Current Reading

The August 2026 reading places the Jamie Index in the Critical band (81–100) for a third consecutive edition, at 85. Both sides of the instrument rose two points — the first time in the series they have moved the same distance in the same direction in the same month.

On the Russian side, the Chinese brake weakened. On 13 August Vladimir Putin made the first visit by a Russian president to the disputed Kuril Islands; the same day, in Tokyo, the Russian and Chinese ambassadors issued a joint statement opposing revision of the outcome of the Second World War. Two weeks earlier a joint naval patrol had transited the same disputed strait. China restrains Russia on nuclear escalation in Europe and stands with it on territorial assertion in the Pacific — a brake that reverses across theatres is a weaker brake. Running the other way, and the only move that lowered the index: the United States–Russia diplomatic channel is functioning again, with foreign ministers meeting in Manila on 23 July and a detainee released on 11 August.

On the American side the movement is harder to read, because nine of the twelve Marker II indicators now sit at their ceiling and two of the four clusters cannot rise at all. A great deal of what the window produced could not register: the Office of the Director of National Intelligence cut about 200 posts from 1 June, leaving it a little over half the size it was in January 2025; an aircraft carrier reached 250 consecutive days at sea. Marker II at 95 is not a measure of how bad things are. It is where this instrument stops being able to tell you.

P(Crisis) rises to 60%. The Civil War Net Score — our separate measure of the conditions for civil war inside the United States — did not move; it holds at 6/7 for a fourth consecutive edition, restrained by the one moderator that has not broken: the cohesion of the military.