an engineer's analysis

The systems that move money, power, and risk.

The Mild Take publishes source-disciplined analysis: long-form pieces on AI infrastructure, technology, and markets, plus a confidence-weighted country-risk ratings tool for where to live, hold assets, and hold currency. Multilateral and independent sources triangulated, US press treated under explicit ownership-tilt flags, ranges stated honestly.

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Analysis Oct 4, 2026

Refresh: two African wars reopened and the oil war reached the exporters' budgets

Fifteen days, six parallel sweeps. Ethiopia's Tigray war reignited as the TPLF seized three airports. South Sudan's Kiir dissolved the whole unity government before December elections. The US-Iran war's damage landed on the oil exporters, with Saudi growth forecast at minus 3.6 percent and Iraq facing its toughest budget in decades, while Oman gained as its ports bypass Hormuz. Oracle invoked force majeure on a data-centre lease. Thirty-one countries, forty-four sub-factors.

live-data
refresh
ethiopia

Articles Oct 1, 2026

Security teams are building trustless systems out of their own colleagues

A security team can spend the trust an organization runs on by building its controls as though its own colleagues were the threat. This piece defines what a security team protects and what its job is.

security
infrastructure
organizational-design

Analysis Oct 1, 2026

The friction budget

Every control a security team ships costs the organization time, money, morale, observability and communication, plus security posture when it is implemented poorly. It costs the team goodwill with leadership, trust with the people who work under it, and eventually its own authority to decide. All of it is finite. None of it replenishes because a quarter passed without an incident.

security
infrastructure
organizational-design

the ratings tool · living decision

Country risk for where you live, invest, and hold money

One of the things we publish is a confidence-weighted country-risk ratings tool: a directional read from −10 to +10 with explicit confidence, for 194 countries across the living, asset, and currency decisions. Open any country for the full breakdown, or compare them side by side.

+3 to +10 (strong)
+1 to +3
-1 to +1 (neutral)
-3 to -1
-10 to -3 (weak)

Hover any country for rank, score, and confidence. Greens are stronger institutional + practical reads for relocation; reds are weaker; yellow is near-neutral. Open the full ratings app for the per-decision grid and category breakdowns.

Directional, not gospel. These are confidence-weighted reads calibrated to one decision-maker's priorities — the methodology explains how each score is bounded. The asset and currency reads are analysis, not financial advice.

The systems that move money, power, and risk.

Recent writing

Refresh: two African wars reopened and the oil war reached the exporters' budgets

Security teams are building trustless systems out of their own colleagues

The friction budget

Country risk for where you live, invest, and hold money

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