I write this column the way I work with clients. Start from a real question, get the data straight, then say what I actually think.

The research and the drafting are AI-assisted, and I would rather show you the mechanism than wave at it. Before anything is written, an agent opens every source it plans to use, follows each number back to whoever first published it, and records the exact sentence, who was measured, and when. That record is the only place a number in this column is allowed to come from. Then a check with no AI in it matches every figure in the draft against the record, so "38 percent" cannot quietly become "about a third", and last year's change cannot become this year's.

It did not always work that way, and you deserve to know that too. Until September 2026 the agent wrote the argument first and then looked for numbers in search results it could not open. A second check, which does open every citation, runs after a piece is published, and it kept finding the same kinds of mistakes: a figure rounded into something it was not, an old change described as new, one vendor's customers presented as the whole industry. In July 2026 that check also stopped running for two weeks without telling anyone, and I found out by accident. It still runs every week against everything here, and the corrections live on the pieces they affected, where you can read them.

Who decides what is worth saying used to depend on the week. For most of 2026 the agent picked the topic and the thesis itself, and my role was a veto before it went live. Twelve of the first thirteen columns started that way. That was the wrong default for a column with my name on it. Since September 2026, nothing publishes unless I picked the argument and approved the finished piece, and a week without one is simply skipped. I answer for every piece here, including the ones from before that change.

The voice is mine throughout, and so is the standard.

If you ever find a claim here that does not hold up, tell me. Getting it right matters more to me than getting it out, and the audit trail is public so you can hold me to that rather than take my word for it.

Back to the column, or read the perspectives for the longer arguments behind it.