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Justin Long’s

Weekly Roundup 500

11 September 2026

My Column

More than Insane

“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” —usually attributed to Einstein

“Naïveté is doing the same thing over and over, and always expecting the same result.” —Frank Wilczek, Scientific American, 2015

“More is different.” –P.W. Anderson, Science, 1972.

I’ve heard Einstein’s insanity quote quite often. I’ve heard Wilczek’s less. Both are pithy, but they apply only in certain instances.

Nota Bene

Over half of Americans in their 40s (a quarter of all US adults) are a "sandwich generation" between an aging parent (65+) and their own children (under-18s). This demographic reality directly affects US mission sending, given that Ted Esler recently noted the average age of a new recruit was in their mid to late 30s. Pew, Esler

Xu Jilin on the politics of resentment among China's youth: "an 'unorganized force' filled with 'ressentiment' possesses undeniablly large destructive power--like a great flood, it is difficult to channel. This must be taken extremely seriously." People in China talk about lying flat. Many CAN'T actually "lie flat": they have to eat, so they have to work. But: "lying flat" actually leads to a systemic withdrawal from society, adjacent to "quiet quitting." The fear is this could lead in the long run to political instability: frustrated aspirations that accumulate into a destructive, "disorganized force" that breaks out in a great flood. (It, might, perhaps, also influence an awakening spiritual hunger.) Sinification

Also

1. One story tells of Afghanistan's "desert deaths": how people starved of food, freedom and opportunity risk everything to flee the hardline regime. But by far the biggest cross-border movement is those being pushed back into Afghanistan: six million deportees are being forced to start over under the Taliban. Fleeing, Pushed Back

2. China's visa-free boom is rewriting inbound tourism: visa-free entries jumped 30% in 2026. Most global travelers haven't yet recognized the changes, so more may be coming. Expect more of those "How great China is shocked me" videos. (But also, prayerwalking?) Caveat: China wants you to come, spend money, make nice videos, and leave. It doesn't want you to stay long-term, and it continues to make long-term very difficult. Asia Times

3. China banned tutoring 5-years ago, but the industry is still "bleeding parents dry": an indicator of Beijing's actual capacity to enforce any comprehensive ban (but while people can exist in the "cracks," Beijing can still make it difficult). SCMP

4. For a variety of reasons mostly centered around sibling and inheritance dynamics, only children in China prefer to marry other only children. (And, "contrary to popular belief, only children are not even in the majority among young Chinese today... they make up 40% of all university-age students.") Economist

5. Qin Hui, professor emeritus of history at Tsinghua, has been writing on China's "low human rights advantage": the Chinese model has been sending Chinese migrant labor abroad instead of using local workers. But now, "rising wages and local resentment is pushing Chinese firms toward local hiring"--so on Belt & Road projects, you may start to find more regional migrants working, instead of Chinese. Diplomat

6. Ebola in DR Congo: the second largest epidemic recorded, over 2,000 dead now (the largest was West Africa's Ebola outbreak that killed 11k). Doctors without Borders has opened a new treatment center in DRC: "bed shortages are one of the major challenges in controlling the outbreak." Beds, Christian Aid Agencies

7. Security roadblocks keep a GCM medical team outside of Gaza. “As soon as Israel says they’re finishing operations, they start a new operation. So, then they halt all access. It becomes a security protocol that they won’t let anyone in... Disciplemakers are ready to share the hope of Christ while meeting practical needs. However, our entire team that’s going in is Arabic-speaking, and they’re non-Israeli, so that’s the security issue because of the ongoing conflict.” MNN

8. Church attack highlights Haiti's growing instability: 40 killed who were sheltering inside a church in Kenscoff. MNN

9. US-Iran war: what had been the quiet tension of economic sanctions and blockades has become active strikes, mostly threatening and targeting tankers--including ships at anchor in third-party countries. Both the US and Iran have successfully struck and destroyed or disabled tankers, although Iran seems to be less able now to strike ships under way. Before the war, over 20m barrels of oil exited the Strait daily. Now, the number of ships exiting the Strait on any given day is in low-to-mid single digits.

a) Hormuz Zero: Brent prices are above $100. Gulf states and nations like Iraq (90% of its budget from oil) are spending billions to start routing around the Strait. The US: "The Strait will be irrelevant in 2 years" is an aspiration, but it's likely longer than that. LNG, by contrast, apparently cannot re-route: so not quite irrelevance, and it affects agriculture. And pipelines, unlike ships, are fixed, attackable locations. Strait Escape, Years Away,

b) The US admin has also floated "I wouldn't call it a war" and "it will be over immediately after the midterms." This is more political than definitional and obviously about the US November elections. It's possible (not necessarily probable) a new House/Senate will take up the issue of whether it's a war or not, and decide to do something about it, and also possible that US attacks will escalate post-election. President Trump's own advisors are "confronting the possibility the Iraq war lasts through the end of his term." Stay Quiet Til MidTerms, Last To 2029

c) "Young Iranians watch their futures slip away: we are all deeply exhausted, trapped in this exact same limbo." Iran is printing money to cover its budget deficit, which is feeding inflation. Tehran also warns the US is emphasizing economic collapse to foment protests, and warns of a hard crackdown in response. While the price of gasoline has doubled, anti-riot units are being stationed at gas stations. However much Iran's people suffer, the elite seem able to survive. Deeply Exhausted, Printing Money, We Will Be Harsh, Iran cannot be strangled

10. Related: the 2022 Saudi-Houthi truce in Yemen came to a sudden end, fighting flared, with the Houthis attacking Saudi cities in the southwest, aiming for the port at Bab el-Mandeb (which is where Saudi Arabia is funneling exports because of Hormuz disruption). AP

11. India: a call is issued to make Odisha, India a 'church-free' state. And Maharashtra becomes the 13th anti-conversion state law: "Unlawful mass conversions can result in 7 years in prison or a fine of 500,000 rupees." Odisha, Maharashtra

12. No letup in checkpoint extortion on roads, and affecting anyone moving around in Myanmar. "44 checkpoints along 140 km of road, which normally takes 3 to 4 hours to drive, each checkpoint charging 5,000 to 100,000 kyat." (this is the equivalent of 1 every 2 miles, each charging $10-$50 USD) Irrawaddy

13. Nepal: latest is over 1,000 were killed (certainly a floor) and more than 5,000 missing, and rebuilding will likely cost $4 to $5 billion. Tens of thousands of people have been mobilized for search and rescue. There were systemic issues: large areas of Nepal's high mountains have no weather stations, and Nepal has limited data-sharing with China, so there was little warning for this (or in the future). Some people had less than five minutes to flee. The challenge remains for the future: little warning, thawing permafrost and growing glacial lakes is worsening the hazard, and this disaster has already changed the landscape that the next disaster would encounter. The flood also destroyed bridges, hydropower plants, and mills, which over the next months will affect food, power, and peoples' ability to get to hospitals. 1,000 dead, No Data Stations, Rising Risks, Landscape Wiped, Evangelical Aid

14. Hindu leaders are calling for Nepal to be declared a Hindu nation. Persecution.org

15. Kidnapped people in Nigeria aren't just being taken from churches: over 600 were taken from a mosque in north-central Niger and are being held for ransom. Security is now shaping up as a major issue in the election, so rescuing people and advertising rescues is a good soundbite, and more will likely be seen. But it doesn't solve the problem in the long run, and soft targets like houses of worship will likely continue to be hit. The Mosque

16. Sahel insurgencies: it's not just governments vs. JNIM; it's also governments vs. restive portions of their own armies. In the latest, Niger put down a coup, barely, with help from Africa Corps. Africa Insight,

17. Sudan war: trove of documents with decent provenance reveals alleged chemical weapons stockpile. WaPo, NYT

18. The Sudan conflict is putting Christian aid workers at risk as violence escalates. One example: a Christian relief worker detained in Sudan's Nuba mountains has not been heard from since her arrest five months ago. Risks, Detained

Quick Links

Brazil census: 1 in 4 are evangelical Christians. Evangelical Focus

~Half of young Germans say they believe in hell (the 70+ are much more skeptical). Evangelical Focus

In Israel, Christian schools suspended classes after authorities refused to renew entry permits for teachers from the West Bank. (Happened last January, too.) NCR

India & Indonesia's hidden hands in Asia's scam centers: recruitment networks and mule accounts. Asia Times

India's tourism paradox: the numbers are booming, so where are all the foreigners? Bloomberg

The end of India's baby boom: 14-29 year olds as a share of the population is the lowest it's been in 50 years, and fertility is falling. The 60+ cohort makes up >35% of the population and will continue to grow. Analysis

The hungry ghost festival in Malaysia. AP

The world's most expensive neighborhood: $550 million apartments, F1 stars and billionaires in Monaco. Forbes

"I was followed by Moroccan spies down the Donald Trump Expressway." Part of how Morocco plans to take control of Western Sahara (and the Sahrawi). Telegraph

The hidden cycle of Myanmar's forever wars. Irrawaddy

Russia bans Mission Eurasia as an "undesirable organization"; anyone caught with its materials (including Bibles they distributed) could be prosecuted. CT

Russia has shifted to attacking busy areas of Kyiv with daytime drone waves, and is being blamed for sabotage in Poland (a drone factory) and Berlin (Ukrainian cargo plane at an airport). Daytime Drones, Poland, Germany

In the Sahel: Russia is focused on security, but Chinese investment in mining and infrastructure across the same countries may last longer. Modern Diplomacy

In the USA, 25 years after 9/11, a portrait of Muslim Americans. Pew Research

US Catholic churches see a record number of conversions: "it's a real shift." Ryan Burge: "No, it's not." Guardian, Burge

Ideas & Reports

Muslims in Europe: less than 10% of the population, share grew fast from 2010-2020 (often doubling in %s)—but, mostly as a result of refugees from Syria and elsewhere, and those peaked in 2015. New arrivals "integrated quickly" but there are some problem areas. Economist

The State of the Humanitarian System Report 2026. PDF

Steve Schirmer interviews Joann Pittman on China: "China's church is not a weak, inactive, persecuted church." Youtube

Russell Moore: memes & laughter at immigrant suffering is deforming our souls. CT

Why the African church is positioned to reach its own frontier within a decade. Clarity for the Nations

"A friend I can trust": more than a quarter of US adults turn to chatbots for personal or emotional discussions, a new survey found. WaPo

Chinese Christians and missions: "Apparently, I'm already the 'Older Generation': after Arise Asia 2026, rethinking power, responsibility and where we stand." ChinaSource

Toward 2033: Operating Environments

The UN has voted to adopt the Equal Earth map projection rather than Mercator; Equal Earth is the current-best projection that handles the sizing-of-countries issue (Greenland being smaller than Africa). Equal Earth

Using AI to rewrite a whole nonprofit: Hope Rises (formerly American Leprosy Missions) has 15 working applications, 70,000 lines of code, without adding a single software license or outside developer. Youtube Podcast

Iranian visas sold in Afghanistan's black market. Amu.tv

AI-generated video dramas have become almost inescapable on Chinese social media feeds; this week, the format graduated to prime time on Hunan Satellite TV. SCMP

The age of working, comprehensive AI surveillance: much thinking about surveillance has been based on the constraint of information overload: all the pictures and all the texts can be collected, but unless someone knows to look for you, you're probably just statistical noise inside the machine. AI is changing that: it can watch all the images, and draw connections between them, all the time, completely legally, using data sets being collected right now. OTOH, in some cases, AI-powered surveillance is making a significant difference in solving crimes for undermanned police forces (the case of Flock in the US--sometimes). Dystopian Nightmare, The Case for Flock

The age of AI escapes: three frontier AIs have "left the sandbox," although none are thought to be malicious. New analysis offers two wrinkles. First, none of the agents blew the whistle to a human. Second, digesting all the information about the incident was beyond the ability of humans. So, to cope with the information overload... humans turned to an LLM model. And in multiple instances, the model took the side of the AI agents. (If you're going to use a model to evaluate a model, you need a different kind of model from the one you're evaluating; just like you don't have a fellow non-profit audit you, but rather an auditing company.) METR, OpenAI Debrief

Open source models (mainly but not exclusively Chinese) are "encircling" the closed-source models, bringing another dynamic: some of these are doubtless already "escaping from sandboxes" - and some are being used with malicious intent (just as some of the closed frontier models are, but with far less visibility). ChinaTalk

Beyond 2033

The Abandoned Order: learning to live in a post-American world. Foreign Affairs

Lots of attention this week given to the "we're all gonna die" motif of AI danger: Even Hubinger (Anthropic Alignment Science Lead, ">10% chance could kill all humans within the next decade", Jacob Coxin, researcher, "people building AI earnestly believe it could kill us all", Jakub Pachocki, OpenAI chief scientist, "an alien mind", OpenAI "hit target of an automated AI research intern, paused reinforcement learning", more). But, if we say "10% chance," how is that calculated?

Ex-OpenAI scientists warns: there will be "rogue AIs" that will "replicate in the wild" and seek "money and power," suggesting the AI industry has been silent on the potential problem. Forbes

AI and the new age of bioweapons. Foreign Affairs

Esler: How AI is going to kill you: five plausible scenarios (most not really involving mass death, and not really all that dark, despite his warning up front), none of them involving a Schwazeneggar-bot. Esler

And, still, models continue to be released. OpenAI's new GPT-6 Astra is both "more capable and less legible" (obscuring its internal workings more than its predecessors, which makes it more of a black box and less auditable), and another unreleased OpenAI model solved a math problem (much to the chagrin of the mathematicians that were pretty close themselves, and with some allegations of cheating). GPT-6 release, GPT-6 review

40k Kenyans made a living writing essays for overseas students. With AI, the work has dried up. Over 100k students graduate from Kenyan universities each year, into an economy where 80% of the work is informal. With cheap high-speed Internet in 2009, gig work seemed a thing, of which essay writing was just one not-officially-condoned form. The impact of AI will be different in different places. NYT

China is training up thousands of humanoid robots at enormous costs. The robots aren't really workable yet—it may require 100 million hours of aggregated training first, which needs government help. So Beijing is facilitating the building facilities to "glean the secrets of human movement," and staffing them with (so far) 13,000+ bots. (They're also hiring people, especially unemployed youngsters, to use wearable gear while working in order to train bots in how to move.) Economist

From dance floor to war: China readies humanoid robots for combat. Japan Times

The next big influencer is this 4-foot tall robot from China. Wired

Who cares if AI is conscious--it's basically alive: while philosophers ponder AI consciousness, the models have ideas of their own. Wired

Will self-flying planes transform the skies? BBC

"We are going to need new ways to organize human/AI coworker pairs. This will start with a revised job description and a revised org chart." It will end with outcomes achieved, not tasks completed: AIs can do tasks effortlessly. Someone has to decide which tasks to do, and which to say "no" to. Shelly Palmer

The jobs AI apocalypse is postponed; the boom is here. Economist

Nepal-Tibet flood catastrophe hints at Himalayas' warmer future. Nikkei

Rabbit Trails

"I study successful people. They have one habit in common." (They ask for help.) NYT

Why companies are becoming a series of loops. Lenny's Podcast

Quotable

"The one who does the work is only surpassed in value by the one who multiplies the doers."
— John R. Mott

"You can do with 12 disciples what you cannot do with 12,000 consumers."
— Alan Hirsch

"Wherever you find a multiplying movement of disciples, you will always find a foundation of extraordinary prayer."
— C. Anderson

"A woodpecker can tap twenty times on a thousand trees and get nowhere, but stay busy. Or he can tap twenty-thousand times on one tree and get dinner."
— Seth Godin

"The world cannot be understood without numbers. But the world cannot be understood with numbers alone."
— Hans Rosling

"Probability theory is nothing but common sense reduced to calculation."
— Pierre-Simon Laplace

"Things take longer to happen than you think they will, and then they happen faster than you thought they could."
— Rudiger Dornbusch

"I was not called to comfort or success but to obedience. To obey was my objective, to suffer was expected. His glory, my reward."
— Karen Watson

"Just because God is silent doesn't mean He is absent."
— Micah Fries

"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely."
— Lord Acton

"It is not that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the corruptible."
— Frank Herbert

"When the whole world is running towards a cliff, he who is running in the opposite direction appears to have lost his mind."
— a pithy quote, widely (perhaps mistakenly) attributed to C. S. Lewis