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Atlas Limits Research Desk
Atlas Limits’ editorial and analytical desk.
162 published articlesPublished articles
Local AI: The Data Center Now Fits on a Desk
For years, the cloud gave artificial intelligence an almost self-evident geography. The most powerful models lived in data centers, behind clusters of GPUs, high-bandwidth networks and levels of investment that only a limited number of actors could sustain. The personal computer received the result: an interface, a few seconds of waiting and an answer calculated somewhere else. That division has not disappeared. But an experiment conducted this week on a Mac Studio suggests that it is becoming less clear-cut than it was even recently.
September 11: The World Twenty-Five Years Later
On September 11, 2001, nineteen men hijacked four passenger aircraft in the United States. Two struck the towers of the World Trade Center in New York, a third hit the Pentagon, and the fourth crashed in Pennsylvania after passengers fought back.
France: When the Exception Becomes the Norm
For several years, the French economy has moved from one crisis to another while giving the impression that it was better at resisting shocks than generating growth.
Poland: The East Gains Weight
For a long time, Europe looked at itself from the West. Its economic centre lay somewhere between the Rhine Valley, the Benelux countries and northern Italy; its political centre oscillated between Paris, Bonn and later Berlin and Brussels; its security, meanwhile, rested largely on a power located across the Atlantic.
Prop Firms: The Hidden Economics of Funded Trading
One hundred thousand dollars for a few hundred. The proposition almost sounds too simple. A trader with limited capital pays for an evaluation, follows a set of risk rules, reaches a performance target and, if successful, gains access to what is presented as a “funded” account. Profits can then be shared, sometimes with the trader retaining a very large portion.
Algeria–UAE: The Break Between Two Shores
Sometimes a diplomatic rupture merely acknowledges a separation that has already taken place. On September 10, 2026, Algeria announced that it was severing diplomatic relations with the United Arab Emirates. According to Algerian state television, Algiers considered that it had “
Health: The Body Becomes Technological
For thousands of years, medicine worked with what the body was willing to reveal.
North Korea: Nuclear Power Changes Scale
For a long time, North Korea’s nuclear programme could be reduced to a handful of names.
USA–Canada: The Commercial Border Is Closing
For decades, the border between the United States and Canada was less an economic divide than a seam.
iPhone: The World in Your Pocket
On January 9, 2007, Steve Jobs walked onto the Macworld stage in San Francisco with a peculiar way of introducing what was about to come. Apple, he explained, was unveiling three products: a widescreen iPod with touch controls, a mobile phone, and an Internet communications device. Then he repeated himself. An iPod. A phone. The Internet. These were not three separate devices. They were one.
AI Takes Position in Orbit
From Abu Dhabi to the ecosystem built by Elon Musk, artificial intelligence is beginning to move beyond terrestrial data centers and into orbit. Behind intelligent satellites and orbital computing projects, a new layer of global infrastructure is taking shape, where sovereign capital, launch systems, constellations, networks and AI models converge.
Amazon: the empire behind the storefront
There is still something strangely misleading about the name Amazon. For hundreds of millions of consumers, it primarily means a website where they can order a book, a phone, a coffee machine, or almost anything else that can fit inside a cardboard box. That image is not wrong. It has simply become profoundly incomplete.