The Week: Iran, IPO Mania, and the New American Dream

The U.S. is losing its strategic edge not due to weakness, but because its adversaries—Russia, Iran, China, and North Korea—have found a shared identity in resisting the liberal world order. Scott Galloway, joined by foreign policy experts Ann Applebaum and Fiona Hill, reveals how Iran’s war strategy has been amplified by Trump’s erratic diplomacy, turning him into a vulnerable negotiator who reveals his hand in real time. Meanwhile, Ukraine has transformed from a defense-dependent nation into a technological powerhouse, using millions of drones to dominate the battlefield and shift the war’s momentum. On Wall Street, a trillion-dollar flood of new stock is imminent—spurred by SpaceX’s record-breaking IPO and a wave of AI-driven public offerings—raising alarms about a coming market correction. Galloway warns that the obsession with optimization, from fitness metrics to career tracking, is eroding life’s meaning: young people are abandoning home ownership not from laziness, but because the dream is unattainable, and in doing so, they’re also delaying family formation. The real tragedy? We’ve optimized for everything except what truly matters—presence, love, and imperfect connection.