https://danconiajournal.substack.com/p/the-lighthouse?fbclid=IwY2xjawKdVCFleHRuA2FlbQIxMQBicmlkETFqcDFWWlR5SmY0ZXpKbkYxAR68akOdbpeOmF-HmWG7BASjQ9URZ5qgd6yGdDVnvlHPsQU1zbbzSMAVUf8Aaw_aem_K0hfN5STRqfpdkgFNFThuAThe Lighthouse
How we cut through the fog of the Misinformation Age
Francisco D'Anconia
May 21, 2025
Come pull up a chair and let’s talk a while about something important. It’s something that’s been on my mind a lot lately, especially as we tackle some of the more complex and complicated issues facing the country today. I’m sure you’ve noticed it, too.
It’s getting harder to think. Or at least, to think clearly.
Not because we’ve lost the ability, but because clarity has become a real danger to a lot of different competing agendas. It’s a battle. Every day, we’re flooded with contradictory headlines, finely tuned propaganda, and half-truths positively dripping with sincerity. You start to wonder not just what’s true, but if there’s anybody out there who even wants you to know the truth anymore. The more noise you absorb, the more your instincts feel scrambled. Common sense starts to look like those old TVs we had when we were kids, fuzz and bars and double images because the signal is just enough out of phase to see, but not clearly. So how do you cut through it? How do you realign the antenna? What do you do when you can't trust the signal?
This isn’t rhetorical. These are questions I wrestle with every day, just like you probably do. I mean, at its core, it’s the reason this Journal exists. It’s my virtual attempt to find high-quality minds, sit across from you for a few minutes, and have a real conversation about how we cut through the fog. Not with slogans. Not with spin. But with method. With rigor. With thinking. Sure, that will come with emotion – we’re human and that’s a part of how we all function. But the emotion should be a result, an effect. If we feel betrayal, it should come after we see that we’ve been betrayed. If we feel angry, it should come after we see clearly that something is wrong. I never want to join the ranks of those who helplessly and ineffectually scream at the sky in a vain attempt to make the world accommodate my feelings, and I don’t want to encourage such nonsense in anyone else. No, ours is an effort to discern truth from fiction, results from narratives, real outcomes from spin and shine.
With that in mind, I’d like to spend a few minutes in honest reflection with you.
You’ve undoubtedly noticed that these entries come in fits and starts at times. I don’t adhere to a schedule or put things out in this Journal just to post content. I write when I feel I have something to say. Usually, that follows a lot of research and analysis, as well as lots of conversations with the smartest people I know. What you read is the result of a process that combines those things with a career’s worth of training in analysis and analytic tradecraft. While I’ll freely state my opinions on all kinds of things, I don’t “guess” here when it comes to assessments. I don’t just parrot the Left or Right’s spin because it suits me, and I sure as hell don’t take the word of elected officials, career bureaucrats, or legacy media outlets. I analyze. I assess. I give you my best whack at a topic and I try to tell you how I got there.
When we looked at the Trump tariffs on China, you didn’t see me speculate about whether it was a good or bad idea. I built an Analysis of Competing Hypotheses (ACH) model and tracked China’s reactions in real time, not through blogs and social media posts, but through primary sources, trade metrics, financial signals, and on-the-ground reporting from sources I can verify. When protests erupted in five Chinese provinces, I didn’t need a pundit to explain what it meant. I’d already mapped out that very contingency and knew what it told us about Xi’s shifting strategy. This kind of thing is referred to in intelligence work as a “reflection.”
When President Trump’s Middle East tour unfolded, same thing. I didn’t look to the op-ed class to tell me whether Trump’s moves were “reckless” or “historic.” I catalogued and graphed reactions, statements, funding flows, ceasefires, and realignments. I applied methodology, not partisanship. I told you what to watch, both to determine whether my assessment held up, or to see if it was falling apart. Both matter – you have to know what signs point to being right, but you also have to be aware of the signs that tell you “I blew it.” And what reflections do we see?
We see Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Qatar maintaining their typical “Arab Solidarity” by advocating for the Palestinian people which simultaneously distancing themselves from Hamas. That’s a big deal. We see them investing heavily with U.S. partners on tech and AI, as well as “buying American” at scale in the transportation sector. We see China reacting all over the place, from overt concessions to back-room deals to save face to diplomatic admissions that Trump’s strategy is working. I’ll get into these in more depth in just a minute, but go back and look at the original assessments and you’ll see these indicators were called out specifically.
I showed you how the methodology worked with Crossfire Hurricane and the Hunter Biden laptop scandal. I didn’t accept Barr’s word. I didn’t look to Durham. I didn’t follow what Mueller omitted. I read and broke down the 7 binders of newly released information as well as the raw information we already had available. I went source by source. I tried to see (and show you) how those sources connected and where the threads crossed. It’s harder this way, but it’s the only way to escape the narrative trap. What’s more, if you don’t do it that way, then at some level you’re just picking sides and believing whichever partisan hack you identify with most.
And that’s the point: We are being manipulated. Constantly. Left, right, and center. We know that. We talk about it constantly. And we know the only protection we have is disciplined thinking.
You’ve seen me say it before. We’re always just one new fact away from realizing we were wrong about everything. That’s the unwritten creed of every serious analyst. It’s why we revisit our conclusions. It’s why, even now, we should continue to test the models we’ve built. We’re not afraid to change our minds — but only if the evidence demands it. Every “change” should be an improvement, an evolution based on better information. That’s why we look for reflections. It’s why we go back and test those indicators to see if we’re on the right track or if we blew it and didn’t consider something important along the way. It’s our mechanism for accountability and for self-awareness.
So, let’s do a quick review of what I’ve put out for your consumption and how those assessments hold up.
In my report on China’s Next Move, I projected that China would offer overt trade concessions in response to internal protests and market pressures, and that Xi would also attempt to quietly negotiate behind the scenes to save face on bigger issues.
Result? Assessment Confirmed. Quiet negotiations are underway. Tariff offsets are being explored even as a public deal favoring the U.S. is announced. Xi’s level of control depends on his ability to keep internal and external influences in balance, and every upset of that balance benefits the U.S. The hypothesis still stands.
In my report on President Trump’s Middle East Tour, I forecast that the President’s agenda was engineered to take advantage of transactional opportunities to shift Middle East partners toward America, and to realign regional power to undermine the CCP’s agenda.
Result? Assessment Confirmed. Record levels of foreign investment in the U.S. coming in. Saudi, UAE, and Qatar maintain support for Palestinians, but have distanced themselves from Hamas in particular. China in particular has squealed in pain at the result of Trump’s deals. The Chinese Foreign Ministry condemned U.S. deals with the Gulf states as “unilateral bullying” and “a targeted campaign to suppress China’s AI industry.” Chinese analysts have begun warning of “U.S. encirclement in the digital domain,” especially as Middle Eastern tech infrastructure begins to shift from Chinese-managed systems to U.S.-regulated architecture. And finally, Beijing is reportedly accelerating its Military-Civil Fusion strategy and pursuing alternative regional footholds in Africa and Central Asia.
So yes — we should revisit. We should refine. We should keep checking. That’s the difference between propaganda and principled analysis. One seeks converts. The other seeks truth.
For many of you, this is why you’ve stayed with me. It’s why you continue to invest the time and effort in wrestling with all of this, and it’s why you’re willing to put in the work to pick apart the ideas I put in front of you. You know we aren’t just screaming into the sky. We’re cutting away the narratives and rhetoric that have been so carefully designed to preserve agendas, and we’re getting to the truth.
I’m also seeing a lot of new readers. This Journal is being shared in places it hasn’t been shared before, and there are new eyes and new minds dipping their attention in for a trial run. To those people: You know something’s wrong. You know the mainstream feels broken. Let this be your invitation to start thinking clearly again — not by trusting me, but by reading and thinking for yourself and seeing where those thoughts lead you. You should be testing my assertions and assessments, too. I certainly do. If you do, I’ll wager that even when we disagree, you’ll be able to follow the reasoning to my conclusions instead of the rhetoric.
And of course, there are my reflexive critics. Those who see me align with President Trump and immediately decide to hate whatever comes next. To those folks, understand I don’t see you as an enemy. But your refusal to test your assumptions makes you your own worst enemy. You call it “resistance.” I call it willful blindness. If you’re a critic, I offer you a challenge - prove me wrong. The source material is public. My methods are transparent. Apply the same rigor to the same information and let’s see what happens when you think for yourself.
The issues we grapple with here are complex. They’re complicated. They’re made much tougher to understand by the incredible armies of competing interests who profit by making sure these issues are impenetrable to the common person. They earn viewers and advertising dollars by shared outrage, engagement by feeding passions rather than encouraging comprehension. It’s an ecosystem that’s evolved to destroy progress whether it was ever intended to or not. Here, my goal is to change things for the better. To do that, we have to start with truth. We have to act based on what is objectively true, and that means we have to spend some time cultivating the skills, the discipline, and the intellectual rigor to cut through the bullshit.
Thanks for coming with me.