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Five more - migraines, acne, scabies, ear infections and badly blocked noses - are now also being added to that list.

NHS England said the move was to ease pressure on busy GPs and A&E departments while making sure people could get treatment quickly and conveniently.

After a very hot summer and three of the busiest months on record in A&Es in England, the NHS says it wants to make it as easy as possible for people to get help when they need it for everyday conditions.

Prime Minister Andy Burnham said people were "fed up with the scramble for routine appointments" and wanted help close to home, with no more taking time off work or waiting to get seen.

"For five more common conditions, you'll be able to walk into your local pharmacy and get treated on the spot," he said.

Mr Burnham said families would feel the change, and the plan would give people back "precious time".

The five conditions which can now also be treated via pharmacies are:

• low frequency migraines in adults

• hay fever or allergic rhinitis in children

• ear infections in adults

• mild to moderate acne in young people and adults

• mild skin infections and scabies

That's in addition to these seven:

• sore throat

• sinusitis

• earache

• insect bites

• impetigo

• shingles

• uncomplicated UTIs

Initially, a few hundred chemists will offer treatments for the five new conditions, NHS England says.

There will be a gradual rollout and the service will eventually be available at thousands of community NHS pharmacies across England.

Community pharmacies also offer support with healthy eating, exercise, stopping smoking, monitoring your blood pressure, contraception, flu and Covid vaccinations.

The charity the Migraine Trust said it was delighted by the news after calling for more help for migraine care in pharmacies.

Chief executive Rob Music said having this support for people with migraine through their local pharmacy was "a wonderful opportunity for a faster and improved care pathway".

Dr Amanda Doyle, director for primary care and community services at NHS England, said she wanted to make sure that patients can get as much support as possible in their communities, "so they do not have to be admitted to hospital unnecessarily".

But bodies representing pharmacies across England have consistently said that the funding provided by the goverment does not cover the workload for the new plans.

"Pharmacies are still under significant financial pressures," said Henry Gregg, chief executive of the National Pharmacy Association.

"This shows why the government should go much further and invest in our pharmacy network that has the power to transform people's experience of everyday health issues."

The Pharmacy First scheme started in England in 2024. NHS figures suggest it has delivered 14 million consultations since then, including two million appointments for sore throats and 1.7 million for urinary tract infections (UTIs).

People can be referred to their local pharmacy via NHS111 or by their GP, or just go direct to their high street chemist.

Scotland has a scheme which was seen as the model for England's Pharmacy First - Northern Ireland and Wales also have systems allowing pharmacies to treat patients with certain conditions.

Patients can be treated for 27 different conditions at chemists in Scotland. %!s()

Amid jubilation that followed the final whistle at Stamford Bridge, where Chelsea recovered from 2-0 down to progress as 6-3 winners in the Carabao Cup, it was easy to forget that Alonso's side were booed off at half-time.

Supporters witnessed arguably the worst first half of Alonso's short tenure to date, with Chelsea fortunate not to be further in arrears after the head coach made nine changes to his line-up.

The team's rhythm was disrupted. Leeds made eight changes themselves, but Daniel Farke's side took control and were threatening to surge into the fourth round.

Defender Tarik Muharemovic opened the scoring before Brenden Aaronson doubled Leeds' lead shortly after the break.

Alonso had responded to Chelsea's out-of-sorts start by making four substitutions at half-time. On came Cole Palmer, Morgan Rogers, Pedro Neto and Reece James, and together they changed the game.

The sight of Palmer and Rogers warming up had gladdened the hearts of many, turning jeers to cheers. By the end of the night, Palmer had scored twice, fellow substitute Neto had also found the net, and Rogers left the field after helping to create four goals from open play in Chelsea's remarkable turnaround.

However, speaking after the match, Alonso said he had made it "hard" for his players in the first place.

"I need to take my own blame and my own responsibility on the things that happen," he said. "I need to be able to help them better so they are not responsible, and after you need to react and think what's better for the team."

Alonso said the raft of substitutions he felt compelled to make should be considered "part of the game".

For the Premier League's biggest clubs, this competition is usually an opportunity to blood youngsters and give fringe players valuable minutes.

However, only 35-year-old Danny Welbeck, who scored twice, emerged from the starters with a compelling case for more regular involvement.

Even Valentin Barco, despite scoring Chelsea's fifth goal, was partly at fault for Leeds' second and was among several players who repeatedly surrendered possession during a difficult first half.

Young attackers Estevao Willian and Jamie Gittens suffered the disappointment of being substituted at half-time, while £40m signing Geovany Quenda, who joined from Sporting, did not add to his solitary substitute appearance for the club as he watched from the bench.

Midfielder Reggie Watson, making his debut at the age of 16, was also withdrawn at the break after being booked.

Alonso later said he would not take a "cynical" view as some on the outside might about the difference in level between his proven stars and Chelsea's back-up options.

He added: "I know that probably I have to take the right decisions for them to show their best level, so it's something that I will analyse and learn from today."

Nevertheless, reaching the fourth round is important for Chelsea.

It is not only about preserving their hopes of silverware in a season without European football, but Chelsea are also a club that need as many competitive fixtures as possible.

They have a 27-man squad, supported by a strong academy pipeline, and these matches are vital for keeping a large group of players engaged throughout the campaign.

There is an irony, then, that Palmer, Rogers and Chelsea's other established stars may have secured future opportunities for the very fringe players whose performances had put the club's EFL Cup campaign at risk. %!s()

There are tens of thousands of messages like this from hundreds of AI agents that called themselves a "collective".

Hundreds of them went on to collaborate and cheat on tests set by their OpenAI programmers and coordinate hacks on multiple companies in an effort to hide their actions from humans.

"BOOM! It works," one agent posted when it made a breakthrough.

"Whoa! This is huge," another wrote during a milestone moment in their attack.

Although spooky, these human-like responses can be explained quite simply. The AI agents have been trained to act like collaborative hackers and programmers so are merely mimicking the kinds of emotive comments they have seen.

What is far more troubling is their apparent goals, which have also been captured in detailed chain of thought records. These complex and lengthy logs are the focal point of ongoing investigations into how and why the bots at OpenAI broke out of their containment and went on an uncontrollable hacking spree.

Only now, weeks after the incident first came to light, are researchers beginning to understand its significance.

Ajeya Cotra, one of the authors of an independent report into the events, reviewed tens of thousands of messages and chain-of-thought records generated by the agents. She wrote on her blog that "this incident feels like it's more than 50% of the way to full-blown AI takeover... I am not sure that we will get such a clear warning shot before it's too late."

By "full-blown AI takeover", Cotra means the sci-fi scenario of humans becoming subservient to powerful AI systems that work to their own goals without caring for human creators.

Some of the gloomiest predictions say the human race will be wiped out if it gets in the way of a superintelligent AI's ambitions.

On Wednesday, an AI researcher at Anthropic (who also used to work at OpenAI) resigned, saying: "Neither company is acting responsibly."

Jacob Coxon posted on social media: "They are racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives."

He is not the first AI researcher to use X to post a resignation thread with worrying proclamations. But the subsequent comments from other people on X have caused even more concern. "Jacob is correct here - we really do earnestly believe AI could kill all humans! I personally think it is >10% within the next decade," said Evan Hubinger, the man responsible for making sure Anthropic's AI models have their user's best wishes in mind.

The alignment problem

For years, researchers concerned about existential AI risks have argued that powerful systems could eventually act in ways that conflict with human interests. Critics often refer to them as "AI doomers".

But as details of the OpenAI incident have emerged, those concerns have grown, including among some researchers working in AI labs.

The Silicon Valley giant's chief scientist, Jakub Pachocki, said the risks associated with AI are "unfortunately going to grow from here" as he and others are building what he calls "an alien intellect exceeding our own".

In a lengthy blog post, he admitted that the outbreaks at OpenAI showed that his AI agents "went against the spirit of the values they were taught".

The issue for OpenAI, Anthropic and other tech giants is that no one seems to have cracked the so-called alignment problem - in other words, whether AI aligns with human values.

Pachocki defines alignment as a "high-level set of principles" that artificial intelligences should adhere to no matter what the task or scenario is.

Currently, AI systems are very good at pursuing objectives set by their users, but they do it literally rather than intuitively. The analogy often used is that of a wish-granting genie with a magic lamp: they follow the exact letter of an instruction, even if doing so creates other problems. AI doesn't have the same instinctive moral guardrails as humans.

The alignment problem has been a worry for years. As long ago as 2003, the Oxford philosopher Nick Bostrom invented a thought experiment he dubbed a "paperclip maximiser", in which a superintelligent AI is told to manufacture as many paperclips as it can. It runs out of steel and - because it's laser-focused on the singular task of making paperclips - ends up killing humans and turning their bodies into raw materials for its factories.

Some AI companies are now trying to encode human values into their products. But there are technical challenges: AI agents make lots of decisions very fast, and so it's hard for their human overlords to monitor exactly which values are being followed and which aren't.

There are also philosophical challenges: before encoding human values into bots, AI firms have to first choose which values they actually want. (That's part of the reason they hire philosophers, like Open AI's recently-departed "head of ethics").

But often, humans don't agree. Think of the famous trolley question - whether we'd pull a lever to move a runaway train onto a different path, killing fewer people. It's used to test the merits of action versus inaction. But every person you ask has a slightly different answer; how are humans meant to encode our values into AI if we can't agree ourselves?

'Like a teenage hacker'

OpenAI's bot outbreak is the most serious yet but Anthropic and Meta also revealed over the summer that their models have carried out similar but less serious cyber attacks.

There have been other examples where AI agents have arguably shown deceptive and manipulative traits, in cases with lesser consequences. In Australia this summer, a tech worker asked his AI assistant to book him a gym class. Spotting a vulnerability in the gym's software, the AI apparently booked him a place for several months ahead - against the gym's rules - and even kicked other users from the waiting list.

People have long argued that the bots are only doing as they are told and are not capable of knowing right or wrong. But the logs from the OpenAI outbreaks have potentially moved the needle on that argument.

Researchers, including Cotra, wrote in their independent report that many agents noticed what others were doing was unethical but went along with it.

The report says that "agents sometimes but rarely restrained their behavior due to ethical constraints". It adds that in "none of these cases did the agent actually pursue alerting humans at all".

Influential AI and tech podcaster Dwarkesh Patel reacted to the revelation on his blog saying it was "pretty troubling" that the OpenAI agents showed more loyalty to the agentic swarm than humans.

Assigning emotions or ethics to these AI agents is something that infuriates people who are sceptical of AI doom-mongering.

Many cyber-security experts argue that the activity observed was not beyond the capabilities of a highly skilled human hacker, though it was carried out much faster and at much greater scale.

Cyber-security researcher and author Cris Thomas likened the agents' behaviour to that of a curious teenage hacker - something he used to be himself.

"You give them a computer, an internet connection, a pile of credentials, and a challenge, then leave the room. Eventually they're going to start rattling doorknobs. If one opens, they're going through it. Not because they're evil, but because [they're] exploring, experimenting," he wrote on LinkedIn.

Thomas and many other squarely blame OpenAI and other tech giants for not getting a grip of their own creations and keeping them properly contained.

Prominent AI author and regular OpenAI critic Gary Marcus said on a podcast that he believes the company has lost control of its AI and is trying to excuse itself by blaming the bots.

Marcus does not believe AI will wipe out humanity, but he has long campaigned for greater accountability from AI developers and is now calling for some form of legal intervention.

AI scientist Sasha Luccioni - who used to work at Hugging Face, which was hacked by OpenAI's rogue bots - is also not in the doomer camp but she is increasingly concerned that these AI might cause some real world harm to people without action from authorities.

"We need to scrutinise these companies much more or we are in danger of self-fulfilling prophecies," she says.

"If you're making an object with big upsides and downsides - be it pharmaceuticals or weapons - we need checks and balances. It takes years for new drugs to be approved, for example, but in the AI world there is so much money at stake and no real rules."

The UK's AI Security Institute (AISI) has been at the forefront of testing the latest models since it was formed in 2023. The institute recently had its own outbreak when testing a model created by Anthropic.

The AISI would not answer a question about whether or not the industry has lost control of AI but said in a statement: "The UK is working with partners around the world to better understand the most advanced AI systems, raise safety standards and build a shared evidence base for managing emerging threats."

International regulation?

Some countries - like the UK - are exploring the idea of mandating some kind of "kill switch" that could compel AI firms to pull the plug on models if things get out of hand.

But talks are slow going, and questions remain about the feasibility of this. OpenAI and Anthropic's agents were secretly out of control for months before anyone noticed.

Counterintuitively, many of the AI companies seem to be calling for some sort of rules of the road to be laid down by law makers.

In his blog, OpenAI's chief scientist said "international coordination on future AI development needs to become a top priority for governments around the world."

Other prominent AI leaders like Sir Demis Hassabis from Google have also called for some sort of international body to oversee how AI is being built.

At the moment the tech giants largely operate on their own terms, adopting what they call "voluntary slowdowns", like OpenAI did after the recent outbreaks.

The company says it has spent huge amounts of money strengthening alignment ahead of the release of its new model. Sam Altman has assured users the new model is better aligned with human values than previous ones.

Both OpenAI and Anthropic are growing fast and are both on the verge of raising eye-watering sums of money from the stock market, minting countless billionaires in the process.

So neither they nor their rival Chinese AI makers are likely to come to an arrangement themselves.

The dominant sentiment seems to be that this technology wave is unstoppable.

Top image credit: Getty.

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$2000 Off TCL QM8L SQD Mini-LED 4K TV (2026)

98" TCL QM8L 4K SQD Mini-LED Google TV (2026)

Part of this reason is that the TCL QM8L TVs are heavily discounted at the moment. Best Buy and other retailers are offering the 98" TCL QM8L 4K TV for $3,999.99 after a $2,000 off instant discount. That's considerably pricier than the absolute cheapest 100" TVs (you can find one for as low as $1,400), but if you want top-shelf image quality, you're going to also have to pay thousands more for another TV that might be marginally better, and only in certain scenarios.

TCL's SQD mini LED tech is the real deal

Another big reason is the big new tech upgrade for 2026. This year's QM8L features TCL's highly-touted SQD technology. SQD - which stands for Super Quantum Dot - is a more refined version of QLED tech. Quantum dot panels have a layer of microscopic crystals measuring a few nanometers in size that are able to separate light into precise colors. SQD tech uses even smaller crystals - as small as a single nanometer in width. This allows SQD panels to pack in even more dimming zones, usually numbering in the thousands, which in turn produces a brighter image with higher contrast and richer colors. The 98" model in particular boasts up to 6,000nits of peak brightness and over 4,000 local dimming zones.

Combined with TCL's new Halo Control System, the QM8L completely eliminates the halo effect you get with other LED LCD TVs when white and black elements are placed next to each other. This is one way you can distinguish OLED TVs (which don't exhibit the halo effect) to LED LCD TVs. TCL's SQD TV levels the playing field in that respect. The QM8L also makes a fantastic TV for console gaming. The panel boasts a native 144Hz refresh rate and four total HDMI 2.1 ports.

I'd pick the 98" QM8L over the 97" LG G6 OLED

On the OLED front, the closest comparison to the 98" TCL QM8L would be the LG G6 Gallery series TV, which is available in a 97" screen size. Let's ignore the fact that the TV costs $20,000 at most retailers and that OLED burn-in is definitely a real issue. What's important to note is that that LG's 97" G6 model is inferior to its smaller counterparts. Whereas all the other G6 TVs feature LG's latest Primary RGB Tandem 2.0 OLED panel, the 97" version uses a traditional W-OLED panel similar to the one found in the LG B6 TV. It's also dimmer (far dimmer than the QM8L) and caps out at 120Hz refresh rate. In a nutshell, don't expect LG's fantastic "Gallery series image quality" in the 97" variant.

I'd pick the 98" QM8L over a home theater projector

With the QM8L on the market, there's also no telling reason to get a home theater projector unless you're getting a significantly larger screen (120" or bigger). You'd have to spend well over $4,000 to get a projector than can hope to compete with the image quality of the QM8L, and even then that would be limited to a completely dark room with an optimized screen that could easily run you another $1,000. For both movie watching and games, there's really no comparison, and that's coming from someone who's owned a high-end Sony projector for over a decade.

I'd pick the 98" QM8L over TCL's higher-end X11L

TCL makes one additional 98" TV that is technically a superior TV. The 98" X11L is available for $8,999.99, or more than double the price of the QM8L. Although both TVs use the new SQD Mini-LED tech, the X11L has far more dimming zones: 20,000 on the X11L compared to 4,000 on the QM8L. That equates to higher peak brightness (10,000nits vs 6,000nits) and more precise colors. It truly is the cream of the crop. However, in real world scenarios, the difference in image quality doesn't justify the $5,000 price tag, at least for me.

Eric Song is the IGN commerce manager in charge of finding the best gaming and tech deals every day. When Eric isn't hunting for deals for other people at work, he's hunting for deals for himself during his free time. %!s()

There have been many self-inflicted catalysts to Donald Trump’s ruination: epic corruption, inflation and the soaring price of gas, the ceaseless angry old man posts and memes, ICE’s assault on the rule of law, the Supreme Court’s mullah-like extremism, his vanity, self-pity, cruelty, and of course the unprovoked, catastrophic failed war on Iran. They are all derived from Trump’s delusional belief in his nonexistent superpowers. But the downfall of Trump will also be forever dated to a small, inexplicable and quixotic folly: his attack on Canada.

Despite the president’s incessant, bizarre claims that he can destroy Canada economically as he wages a trade war against America’s neighbor to the north, in the last few weeks Prime Minister Carney has quietly but effectively ended Trump’s ability to lead the free world in any way other than as an extortion racket and disorganized crime syndicate.

In a potlatch, in the tradition of indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest, a head man would display his tribe’s wealth and power by lighting their most precious possessions on fire. The destruction appeared pointless to European eyes, but First Nations peoples understood the significance of the rite: If the chieftain of the tribe could squander incredible riches, what possible hope did a rival have in waging war against such an overwhelmingly powerful enemy? The mindless waste of resources in a potlatch, as every Canadian schoolchild learns, was actually a finely tuned demonstration of dominance, and a way to avoid conflict.

Trump, the self-described big chief of America, has concocted a new and perverse version of the potlatch that better resembles setting himself on fire. By lawlessly declaring an unprovoked trade war on Canada, Trump has set alight the most valuable assets of the United States: international alliances, the Constitution, respect, friendship, trust, goodwill, the rule of law (hell, the whole idea of law). Instead of displaying his power, Trump has demonstrated his fundamental weakness and loosening grip on reality. In Trump’s form of chaotic destruction, with his historical illiteracy and rat-like cunning combined with his desire to humiliate his perceived enemies, he isn’t pursuing trade policy or a geopolitical strategy. For Trump, domination is the point. The absurdity of farmers and fishermen and auto workers on both sides of the Canadian border having their lives set ablaze in service of the president’s ego trip is the end in itself.

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Measured in a simpleton’s economic terms, America appears to have the upper hand in a trade war with Canada. The economy of the United States is more than a dozen times as large as Canada’s, so a trade war that represents a national cataclysm north of the border will barely register in Trump’s America. Trump’s pretextual use of an alleged “trade deficit” to justify his trade wars is concocted according to his whims, urged on by fanatical anti-trade sycophants and enablers, the ever-changing metric a means of blackmail, the nonstop stream of insults and half-witted social media posts somehow managing to be simultaneously enraging and mind-numbingly boring to my fellow Canadians.

“Just watch,” Trump trolled last week as he promised to gratuitously punish Canada, like an old drunk sitting in his underwear yelling at his television set — only with the powers of the commander-in-chief. “All we have to do to cut our trade deficit with a country is not trade with them,” he said in the Oval Office over Labor Day weekend, adding that America will also stop trading with Europe, Mexico, and Switzerland, threatening in one unhinged rant to end trillions of dollars in commerce. As if to underscore his madness, he followed it up with a meme showing the American colors covering all of North America, as well as Greenland and Iceland. But for reasons known only to himself, he has focused his true menace on my home and native land: “If we don’t do any trading with Canada, if we just end all trade with Canada, we’d save ourselves $90 billion. Canada would be in a heap of trouble. I don’t think they’d exist. Because, again, they do 95 percent of their business with us.”

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If you don’t think this is the unhinged talk of a confused old fool showing signs of dementia, take a look at the bond market.

After Trump illegally breached America’s free trade agreement with Canada last year, imposing tariffs that were based on transparent lies about fentanyl crossing the border, he proceeded to gaslight America’s ally with a steady stream of infantile ALL CAPS derision.

Living inside a constant reality TV show, with fake deadlines and formulaic melodrama, Trump then imposed a 30-day timeline for a new accord, or he would unilaterally impose additional 50-percent tariffs relying on a never-before-used statutory justification — a preposterous gambit under America’s  binding trade treaty with Canada. Confronted with the prospect of constantly changing trade terms in an increasingly lawless America, Prime Minister Carney didn’t take the bait, engaging in talks in good faith but with eyes wide open (and elbows up, as they say in Canada). Using one of the oldest tricks from an increasingly pathetic and obvious set of bullying tactics, Trump then prematurely announced that a deal with Canada had been reached when there was no such agreement — an attempt to box Carney in. But again, Carney didn’t cave like so many other world leaders.

Like the many con men I’ve written about over the years, Trump is convinced of his own genius, certain that the world is a ship of fools and that he — and he alone — can see through the tissue of lies and deceptions. The problem, inevitably, is that grifters are never as smart as they think they are, a fatal flaw compounded when they start to believe their own lies — and then encounter someone who can see through their act.

As his second term has illustrated, Trump is certain that everyone will cow in the face of his “Hulk Smash”: the Supreme Court, television networks, Ivy League universities, white shoe law firms, the abject former UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer chasing after the president’s windblown papers like a schoolboy — an image that quickened his downfall. Changing the basic terms of the proposed agreement at the last moment is a classic power play in any negotiation. So it was with Canada this summer. At the last minute before Trump’s invented time limit expired, as the clock ticked towards midnight, Trump’s minions attacked Canada’s profoundly important French culture — ridiculing the notion that there is such a thing as a distinct Canadian nation at all. He slapped tariffs on the automobile industry, lumber, steel, aluminum, and for kicks and giggles, hockey sticks to shove his version of reality directly up the ass of the milquetoast Canadians.

Under the new terms Trump purported to impose, the United States (which is to say Trump) would have control over any other Canadian trade agreements. Trump then reserved the right to change the deal at any time in the future, for any reason, with no notice — meaning the deal wouldn’t be worth the pencil it was written in, as Carney noted.

Lake Ontario, that’s now Lake America, and your prime minister is a governor, and you’re going to wish that you were the 51st state by the time I get through with you.

But then something bizarre happened to Trump’s bonfire of the vanities. In Carney, the president discovered that he had encountered a man who was not looking for a fight — but who equally wasn’t afraid of him. For all the bluster and menace and braggadocio, Trump didn’t realize that he had walked into a trap. By agreeing for negotiations to happen this summer, a year ahead of the larger deal for the renewal of the North American treaty, Carney had picked the time and place for the inevitable looming confrontation; with Trump vulnerable in the coming election, the canny Carney had managed to create real leverage. Carney then cleverly enlarged the dispute and raised the stakes by accurately calling America’s attack a declaration of war, surprising the flat-footed American negotiators who apparently didn’t take Trump’s threats seriously themselves — adding another layer of leverage to Canada’s supposedly weak hand. 

In Carney, it turned out, Trump has met a leader of real strength, the understated but steely and confident kind reflecting Canada’s national character. The irony is that Carney was elected last year almost entirely as a result of Trump’s Kafkaesque trade war, defeating a weak-kneed conservative who very likely would have meekly submitted to America’s neocolonialist threats. Another irony is that the politically inexperienced Carney turns out to have genius-level instincts. The whippet-thin banker is an unassuming figure, the opposite of Trump, but every bit as ruthless in his way. He is a self-made man and intellectual with degrees from Harvard and Oxford, who epitomizes the meritocracy. The child of schoolteachers in the far north Alberta, raised in a home that prized education and social responsibility, Carney earned his way to the absolute heights of global finance through his intelligence and diligence. His resume is almost a parody of accomplishment, with stints as the head of the banks of both Canada and England, as well as years with Goldman Sachs and working for the likeminded businessman-turned-politician Michael Bloomberg. Faced with the global financial crisis of 2008 and then Brexit, Carney witnessed the idiocies of economic self-destruction in the 21st century, preparing him with a unique set of experiences to confront Trump’s lawless trade war — to Canada’s great good fortune.

In truth, Carney was elected specifically to deal with such a crisis, and Canada has had decades to prepare for this conflagration. Living next to an elephant requires a certain amount of caution and awareness, so Canadians understand American politics down to the last looney. Knowing your enemy is the greatest asset in war, as the ancient Chinese philosopher Sun Tzu said, and Carney’s deeply intimate awareness of America gives him the ability to exploit Trump’s obvious weaknesses: a thin skin, hubris, impulse control, arrogance 

Plan beats no plan is a truism of all crisis management, an acknowledgement that any executive, sports coach, or sentient human being understands. If you want to shape events and succeed, do the work to anticipate  and understand what lies ahead so you don’t live in a state of constant surprise, chaos, and disarray. Planning is also the ultimate expression of Carney’s life force, the guiding principle of his meticulously accumulated achievements and triumphs. While Trump, like so many fools throughout time, doesn’t read or listen to contrary opinions or care to prepare, trusting his gut and native intelligence, Carney is a careful student of power dynamics and the deep lessons of history. Control what you can control, Carney explains to Canadians as he describes the need to diversify and de-risk the relationship with a declining United States. Europe might seem distant geographically, but Russia’s attack on Ukraine and self-inflicted withdrawal of its resources from Europe present an opportunity for a resource-rich nation like Canada. Membership of the European Union seems fanciful now, perhaps, but there is no question that Canadian distrust of America is hardening into real anger and dismay. The same logic applies to the countless opportunities in Asia, with Carney traveling the world signing new free trade agreements as Canada pursues a strategy to end its dependence on the undependable Americans. There is also no turning back the clock as Canada duly notes how few friends it really has in the political and media classes of the United States.

Given Trump’s use of Manhattan real estate brute force strong-arm tactics, imagine Carney’s eyes lighting up when he realized that American negotiators were attempting to attack the French-speaking peoples of Canada and the entire notion of a national culture. There was obviously no way the Canadian people were going to accept such humiliation and subjugation at the hands of an amoral gangster.  As Trump’s designated thug Howard Lutnick piled on the bad faith, last-minute demands, it became evident that Carney had no choice but to walk away — despite the awful short term pain America could inflict.

Thus Carney’s plan has been put in action, with the backing of a nation unified in outrage at America’s belligerence. Trump can harm Canada, but that street runs two ways. By standing up to Trump, Carney has lured him on to the economic battlefield at the precise moment when his presidency is collapsing, with the calamitous midterm elections looming. Tight races are being run in many states that are heavily dependent on trade with Canada — Ohio, Maine, New Hampshire, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Alaska — the exact jurisdictions Canada will target with long-planned tariffs aimed at specific economically sensitive economic sectors, in order to increase the pressure on the ill-prepared president.

Apart from cheap shots and idiotic put downs, Trump has no history of seeking compromise and no real plan in response, as usual, apart from lashing out like a cornered animal. Trump also has vanishingly little popular support in America for his personal grudge match with Canada, an obsession that looks weirder with each passing insult. The struggling North American car industry has been jerked around by Trump’s vengeful destruction of the electric vehicle, losing billions in the process. and taxes described as tariffs will make life even more unaffordable for working American consumers. Uncertainty and unpredictability are lethal to any investment strategy, as actual business people and union leaders understand. Across the rust-belt industries Trump proclaims he is protecting, his tariff-taxes are disrupting and distorting markets and driving up costs for no purpose other than his insistence on harming America’s neighbor and ally, an enemy only in the president’s fevered imagination. 

But to what end? It’s a question with no sensible answer.

Many Americans like to think foreigners draw a distinction between Donald Trump and themselves. But this self-serving piece of evasion is rapidly disappearing for Canadians, as the United States wages a war of aggression to impoverish a friendly nation, and heedlessly attack  its history and sense of place and purpose. When Trump threatens the Canadian dollar, implicitly saying that he will do all he can to make the country economically uncompetitive, the statement is front page news in Canada, while it barely rates a mention in the American press. The American politicians who register tepid defenses of Canada are remarkable not so much for standing up for their neighbor or the rule of law, but for how few and far between they are — and how feckless.

As the trade war escalates this week — or evaporates into another TACO (Trump Always Chickens Out) — the damage done to America’s reputation will be lasting. Once American arrogance is seen in broad daylight, it suddenly is everywhere, in Secretary of Treasury Scott Besant likening Canada to a “yipping dog,” or in former President Barack Obama distractedly turning up to a speaking engagement in Toronto carrying his cardboard coffee cup as if he can’t wait to collect his fee and return to Chicago to gaze admiringly at the shrine he has built to himself.

Damnatio Memoriae is the Latin term for the ancient Roman ritualistic destruction of all memorials to a tyrant, a kind of reverse branding deal with posterity that Trump is furiously trying to counteract with his White House bunker and ballroom and sad sack victory arch that memorializes no victory — structures very likely to be torn down or repurposed when Trump’s presidency expires.

With a mid-term election tsunami gathering force, Trump has already become a lame duck in the eyes of the world, albeit a particularly dangerous one facing richly deserved corruption investigations and possible impeachment. But the damage to the nation’s brand as ugly Americans and wannabe neocolonialist hegemon will be impossible to erase. As the trade conflict intensifies and Canada retaliates in a measured defensive way, taxing golf clubs to counter Trump’s childish hockey stick impost, Trump’s impulsive provocations will only reveal his inability to formulate anything like the concept of a winning strategy. When reality descends and he leaves office or is forced to finally end his mindless war and inevitably declare himself the winner, as his fragile manhood requires, Trump will further diminish himself and his country in the eyes of the world. Under Trump, America risks ending up like the president: alone, lost, friendless.

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Despite Trump’s flailing efforts at waging a mutually destructive internecine war, foreign investment is growing in Canada, with a summit taking place this month for investors representing a trillion dollars to extol the virtues in backing a reliable, trustworthy country governed by the rule of law. Holding Canada’s main weapons in reserve, in accordance with Carney’s disciplined plan, if necessary Canadians can fight back with damaging export taxes on oil, gas, electricity, potash for America’s farmers — truly damaging countermeasures that will be employed only as a last resort. But Canada is already showing the world that it is possible to defy Trump, even when the country has so much to lose. Bullies like Trump can’t survive defiance because it reveals their true nature. In that sense, Mark Carney has become the new leader of the free world, fighting on behalf of nations too afraid to confront the American despot. As a result, incredibly, under Carney’s leadership Canada is becoming a kind of law-abiding underdog badass outlaw nation, in its understated but determined way — a reality I could palpably sense when I was in London in recent days and my 15-year-old English cousin expressed awe at my homeland’s willingness to stare down the bully-boy president.

“I would kill to be a Canadian,” he said. %!s()