IT’S POLITICS: Leaders Who Shape Global Conflict: Trump and Xi

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We asked some of our clients, bespoke AI and our Strategy Team: Who is the political leader most likely to cause World War III, and who is the political leader most capable of stopping World War III?

And this was the response:

Viewed through the prism of strategic history and contemporary financial diplomacy, the question of which leader might inadvertently ignite, or instead forestall, a wider conflagration is less a matter of personality than of structural power, institutional constraints, and geopolitical incentives. Yet, as historians from Thucydides to modern analysts have repeatedly noted, individual leaders can still accelerate or dampen systemic pressures. With that caveat, recent expert commentary, polling data and geopolitical assessments as of March 2026 suggest two figures loom particularly large in opposite directions: Donald Trump, the incumbent president of the United States, and Xi Jinping, China’s paramount leader.

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IT’S POLITICS: The Guilty Men – 2026/03/12


Madrid, 12th March 2026.

PART ONE

Based on current events as of March 2026, compiling a comprehensive, global list of politicians under suspicion of breaking laws requires noting that “suspicion” often stems from ongoing investigations, indictments, or international warrants rather than convictions. These cases span corruption, war crimes, interference with law enforcement, and more. I’ve prioritised by prominence (e.g., heads of state first), severity of allegations (e.g., international crimes over domestic probes), and recency/impact. Note that many U.S. cases involve investigations by the Department of Justice under the Trump administration, which critics have described as politically motivated. This is not an exhaustive list, as investigations can evolve rapidly.

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IT’S POLITICS: The Aferlife Briefing- 2026/03/11


THE AFTERLIFE BRIEFING

(formerly titled The Saturday Scene*)*

Tagline:
Where history’s most troublesome minds return to review the week’s political disasters.


OPENING

Studio lights rise. Dramatic music that sounds suspiciously like a funeral march remixed for television.

Martyn Rhisiart Jones sits behind a polished desk.

Behind him, a giant screen flashes headlines:

WAR, SANCTIONS, DIPLOMACY, OUTRAGE, DENIAL

Seven historical figures sit around a circular table.

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Laughing @ Data.Com: A Satirical Take on IT Industry Hype – Book Review

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Penelope Parker, Madrid 10th March 2026

The tech industry has long been a parade of expensive suits, hollow acronyms, and “digital transformations” that possess all the structural integrity of a damp Digestive biscuit. Into this landscape of algorithmic overpromise and professionalised grifting comes Martyn Jones with Laughing @ Data.Com, a book that, by all rights, should be required reading for anyone currently being held hostage by a Jira ticket.

Jones, a man once heralded as a top-tier database expert back “when that kind of accolade still meant something,” has produced a work that is less a technical manual and more a weary, satirical travelogue through the “Kafkaesque scrum of buzzwords and bootlickers” that defines modern IT.

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Laughing@Data.Com: A Candid Review of Data’s Absurdities – Book Review

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Rebecca Trentt

Book Review: Laughing@Data.Com by Martyn Jones
A survival manual for the data-industrial complex, delivered with a raised eyebrow and a sharpened knife

There are books about data. Then there are books written by people who have survived data.

Laughing@Data.Com sits firmly in the second category.

Martyn Jones’ latest contribution to the already groaning shelf of “data thought leadership” arrives like a heckler in a TED Talk. Where most books on artificial intelligence, analytics, and “digital transformation” read like a PowerPoint deck translated into prose, Jones offers something rarer: a long, irreverent laugh at the entire enterprise.

Not a joyful laugh, mind you. More the hollow, existential chuckle of someone who has spent thirty years watching corporations spend millions trying to discover that spreadsheets still work.

And that, in many ways, is the point.

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Laughing@Data.Com: Hilarious Heresy Against the Hype Machine – Book Review


Lila de Alba

In the digital colosseum where data evangelists duel with dashboards and AI prophets peddle predictive panaceas, Martyn Jones arrives not with a sword, but a seltzer bottle. His latest tome, Laughing@Data.Com (self-published, 2025), is a riotous romp through the absurdities of the IT industry, a book that skewers the sacred cows of big data, machine learning, and that perennial favorite, “digital transformation,” with the precision of a Welsh coal miner’s pickaxe. Jones, a grizzled data architect who’s consulted for everyone from Adidas to the UN (and survived to tell the tale), channels the spirit of Swiftian satire into a manifesto that’s equal parts Wired’s gadget glee, CIO’s boardroom battle cry, and FT Weekend’s urbane eyebrow-raise. If Dave Trott’s advertising yarns met Stewart Lee’s stand-up scorn in a Zurich banker’s lounge, this would be the offspring: witty, worldly, and wonderfully wicked.

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Revealing Wealth: A Blueprint for Financial Transparency – Book Review

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By Samantha Sterling Parker, Spanish FT Weekend

Madrid, Monday 9th March 2026

To say that Martyn Jones’s Revealing Wealth is merely a book about tax evasion is like saying the Large Hadron Collider is just a fancy pipe. This is a manifesto for a digital revolution, a technical blueprint for global equity, and a provocative call to arms that arrives just as the old financial order begins to crack.

Below is a look at this seminal work through three distinct editorial lenses.

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IT’S POLITICS: Uncovering Tax Evasion: Insights from ‘Revealing Wealth’ – Book Review

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By Samantha Sterling Parker, Long FT Weekend

Madrid, Monday 9th March 2026

Book Review: Revealing Wealth: Combatting Tax Evasion with Data, Political Will and Technology by Martyn Jones

In an age defined by algorithms, trillion-dollar tech companies, and data flowing across borders at the speed of light, one of the oldest problems in civilisation persists: how the wealthy avoid paying their share of tax. In Revealing Wealth, Martyn Jones argues that the real scandal is not simply that tax evasion exists, but that in a data-rich world we still allow it to thrive.

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