Welcome, Update, and What's Next

Hi everyone,

Thank you all for signing up for dystl! Many of you recently signed up, so I want to provide a short intro to dystl. There are also recent developments I'd like to share with everyone, so that you know what to expect in the coming weeks.

What is dystl and how it started:

I created dystl in March as a way to deliver concise, meaningful briefings about the war between the United States and Iran; since then, the coverage has expanded in depth and breadth.

No matter the topic, dystl briefings are focused on the forces driving the situation and its real impacts on politics and markets. Instead of trying to break news or become another unintelligible dashboard from which to 'monitor the situation', a dystl briefing is the place to come, once or twice a week, to gain an understanding of what is really going on, why it is happening, and the implications going forward.

To achieve this goal, dystl operates like an intelligence agency. As the system ingests and analyzes thousands of signals every day, it updates hundreds of analytical dossiers on states, institutions, individual actors, crises, and themes. Every briefing you receive is built out of the continuous learning of this proprietary intelligence.

If you know anyone who would enjoy reading dystl, please forward them this email. If you were forwarded this email, welcome! To get future dystl briefings in your inbox, you can subscribe, for free, here: dystl.world.

New Flagship Briefing: Balance of Power

Later this week, I will share the new flagship briefing of dystl: Balance of Power. Using dystl's expanded briefing coverage and deeper analysis of the hundreds of thousands of raw signals collected thus far, the Balance of Power briefing covers global geopolitical and macroeconomic risks. This new briefing ties together individual situation briefings into a unified narrative on the trends driving global risks. Every week Balance of Power will provide an update on the most important changes in our macro risk assessment. To see a list of the initial risks we are tracking, scroll to the bottom of this email.

SCOTUS: ScotusDashboard.com and the new SCOTUS Briefing

Prior to starting dystl, I created ScotusDashboard.com. The goal was to provide greater context on cases ahead of their oral arguments at the court. Running since February, ScotusDashboard.com has also collected valuable data on trends at the Supreme Court, from basic stats on speaking time and the length of written decisions to trends in language use and emerging doctrines.

In the next week or so, I will also launch a new dystl SCOTUS briefing. Coverage will include those macro trends as well as analysis of recent decisions and their commercial and political implications. It will also cover appellate court circuit splits and analysis of cases likely to make it to the next SCOTUS term in October. To see a preview of the trends we are analyzing from the court's most recent term, scroll to the bottom of this email.

Situation Briefings: Ongoing and Expanding Coverage

dystl's situation briefings will continue and the coverage will expand. Today, dystl has six active situation briefings: US-Iran, Ukraine-Russia, Macroeconomics, Trade, Asia, and Europe. These briefings are always available on the main dystl.world briefing dashboard, and you can opt to have them delivered to your inbox as well.

In the coming weeks, I will expand the coverage to more thematic topics and regional topics. As new crises and conflicts arise, dystl will also expand its coverage.

Thank you all for your support and signing up! I would be so grateful if you can forward this email to any friends you think will be interested in reading dystl dystl.world/join

TTFN, Will Higgins

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dystl Risks We Are Watching

1. Energy and the Electric Stack

2. Erosion of the Post-WWII Rules Based Order

3. Personalisation of Power

4. Alliance and Realignment, Hedging

5. Fragmentation of the Dollar Order

6. Weaponized Interdependence

7. Cheapening of Force

8. Agricultural Coercion

9. Water as Leverage

10. Critical Materials Coercion

dystl SCOTUS Trends We Are Watching

Bloc A — Power among the branches

1. Executive tariff power after Learning Resources (narrowing)

2. The unitary executive, completed (consolidating)

3. The Fed carve-out (unsettled)

4. Major questions after its bipartisan turn (expanding/unsettled)

5. The agency-power perimeter: nondelegation and the FCC (dormant, armed)

6. The deference endgame spreads to criminal, immigration, benefits law (unsettled)

7. Universal injunctions are dead; the remedies war is not (unsettled)

8. The emergency docket is the merits docket (expanding)

Bloc B — The litigation economy

9. Standing as the gatekeeper, asymmetrically applied (unsettled)

10. Class certification and the uninjured-class problem (unsettled)

11. Asset management's own docket (unsettled — highest ICP relevance)

12. Federal preemption as the liability shield of first resort (unsettled)

13. Intermediary liability online (expanding)

14. The Federal Circuit quietly reprices IP (narrowing — proprietary find)

15. The government contractor's immunity perimeter (narrowing)

16. ERISA withdrawal liability and the multi-employer pension overhang (unsettled — new)

17. Foreign sovereigns and the sanctions-exposure docket (expanding)

18. The state-enforcement frontier (expanding — new)

Bloc C — Society-to-market channels

19. Religious exemption and professional-speech regulation (expanding)

20. Election mechanics and the political-risk channel (unsettled)