SENSE CHECK
Issue 02 — Friday 02 October 2026
Good morning.
This week we asked whether the West is in decline or simply going through a period of upheaval, and we put it to someone who once helped run a country. John Anderson, Australia's former Deputy Prime Minister, took us through political power, faith and the patterns that keep repeating across civilisations, and the two clips below came straight out of that conversation. Elsewhere, British and American troops have left Iraq and the biggest AI companies have agreed to police themselves, two very different stories about what happens when the supervision stops. Here is the lot.
THE ONE THAT MATTERED
Ex World Leader on How We Can Save The West
Mike sits down with John Anderson, former Deputy Prime Minister of Australia, for a wide-ranging conversation. They discuss political power, spirituality, personal growth, societal change, and the recurring patterns that shape civilisations; exploring what we can learn from the past and what it might take to build a stronger future.
FROM THE SAME CONVERSATION
Is the West is in decline or simply going through a period of upheaval? Watch Now
Can suffering be a source of purpose rather than something to avoid? Watch Now
STILL WORTH YOUR TIME
The podcast: Rabbi Pesach Wolicki Answers the Hardest Questions on Israel, Palestine & Iran: Watch Here
Editor’s Desk: £72 million and nothing in return. Where Reform UK’s crypto money actually came from, why none of it is illegal, and what that tells you about British party funding. Watch Here
ELSEWHERE THIS WEEK
The coalition leaves Iraq. After more than a decade, American and British forces have left Iraq, bringing the international military mission against Islamic State to an end. The coalition arrived in 2014 after the group seized large parts of the country, and although Baghdad declared it militarily defeated in 2017, foreign troops stayed on to train Iraqi forces and head off a comeback. Iraq now carries primary responsibility for its own security, with Islamic State remnants still active and powerful Iran-aligned militias posing a different kind of problem. This is less the end of a war than the end of a chapter, and the test of whether Iraq can hold together without outside help starts now.
The AI pledge with no teeth. Donald Trump says America's biggest AI companies have agreed to police themselves, but the deal is not a law and nothing in it can be enforced. It asks the firms to build layers of safety checks as their systems grow more powerful, including internal monitoring and independent reviews. The catch is that the companies largely decide how those checks work, who carries out the external reviews and whether the results are ever published. The real question is whether they can regulate themselves as the technology advances, or whether governments will end up writing and enforcing the rules anyway.
COMING UP
New guest lands on Tuesday!
More Editors Desks episodes on the way next week!
That’s the week. If something in here was useful, forward it to one person who’ll disagree with it.
Okiki
Chief of Staff & Head of Operations, Common Sense Network
Subscribe · Become a member · Reply to this email, we read everything!