What does game theory say about the news? Every Monday, one story from the week — read as a game rather than as a drama.
No opinion about who is right. Only who the players are, which rules are actually enforced, what each side is rewarded for, and where that leads.
A new book excerpt alleges that Jared Kushner ran Middle East policy with money from two Gulf rulers. Whether or not it holds, the structure around him is already clear. A power borrowed from one man can be withdrawn by that man, and the closer you stand, the better you absorb the blame.
A preacher and a smuggler both want the bars closed on Sunday. They never meet and never agree, yet together they keep the ban in place. The pattern has a name, and it explains why some rules last long after anyone can defend them. Can game theory predict the future? Not the way a prophet claims to. What it can do is make forecasts that can be scored, and Book Four makes twenty-five of them, each with a source, a threshold, an expiry date and the observation that would prove it wrong. The commonest analytical error is not bad reasoning about the players you listed. It is a player you never listed, who turns out to hold the veto. Closeness to a great power reads as leverage and functions as exposure. The mistake is assuming the senior partner's real dependency lies with you. A situation everybody dislikes can be perfectly stable, because the first person to move alone makes their own position worse. This is the single most useful idea in the series. There are perhaps a dozen points on earth through which the world's trade must physically pass. Whoever controls them does not need to control anything else. Over three years, personalities and accidents dominate. Over thirty, they average out and only structure remains. This is why long forecasts can be honest and short ones usually are not. Not who wins each engagement, but what each engagement costs. A defence that spends millions to stop something that cost thousands is losing while winning. Write down what it says it is for. Write down what it reliably produces. Then check whether remedies existed and were refused. The third step is the one that does the work. Everyone in the room can see the problem. Nobody names it. This is not cowardice — it is the correct move, and that is what makes it hard to fix. A neighbour who can open a border at will holds something worth more than the land on the other side of it. The threat is the asset, and using it up would end it. They are announced as pressure on a government and they function as pressure on a population. Those are different games, and only one of them is being played.Why enemies so often want the same law
Twenty-five predictions you can check
The player who is not at the table
The junior partner problem
An equilibrium is not an optimum
Empires do not hold territory. They hold the narrow places.
Why thirty years is easier to predict than three
The exchange rate that decides modern wars
How to read an institution in twenty minutes
The meeting where nobody says the obvious thing
Why Morocco will not take Ceuta
Why sanctions almost never do what they are announced to do
Last reviewed 2 August 2026