South Korea’s beauty industry is renowned for its trend-setting skincare products, often promoted by the country’s film and music stars. But 42-year-old Cha Haeyoung, the CEO and founder of perfume and skincare brand Nonfiction, wants to outgrow the K-moniker. “I have so much respect for K-beauty but I don’t want to be defined by it,” says Cha, who tends to stay out of the spotlight. With plans to expand to the US and Europe, she wants to create a borderless brand that transcends nations and any ties to her as founder and majority shareholder.
Dressed in black, Cha meets Monocle in Seoul’s Hannam neighbourhood, home to many of the country’s richest families. In Nonfiction’s boutique – one of 11 outposts in South Korea, alongside two in Japan and one in Hong Kong – yellow tulips bloom on display tables, adding colour to the brand’s monochrome aesthetic.
Floral scents have become Nonfiction’s flagship product line, popular with both men and women. These include The Rose, the latest perfume created by French perfumer Maurice Roucel. Cha says that she has always had a sensitive nose, though fragrance wasn’t in her original blueprint for the company. “This is embarrassing but I wasn’t used to buying South Korean perfumes,” she says. “There was a perception that the best scents were made abroad, so I didn’t think about making fragrances.”
A few years ago, Cha was introduced to well-established perfumers in France. At her first meeting with Roucel, the 79-year-old showed her original fragrance samples inspired by Nonfiction, created at his own initiative. “Maurice is the wittiest, coolest French grandpa,” says Cha. “He told me that Nonfiction inspired a minimalist, clear feeling. Something that brings out the very fragrance of our skin.” This encounter yielded their first collaboration, The Beige, in 2024.
Nonfiction’s turnover last year surpassed €30m. Annual revenues are averaging double-digit growth and the six-year-old company now has almost 150 employees in South Korea alone. While perfume is powering its current growth, the coronavirus pandemic proved to be the first unexpected business opportunity. Nonfiction launched in 2019 with a collection of body washes and hand lotions sold at Sephora. These products became a viral gift for South Koreans to send each other during lockdown and, by the end of 2020, first-year sales of about €50,000 had soared to almost €3.5m. This growth was “shocking” for Cha. “At the time, I didn’t even know what that success meant,” she says. “I was scrambling to answer emails and attend meetings. The growing pains were indescribable. I had no time to feel happy. I was working all the time.”
Cha started Nonfiction with two employees. They would meet at her home, a “fairy-tale” period before rapid growth that she compares to falling in love. Cha describes her first showrooms, in Hannam and Busan, as having “the warmth of our grandmother’s living room”. The retro-themed shops were a hit, face masks and social distancing notwithstanding. “Good branding is about different elements coming together in harmony,” she says. “When I enter spaces that reflect that, I feel a huge thrill.”
“I have always loved clothes,” says Cha. “Since I was young, I have wanted to experience everything first: the best hair salon, the best natural wine, the best bread.” Now customers race to Nonfiction shops to be first to buy a new scent.
As international markets beckon, her advice to other entrepreneurs reflects her brand’s evolution. “Trust your instincts and be wary of flashy exteriors, especially your own,” she says. “What is seen by others is fiction. Explore what lies beneath.”
Six years since founding Nonfiction, Cha takes more holidays and strives for a better work-life balance, something she credits to her married life. Yet she remains committed to the business. “I love creating a product, making it sell well and building revenue,” she says. “If, some day, I’m OK with my company changing colours without me, I’ll let go then.”
nonfiction-beauty.com
Luxury assets come in all shapes and sizes, including – for a particular set of American investors – Welsh football teams. An increasing number of American executives are buying up European football clubs, which they view as undervalued by the standards of the US sports industry. Despite it being the world’s most popular sport, none of the 10 most lucrative sports franchises is a football team; all being basketball, baseball and American football teams whose support is largely confined to the US. Looking across the Atlantic at the European “soccer” industry, Americans see big money being left on the table.
It was recently announced that Snoop Dogg – one of the most recognisable names in music and a multifaceted entrepreneur – will join a US-led consortium of owners at Swansea City Association Football Club. The club has, for the most part, chugged along unglamorously in the second tier of the English Football League. “The story of the club and the area really struck a chord with me,” said Snoop in a press release. “This is a proud, working-class city and club. An underdog that bites back, just like me.” Perhaps there’s something in his assessment of Swansea City’s hardened spirit. Until now, the club has been best known for the antics of its mascot, Cyril the Swan, in the late 1990s. Cyril regularly picked fights with rival mascots and in 1999 was summoned before a disciplinary panel after a pitch-invasion incident. Cyril’s misbehaviour put Swansea – a post-industrial city of some 246,000 in south Wales that’s also my hometown – on the map. Snoop’s involvement is set to propel Swansea onto the global news agenda once again.
The majority of American owners buy the most prestigious and successful European football club that they can afford, then extract its dormant value with techniques imported from US sports. For instance, Eagle Football Holdings, headed by American John Textor, acquired a majority stake in Olympique Lyonnais in December 2022. This placed the French club within an integrated, international multi-club portfolio that recruits and develops players and moves them between different clubs – a system that was originally developed in Major League Baseball.
Other American techniques in European football management have little to do with the game itself. Football clubs are increasingly being parlayed into broader entertainment and lifestyle offerings, often through collaborations with non-footballing brands, a practice with an established history in the US. Since acquiring AC Milan in 2022, the American group RedBird Capital has used Milan’s design heritage to attract commercial partners. AC Milan’s “official style partner” is Off-White, a Milan-based luxury fashion brand that was itself founded by an American, the designer Virgil Abloh.
But entertainment is fuelled by narrative and the acquisition of little-known Welsh clubs is indicative of an ownership model that is even more peculiarly American: investing in an obscure team, then juicing it with money and celebrity, and packaging the incongruous acquisition itself as theatre. The most successful instance of this is the 2021 takeover of Wrexham AFC, a club in northeast Wales, by Hollywood actors Rob McElhenney and Ryan Reynolds. So far, the partnership has led to three consecutive league promotions – unprecedented in English football – and a popular Disney+ series, Welcome to Wrexham, which documents the development of the club under their ownership.
Snoop Dogg and Swansea City AFC seem to be working to replicate McElhenney and Reynolds’ success. In one social-media post, Snoop Dogg, wearing a Swansea shirt, faces off against Reynolds in a Wrexham kit. Beneath them, a gnomic legend reads, “There’s Beef in Wales, But It Was Born In America.” Any emergent beef between Wrexham and Swansea will indeed have been born in America: there is no historical rivalry between the clubs, which are located about as far from one another as it is possible to get within Wales. This kind of clumsy narrative manipulation will irritate some Swansea fans. But if celebrity involvement generates the sort of financial and footballing returns that Wrexham has enjoyed, most of them will probably consider the cringe messaging a price worth paying.
Rees-Sheridan is a Monocle contributor based in New York. Want to read about what a European land war may look like? Monocle attended Operation Hedgehog, in which Nato troops joined the Estonian Defence Force to execute a series of large-scale defence drills amid rising concerns over the vulnerability of the Baltic region.
Samsung is the world’s leading seller of both smartphones and TVs. But it doesn’t matter how successful you are – the electronics market is a competitive field. Today’s number one might not remain so tomorrow. In April, the South Korean giant appointed Mauro Porcini as its new chief design officer, a job that had not previously existed at the company. With such a title, could he become to Samsung what Jony Ive was to Apple?
Porcini has held the same role at his two previous companies, 3M and PepsiCo. Speaking to Monocle in New York after Samsung unveiled its latest foldable smartphones and smartwatches, he is dressed in a white open-necked shirt, an understated suit and eye-popping trainers. He’s keen to explain that his new role goes beyond creating chic designs or selecting fun colours for upcoming products.
“It’s about understanding people: what they need and what they want,” says Porcini. “For the company, it’s about understanding the technology, its manufacturing capabilities, branding and business models. From there, we define the innovation strategy of the business – what is Samsung’s portfolio going to be in 10 years?”
Porcini, who was born in Gallarate, Italy, 50 years ago, talks about products having “emotional benefits and semiotic needs”. Semiotics, or the study of signs and symbols along with their use and interpretation, is important to the design executive. He wants to know what buying a certain brand says about a person – what kind of statement does wearing a digital watch over a classic one make to the world about the wearer? You could also say that an Apple, Samsung or Google watch each projects a different image of its user.
When the conversation moves to AI, Porcini seems relaxed. “AI is a tool, right?” he asks. “I studied design at the crossroads between analogue and digital. I started with a pencil and Pantone markers, then suddenly had to learn how to use software. Everything was done with computers and renderings. Many designers thought that they would lose their jobs and machines would take over. Now we realise that human intuition, interpretation, creativity and imagination are still needed.”
Porcini, whose talk of design focuses on what it means to the users of the products, wants more AI in Samsung’s gear. “If you think about the company’s portfolio, the products are with you wherever you go and they can monitor your body wherever you are, even while you sleep.” Porcini is animated – the benefits of this technology for human health seem to be a topic close to his heart. The latest Galaxy Watch, he tells us, has a sensor that can inform you when your antioxidant levels are low (perhaps you need to eat more carrots or kale). In the not-too-distant future, Samsung refrigerators could access this information and not only tell you which food is nearing expiration but also encourage you to choose vegetables over a slice of cake. Alternatively, your TV could remind you to exercise for five minutes before you sit down on the couch. It’s all very impressive but do we want our appliances to mother us? Should an oven count our calories? How will Samsung get the right tone?
“We often say that designers create ‘meaning’ – we don’t design products or brands,” says Porcini. “And different ingredients play into the creation of meaning. You have a sender, a message and a receiver. You have a code, a media, a context and a noise,” he says, explaining the elements meticulously. “Take me talking to you right now: I am the sender and you are the receiver. What we’re talking about is the message and English is the code. My body language, the way that I’m dressed and my Italian accent might be different from someone else and could change the meaning of the message,” says Porcini passionately. “You could do everything right but it won’t work if you have the wrong tone.”
“Samsung is already in people’s lives in many ways,” he says. “Our products clean your floors, dishes and clothes. They preserve your food or entertain and connect you with others. It’s already a caring presence.” And this is what Porcini wants Samsung to be: a business where “high-quality, reliable or innovative” are not its only characteristics but also tangible human values.
But the executive might have his work cut out for him. Can people learn to love a behemoth brand in the same way? “In big corporations, the dilemma is always the same: how can we please everyone while remaining relevant?” he says. “We need to have the courage to speak directly to people with a certain tone and an original point of view. That’s when they will fall in love.”
At this time of year the streets of Peschiera del Garda are clogged with traffic as holidaymakers descend on the lakeside town. Alongside the Italians flocking to second homes and annual rentals, many of the number plates stuck in gridlock display the letter D – a testament to the fact that this picturesque corner of northern Italy becomes mini-Deutschland during the summer months.
The Germans are lured by the cypress trees and swimming spots, as well as the five-hour drive time from Munich. Though they head for restaurants and aperitivo bars, they’re missing out on the true dolce vita. While Garda’s lakeside establishments offer great views of the water, they completely miss out on what makes Italy such a beguiling place: the sagra.
The sagra doesn’t really have an Anglosphere equivalent. Often organised by the local parish, it’s an evening-time village party, which is usually a celebration of a patron saint or seasonal food (the annual asparagus festival is held in Cavallino-Treporti in late April). The one that we recently attended in Castion Veronese with my Italian family seemed to be entirely devoid of tourists. My sister-in-law, Annapaola, couldn’t help but wonder why foreigners didn’t partake in the experience. “The sagra is a slice of Italian life,” she told me. “And it’s authentic.”
Authentic would be one way to put it. Raw and unpretentious would be another. Take the relaxed approach to parking, for example. Naturally, no dedicated spaces have been provided, so people become intrepid. A patch of grass on a roadside hillock that leaves the car tottering at a 35-degree angle? Ideal, apparently. With the prime spots taken, we slowly drive down a bike lane and park next to it.
Though a sagra might sometimes have a religious element, this takes a back seat to the main event: feasting and drinking. “You always eat well here,” said my sister-in-law as we dined on lamb arrosticini (grilled skewers) and a traditional and thoroughly satisfying Veneto dish that you’d struggle to find on menus around the lake: risotto al Tastasal (a homely white-rice dish made with pork sausage). It’s washed down with beers for €3 and cocktails for €5 – prices that the Germans by the lake are unlikely to find.
An authentic Italian experience also means bringing the kids along, no matter the time. Children sat around the stage as a concert struck up, featuring a cover band of Italian pop group 883, cranking out 1990s hits at an ear-splitting volume. It was all rather lost on me, though after five years in Italy I did know one of their songs: the hilariously named “Hanno ucciso l’Uomo Ragno” (“They killed Spiderman”). Aside from the music, there were also plenty of giostre (rides) to keep the children entertained until the wee hours, as well as trampolines and a bouncy castle. It was all wonderfully chaotic.
In a country where so much has been constructed to appeal to what a tourist thinks is a real Italian experience, the sagra is the real deal. These village festivals are about as far away from souvenir shops and English menus as it’s possible to get. As much of Lake Garda becomes bundled up to appeal to the Aperol Spritz-laced idea of the perfect summer, the sagra is a place to revel in Italians just being Italians: family time and simple pleasures. It’s nothing special – but it’s special precisely because of that.
Ed Stocker is Monocle’s Europe editor at large. For more opinion, analysis and insight, subscribe to Monocle today.
1.
‘Magazine C’, South Korea
From the team behind Magazine B – the South Korean brand-documentary publication – Magazine C is a quarterly publication for furniture obsessives. Each edition is dedicated to a single chair, exploring the people, craft and stories behind a chosen design, starting with Jean Prouvé’s Standard chair, Thonet’s No. 14 and the Louis Ghost chair by Philippe Starck. Compact and sleek, the magazines have a considered aesthetic. A limited use of bright colours and crisp photography give the design a premium feel. Meanwhile, the familiar, neutral serif typeface of FK Roman Standard adds personality.
“Typography in general plays a central role in a magazine’s visual identity and editorial expression,” says editor in chief Minjung Kim. “It allows imagery of chairs and their surrounding contexts to be presented within a unified and coherent graphic framework.” A valuable contribution to design education, the magazine’s uniquely niche perspective offers a surprisingly diverse mix of content. From personal stories to lifestyle and architectural history, it successfully shows that there’s more to chairs than simply somewhere to sit – they can also be a lens on contemporary life.
reading-b.com
2.
‘The New Sustainable House’, Australia
The New Sustainable House by Sydney-based writer and curator Penny Craswell is a rallying call to action. Architects, designers, builders and their clients have more information, technology and innovative materials at their fingertips than ever before; and yet the building industry is one of the world’s greatest polluters. The notion of designing with the environment in mind has been around for some time – but meaningful change has been slow.
To get the industry thinking even harder about its impact – and what is possible to achieve – Craswell profiled 25 architect-designed homes from around the world that stand out for their innovative solutions. Highlights include a single-storey mud-brick box built in the Texas desert and an all-timber Swedish cabin that is completely petrochemical-free. What unites this diverse lineup is the shared ambition of architects and clients to do as little harm to the environment as possible, without losing out on comfort or aesthetics. “There is no one quick fix to sustainable architecture,” says Craswell. But this book is as good a place to start as any.
thamesandhudsonusa.com
3.
‘A Passion for Jean Prouvé’, France
A Passion for Jean Prouvé: From Furniture to Architecture showcases works by the 20th-century French engineer, architect and metal artisan from the collection of gallerists Laurence and Patrick Seguin. Generously illustrated with photographs and previously unpublished drawings, the bilingual publication demonstrates how Prouvé was a strong advocate for mass production and industrial techniques.
The Seguins’ private collection features little-known pieces, such as the 1939 Saint-Brévin table, as well as more iconic works, including the Métropole chair and the 1930 Cité armchair. The collection is split between their Paris apartment and gallery and their estate in the south of France, where Prouvé’s demountable houses are installed en plein air. The Seguins’ passion for Prouvé’s work attests to his creations’ enduring charm. “His modernity prefigured many contemporary approaches,” say the collectors. “There is a real dialogue – a synergy – between his furniture and contemporary art.”
patrickseguin.com
4.
‘Casa Mexicana’, Mexico
The rich architectural tradition of Mexico, defined by sun-soaked concrete walls and wooden ceilings, is the subject of Casa Mexicana – a new publication from British publishing house Thames & Hudson. With photography by Edmund Sumner and text by London-based architecture journalist Jonathan Bell, this colourful monograph takes its readers to 26 homes across the country. From tucked-away houses on the streets of Mexico City to beachside retreats in Puerto Escondido, the book is an exploration of contemporary brutalism and natural textures such as concrete, stone and wood, which seamlessly blend into dense greenery and dramatic landscapes.
Sumner’s photographs capture sweeping vistas and intimate details, while floor plans and drawings offer technical insight. Architects such as Ludwig Godefroy and Mauricio Rocha appear throughout, showcasing the range and ethos of Mexican design today. Whether you’re dreaming of a remote getaway or want to explore the structural nuances of a dynamic architectural movement, Casa Mexicana is a visual journey into the heart of the nation’s built environment.
thamesandhudson.com
5.
‘Dakar, Métamorphoses d’une Capitale’, Senegal
All cities must change if they want to avoid becoming static mausoleums – but what’s at risk when that transformation happens too quickly or almost indiscriminately? Authors Carole Diop and Xavier Ricou are worried that part of their hometown, Dakar, is losing its architectural soul in the process of relentless modernisation. So they have put together a book called Dakar, Métamorphoses d’une Capitale. It’s half a portrait of the city, half a manifesto for sensitive preservation and wholly a case study for urban planning across Africa.
From its beginnings as a series of fishing villages inhabited by the Lebu people through to its official founding as a city in 1857, the colonial era and post-independence expansion, each of the Senegalese capital’s historical chapters is explored with illuminating photography and cartographic evidence that unearths traces of the past in the present. Published by Éditions de l’Aube, it’s an ambitious, impassioned and necessary work. It’s also a rare opportunity to admire pictures of Dakar’s modernist, neo-Sudanese and art deco treasures, as well as the masterpieces of asymmetrical parallelism that shaped its visual identity. All 450 buildings are neatly laid out in the book’s closing inventory, an impressive catalogue of a heritage under threat.
editionsdelaube.fr
West Coast cities are among the US’s most reliably Democratic bastions. Not a single Republican holds statewide office in California, Oregon or Washington, forming what political strategists call the “blue wall” on the Pacific. Understandably, then, it’s here that backlash against Elon Musk has been the most vociferous. Ever since the South African embraced Donald Trump and the Maga movement, and dismantled the federal bureaucracy via the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (Doge), his stock has plummeted in the eyes of West Coast denizens who once admired him.
The activist network #TeslaTakedown continues to boast weekly protests outside Tesla dealerships from Seattle to San Francisco, more than two months after Musk left government and returned to his business empire. Global Tesla sales saw their biggest-ever drop in the first quarter and dropped another 13.5% in the second quarter, a reversal of fortune that stung in the car brand’s most popular precincts. California accounts for the majority of the company’s sales nationwide and Washington state once boasted the highest per capita Tesla registrations.
Now, owners of the controversial electric car are quick to affix bumper stickers affirming that they purchased their Model S before the company’s owner made his political allegiances known. With a shocking 46 per cent of Tesla owners reporting acts of vandalism in one market research study, some drivers have even paid specialists to make their Musk-mobiles appear to be German-made Audis.
Los Angeles hosts more Tesla protests than any other city, which can make anti-Musk mania seem de rigueur in the City of Angels – except for a pocket of southern California.
In the small cities of El Segundo and Hawthorne, both part of Los Angeles County, there is a thriving community of engineers and scientists who dream of going to space. Their north star is SpaceX, Musk’s commercial spaceflight company, whose successful invention of a reusable rocket capable of ferrying satellites into orbit far cheaper than Nasa ever did, has birthed an entire industry.
While Musk announced last year that he was moving the company’s HQ to Texas over political spats with the California government, not everyone enamoured with exploring the solar system followed. From the beach to the mountains, the Golden State still holds plenty of appeal over Lone Star scrubland. The resulting community is a macho inverse of Silicon Valley, where building “hard tech” tangible objects – from drones to satellites to rocket ships – is prized and namby-pamby software is derided. And in Musk, whose first successful Falcon 9 rocket looms over the area like a neolithic monolith, these entrepreneurs who eschew bits and bytes in favour of nuts and bolts have a hero untarnished by any of his recent forays into national politics.
The starkest display of admiration I saw in Hawthorne (when reporting on the aerospace startup bringing sci-fi to life) came in the form of a Cybertruck, its proud owner displaying the license plate “BLD2MRS”. Colonising Mars, of course, being one of Musk’s extraterrestrial obsessions. While the Left Coast political mainstream brandishes protest placards comparing Musk to a Nazi, it’s worth noting that not everyone drawn to the Pacific’s salt air sings from the same hymn sheet.
A friend of mine who works in special effects once told me that Michael Jackson’s 45-degree “Smooth Criminal” lean was accomplished using a trick shoe into which a well-camouflaged peg on the stage floor would slot, anchoring the singer as he appeared to defy gravity. The fact that it’s a gimmick achieved through sleight of ankle doesn’t diminish its wonder, since so much of pop is pure magic and misdirection anyway. How authentic a song or performance feels largely depends on how well it sells a fantasy and how willing you are to buy into it. Johnny Cash never “shot a man in Reno just to watch him die,” but when he intones those words on “Folsom Prison Blues”, you allow yourself momentarily to believe that he did. The same goes for when Lana Del Rey steals the title line of an old Phil Spector-produced Crystals song, “He Hit Me (And It Felt Like a Kiss)”, and stashes it for you to find in the chorus of her 2014 single “Ultraviolence”. Despite its contraband provenance, the words still have power; they still jolt. You feel their sting because you believe her.
But could you believe a machine in the same way? In July an article by news website Techradar suggested that Velvet Sundown, a psych-rock band with more than a million monthly listeners on Spotify, was an AI-generated hoax. Its supposed members, pictured in publicity images as soulful hunks of various 1970s flavours, didn’t seem to exist beyond their music, which appeared to have been churned out by a generative music creation model such as Suno. After an initial flurry of panicked denials from an individual purporting to be the band’s PR rep (“We are REAL! Think next time before you erase real people”), Velvet Sundown’s Spotify bio was quietly updated to concede that its output was indeed a “synthetic music project” created “with the support of artificial intelligence”.
The response from (former) fans was predictably brutal – no one likes to be duped – and the media was no kinder. But the experience of listening to this digitally conceived approximation of the kind of retro, ersatz-Me-Generation nostalgia fodder that tends to be taken with utmost seriousness by legacy music magazines is a curious and weirdly thrilling trip. It’s like climbing into the back of someone’s pick-up truck expecting to hitch a ride to the mythical Laurel Canyon, only to be dropped off deep in the Uncanny Valley: a bit disappointing and disquieting, yes, but compelling too.
The music itself isn’t bad. Velvet Sundown songs such as “Dust on the Wind” end rather abruptly, as though the AI used to make them couldn’t quite grasp the point of a satisfying climax. The rote-Americana arrangements are serviceable, if not in the least inspired. The lyrics aren’t tin-eared enough to destroy a track entirely and line endings rhyme as neatly as an 11-year-old’s poetry homework (“Signals flashing in the trees/Broken oaths float on the breeze,” and so on). The vocals, meanwhile, are no more generic in style than what you’d expect to hear at a half-decent open-mic night. What’s interesting – and spooky – about all of this is its air of competence. There’s no greatness here but this perfectly passable music raises the question: what will this technology be capable of in years to come?
Watch Hollywood music biopics such as A Complete Unknown, James Mangold’s recent Bob Dylan movie, and you’ll be told that meaningful art is the product of individual insight and experience — that masterpieces are, in essence, fragments of real lives truthfully captured. It’s odd that such an archaic belief persists when it comes to discussions of pop, almost six decades after Roland Barthes’ essay “The Death of the Author” pointed out the folly of looking for a work’s ultimate meaning in the intentions of its creator. What matters is whether a song, painting, film or sculpture moves its audience, whose subjective appreciation of it is where real authenticity lies.
In this light, if AI one day becomes sophisticated enough to compose a song as good as, say, the Beach Boys’ “God Only Knows”, Dylan’s “Red River Shore” or Britney Spears’s “Toxic”, the fact that no human soul suffered to birth it should make little difference in how we respond to it. “Purple Rain” would still be “Purple Rain” if a robot, rather than Prince, had composed it. I like to think that AI won’t reach that point any time soon, if it ever does – it’s all too reminiscent of the “versificator” in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, a device that auto-generates “sentimental songs” to distract an oppressed people from their abjection. But consider how rudimentary the technology’s efforts at songwriting were just five years ago. The best that OpenAI could do in 2020 was a glitchy Frank Sinatra clone bawling, “It’s Christmas time! It’s hot-tub time!” AI won’t, I suspect, replace human artists but it will surely start competing with them in earnest.
There are, of course, difficult issues around how generative models are trained and the ownership of ideas fed into them. Tech companies aren’t known to play by the rules of copyright (or even of basic morality, frankly), and the livelihoods of many in the creative industries are now imperilled by this acceleration towards insta-art made by nerds with no real mastery of these media, simply keying in prompts. The fair remuneration of genuine artists is a legislative issue that lawmakers urgently need to tackle. The technology, meanwhile, is now a reality and, like all other innovations that have come along to simplify processes, will likely seem normal within a decade. Think of the development of modern multitrack recording in the mid-20th century, which was initially opposed by musicians’ unions fearful of its impact on session work for orchestras: something so essential to the recording process today was once considered dangerously disruptive too.
Humans will find ways to wring creativity out of AI, using it as a tool. And yet there’s something intrinsically depressing, even sinister, about the technology’s incursions into the sphere of artistry. To accept its rise unconditionally feels like a surrender to bozos who view art as little more than “content” – the mindset of insensible utilitarians uninterested in the possibility of true imaginative transcendence. In 1891, Oscar Wilde fantasised about a future society liberated and enriched by “the slavery of the machine”. He predicted that all of “the ugly, horrible, uninteresting work” that sustains civilisation would eventually be delegated to technology, freeing us to spend our lives making “beautiful things”. Who knew that our species would seek to delegate the latter too?
Read next: AI imitations could never replace the art of Studio Ghibli
Tim Weiner’s latest book, ‘The Mission: The CIA in the 21st Century’, is a history of the world’s foremost intelligence service, from September 11 to the present day. Here he tells Monocle about how the agency has changed since Donald Trump became president.
The collapse of the Soviet Union left the CIA bereft. How could it be a great intelligence service without a great enemy? Then, shortly after the turn of the century, the mission became clear: counterterrorism. The CIA was not set up to be a killing machine, run secret prisons or conduct interrogations but that is what it did in the name of counterterrorism. Terrorism swamped everything until roughly 2016, when Vladimir Putin monkey-wrenched the presidential election in favour of Donald Trump. After this, leaders of the Clandestine Service (basically, the spies) got together. Their top agent at the time, a man named Tomas Rakusan, whose roots are Czech and who was nine years old when Soviet tanks rolled into Prague in 1968, said, “Listen, the Russians just sabotaged our election. How do we make sure that this never happens again?”
People who had spent the previous 15 years targeting terrorists turned their talents on the Russians. They wrote a manifesto called “A Call to Arms” and their mission became penetrating the Kremlin. They succeeded in stealing Putin’s war plans for Ukraine. At the beginning of 2022, the US, armed with the CIA’s intelligence, tried to tell the world that Putin was about to launch a military invasion of Ukraine. And the world said, “Oh, yeah, really? Aren’t you the people who said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction?” Well, they were right. It didn’t stop the war but it certainly served as a unifying force to get Nato allied with the US in trying to fight the Russians.
The CIA has been essential to the survival of Ukraine ever since the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014. This mission is now in great danger because the US president dislikes Ukraine and is perfectly willing to see Russia try to destroy it. He disdains alliances such as Nato and has alienated most of America’s friends. To be blunt, Trump has gone to the other side. He is objectively an ally of Russia in this war and you can put a date on it: 24 February. That was when the US voted with Russia, Iran and North Korea against a UN resolution condemning the invasion of Ukraine on its third anniversary. This is quite a head-spinning event for the officers of the CIA – to have a president who is breaking alliances and embracing enemies. The CIA relies mightily on unity with foreign-intelligence services to get a complete picture of the world. It is not, by itself, a global agency.
Today the director of the CIA, John Ratcliffe, will tailor information to please the president, a president who doesn’t believe in intelligence. You have a secretary of state who recently said to forget about intelligence when it came to the success, or lack thereof, of the US attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities. Trump is firing people in the national security establishment who won’t kowtow to him. This is a very dangerous situation. He has deliberately weakened the structures of American intelligence and foreign policy at a time when the US is gaining a lot of enemies in the world.
Tim Weiner is a US reporter and a Pulitzer Prize-winning author. ‘The Mission: The CIA in the 21st Century’ is his sixth book. To read more on geopolitics and security, head to monocle.com or subscribe to Monocle today.
I’ve been plotting a Zürich to Lisbon road trip for the better part of six months. In its original form, it was going to be something of a delivery mission to transfer fragile objects from various lockers in my Swiss apartment to shelves and assorted surfaces in the Portuguese capital. It would be a three- to four-night journey with stops at various wineries and a night here and there with friends in and around Marseille. It was also going to be the first grand tour for the Toyota Land Cruiser and the plan was to turn it into a 10-day adventure.
A couple of months ago, however, it was decided that the diary wasn’t going to allow for such driving decadence and a new plan needed to be hatched. Do we skip the road trip altogether? Perhaps it’s better to let a gentle shipping company deal with the fragile objects? Or what about a one-way trip and basing one car in Lisbon for a stretch? After a bit more diary consultation and a conversation with the little Suzuki Jimny that’s been living a very comfortable life on Zürich’s Gold Coast, we landed on this past Saturday as the departure date for a three-day, two-night drive to Lisbon. Here’s a brief play-by-play peppered with a few observations:
Saturday 07.45
The plan was to be on the road at 06.30 but the most magical dinner the night before at Alex, across the lake, meant that the start wasn’t quite as sharp. Nevertheless, Zürich was in holiday mode so we were quickly on the highway. Destination: Geneva.
Mats played navigator and chief steward on the journey. As the Jimny is rather basic on tech, there was no need for a deejay. Radio would have to do and thanks to a bit of Chérie FM, France Inter and Los40, we did just fine.
France might be home to some of the world’s most admired retail brands and Spain to some of the world’s best chefs but you’d never know it based on the roadside hospitality offering. France and Spain have some serious work to do when it comes to polishing this part of their tourism infrastructure. There’s much to be learned from the Swiss, Austrians and Japanese in this territory. Toilet seats would also be a nice touch.
The Jimny’s speedometer shows the number 180 at the top end but the car is most comfortable at 110km/h or slower. At the last minute, we decided to cut the trip to one night and the most sensible (and perhaps most comfortable) stop was San Sebastián. We rebooked the Hotel Arbaso and, based on a Google estimate of 11 hours on the road, made plans for a lovely dinner around 21.00. In the end we dined very well but closer to 23.00; the total drive almost 14 hours.
Sunday 10.00
On Sunday morning we made a grocery, wine and coffee stop at Lukas Gourmet Shop in San Sebastián. If you’re not familiar, it’s worth a small detour. It’s just the right mix of the daily and more refined essentials that every neighbourhood needs. The extra boxes of wine helped steady the vehicle for a day on the road.
The Jimny is not the most aerodynamic vehicle in Suzuki’s line-up but it’s certainly cute to look at and under the right circumstances a treat to drive. Highways are another matter. Under windy conditions it’s essentially a cardboard box atop a skateboard and blows all over the place. Passing trucks and buses in 90km/h crosswinds near Burgos proved one of the trickier parts of the journey.
Who has Europe’s best highways and infrastructure? It must be the Basques. The region not only has exceptional roads and impressive tunnels, they’ve also done a decent job of keeping much of it graffiti-free, which is saying something in Europe these days.
Who has the worst highways? Salamanca. Shame on you. Absolutely dreadful.
After a 10-hour drive we reached Lisbon last Sunday at around 20.00. The Jimny is now adjusting to a slightly different pace from Zürich and enjoyed its first jaunt down to the beach. Soon we’ll do a spin around some neighbourhoods I’ve been wanting to scout. Beep-beep!
Travelling to Zürich or Lisbon? For everything that you need to know and everywhere that you need to go, consult our City Guides.
Unlike Paris or Milan, Seoul doesn’t empty out come August. Despite the red line on the thermometer camping out in the mid-thirties and air conditioners working as hard as office staff, many Seoulites prefer to stay put. And yet South Korea’s islands offer an opportunity to slow down and discover – one slow ferry ride at a time – a more intimate side of a country that is hurtling towards the future at dizzying speed. Island-hopping is one of my favourite ways to travel on the peninsula of more than 3,000 islands. Sure, “only” 473 of them are inhabited but that’s still a generous playing field for summer expeditions and a much-needed break from the cars and karaoke bars of Seoul.
I have spent most of my adult life in and around the South Korean capital, where a staggering half of our 51 million people live and the majority of tourists visit. This year is predicted to break records for the number of international arrivals but most will stay in Seoul or join the domestic crowds flying to Jeju Island – the busiest passenger air route in the world. Jeju is South Korea’s biggest and best-known island: an oval-shaped volcanic rock in the middle of the sea passage that separates the Korean peninsula from Japan’s Kyushu Island. Yes, the beaches and palm trees belong on a postcard and there are some remarkable places to stay and become immersed in island life (Stayfolio is a great hotel designed by Z-Labs if you’re on the lookout). But even Jeju, home to fewer than 700,000 full-time residents, feels crowded. So, these days, when I need a break from the mainland and some blissful silence – I go elsewhere.
Gwanmaedo was my first time falling in love with one of those lesser-known islets. This tiny island of around 200 people, located in the southwestern tip of the peninsula, is a microcosm of South Korea’s shrinking population. The country has the lowest birthrate in the world and this is especially felt in rural communities and on islands such as Gwanmaedo, which had more than 1,000 residents in the 1980s. When I first visited many summers ago, I went camping with friends, swimming at empty beaches and hiking on trails, offering spectacular vistas out to sea. These remote islands are not known for famous tourist sites or social-media scenery but that is part of the allure. Destination restaurants might be thin on the ground but the village inn will always have fresh seafood. Ulleungdo is a three-hour ferry from Gangneung, on the eastern side of South Korea, and its seafood has become a delicacy. The island’s squid – whether sashimi or stir-fried – attracts travellers from far and wide.
Remember, for all the benefits of avoiding the crowd, pack sensibly and be prepared for the realities of small-island life. English speakers will be as hard to find as a supermarket. Far from the frontier of the future in Seoul, the charm of South Korea’s islands is that they force you to recalibrate. Whether it’s for the weekend or a longer escape, there’s something profoundly hopeful in knowing that places such as Gwanmaedo and Ulleungdo still exist: beautiful, faraway and waiting to be explored – a reminder that sometimes the best journeys are the ones that take you back in time.
