| Americans feel they have less and less control over their own lives, writes Rana Foroohar and they increasingly blame big business. AI and data centres have been the tipping point but it is a problem that has been building for decades, she says. Algorithmic control of our consumer choices is now a simple fact of life and, in the past few years, the American dream of free choice and upward mobility has been called into question. She cites a 2025 survey in which only 31 per cent of respondents agreed that “if you work hard, you will get ahead”. The reaction can be seen in recent polling favouring labour and faith-oriented candidates aligned with institutions (unions, the church) that offer alternatives to corporate power. Elsewhere, Jemima Kelly embraces the changing seasons, but there is something about the energy of summertime that she increasingly wants to hold on to. “For me, the joy of summer is not the opportunity to do nothing, but to have the time to do things slowly. To go the long way round; to spend an entire afternoon preparing a melanzane alla parmigiana; to hang out the laundry on the line.” According to Robert Zoellick, former US trade representative, Trump’s trade bullying will simply stoke Canadian anger. It’s not popular among Americans either, he adds. US goods and services trade with Canada has grown to about $900bn a year — and is almost in balance. Americans and Canadians have stood arm-in-arm during the First and Second World Wars, the Korean war, and in Afghanistan. “No American leader should dishonour the country’s past by treating our closest partners so shabbily,” Robert writes. Senior Brookings fellow Eswar Prasad considers three outcomes of financial innovation. The first is true multi-polarity involving currencies built on strong foundations. The second is greater dollar dominance, leaving the world vulnerable to shifts in US policy. The third, and most worrisome he concludes, is a fragmented system with no widely trusted currency or central bank. And the language used by systems engineer Guru Madhavan’s yoga instructor gets him thinking about what we get wrong when we talk about ourselves. Your body is not a machine, he says. | 
