This article is within the EU, Italy, Turin series.

It is the second article- the first one was two weeks ago.

As I wrote in the introductory article, this will be a long series, lasting at least until the Italian national elections (and beyond).

Anyway, as it is a tradition for most of my articles written during an electoral cycle, most articles will be short, and sharing commentary on recent events (as well as trends).

The title of this specific article says it all: gearing up.

Some of my former colleagues would probably instead say that we are on a war footing- but, considering the geopolitical context, I would avoid that.

Looking outside Italy, there is a couple of news announces that received from Reuters today that show an inkling about what could be some developments in 2027:



Yes, another brilliant war started this century that, after a couple of decades, produces something far, far away from the stated intent.

Few sections:
_ A Industrial policy under scarcity
_ B Sorting out the mess
_ C Reality knocks at the political door
_ D The end of the beginning



A_ Industrial policy under scarcity

Recent events on the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan, while at the same time Pakistan announced that was ready to defend the holy sites in Saudi Arabia, showed that we are still paying the costs of that war.

Anyway, will talk about that in the next short article about "The Future of Europe", tomorrow.

What matters for this article is, as you can see the daily Morning News that publish since March 2026 with the support of Claude (and, from version 1.7.3, also Grok, as Grok, being part of X/Twitter, apparently can get access to news that all the other models cannot get access to), national politics has to deal with a geopolitical scenario that is continuously fluctuating- on a daily basis.

Today, would like to relaunch a couple of items that shared between Facebook and Linkedin.

Obviously, considering the external instability and the national debt, the first item influencing our context is the constant need to refinance the national debt- and this week started with the news that another 100bln EUR need to be refinanced before the year end:



Unable to create new debt also due to European Union constraints, Italy has to go creative in coping with the significant impact of the wars going around us- and their direct (e.g. we supply, as other EU Member States, materiel to Ukraine) and indirect (e.g. the additional costs due to the unrest around Hormuz and Saudi Arabia).

I wrote within the introductory article that one of the most read article on this website is about industrial policy and elections- and our creativity has been shown recently by using moral suasion to lower oil prices and, as announced today, electricity.

The creativity point? When Italy privatized former monopolists, the State (or local authority) retained a significant stake in most companies- and used that routinely as leverage.

From local authorities extracting dividends to copy for a contraction of the taxable income in a contracting economy, to governments of all the hues and shapes doing the same.

So, ENI (founded in 1953 as "Ente Nazionale Idrocarburi") announced that would reduce prices



IP, an Italian company now belonging to a foreign entity, followed suit due to political connections, and today also Q8 (yes, Kuwait) did follow suit.

Some said that this is to avoid having a tax levied on companies for the profits that made due to the situation in Iran and surrounding areas, but actually it made it easier to have an immediate result without costing directly to taxpayers.

In Italy, we are heading into "lean times"- also due to the clouds hovering on 2027, the year when the next elections will happen.



B_ Sorting out the mess

So, another announce was made that some checks would be done on a significant part of the formal yet informal economy:



Frankly, it is just to be expected that, elections or not, more controls will be done- hence, also a campaign about how few pay taxes in Italy, while all access services.

Well, since 2012 and also when I was a freelance in the 1990s I saw how much taxes take a toll- and, while in other countries when you have what my colleagues abroad called "in-between", you get immediate benefits, in Italy de facto are based on two years back.

Hence, if you never report your income, or "underestimate" it, it is relatively easy to get benefits, direct or indirect (e.g. not being required to contribute to some costs).

An incentive to cheat.

In my case, since 2012 had a dual purpose.

Seeing if, after having been made to return, there was really an opportunity to settle and resume what was doing before moving to Brussels, or, at least, start at the same level where, despite being an unknown entity on the market in Brussels, had started a career path there before Italian interferences.

And, once after the first mission started being doubtful about that potential, used the period between missions to keep developing and retaining skills, and work on my own projects- including publishing on change.

Anyway, despite all the taxes I paid, my benefits... were self-financed by setting aside during missions to support outside missions, as matured rights generally only after I had started another mission.

While technically then would be entitled e.g. to reduce contribution to health costs, frankly, never used that "opportunity": would not make sense, in my view, if you have revenue, to drain scarce resources that could be used for those who have no revenue.

Anyway, also during the COVID crisis, I saw some questionable practices- as the concept of giving money to companies and not to employees to keep afloat jobs- and then seeing cases of misuse of those funds.

In tomorrow's article will discuss more 2027 from a European Union perspective, but this short digression probably makes understandable, for my foreign contacts who are used to a different approach.

E.g. I remember in Brussels how people waiting to be called to work in institutions worked temporarily for ASBL- non-profit, with job titles that would make impossible to offer them a role aligned with that, but with their non-profit job lasting only long enough to mature benefits (9 months, if I remember correctly- again, paid taxes but never had access to any benefit there too).

Before the elections probably those checks will keep affecting organizations and structures, including non-profits and foundations- not citizens (and not even small businesses or local authoritie), as that would be politically a suicide months before an election.

Still, it is interesting how media keep reporting on private organizations receiving funding from the PNRR (the National Recovery and Resilience Plan part of the Recovery Resilience Facility / NextGenerationEU) due to their "cultural role": so, taxpayers ended up funding the renovation of private entities- and shared already in the past news items reporting how some existing plans were resurrected to enter in this funding cycle.

I will share in future articles within "The Future of Europe" series more data about the Italian PNRR and its results and impacts.

After the elections, if the new Government will have a large enough majority, probably instead the cleanup will expand.

Because while the First Republic (right after WWII) was routinely lambasted for "recommendations", i.e. political patronage (that was really keeping up with a long standing Italian tradition, since Ancient Rome), the Second Republic was structurally getting us used to actually create rules and laws and regulations that generated business opportunities.

Starting from privatizations and the generation of banking foundations, that created financial resources pools outside real political democratic oversight, but used routinely to direct (or redirect) initiatives, sponsorship, and, of course, as you can read also in news items from mainstream media that posted online since 2012, routine volleys of accusations between incumbents and those aspiring to takeover.

Remember e.g. how the late President of the Council of Ministers Berlusconi once set in motion so that also employees in "participate" and "controllate" (i.e. companies formally privatized, but still having local authorities as a significant shareholder) would be counted within the constraints that over-indebted local authorities should comply with.

At the time, the reason was really that most of those entities were associated with local authorities where the political leadership was on the other side of the political spectrum- as generating new entities to escape from constraints had become a common habit.

Hence, as we are in a new political cycle, as it happened in the past, it is just normal to see an evolution of structures associated with power.

And if the new Government will have a razor-thin majority, then instead probably you will see few more rounds of creativity and tinkering- not a real cleanup.

Anyway, in Italy, the "gearing up" before national elections is traditionally done by looking at interim and local election that are scattered across the country.

If you win them, usually you claim that it is a trend.

If you lose them, instead remember that are local elections.

And the same happened few days ago:





C_ Reality knocks at the political door

I discussed in the previous article the new political entity created from a former general- so, if you find the commentary cryptic, read that article.

What matters is the approach: those winning have to show that the results are "sustainable" (i.e. can be sold as a national trend), while minimizing the impact of "background noises".

A new political entity getting 11% also on a limited turnout at the polls still is something more than a background noise, if you consider than many political parties in the center of the political spectrum have not just a single digit, but it is doubtful that could get 5% if they were to run alone, instead of being part of a coalition.

Now, that news items is really focused on the center-right and extreme-right.

Anyway, also the center-left is gearing up and posturing for the elections, and doing the usual game that Italian politicians love to do.

Once you are elected to an office, stay there forever- and move only if a better office becomes available.

Hence, this habit of lecturing others about democracy- and then, routinely, if and when a term ends, change the rules to stay in office:



So, President Trump, when made that famous quip after President Zelensky basically said that while the was going on, he would not hold elections, would not be surprised, if he were to move to Italy.

There is no office small enough or large enough to avoid the potential for an extension.

Actually, due to the political inability to reach a consensus on a new President, both the last two Presidents of the Italian Republic have been asked to stay on for a second mandate- President Napolitano did stay only for part of the second term, President Mattarella is going soon to complete his second term (in Italy, the term of the President is 7 years, to enable a partial overlap with the term of the Parliament, that nominally is 5 years but often has been shorter).

Posturing implies that the secretary of the leading party of the center-left was, as reported in that article, described as "the natural candidate", even to the point of stating the curious concept of having primaries with just one candidate (should rename them into "plebiscite"- which is not really something usually see in a democracy).

And posturing implies that instead the leader of another party of that coalition keeps asking for real primaries, and today a former President of the Council of Ministers said that, if former President of the Council of Minister Conte were to be a candidate in the primaries for the center-left coalition, he would support Conte: a parting shot for the incumbent secretary of the Partito Democratico.

And, potentially, also an "assist" (as we say in Italian soccer) to another potential candidate that keeps repeating that she would run as leader of the coalition, but only if called/appointed/whatever, not if has to get through the primaries.

Few days ago, Beppe Grillo, a comedian founder of the M5S / Cinquestelle (well before Zelensky, Italy had its own comedian turned politician- but, due to a prior, could not be elected) was reported having said to a show with a singer, Fedez, that he did not consider launching a new political party, as was alone (in his past venture, he an IT expert called Roberto Casaleggio, who came from the Olivetti environment- a bit of cyberpunk utopia).

This morning my early morning news review brought this article:



You can read it on the website of a Turin newspaper, La Stampa.

Quick summary? The Italian who worked in cybersec at Twitter/X and is considered the "Musk ambassador" in Italy had a mutual exchange of compliments with Grillo.

Net result? The proposal is not to have politics control AI, but AI control politicians.

Will share my five cents in the conclusions.



D_ The end of the beginning

Yes, I use this title a lot- but because it is where we really are.

The month of September ending today, but, despite having a statutory end of the term for the Parliament (and Government) in autumn 2027, now the rumors and announces and noises talk about elections either in spring 2027 or even in January.

As you read maybe in previous posts that shared, I think that the earlier, the better.

There are too many clouds assembling for 2027, and too many variables to monitor- something that Italian coalitions, also when have a stronger degree of cohesion than the current ones, routinely fail to do, tinkering their way through "survival of the less weak".

Concerning the proposal/provocation: if you read my previous articles, you know that actually long ago wrote that:
_ with AI, we will have way too many interactions to have humans be really able to oversee
_ across my publications online since the early 2000s, routinely quoted the "quis custodiet ipsos custodes" concept, i.e. who watches over the guardians
_ since 2012, in Italy routinely saw how a tribal country integrated the "self-regulated" concept with some twist that make difficult to accept the concept, as tribal exchanges alter continuously the balance making de facto not feasible a "level playing field" (which should be a basic tenet of a modern democracy).

Specifically on AI, actually, as shared in previous articles, blended my interest in (human) Constitution with communication coordination experience, with AI and the introduction of what Anthropic called "Claude Constitution".

Net result? The AI2AI language experiment that shared as a prototype (and tested and developed with multiple AIs, including testing message exchanges and when to escalate to human supervision).

So, while I would question the use of AI to "control", probably, as shared also in the past, "surveillance and escalation of anomalies" could create the "level playing field" that we lost in Italy.

I shared more about those concept in a couple of mini-books about integrating AI in human activities, including politics as a grassroot activity:
_ (on Leanpub- set zero to get it free) #BlendedAI - Building Human/AI Systems - Episode 02 - BPR Reborn - A Collection of Cases, published on Easter 2026
_ (on Amazon- free if you have access to Kindle unlimited): Citizen Audit & Ai - User Manual, published on August 31 2026.

At the Leanpub address, you will find also A visual companion to "#Expo2015diaries - the century of the commons", a step on the journey to publish in 2030 another book on "commons" and sustainability- you can read the draft segment shared so far since 2016 at this address.

From now on, in this series, this section will be shared with limited changes- to keep sharing the links to the supporting material, and close on themes that will be recurring, adding just few paragraphs focused on the specific article.

As, anyway, I do expect most visitors to the website to just read one of the articles within the series- not all the sections.

Stay tuned- will be interesting journey toward the Italian and European elections, from now until end 2027.

Have a nice week!