25 Years Later— A Reminder That The World Can Change In An Instant

Notes From the Field By James Hickman (Simon Black / Sovereign Man) September 11, 2026

At a time in my life which now seems centuries ago, I was once a young lieutenant, barely a year out of West Point, and I had recently been assigned to lead an electronic warfare platoon.

Whenever my unit wasn't deployed or in the field, most of my duty days were spent in a top-secret facility called a SCIF— the kind of place that was guarded by military police and didn't have any windows.

Here’s An Obvious Example Of A Critical Resource Shortage

Notes From the Field By James Hickman (Simon Black / Sovereign Man) September 10, 2026

In July, the Canadian uranium miner Cameco stopped producing at its mine in northern Saskatchewan (known as ‘Cigar Lake’) for two weeks. Cigar Lake itself was fine, nothing was wrong with the mine. The problem was their sulfuric acid plant— a crucial ingredient in processing uranium ore— broke down.

Normally they would have just bought sulfuric acid from somewhere else while they fixed their company-owned acid plant. But this year that's not so easy.

The Candlestick Makers Are Back, and This Time They're Not Joking

Notes From the Field By James Hickman (Simon Black / Sovereign man)  September 3, 2026

In 1845, the French economist Frédéric Bastiat petitioned parliament on behalf of the nation's candlestick makers. They were being ruined, he wrote, by an unscrupulous rival that was flooding the market with light at a price no honest candlestick maker could match.

Government Regulations Now Add $132,000 to the Average New Home

Notes From the Field By James Hockman (Simon Black / Sovereign Man)  September 2, 2026

Somewhere in America there's a local ordinance that tells you which way your garage has to face.  Another one dictates what your fence can be made of, and a third sets how many square feet of window your house needs. A few spell out the dimensions of particular features down to a quarter of an inch.

The National Association of Home Builders, the trade group for the companies that build American homes, has been adding up what rules like these cost since 2011.

Your Mortgage Is Now Competing With Google and the Pentagon

Notes From the Field by James Hickman (Simon Black / Sovereign Man)  September 1, 2026

Hardly a week goes by without another data center announcement, and the projects have gotten so big that they're now measured in gigawatts.

A gigawatt is a billion watts of electricity. Running around the clock, one gigawatt is enough to supply about 800,000 average American homes— and a single large data center is now built at that scale.

The data center that Meta is building near El Paso is designed for a full gigawatt and comes online in 2028.

Breaking Down $15 billion Spent on California's Train to Nowhere

Notes From the Field By James Hickman (Simon Black / Sovereign Man)  August 28, 2026

In November 2008, California voters approved a ballot measure to build a bullet train from San Francisco to Los Angeles.  It was supposed to be fast enough to make the journey in under three hours. And passengers could hop on by 2020, for a total cost of $33 billion.

Eighteen years later, there is nothing to ride.

Pot, Meet Kettle: China Is Lecturing America About Debt

Notes From the Field By James Hickmasn (Simon Black / Sovereign Man)  August 27, 2026

Several days ago, just as America’s national debt topped $40 trillion for the first time, China's official propaganda outlets took the opportunity to mock the United States over this ominous milestone.

Xinhua is the Chinese government's official news agency, and they published a scathing commentary comparing the US national debt to Frankenstein and his monster. They noted both were "destroyed by the forces they had set in motion," and that America "risks a similar end."

Congress Built This Mess. They’ve Made Sure They Don’t Live In It.

Notes From the Field By James Hickman (Simon Black / Sovereign Man)  August 25, 2026

King Hammurabi of Babylon had a simple rule for home builders: if the house you built collapsed and killed its owner, you were put to death.

That was law #229, carved in stone almost 4,000 years ago. And some version of this rule has existed for most of human history. Even to this day, it’s a tradition among architects to spend the night under a bridge they designed to prove that it’s safe.

 The Whole World Is Stockpiling Like It's 1939

Notes From the Field By James Hickman (Simon Black / Sovereign Man) August 24, 2026

On June 7, 1939, US President Franklin Roosevelt signed a new law authorizing $100 million (a lot of money back then) to buy rubber, tin, tungsten, etc., and put it all in storage.

The United States was still at peace at the time. World War II had not yet broken out, and global trade was still relatively seamless.

Shattering the Myth That Higher Taxes Can Fix the $40 Trillion National Debt

Notes From the Field By James Hickman (Simon Black / Sovereign Man) August 20, 2026

In June of 1944, American soldiers were storming the beaches of Normandy, single-handedly leading the fight to defeat the Nazis.

Back home, Americans gave everything they had. Some 85 million bought war bonds. The top income tax rate hit 94%, the highest in US history. Even ordinary people paid more and more income tax to support the war effort.

Foreign Buying of US Treasuries Just Fell 88% in a Single Month

Notes From the Field By James Hickman (Aimon Black / Sovereign Man) August 19, 2026

If you were to head to Bloomberg, CNBC, or Yahoo Finance this morning and see virtually all green across the board in US markets, you wouldn’t think it’s a sad day for America.

And yet, despite stocks being up and investors positively effervescent, it is indeed a sad day, because today marks the first real capitulation by the Treasury Department.

 How Medicare Became a Slush Fund

Notes From the Field By James Hickman (Simon Black / Sovereign Man)  August 18, 2026

Four years ago this month, Washington passed a law and named it, with a straight face, the Inflation Reduction Act.  Bizarrely, their plan to ‘reduce inflation’, which had been caused by excessive government spending, was for the government to spend even more money. It’s genius!

Breaking Down Comrade Mamdani’s 30% Discount

Notes From the Field By James Hickman (Simon Black / Sovereign Man) August 14, 2026

When Walmart founder Sam Walton passed away in 1992, his family fortune made him the wealthiest person on the planet... by far. His Walton Family Enterprises was worth $23.8 billion— nearly four times as much as Bill Gates at the time. And if he were still alive today, Walton would be the second-richest man in the world, just behind Elon Musk... and ahead of Zuckerberg, Ellison, the Google guys, etc.

That’s a pretty impressive feat for a guy whose core business is basically being a gigantic grocery store.