression alone, but because of its fusion with powerful new digital tools. Governments are deploying surveillance technology, internet shutdowns, and algorithmic suppression alongside traditional intimidation. The combination creates a more sophisticated, harder-to-document threat to independent journalism. Kenya, Ethiopia, Tanzania, and Nigeria are cited as countries where the trend is most visible. International press freedom organisations have been slow to adapt their frameworks to this hybrid model. Source: Daily Nation Kenya · 8 May 2026
An eruption of Mount Dukono on Indonesia's Halmahera island has left two Singaporeans and one Indonesian missing. Over 100 rescuers, military personnel, police, and two thermal drones have been deployed. Survivors told police that three hikers — including the two Singaporeans — died in the eruption. Dukono is one of Indonesia's most active volcanoes, but its remote location on a small eastern island means it receives minimal monitoring compared to Java's famous peaks. Source: South China Morning Post · 9 May 2026 ---
Here is a story that smells right. A gourmet mushroom startup in Bangkok has found fertile ground — literally — by growing high-value varieties in urban conditions that most agricultural investors would dismiss as impossible. The company, operating in a market dominated by cheap commodity imports, has identified a gap that nobody else was looking at: Thailand's restaurant boom demands high-quality, locally grown speciality mushrooms, but the existing supply chain runs through middlemen who add cost and subtract freshness.
The startup's approach is to control the growing environment entirely — temperature, humidity, substrate — using low-cost technology adapted from the Thai industrial sector rather than imported agricultural systems. This is not vertical farming funded by Silicon Valley billions. This is people who understand local conditions building something that works with the materials at hand.
What makes this interesting is the market context. Thailand's food industry is one of the world's most competitive, with razor-thin margins and deeply entrenched supply networks. Going head-to-head with established distributors requires not just a better product but a different route to market. The startup is selling directly to restaurants, cutting out the wholesale layer that has controlled Bangkok's ingredient supply for decades.
There is no government subsidy here. No international development fund. No "accelerator cohort." Just people who spotted a gap between what chefs want and what the market provides, and built the simplest possible bridge across it. The bet is that quality and freshness, delivered directly, can beat scale and cost in a market that has never rewarded small producers.
It is the kind of venture that most venture capitalists would walk past — too small, too local, too agricultural. Which is precisely why it might work. The best opportunities are the ones that look too humble for the people with the money.
Source: Nikkei Asia · 8 May 2026
Researchers have identified the enslaved child depicted in a Joshua Reynolds painting that has hung in museums for centuries with the boy treated as an anonymous prop. New historical analysis has revealed his name and years of military service. The identification is part of a broader scholarly effort to recover the individual histories of people rendered invisible by portraiture conventions that treated Black figures as decorative elements. The work is meticulous, not performative — rooted in military records and parish archives rather than contemporary politics. Source: Artnet News · 8 May 2026
Wallpaper devotes a gorgeous feature to Nyonya Kuih, the exquisite Malay cakes born from Peranakan culture — a fusion of Chinese and Malay culinary traditions dating back centuries. Each piece is a miniature work of art: layered rice flour, coconut milk, pandan, palm sugar, and butterfly pea flower, pressed and steamed into geometries that would embarrass most European patisseries. The cakes are street food priced, gallery worthy, and nearly impossible to find outside Southeast Asia. A food tradition that has resisted industrialisation precisely because its complexity defeats mass production. Source: Wallpaper · 8 May 2026
Keir Starmer's Labour Party has suffered a humiliating defeat in local elections, and the political landscape that emerges from the wreckage looks nothing like the two-party system Britain has known for a century. The New Yorker reports that five major parties are now competing for votes in a volatile electorate where tribal loyalty has evaporated. Reform UK, the Conservatives, the Liberal Democrats, the Greens, and a diminished Labour are all circling each other in a fragmented market where no one commands a natural majority. The far right, in particular, is well positioned to exploit the chaos in any future general election. For decades, Britain's first-past-the-post system suppressed multi-party competition. That suppression is failing. The result is not a richer democracy but a more unpredictable one — where governments can be formed on a shrinking share of the vote and where policy continuity becomes almost impossible. It is the most structurally unstable moment in British politics since the 1920s, and nobody in Westminster seems to have a plan for it. Source: The New Yorker · 8 May 2026
Hong Kong-based Sunpride Foundation, founded by collector Patrick Sun, has been quietly building the most significant collection of LGBTQ+ art in Asia through its "Spectrosynthesis" exhibition series. The project operates in a region where queer expression remains legally fraught in many countries, making the curatorial and logistical challenges enormous. Sun's approach is art-first — acquiring and exhibiting work on its merits rather than as identity politics — which has helped the foundation navigate conservative cultural ministries from Tokyo to Bangkok. Source: Artnet News · 8 May 2026
Cypriot-British designer Michael Anastassiades has announced the closure of his eponymous lighting brand — one of the most quietly influential design studios of the past two decades. His minimalist fixtures, all geometry and restraint, became the anti-statement statement in high-end interiors worldwide. Anastassiades says the decision is deliberate, not financial: he wants to return to the creative process itself, free from the obligations of running a production company. In an industry that equates growth with success, choosing to stop is its own kind of design statement. What comes next, he says, is "the freedom to explore new directions in design, in all its forms." Source: Wallpaper · 8 May 2026
Hungarian director Ildikó Enyedi's new film "Silent Friend" follows three experimenters from three different eras — all drawn to the same tree in Marburg, Germany — as they try to unlock the secrets of plant life. The New Yorker calls it a "meditative nature epic." Enyedi, who won Berlin's Golden Bear for "On Body and Soul" in 2017, is one of European cinema's most singular voices: unhurried, deeply sensory, uninterested in commercial formula. The film is a quiet argument that patience — with plants, with knowledge, with each other — is itself a form of courage. Source: The New Yorker · 8 May 2026 ---
Noema Magazine reports on an emerging phenomenon that defies easy categorisation: the growth of virtual civil society in China. Despite the Communist Party's comprehensive control of physical public space, online communities are developing the functions — mutual aid, collective advocacy, norm-setting — that civil society organisations perform elsewhere. These are not dissident networks. They operate within the system, using platforms like WeChat and Douyin to organise around local issues: environmental complaints, consumer protection, neighbourhood governance. The Party tolerates them because they solve problems that overloaded local bureaucracies cannot. The tension is structural: every successful community group demonstrates that citizens can organise effectively without the Party, even as it operates under the Party's umbrella. The long-term implications for Chinese governance are profound. If these groups develop institutional memory and cross-regional networks, they become something China has not had since 1949: an autonomous civic layer. The Party knows this, which is why the tolerance is calibrated and conditional. But the genie is difficult to re-bottle once people have experienced collective agency, even in small doses. Source: Noema Magazine · 8 May 2026
Nature reports a breakthrough in pancreatic cancer treatment: a new drug that blocks the activity of KRAS mutant proteins — long considered "undruggable" because of their smooth molecular surface that offered no obvious binding site. Patients with a deadly form of pancreatic cancer survived significantly longer on the treatment. This matters beyond oncology because the KRAS family of proteins drives approximately 25 per cent of all human cancers. Cracking the "undruggable" designation for one member of the family opens a methodological pathway for the rest. The approach — using protein degradation rather than traditional inhibition — represents a shift in drug design philosophy. Rather than trying to block a protein's function directly, the drug tricks the cell's own recycling machinery into destroying the mutant protein entirely. It is the pharmaceutical equivalent of removing a broken machine from the factory floor instead of trying to jam its gears. Source: Nature · 8 May 2026
Sifted reports that missile-focused startups are emerging as the "new wave" in European defence tech, as the continent's military-industrial base struggles to meet demand generated by the Ukraine war and broader geopolitical instability. Traditional European defence primes — Rheinmetall, MBDA, Saab — cannot scale production fast enough. The gap has created an opening for startups that can move faster on specific subsystems: guidance, propulsion, materials. The parallel to the software startup wave is inexact but instructive: when incumbents cannot meet demand, capital flows to insurgents who can ship product. The regulatory environment remains the primary constraint — defence procurement cycles are measured in decades, not quarters — but several European governments are now experimenting with accelerated acquisition pathways specifically designed for startups. Source: Sifted · 8 May 2026 ---
359.44
$359.44 billion
That is the value of China's exports in April 2026 — a monthly record — representing 14.1 per cent year-on-year growth despite the Strait of Hormuz crisis driving up energy and shipping costs globally. The consensus forecast was 6.96 per cent. China didn't just beat expectations; it doubled them.
The number demolishes a popular thesis: that the Iran war and the associated disruption to global shipping lanes would constrain Chinese manufacturing. Instead, Chinese exporters appear to have adapted with startling speed — rerouting supply chains, absorbing higher input costs, and leveraging a weak yuan to maintain price competitiveness. It also complicates the argument for Western decoupling. If China can post record export numbers during the most significant disruption to global energy markets since 2022, then the resilience of its manufacturing base is not a thesis — it is a fact.
For the upcoming Xi-Trump summit, this number is both an asset and a liability for Beijing. An asset because it demonstrates economic strength. A liability because it hands Washington ammunition: the bilateral trade imbalance is widening at precisely the moment Trump is looking for leverage. The global economy, it turns out, still runs through Chinese factories — war, tariffs, and all.
Source: South China Morning Post · 9 May 2026; Nikkei Asia · 8 May 2026
In perspective
That is the value of China's exports in April 2026 — a monthly record — representing 14.1 per cent year-on-year growth despite the Strait of Hormuz crisis driving up energy and shipping costs globally. The consensus forecast was 6.96 per cent. China didn't...
8 — Today's Wisdom
Carissa Véliz argues in a new essay that your phone is not a communication tool that happens to collect data — it's a surveillance tool that happens to make calls. It's an elegant formulation, and she's right on the substance. But her conclusion points in the wrong direction.
If you follow the argument all the way through, you end up with the state deciding which devices are allowed to be sold, based on a philosopher's definition of what an object "really is." That is exactly the kind of thinking that gives us EU regulation in twenty layers, where each layer solves the problem the previous layer created. I've been building tech companies for over twenty-five years and I've seen that pattern so many times I could draw it in my sleep.
The real solution is not to ban hardware or mandate government-approved "clean devices." The real solution is to make it profitable to build phones that respect you. That requires consumers to actually pay for privacy, not just say they care in surveys. And it requires entrepreneurs who see the business opportunity in building the alternative, not activists who want someone else to regulate the problem away.
Markets solve what regulation complicates, provided someone has the courage to build the better alternative and take the financial risk. Freedom of choice requires that there's something to choose between. Build it.
Johan Staël von Holstein
Serial entrepreneur · wakopa.ai