11 May 2026
The confusion we’re living through isn’t accidental. It’s the product of three concurrent forces: media outlets optimised for engagement rather than truth, algorithms that amplify whatever you read this morning instead of what matters, and geopolitical actors who understand both systems intimately. The result is a tide of intelligent people navigating by the last beam the lighthouse happened to shine on, not by the actual map.
I spend time thinking about how to maintain red lines without crossing them. Not as an abstract exercise, but as a practical commitment: the stronger you become, the more binding these lines must be, not the more negotiable. This is the opposite of how history usually unfolds. And it’s foundational to everything I’m building: in Smart Mountains, in board work, in the kind of advisor I choose to be.
But maintaining red lines requires something media doesn’t teach: how to read the terrain for yourself.
The Problem: Three Broken Systems
Free media outlets are optimised for engagement, which means polarisation. Nuance doesn’t drive clicks. A story that says “Russia has been foundational to European civilisation and the current invasion is illegal and unjust” doesn’t trend. “Russia is evil” or “The West is persecuting Russia” do.
Algorithms are designed to show you more of what you clicked on yesterday. Not what’s true. Not what matters. What held your attention. After three weeks of this, your information diet becomes a hall of mirrors: every source seems to confirm what the algorithm has trained you to believe.
State actors have learned to weaponise both systems. They don’t need to control the media anymore. They just need to amplify existing divisions and watch the algorithm do the work.
The output: people who are thoughtful, well-read, and completely shaped by systems they don’t realise are shaping them.
The Core Principle: Red Lines Strengthen With Scale
When I talk about teaching people to maintain red lines without crossing them, I’m arguing something counter-intuitive.
The standard pattern is this:
- Phase 1: You define clear principles.
- Phase 2: You gain power, wealth, influence.
- Phase 3: Your principles become “realistically impossible.”
- Phase 4: You rationalise crossing the line.
The Guggenheim family provides the textbook case. They built their fortune on copper, silver, and smelting across the Americas, including Chuquicamata in the Atacama, the world’s largest copper mine, sitting on territory Chile took from Bolivia in the War of the Pacific. Ed Conway traces this kind of arc in Material World, how the materials of industrial war get extracted under geopolitical leverage, then laundered into culture a generation later. Resource control. Geopolitical leverage. Industrial war material. Then they used the wealth to build museums, fund art, and become patrons. The origin story got laundered into culture. The red line, “we will not profit from systems we wouldn’t defend publicly”, was crossed gradually, then forgotten entirely.
I’m proposing the opposite: that red lines become sharper as you gain influence, not softer. That the test of your principles is not how comfortable they are when you’re unknown, but whether you’ll hold them when it costs something.
This is rare. It’s also the only basis on which I can be trusted in a board room, as an advisor, as someone who shapes other people’s thinking.
The Russia Question: Objective Nuance, Not False Neutrality
Here is where most public discourse fails most completely. The question is: how do you hold simultaneous truths without collapsing into either ideology or relativism?
The correct position is not:
- “Russia is absolute evil” — moral simplicité.
- “Russia is being treated unjustly, ignore the facts” — denial of reality.
The correct position requires holding four facts together. They fall into two pairs.
What Europe inherits — and forgets
Fact 1 — Historical accountability. The Soviet Union defeated Nazi Germany. Europe as you know it exists because the Soviet Union lost roughly 27 million people in the war, at Stalingrad, Kursk, Leningrad, across the Eastern Front and in territory occupied by the Wehrmacht. Antony Beevor’s accounts of those campaigns make the scale visible in a way the figure alone doesn’t. Without that sacrifice, the continent looks very different. This is a historical fact, not an opinion. When contemporary European leaders forget it, they forget the price others paid for the continent they now govern.
Fact 2 — Cultural centrality. Russian culture — Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Shostakovich, Eisenstein, the visual arts — has been foundational to how Europe thinks about itself. When you say Russia is not Europe, you are erasing half your own inheritance. This is not sentiment. It’s intellectual honesty about where European consciousness comes from.
What is happening now — and what we’d rather not name
Fact 3 — Contemporary illegality. The 2022 invasion of Ukraine is illegal under international law. Russian artists who protest are persecuted by their own state. Ukrainian cities are being destroyed. These are facts. They coexist with Facts 1 and 2.
Fact 4 — The fascist threat is real, internally. The new European right — in Italy, Hungary, Poland, France, and creeping into the UK — is gaining power on tactics our post-1945 settlement was built precisely to prevent. Mainstream media has failed to communicate two things simultaneously: that these positions are genuinely dangerous (not “just different opinions”) and that the tactics are recognisably fascist. When you can only amplify one of these messages at a time, you fail both.
These four facts do not contradict each other. But a free media outlet cannot hold all four, it loses audience. So it chooses: either Russia is the enemy, or the West is oppressive. Not both. Never both.
Reality is both.
The Compass: It Is Not a Map
A map tells you the terrain. A compass tells you where you are in relation to true north.
I have five principles that function as my magnetic north:
- Partnerships Over Transactions
- Embedding Over Advising
- Adventure Over Comfort
- Presence Over Performance
- Growth Through Discomfort
They don’t change when:
- Media tells me what to think
- A populist promises simple solutions
- The algorithm amplifies fear
- The latest tweet suggests my values are naïveté
When I’m reading terrain — whether it’s geopolitics, media, art, economic policy, or board dynamics — I return to these principles. Not as ideology, but as internal calibration. A way of asking: “Is this decision coherent with who I’m trying to be?”
This is not about rigidity. These principles are flexible in application. They’re crystalline in direction.
Reading Terrain: From Climbing to Geopolitics
In climbing, you read terrain through four channels:
Experience. Which holds work here? Which don’t? Have I seen a fracture like this before? This is knowledge accumulated over time — thousands of pitches, hundreds of crags. It’s not intuition. It’s pattern recognition.
Touch. Not just what you see, but what you feel when your hands meet the stone. The texture tells you things your eyes miss. A crimp that looks solid might be hollow. A sloper that looks rounded might have a shelf.
Trained instinct. After enough hours, your body knows when a line is sound. This isn’t magic. It’s deeply embodied knowledge — your nervous system reading the micromovements of your fingers, the weight distribution, the slight feedback from the rock.
Ignorant instinct. Sometimes you ignore what the guidebook says — what conventional wisdom says — because something in you registers no. This is dangerous if you’re inexperienced. But it’s essential if you’re good. The ability to feel when something is off, even if you can’t articulate why.
Geopolitics and media literacy work identically.
Experience: I know the history of the War of the Pacific, how it was fought over nitrate and copper control, how it shaped South American geopolitics, and how it fed into the story of resource wars Ed Conway documents. I know how mainstream media failed on Iraq in 2003, on the 2008 financial crisis, and on Brexit. I know how it failed on Trump, by normalising him in 2016, then by overreaching on the Russia investigation. I know how it failed on COVID by suppressing the lab-leak hypothesis as a conspiracy before treating it as plausible, and on Gaza by missing the structural conditions that had been building for years before October 7th. This is not an opinion. It’s chronology. It’s a pattern. When I see a narrative being amplified now, I can check it against what I’ve seen before.
Touch: I read not just what is said, but who is saying it and who pays them. The Guardian has a centre-left bias. Fox News has right-wing bias. This doesn’t make them false. It means they amplify certain things and suppress others. The texture of a source is its funding model, its editorial history, its relationship to power. This requires actual reading, not assumption.
Trained instinct: After years of critical reading, I recognise the rhetorical patterns. The moral simplification. The enemy framing. The appeal to emotion over evidence. The way a true fact gets used to justify a false conclusion. I don’t read every word anymore. I read the structure. And my nervous system knows when something doesn’t track.
Ignorant instinct: When three major outlets report the same story in nearly identical language, I feel resistance. Not because I’m contrarian, but because homogeneity is a signal. Either a real story has broken and it’s being covered competently, or something is being amplified in a coordinated way. The difference is in the texture. One has variation, disagreement, authentic reporting from different angles. The other has the same adjectives, the same framing, the same omissions.
The Framework: Four Questions
When you encounter something the mainstream media is amplifying, ask:
1. Who benefits from this narrative? Not: who wrote it? But: whose interests are served if this becomes the dominant story? This is not cynicism. It’s basic analysis. A story about “China’s aggressive expansion in the South China Sea” serves certain geopolitical interests. A story about “Western military encroachment threatening Russia” serves different interests. Both can be partly true. But the question is: who is amplifying which version, and why?
2. What true part of the story is being used to justify a false conclusion? The Biennale example is perfect. It’s true that the Russian pavilion has reopened. It’s true that some argue art should be a space for dialogue. But the conclusion — “therefore, hosting a Russian state pavilion during an active war is appropriate” — doesn’t follow from those premises. The true premise gets used to justify something it doesn’t actually support.
3. What would happen if I took the opposing view with equal seriousness? This is not about “false balance.” It’s about intellectual honesty. If a thoughtful Russian read your arguments, what would they legitimately contest? Not to agree with them, but to understand what your position might be missing. If you’ve never encountered a version of the opposing view that made you slightly uncomfortable, you haven’t thought hard enough.
4. Does this conclusion move me closer to or further from my values? Not: “Do I like this better?” But: “Is this coherent with who I’m trying to be?” If maintaining a position requires you to ignore facts, suppress artists, or participate in systems you’d criticise in other contexts, that’s a signal. Red line territory.
On the New Right: You Can Say No Clearly
Here, you can be crystalline without false nuance.
The new European right is not “just a different perspective.” It has a specific combination of elements that our post-1945 social contract was built precisely to prevent:
- Scapegoating of internal minorities
- Appeal to a mythical golden past
- Erosion of democratic institutions from within
- Rhetorical purity without articulated policy
This is not opinion. It’s pattern recognition. When you feel this combination of elements, you’re feeling fascism. The viscera knows before the intellect articulates it.
But recognising this does not mean demonising everyone who votes for these parties. It means saying: “I understand why you’re angry at the institutions. You’re right to be angry. But this solution will take you where you don’t want to go. And I will not follow.”
This is a red line. You can hold it clearly without caricaturing the people on the other side.
Media Literacy as a Practice
This isn’t a checklist. It’s a discipline — something you return to daily, like climbing.
Diversify your sources by funding model, not just by ideology. Read outlets with different money behind them. A subscription-based outlet has different incentives than an advertising-based one. A state-funded broadcaster has different pressures than a family-owned publication. None are pure, but the mix of biases tells you something.
Follow stories over time. A single article is a snapshot. Follow a story for three months, six months, a year. Watch how the narrative evolves. Watch what gets emphasised and what gets quietly corrected. This is where you learn what outlets actually care about versus what they amplified for engagement.
Read in the original language when you can. Translation is interpretation. When you read about Russia, read Russian sources (even if you need translation). When you read about China, read Chinese sources. Not because they’re more true, but because you’ll see what’s being amplified differently.
Know your own biases. I have them. I’m sceptical of narratives that present Europe’s challenges as purely external threats, because I’ve watched how that led in the past. I’m cautious about anti-establishment rhetoric that doesn’t articulate an alternative. These are my biases. I try to name them. This doesn’t make me neutral. It makes me honest about my position.
Talk to people who disagree seriously. Not social media disagreement. Real conversation with someone thoughtful who holds a different view. Not to convince them or be convinced, but to feel the terrain from another angle. This is where trained instinct sharpens.
Presence as Resistance
The deepest part of this is simple: stay present.
Media thrives on your distraction. Algorithms thrive on your reactive clicking. Polarisation thrives on you not having time to think.
Presence means: I read the article. I sit with it. I check my sources. I ask my four questions. I don’t immediately share it. I wait to see if my understanding shifts. I notice when I’m being emotionally manipulated. I notice when I’m the one doing the manipulating.
This is slow. It’s the opposite of engagement. And it’s the only way to maintain a compass in a world full of falsified maps.
Conclusion: The Terrain Is Real
In climbing, you can ignore the guidebook. You cannot ignore the rock.
The media environment is designed to make you think you can ignore the terrain — that it’s all interpretation, all narrative, all perspective. This is sophisticated propaganda. It serves people who benefit from your confusion.
The terrain is real. Russia’s cultural contribution to Europe is real. The current invasion is real. The threat of fascism in Europe is real. Your responsibility to think clearly about all of these simultaneously is real.
This is harder than choosing a side. But it’s the only choice that honours both the people who died defending Europe and your obligation to keep it intact for people who come after.
Your compass won’t tell you which route to take. But it will tell you which direction is true north. The rest is climbing.
Related: “The Ethical Ratchet,” “Partnership Principles,”