Pushback of the Week, October 19, 2025

Two Voices Offering Insightful Analysis

Solari subscribers often ask Catherine who she turns to for geopolitical analysis. Two of the most insightful voices, both at Substack, are former British diplomat and MI6er, Alastair Crooke, and American economist Dr. Pippa Malmgren.

Crooke, who grew up in Zimbabwe (at the time called Rhodesia) before being educated in Switzerland and Scotland, went from a brief career in London banking to three decades working with MI6 under diplomatic cover, including in the Middle East. A couple of years after an Israeli newspaper “outed” his MI6 affiliation, he founded the Beirut-based Conflicts Forum, continuing to focus on the Middle East as well as West Asia and combining “a unique blend of strategic perspective with experienced political know-how.” Crooke is a frequent guest on Judge Napolitano’s Judging Freedom show.

Malmgren describes her speciality as “understanding the nexus between geopolitics, tech innovation, strategic security and markets.” Her action-packed professional biography includes founding tech businesses, advising presidents and prime ministers, and working in finance and asset management. A decade ago, she authored Geopolitics for Investors (2015) as well as Signals: How Everyday Signs Help Us Navigate the World’s Turbulent Economy (2016), and more recently, she has co-authored two books about leadership (The Leadership Lab [2019] and The Infinite Leader: Balancing the Demands of Modern Business Leadership [2021]). Recent posts at her Substack, Pippa’s Pen & Podcast, have tackled topics ranging from rare earth elements to recent developments in Latin America to “hot wars in cold places.”

For last week’s News Trends & Stories interview, Catherine included a quote from Malmgren that echoes what Catherine has been saying for decades about the Siamese-twin relationship between government and organized crime. Malmgren observed, “The line between legal and illegal has all but vanished—what matters now is control.” In a Conflicts Forum post about the “new era of coerced dominance,” Crooke agreed, describing an environment of “war without limits—without rules; without law,” and characterizing Israeli and U.S. foreign policy as “Ignoring rules purposively to shock. Moving fast and breaking things.”

Fortunately, both writers are future-looking and resilience-oriented, with the Conflicts Forum billing itself as a “geo-political oracle,” and Malmgren seeking to help people “prepare for tomorrow’s economy today.” Malmgren strives to identify and clarify “meaningful and actionable” trends just as we do at Solari, where our tag line is, “Actionable intelligence for a free and inspired life.”