COVER STORY This issue: Admiral Samuel Paparo is tasked with preventing a conflict with China—by preparing for one. In the summer of 1986, when he was a college student in Pennsylvania, Samuel Paparo took his future wife Maureen to watch Top Gun. Many young Americans emerged from theaters across the country with a new hero: the brash, daring, risk- taking Maverick, played by Tom Cruise, who became an avatar of American power at the twilight of the Cold War. But Paparo took away a different lesson…To understand the world we live in, read TIME.

Life once followed a familiar pattern. Myanmar is poorer and more violent since its dictator seized power. Now he wants rapprochement with the West. First came the mirror. before Min Aung Hlaing enters the room for his first Western media interview since seizing power in a 2021 coup d’état, aides maneuver an ornate Rococo-revival looking glass into place for preening. Then come requests for his portrait: light him from the left, the better to disguise a thinning hairline no longer hidden beneath an olive cap…

Every room has a parallel conversation running beneath the surface—a pulse, a vibe, a temperature. This undercurrent of unspoken behavior delivers data instantly, but only if you can decipher it. Neuroscientists, psychologists, anthropologists, and linguists have studied how subtle behaviors create meaning. I’ve spent the past decade training people to spot those signals: who holds power, which relationship will influence a decision…