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Welcome to the third edition of the Sunday Revue of the FIELDS NOTES newsletter.

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24 – the number of industrial projects for which the Department of Energy canceled $3 billion in funding this week, in a move nonpartisan analysts said harmed U.S. competitiveness. Department of Energy

7 – the number of other clean-energy projects from which the Energy Department plans to yank back loans. Semafor

4.6 million – the total pounds of U3O8, or triuranium octoxide, the uranium compound for the yellowcake that becomes enriched uranium fuel for reactors estimated to be available at a mining project the Department of the Interior just fast tracked as part of the Trump administration’s efforts to bring back the domestic nuclear supply chain. World Nuclear News

52 – the percentage by which reactor developer NuScale Power’s stock price jumped after Trump’s executive orders last week on nuclear power, the biggest bump out of any publicly traded reactor companies. Ignition

$40 million – the price industrial giant Glencore bid for the bankrupt battery recycling startup Li-Cycle’s assets. Canary Media

2.7 – the percentage by which the global economy may grow on average between now and 2030 if the Trump administration brokers a truce in its worldwide trade war. Inside Climate News

3 – the number of anti-renewables bills that died in the Texas legislature this week after the House failed to schedule votes before the end of the session, despite all three passing in the Senate. The Hill

52 million – the number of trips passengers took on bullet trains between Beijing and Shanghai as Chinese travelers abandon domestic flights in favor of rail. South China Morning Post

On the need for an American-led Asian alliance to counter China, former Biden administration official Ely Ratner in Foreign Affairs:

With that in mind, the United States should help its allies prepare for China’s efforts to scuttle a collective defense arrangement in Asia. None of this will be easy. But neither was the great progress that Washington’s allies have already made, not only in acknowledging the threat from China but also in taking unprecedented steps to invest in their own militaries, build ties with their neighbors, and double down on their alliances with the United States. In fact, in recent years, Australia, Japan, and the Philippines have already made moves on defense and security matters that were previously deemed implausible. The conditions are now set for strong leadership to transform a collective defense pact in Asia from something once unimaginable into a defining feature of the region’s future peace and prosperity.

On the growing competition between the old petro states and the emerging electro states, Tatiana Mitrova and Anne-Sophie Corbeau in The National Interest:

The PetroStates Alliance is inherently unstable. While the United States, Russia, and Saudi Arabia may find tactical alignment, their strategic interests diverge—in oil pricing, political systems, and regional goals. ElectroStates face their own tensions, including trade frictions between China and the EU and intensifying competition for clean tech leadership—both of which reflect deeper geopolitical and economic rivalries. What lies ahead is not a binary clash but a volatile contest between legacy energy powers and new clean energy hegemonies. PetroStates may cling to pricing power and fossil revenues, but ElectroStates are capturing the commanding heights of industrial technology and green influence. Both camps are internally fractured, but it is the scale, speed, and state coordination—especially in China—that may ultimately determine the balance of power in the post-hydrocarbon global order.

On whether the so-called Abundance Agenda is a myth or a utopia, John Ganz in Unpopular Front:

“It’s pretty clear Abundance is a utopia. But a myth is something else: it’s a representation in images of a political movement’s inner convictions, “they are not descriptions of things but expressions of a will to act.” They embody a struggle. Very often, they are pessimistic rather than optimistic, and this pessimism is bracing; It communicates a whole worldview in a compelling story. Trumpism contains many myths, including the idea of the stolen election, which I contend is less a statement of fact than an imaginative projection of a shared sense of dispossession. Populism is mythic: it creates a world of heroic people and villainous elites, and a vision of a cataclysmic showdown between the two. People want a little more myth, struggles, enemies, battles, triumphs, etc. Not zoning restrictions. Now, to be fair to the Abundists, they will say it’s more a policy idea than a conception of politics. Politics is poetry, and governing is prose, as the old saw goes. No one has written the Democratic poetry of our era yet.

• Federal authorities cracked down on an illegal Chinese fishing vessel whose squid hauls were sold in American groceries and served as calamari at U.S. military bases, public schools, prisons and the cafeteria in Congress. The Outlaw Ocean Project

• Years after the U.S. abandoned its thorium energy efforts, China is making major breakthroughs. MIT Technology Review

• Finland’s industrial giant Wärtsilä is betting on ethanol as a power source in Brazil. Reuters

• U.S. microreactor developer Oklo, whose chief executive appeared alongside Trump last week at the signing of the president’s executive orders on nuclear energy, signed a landmark deal with Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power, one of the world leaders in atomic power plant construction, to build its reactors. Oklo

• Kazakhstan, which long eschewed nuclear power despite providing a huge portion of the world’s uranium supply, is now looking to build its first nuclear plant – and just signed a deal with China to work together. Kazinform International News Agency

• In a rare address before the Canadian parliament, King Charles said the country will position itself to become an energy “superpower” in the face of U.S. threats to its sovereignty. E&E News

• Thin plastic films like those used to desalinate water could refine oil more cheaply and with less pollution, new research has found. Science

• Pakistan, already prone to blackouts, will set aside 2,000 in excess power for data centers. Barron’s

An hour-long SLICE History documentary by director Klaus Kastenholz on the rise and fall of Francisco Franco’s dictatorship.

A thorough update and analysis on whether Al-Shabaab will storm Mogadishu the way Syrian Islamists took over Damascus and the Taliban seized Kabul from Warfronts.

A long, combative conversation between comedian Adam Friedland and disgraced New York politician Anthony Weiner

• “Lilmore,” a grinding house song by Haus Geek

• “Automotivo Bayside,” a thumping house beat by Brazilian producers DJ NK3 and MC AIKA

• “Caux,” a deep-house banger by one of my favorite DJs, the Lisbon-based Vano 1337

• “Let’s Straighten It Out,” the funky 1978 blues hit by O.V. Wright

Signing off from a crisp Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, where my friend Ivan and I spent the afternoon sharing qvevri wine and khachapuri at Ubani, then capped off the meal with a pot of Yemeni Jubani coffee at the new Qahwah House that opened on 86th Street, followed by a quick shopping visit to the Turkish Uncle Steve’s discount market for organic strawberries that were remarkably $2.99 per carton. Southern Brooklyn lifestyle at its best.