The Biggest Winners Of This War Don't Pump A Single Barrel

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

How much do you think it would cost to send a supertanker, one of the giant ships that move the world's crude oil, through a narrow stretch of water that is full of mines, where missiles hit two tankers in early July, and where a crew member has already been killed?

Last month, one shipowner agreed to make that run— through the Strait of Hormuz— for nearly $470,000 per day.

Why They Won't Even Fix the Easy Stuff

Notes From the Fied By (Simon Black / Sovereign Man)  July 27, 2026

The Department of Transportation's headquarters campus in Washington spans two complexes covering 1.8 million square feet across 11-acre of prime DC real estate. In the private sector, such a trophy office property would fetch north of $1 billion per year in rental income.

Yet for the federal government, two-thirds of the space sits empty according to the Government Accountability Office (GAO), the federal government's own internal watchdog. This is based on real data; the GAO toured the department's buildings last fall and counted the empty desks.

US Taxpayers Subsidized The Greatest Heist Of The Cold War. The Grocery Bill Came Later.

Notes From the Field By James Hickman (Simon Black / Sovereign Man)   July 23, 2026  

In the summer of 1972, a Soviet official named Nikolai Belousov stepped off a plane in New York City with a shopping list.

The Soviet Union had just finished its worst harvest in over a decade and was on the verge of starvation... and Belousov was tasked with the nearly impossible mission of buying enough wheat to feed an entire nation.

Why Britain's New Marxist Leader Suddenly Loves Oil

Notes From the Field By James Hickman (Simon Black / Sovereign Man) July 21, 2026

On November 27th in the year 176 AD, Marcus Aurelius promoted his 15-year old biological son Commodus to be Co-emperor of Rome.    Marcus Aurelius never realized it, but he was sealing Rome’s fate… and essentially marking an end to the Empire’s golden age.

The Latest Flashing Exit Sign for the US Dollar

Notes From the Field By James Hickman (Simon Black / Sovereign Man)  July 13, 2026

Washington has a comforting story about Social Security: yes, the trust fund is running out of money, but not until 2032. That leaves six more years to form the commissions, schedule the hearings, and study a problem that has been obvious for decades.

But last week, a man who used to run the numbers for Social Security itself explained why even a measly six years is optimistic.

America Turns 250 At 125, It Looked Like the End

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

On the afternoon of September 6, 1901, President William McKinley stood in a receiving line at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York, shaking hands with a crowd of well-wishers.

One of the people in the crowd was a young man named Leon Czolgosz... who was patiently waiting with a revolver wrapped in a handkerchief. When he reached the front, he fired twice into the president's abdomen.

Why China Just Overtook The US With The Most Powerful Supercomputer

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

Yao Tongbin was one of the most important scientists in Maoist China. He had earned a doctorate in metallurgy in England, spent three years at a research institute in West Germany, and left it all to return to China in 1957.

He spent he next 11 years building China’s first-ever modern missile program, with unparalleled knowledge and experience he had accumulated in the West.

Get Ready for “Business Friendly Socialism”

Notes From the Field By James Hickman (Simon Black / Sovereign Man) June 22, 2026

On New Year's Day in the year 1829, a 29-year-old young lady from Washington DC named Peggy Timberlake married John Eaton— a powerful senator from Tennessee. Eaton was also close friends with the incoming president Andrew Jackson.

Peggy, on the other hand, was rumored to be somewhat of a harlot. She was openly flirtatious and allegedly promiscuous, and her wedding to Sen. Eaton came only a few months after the mysterious death of her first husband.

You Weren't Crazy 17 Years Ago. You Were Early

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

20 years ago, if you recognized how deep America's problems were, it was easy to feel like you were the crazy one.

Banks were handing out mortgages to people who plainly couldn't afford them. Wall Street bundled those mortgages by the millions and sold them on as some of the safest investments around. And the whole structure rested on the assumption that home prices would never fall, so a bank could simply sell the home for more in case of a default.