Thursday, August 13, 2026

THURSDAY — LEADERSHIP, HISTORY & POWER

“Because unlike the Kremlin, night lights don’t lie.”

— Frank Jacobs

A Cold War weather satellite program built to track cloud cover turned out to be an accidental auditor of national economies. Sweden’s intelligence services used nighttime luminosity to show Russia’s economy shrank 8% between 2020 and 2024 while the Kremlin claimed 13% growth, and one landmark study found autocracies pad GDP figures by 15 to 30% relative to what their light emissions support. Every organization broadcasts something it never filed. What might yours say if someone measured what you do rather than what you report? To learn more, Check out the article How Earth’s night lights became our most honest economist.

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Stay safe. Stay healthy. Be strong. Lead well.

Chad