A warning from the future

Download The Nerve's new report, 'First 100 days of Trump 2.0: Narrative warfare and the breakdown of reality'

26 January 2026 View in Browser

Dear reader,   In the Philippines, we learned that fighting for facts is fighting for democracy itself. In America, one year into this new reality, that battle is no longer theoretical — it is the defining struggle of our time.    When we analyzed the first 100 days of Donald Trump’s second term, we recognized the warning signs immediately. The chaos of those early months — 143 executive orders in the first 100 days triggering the further fragmentation of the public square — was not just political turbulence. It was the systematic importation and evolution of the authoritarian playbook we survived in the Philippines.

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We had, after all, already lived through the future of information warfare, and we knew it was heading West. In the Philippines under Rodrigo Duterte, we watched a leader weaponize social media to bypass traditional institutions, creating a parallel reality where journalists and critics were branded “enemies of the people,” and facts became meaningless.   This report, originally compiled in the spring of 2025, documents the installation of that machinery. We release this analysis now because the endgame we predicted has arrived — not as policy, but as military action, occupation, and bloodshed.   We did this research not to take a partisan position, but to expose the forces shaping our collective reality. Having lived through the collapse of an information ecosystem before, we know that understanding the mechanism is the first step to resisting it.     The first 100 days formed the blueprint. Venezuela is the proof. Minneapolis is the warning. Greenland is the pattern.    This report is the evidence of how narrative warfare laid the groundwork — and what becomes possible when the battle for information integrity is lost.

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Maria A. Ressa Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, 2021 CEO, Rappler and Head of Global Strategy, The Nerve Professor of Practice, IGP Faculty Advisory Board Member, and IGP Technology & Democracy CoDirector, Columbia-SIPA

The Nerve is a data forensics company that enables changemakers to navigate real-world trends and issues through narrative and network investigations. Taking the best of human and machine, we enable partners to unlock powerful insights that shape informed decisions. Composed of a team of data scientists, strategists, award-winning storytellers, and designers, the company is on a mission to deliver data with real-world impact.