Marvin Liao 7/7/26 Marvin Liao 7/7/26

Company Golden Ages: The Magic 5 Years

There was this write up that came out in february about the “It” company of 2026, Anthropic. One of the leading AI companies that is growing like mad: https://steve-yegge.medium.com/the-anthropic-hive-mind-d01f768f3d7b

As of February 2026, it’s reported that their ARR is $40 billion dollars and they recently raised $30B dollars at a post money valuation of $380B usd. Incredible. I don’t think we have seen companies grow like this. And this fast. I guess we will see how long this lasts but it’s hard to argue that Anthropic is not in its magic era.

"A Golden Age is a period of intense innovation, category creation, velocity, and productivity that lasts typically several years. Golden Ages at companies have the property of attracting all the greatest talent in the industry, very quickly. That’s happening at Anthropic right now.

So now you see how the magic starts and ends. During Golden Ages, there is more work than people. And when they crash, it is because there are more people than work.

As soon as there wasn’t enough work, people began to fight over the work that was left. It kicked off a wave of empire building, territoriality, politicking, land grabs, and, as Lydia Ash taught me, Cookie Licking–a phrase folks at Microsoft had invented to accuse people of claiming work that they will never actually get around to doing."

I was lucky to experience a 5 year golden period at Yahoo!, roughly 2002-2008, where we had tremendous growth and a hothouse of talent. I caught a 4 year magical window at 500 Startups as well where the alumni have gone on to bigger and better things after.

Alas, these golden ages don’t last forever. We saw this happen at Ebay, Paypal, Google, Facebook aka META, even Coinbase. I’d say Stripe and Ramp are probably in the midst of their Golden Age right now. Golden Ages are magical times to be at these companies where you learn immensely and meet awesome people. These company mafias are invaluable for your career. So if you find yourself at one of these hot companies during their magical period, count yourself very lucky. It’s not that common, even in Silicon Valley.

Marvin Liao 7/5/26 Marvin Liao 7/5/26

Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads July 5th, 2026

“Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass under the trees on a summer’s day……is by no means waste of time.”--John Lubbock

Love what these folks are working on. American Operator, making Main Street business accessible. Critical to the American local economy. The Operate to own model.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pyWnKbOEqH4

2. A good primer on the ultra-hot sector of Defense-tech. Probably too hot in my view. Trend is your friend I guess.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLJcFOWlmGE

3.The American naval blockade on Iran is about China.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgIg8wMEez8

4. Great summary of the crazy AI developments right now. Funny takes too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6Uj8vzrjgQ

5.Another great episode. Some of the best and most informed views on Silicon Valley news. What it takes to thrive in the AI world.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOY8hsBqjJo

6."The “let it kill you” part of the quote isn’t about self-destruction. It’s about the willingness to be consumed. To care about something enough that it inconveniences your life. That you’re still doing it when it isn’t going well, when it isn’t getting engagement, when nobody’s asking you about it at dinner.

Most self-improvement culture asks the exact opposite of you. It wants easy wins, visible metrics, shareable milestones. It is, structurally, allergic to the kind of deep commitment the quote is describing.

Meaning isn’t found. It’s built, through experimentation.

The people who end up with a genuinely purposeful relationship to what they do aren’t the ones who found the right answer quickly. They’re the ones who kept moving through enough experiences that eventually something stuck and then they committed to it seriously enough that they actually got good."

https://lifemaxxers.substack.com/p/the-case-for-treating-your-2030s

7. Leaned something new. Lots of good insights on manufacturing in America from an expert.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGQRe_HmpHU

8.The future in the eyes of one of the Big VCs. This was a good interview.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZDJ3jcO5UY

9.Allbirds pivot to AI and SpaceX IPO. Lots of strong opinions here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQ5TEs_3Dq8

10."For entrepreneurs, the lesson is clear: even with a 10x better solution that is already working in customers’ hands, achieving mainstream adoption takes time. Self-driving cars are already on the road and performing at a high level, yet it may take a decade or more to reach widespread adoption.

Entrepreneurs would do well to keep this in mind as they work to change the world."

https://davidcummings.org/2026/04/18/self-driving-cars-and-changing-human-behavior/

11.Obsession and winning in the age of attention.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWn3KgO9Dvk

12."France’s long-range and deep-strike portfolio is, on paper, the most ambitious in Europe. Across all capability tiers, the French industry is developing or has recently contracted more distinct long-range strike systems than any other European state."

https://missilematters.substack.com/p/french-long-range-and-deep-strike

13."One query I get often: “What class/skill would you suggest our kids take/learn to compete in the modern economy?” A: Storytelling. The flow of capital, like the trajectory of history, clots around compelling stories. Entrepreneurs, aka storytellers, deploy a narrative that captures imaginations and capital to pull the future forward. Before America was a nation, it was a story told by traitors who recast their rebellious colonies as bastions of liberty and themselves as patriots.

Mastery of narrative is humanity’s superpower, as the arc of evolution bends toward good storytellers. Communities with a larger share of skilled storytellers experience greater levels of cooperation and procreation. Storytelling reinforces their evolutionary resilience, efficiently transmitting survival-relevant information."

https://www.profgmedia.com/p/moonshot

14.Good list of some good city options outside of the big 4 in Japan. Very helpful.

https://palombo.substack.com/p/the-7-japanese-cities-people-are

15."Yet for all that, it is difficult to tell just how much demographics are a constraining factor at the present moment. What would the fighting look like if 80% of soldiers in Ukraine were under 30? Would more effective infiltration operations enable one side to collapse the other’s lines? Could a much higher operational tempo create a true breakthrough? Or would the density of ranged weapons simply negate all the advantages of youthly vigor?

I strongly suspect most observers would lean heavily toward the latter answer; given the compounding effects of small advantages, I’m not so sure. It is precisely because we have not seen a successful operational breakthrough that we don’t have a standard whereby to judge the importance of troop quality. It remains one factor among many to keep an eye on."

https://dispatch.bazaarofwar.com/p/warfare-in-an-aging-world

16."Great Houses — as I call them — exist because they are the optimal social form for managing the long and largely illegible training process to produce low-time preference, high-character, high-trust people that can develop, use, and monetize ‘aristocratic’ technologies — those which are characterized by expensive, steep, long learning curves and a vast gulf in output between novice and master.

A family that does not have such a technology can take advantage of a temporary trend or opportunity to accumulate great wealth in a single generation, but can lose it in the next. A family that does have one can err for decades and still return, if the rare underlying capability remains."

https://becomingnoble.substack.com/p/permanence-is-an-undervalued-asset

17."Effectively, the markets are pricing a binary outcome: a long war and the potential for catastrophic damage to priceless assets, or a sudden peace and the rush of supply it would bring. If one scenario implies $150 oil and the other $50, is a rough price of $90 all that far off? Yes, a few refiners in a couple of parts of the world feel the need to pay nosebleed prices now, and those make for great fodder on Twitter, but markets this significant are not to be disregarded.

Of course, each day that Hormuz remains closed, the global supply deficit grows. A broader population of oil-thirsty nations will dent the potential price impact of a sudden reopening. Oil prices that creep higher while the current pause in fighting holds are certainly consistent with this line of thinking. Additionally, if a full-blown attack on infrastructure occurs, or if the Houthis close the Red Sea, the lower end of the potential price range evaporates while the upper end expands. The price action in such a scenario would be unfathomably violent, especially at the front end of the curve."

https://newsletter.doomberg.com/p/backwards-looking

18."If that is right, the rupture did not begin in 2016. Across geopolitics, energy, technology, and politics, the architecture of the present decade looks to have been largely in place by the end of 2014."

https://www.driftsignal.com/p/the-year-2014-and-the-origins-of

19."Focus is what determines what will or will not appear in your consciousness.

What does this have to do with creativity?

Everything.

Creativity is your ability to see what others can’t.

It is how you connect two seemingly unrelated topics and make them fit perfectly together.

It is how you articulate ideas that makes people go: “How the hell did this person say it?”

It is how you can create great products, start trends, and light up a movement.

Creativity is a skill you developed through focus and intentional practice."

https://hussainibarra.substack.com/p/how-to-become-disgustingly-creative

20."The man who eats alone, reads a book, orders a second glass, and doesn’t check his phone is the most interesting man in the restaurant. He doesn’t know it. Everyone else does. The waitress is glancing over. The couple at the next table have built an entire backstory for him in their heads. He’s simply sat there — but sat there with a stillness that no other man in the room is pulling off, because no other man in the room has learnt how.

A man at ease with his own company is instantly legible as a man who has things in his life that other people want to be near."

https://lifemaxxers.substack.com/p/the-lifemaxxers-guide-to-the-summer

21."The ultimate status symbol is having a career that looks like a series of lucky breaks to an outsider, but is actually a sequence of highly calculated Intensity Spikes. It signals that you don’t work for time; you work for Results. While the masses are proud of their “365-day streaks,” the Sovereign is proud of his 24-hour Dominance."

https://luxlifestylelab.substack.com/p/the-consistency-myth

22."The project scope also increased dramatically. The Creatine supply chain is not a “nutrition” supply chain, but rather an industrial one. The two precursors are the roots of a massive product tree that spans into the billions of dollars across markets."

https://www.broscienceclub.com/p/disciplus-accelerator-and-the-future

23."There is no permanent business model on the internet. Forget about one method. One source of traffic or one business mechanism. Sooner or later, it will stop working. Or it will get saturated to a point where your method will no longer be efficient. It is the nature of the online business. Your ability to reinvent yourself and adapt what you do is what will keep you in the online money-making game."

https://www.beautyofsaas.com/p/the-online-business-advice-no-one-profits-from-telling-you

24."The strategic insight that separates the winners from the losers in this transition is not technical—it is architectural. The organizations and investors who understand that agentic AI is an organizational design problem as much as a technology problem will be positioned correctly.

The shift from Human-in-the-loop to Human-on-the-loop is not about removing humans from decisions. It is about moving humans up the abstraction stack—from approving individual actions to designing the policies, authority structures, and exception frameworks that govern thousands of autonomous actions. That shift requires new infrastructure, new governance frameworks, new liability structures, and new professional disciplines.

The companies building those foundations—governance tooling, vertical compliance infrastructure, outcome-delivery operations—are building the load-bearing walls of the next enterprise technology era. Everything else is interior decoration."

https://investinginai.substack.com/p/blue-ocean-opportunities-in-the-agentic

25.US grand geopolitical strategy or the lack thereof.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hauSfd65lDM&t=899s

26."The standard model of industrial policy — temporary export subsidies — imagines these as being provided at taxpayer expense. But if financial intermediaries are important — and most rapidly industrializing countries rely heavily on banks rather than on markets for financing — then it’s not so simple. A wave of corporate failures may be healthy for margins, but could cause years of low growth as banks are paralyzed with fear and tethered to zombie companies. And it’s not clear that state ownership and control of the banking system is an effective remedy, because even in a communist system, middle managers are still probably afraid for their personal careers (or their lives) if their institutions perform poorly.

This means we shouldn’t hail the Chinese industrial policy experiment as a success until we wait a few years. More generally, I think discussions of industrial policy tend to downplay the role of financial systems, and banking systems in particular. "

https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/updated-thoughts-on-industrial-policy

27.Probably one of the best and deepest interviews with Tim Ferriss I've listened to in a few years. It's really interesting and wide ranging.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6NYNOejPWc&t=2012s

28."To the Gundo bros, being alive in 2026 is spectacular: it’s the age of splitting atoms, turning sewage to fuel and catching rockets with chopsticks.

The best of American excellence is not locked in the past, buried alongside the Wright brothers and Manhattan Project engineers. It’s in the present, hunched over a piece of machinery in El Segundo, wrench in one hand, a Celsius in the other."

https://www.deseret.com/u-s-world/2026/04/21/el-segundo-hard-tech-hub-jakob-diepenbrock/

29."The cheap missiles could restore the U.S. military’s ability to deter a Chinese attack on Taiwan. But there’s still a window of vulnerability between now and the end of 2027 as the JASSM inventory reaches a new low before large numbers of Rusty Daggers reach the bomber wings."

https://www.trenchart.us/p/this-cheap-cruise-missile-could-salvage

30."In other words, American youngsters idealizing China — without actually engaging with China or knowing much about it — is really about expressing their dissatisfaction with America.

Chinamaxxing is mostly just Americaminning.

That mirrors a larger global reaction. Donald Trump’s tariffs, threats against allies, and reckless wars have turned most of the world against America. Traditionally, confidence in U.S. leadership was higher than in Chinese leadership, but this has reversed since Trump’s election.

So in fact, I do see some real signs of China’s soft power growing organically — finding ways to flow around the walls of censorship and official marketing campaigns, exposing outsiders to a more real, raw, authentic China. It would be astonishing if a newly developed country of 1.4 billion people didn’t have plenty of natural, organic appeal. Now, despite the best efforts of the country’s masters, that appeal is starting to show itself."

https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/is-chinas-soft-power-really-rising

31."Omar Haroun, CEO at Eudia, talks about a “Pareto Compression,” where the old adage of 20% of inputs driving 80% of outputs is being compressed. In this new world, expertise is rewarded exponentially, with perhaps 5% of inputs driving 95% of outputs. This doesn’t mean we’re all doomed. What it means that in every role, every job function, humans will be pushed into that zone of genius, that 5% where what they do truly counts. In the case of radiologists, it’s the interpretation of non-routine cases, more patient engagement, an expansion in the need for soft skills, coordination, and communication.

Pareto Compression does not mean a compression in the number of people to do the job; it means a compression in the task-sets within every job, pushing every performer to higher, more satisfactory marginal work, on top of AI. Like the radiologists, it can expand demand, and push the role to the frontier of accretive human capability. In other cases, it doesn’t mean everyone must become an expert; on the contrary, it broadens the base of who can do the job, and opens doors.

In a competitive environment the choice of Strong vs Skinny is not an ultimatum, or a zero-sum choice; it is the requirement of every organization to dive deep into jobs, identify tasks, and choose where to apply “Skinny” and where to apply “Strong.” Most organizations will have to do both by trimming non-routine tasks with robotics and AI, and by amplifying non-routine tasks with these extraordinary new tools. The world of AI adoption is one of rote task elimination, a broadened base of who can do the work, and a Pareto Compression of expert work amplified significantly."

https://ideas.scotthartley.com/p/ai-strong-vs-skinny-leadership-tradeoffs

32."The geographical layout driving this is straightforward. Aerial drone saturation has pushed the effective kill zone out to 20-25 kilometers from the front. Any infantry movement in that corridor is hopeless. FPV drones that cost less than a decent laptop will intercept armored vehicles on the way to evacuate a position. Ukraine faces a manpower crisis compounded by a physics problem: the most important ground on the battlefield is also the most lethally inaccessible to human beings. UGVs dissolve that constraint. Lose one, absorb the cost, send another.

What is changing is the threshold for when and where human beings need to be present. The first line is becoming robotic. Humans are moving back.

The manpower dimension matters beyond Ukraine. Ukraine is fighting an adversary with three to four times its available manpower pool, and UGVs are directly softening that asymmetry — each robot that holds a position or runs a logistics route is a soldier who doesn’t need to be recruited, trained, or replaced.

The implications for Europe are significant. Rebuilding credible standing armies across the continent has stalled politically for a decade, in part because reinstating conscription is both deeply unpopular and arguably misaligned with how modern warfare actually works — what militaries need are professionals who can operate complex networked systems, not mass infantry. A robotized frontline changes that calculation. Smaller professional forces, augmented by large fleets of expendable machines, may be able to generate the combat mass that European governments cannot generate through recruitment alone."

https://defensebrief.substack.com/p/the-first-robotized-war

33."Two men. Same cancer. Same strange, impossible gratitude. The suffering didn’t create their faith. It incinerated everything that was competing with it. The noise finally stopped, and in the silence they could hear God more clearly than they ever had. I’ve noticed this pattern in my own life on a much smaller scale.

The seasons that reshaped me most were never the wins. They were the losses, the failures, the stretches where I had no move left except to pray, mean it, and need it. Suffering has a way of clearing the room. The question is whether there’s anything left when it does."

https://substack.com/home/post/p-195260819

34.Lots of big news in Silicon Valley and some of the best takes here too. Always makes me think and you get the zeitgeist of the moment.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s61XVZAt5ns

35."The commoditization flywheel : both companies give away complements to drive usage of the core.

The risk of this strategy to the ecosystem is that it makes previously attractive categories no longer viable. Commoditizing the complement does not demand a best-in-class replacement. A free, good-enough product is enough to change market dynamics."

https://tomtunguz.com/competitive-strategy-in-ai/

36."The nightmare scenario isn’t worldwide toll booths or even simultaneous blockades. We can tolerate higher prices and more frequent disruptions. What we shouldn’t tolerate is a descent into gangsterism. In the U.S., Donald Trump has undermined capitalism and the rule of law. (See: TikTok, tariffs, deploying prosecutions to attack Fed independence and political opponents, etc.)

Trump’s strategic incompetence in Iran is exporting gangsterism to the world. In effect, we’re trading in our world policeman badge for regional protection rackets. That’s not the art of the deal, but the illusion of the steal. The question isn’t whether America has the economic and military firepower to prosper in Trump’s gangster paradise, but what we lose when we abandon the rules-based order we helped create. A: Everything."

https://www.profgmedia.com/p/freedom-of-navigation

37. Lots of good discussion on the latest Silicon Valley news. Apple CEO shakeup. Musk vs OpenAI. Cursor (60Billy!?)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjePLXg64n0&t=223s

38."Zelensky is already pointing toward the reality that follows a ceasefire and it is a reality that most Western capitals have not begun to internalize.

A ceasefire does not mean the end of confrontation. It means the transformation of confrontation into a new phase of Cold War 2.0, in which Russia remains a revanchist power with unresolved territorial claims, undiminished nuclear capability, and a leadership class that views the current international order as a threat to be dismantled.

The question is not whether a ceasefire is coming. The trajectory of 2026 is making that increasingly clear, once again contrary to the mainstream opinion that insists on stalemate as the default setting. The question is whether the West will use the breathing space a ceasefire provides to prepare for what comes after — or whether it will repeat the mistake of the post-2014 period, when a Minsk process that everyone knew was failing was treated as a substitute for strategic readiness.

The ceasefire is coming. What follows it will be the test that matters."

https://velinatchakarova.substack.com/p/the-ceasefire-is-coming-putins-strongest

Marvin Liao 7/4/26 Marvin Liao 7/4/26

Rental Family: Finding Your Place

That movie was so delightful. The description of the movie: starring Brendan Fraser as the main character Phillip is as follows:

“Struggling to find purpose, an American actor lands an unusual gig with a Japanese agency to play stand-in roles for strangers. As he immerses himself in his clients' worlds, he begins to form genuine bonds that blur the lines between performance and reality. Confronting the moral complexities of his work, he soon rediscovers purpose, belonging, and the quiet beauty of human connection.”

The Tokyo city landscapes are lovely but it also shows how isolating life can be in a big city. About how complicated Japanese culture can be for foreigners. And probably for the Japanese themselves. As Shinji, the company boss says: "You could live in this country for 100 years and there will still be things you won't understand."

The work is important. When he asks his colleague why they do this work, she responds:

"These people look at you like they've been waiting for you their whole lives." The job helps fill the emotional hole in their clients.

He makes friends and real relationships along the way. He feels meaning for the first time in 7 years living in Japan. It transforms his life for the better too. He even goes to some beautiful Japanese countryside and ocean landscapes. My god, these views were beautiful.

Some great quotes and insights that I took from the movie:

“Sometimes the story we tell ourselves becomes the truth.”

“Sometimes, it’s okay to pretend”

“Sometimes all we need is for someone to look us in the eye to let us know we exist.”

There is an emotional toll that the job takes: Building relationships and feelings and cutting them off. Yet there are lighthearted moments like when he has challenges with one of his clients kids:

“She hates me.” His boss replies: “that’s what being a parent is about.” It’s funny and so real as a parent of a teen right now.

There is also a scene where the child Mia asks: “Why do adults always lie?”

Phillip responds: “It’s because it’s a lot easier than telling the truth. Sometimes they lie to protect the people they care about…..” Very real.

There is also a discussion with Kikuo-san, one of the clients on religion. He says it’s about:

“Becoming more than yourself” and “God exists in all things, God exists inside us too.”

I really believe this is true.

Ultimately it is a movie about relationships, friendship and being human. Finding closure. Finding your voice. Finding yourself. Finding family. Finding your home & belonging. Sometimes in places you don’t expect. You will love it. And if you love Japan like I do, you will enjoy this movie even more. So go watch it!

Marvin Liao 7/2/26 Marvin Liao 7/2/26

I Don’t Want To

I remember when my daughter was like 4 or 5 years old, there was this period of time, when she was in this “I don’t want to” stage. Anything or everything we asked her, she would respond in her cute voice: “I don’t want to!” It was a pain back then but I look back to this time with fondness.

“I don’t want to.” Simple words. Yet it gets drummed out of us as we grow up by our families, school, friends, work and society at large. To survive and grow up you have to do things you don’t want to do. This is normal. Most of us mindlessly do this.

You go to school and take requisite classes because you have to, like French (I grew up in Canada), math, biology, or whatever even if you didn’t enjoy the subject. I played violin and viola even though I didn’t enjoy it because my mom made me. I had to work part time jobs, go to University because I grew up in an Asian immigrant household. It literally was not NOT an option.

All of which probably caused me to rebel. I don’t like anyone telling me what to do. It’s why I went backpacking in Europe. It’s why I moved to Taiwan and taught English despite my parents' misgivings. It’s also why I ended up in SF. I wanted to chart my own path.

Yet the irony is I ended up doing a bunch of stuff I didn’t want to. An example being working for someone else. Looking back I am glad I did as I learned a lot but it cost me a lot too.

As you get older, you learn to understand the different types of “I don’t want to.” The type that is good for you and the type that is not so good for you. The good stuff: going to the gym. I hate going to the gym. But it’s so good for you. Managing your diet and having more bland protein power and veggies, all good for you. Doing the stuff on your TO DO list or having that difficult conversation with a colleague or founder or partner. It sucks but it’s better to do it. Eat the frog. Getting up early in the morning so you can steal a march on the day, yet those first five minutes up are painful.

The bad stuff for me: working for someone else. Man, that just kills my soul, being at someone’s beck and call, having to ask if I can go on vacation. Awful. Social obligations to go to events or meet someone I dislike or don’t respect. So many examples of this in Silicon Valley.

This is probably why I focus so much on optimizing my social network, optimizing for financial and time freedom. I don’t do anything I don’t want to do. And only do things I don’t want to do that are actually good for me. You should only do a select few “I don’t want to,” not all of them. As you do them over and over again, these become “I want to” and this is the secret of longevity, effectiveness and relevance.

Life is hard. It’s supposed to be. But a good life is one where you get to pick your hard.

Marvin Liao 6/30/26 Marvin Liao 6/30/26

Learning from Chamath: One of the Most Polarizing Men in Silicon Valley

I admit during the 2010s, I was a fanboy of Chamath Palihapitiya. A fellow Canuck, but from a very poor & troubled family life, he made it to Silicon Valley. Chamath really made it big as an executive at Facebook. He parlayed his fortune there into VERY successful investments in the Golden State Warriors, Slack, Groq. He was critical, outspoken, passionate, called things as he saw it and people loved it.

Until he did the SPAC thing in 2020 & 2021. Leveraging his fame and reputation to dump these stocks onto retail, with zero contrition till now btw, except to say “No crying in the casino.” That and his growing hubris due to All in Podcast fame. But he seems to have settled down. I particularly enjoyed an interview he did recently with his 2nd wife, a lovely lady entrepreneur from an Italian pharma dynasty. It humanized him. Whatever you think of him, he is damn smart and an excellent investor.

He put out a video in February that was excellent. 30 Years of Business Advice in 13 Minutes. It’s very wise.I strongly recommend you watch it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-LAT4HjWPo

I pulled out some key points from this video.

Thoughts on longevity and playing the infinite game. This is what the best people do. You can’t let your brain rot from longevity. We all know of people who literally dropped dead weeks into their retirement. You gotta have a mission. Longer term goal. As David Senra says: “my retirement plan is death.” Chamath gives his take on this.

“It took me 30 years to realize what I'm about to tell you in the next few minutes. You can just never stop. And that seems like a really odd thing to say, but I think people frame their life as these objectives. And the problem with having objectives is that at some point you'll meet enough of them and you'll think, "I've made it."

I think what I've learned is that there are no objectives that are worthy enough for you to say, "It's time to stop. As I keep going, I'm getting into my 50s. There are all these people that I really used to look up to who've just stopped. They're not in the arena anymore. And I just think it's insane. Why would they do that?

Then you look at somebody like Buffett and he goes and goes and goes and he's 95 and he's finally taking a half step back. Munger basically died doing the job. There are so many examples of those kinds of people and really what are they? They're not committed to a set of objectives. They're committed to learning, putting themselves at risk, surrounding themselves with people that know interesting things. And it's kept them sharp, and it's kept them vibrant.”

But it’s not just infinite games. It’s about playing the right game. The right metrics. The right priorities. I personally made the same mistakes and due to my risk aversion and lack of courage, didn’t even hit maximal money goals either unlike Chamath.

“And I think as I get older, that's really the most important goal. And if someone had told me that that was a goal, I would have made slightly different decisions. I would have

optimized less for money. I would have made some very specific decisions very

differently. I would have taken more risk, even more than I did when I was younger.”

He gives great advice on how to go after the life you want. Basically avoid debt early in your career. And not going after short term optimization. Fight the hedonic treadmill. This is what continually gets me into trouble, especially during my Yahoo! & pre-parent days. I was ridiculously wasteful and not just jumped on the hedonic treadmill with abandon but ran on it too.

“If you're going to live a life without objectives and you're actually going to live a life of process, you have to create some really good boundary conditions. What is an example of one?

You cannot have debt. Debt is one of these very simple and practical things that when and if you have it will cause you to stop. It can cause you to stop learning. It can cause you to stop taking risks. It'll cause you to seek objectives. The most obvious one being money.

And all of those short-term optimizations have huge repercussions and consequences for the next 20 and 30 and 40 years of your life. Having no debt is critical. And being able to have the discipline to not choose the things that cause you to be in debt.”

Chamath also says: Don’t believe social media and the influencers with their curated photogenic lives. You get the wrong idea of what is real. Or compare yourself to their fake life.

“And what's hard, especially for younger generations, is you spend all of this time rotting your brain with worthless social media of all of these people who are essentially lying to you about their fake life. And too many people get tricked into that life being the actual life that those people have and then as a result the life that you should be living. All of those things are oriented around money. All of them.

There's never a person that really is celebrated for a lifelong commitment to process.

Maybe Kobe Bryant and unfortunately he's not with us anymore.”

It’s funny coming from Chamath who is not known for his humility at least until recently. But humility is important if you want to thrive in this ever fast changing world. You will be wrong all the time. And it’s okay. From my own experience and data sample set, I have never met an arrogant “know it all” succeed in life.

“Number two, you need to manage your life with humility. That's something that took me a really long time to learn as well. What does that mean? It means that you have to be extremely truthful about the way that things are today because it allows you to see how things are. It allows you to share the truth with other people that allows them to actually find incredible solidarity with you.”

Your circle matters. I follow the Tai Lopez framework. Spend a third of your time with older and more experienced folks. A third of your time with peers. A third of your time with folks younger but up and coming. Chamath believes younger people give you a window into the future. I definitely agree with this. Watch what younger people are doing or the hobbies they pick up. I also continue to learn so much from my teenage daughter. And again pick the right goals.

“Three, you have to surround yourself with people that are younger than you. The

way that they see the world is just completely different. Their biases are different. Their frameworks are different. And it's hard because a lot of the time I believe that I've

learned enough where I don't have to be told I'm wrong. But that's not true. In

fact, the opposite is totally true. The more time I'm with younger people, the more I realize that everything I know is stuck in a moment in time. And while it's relevant, it'll decay in relevance.

And at some point, the way in which I think things should work will be completely and diametrically the opposite of how things will actually work. And so all these young people end up as an early warning system for the future, which is just another way of

learning.”

So, those are three practical things that somebody can do to not riddle yourself with superficial dumb objectives that'll bog you down. I was littered with dumb objectives. I

was a director, become a vice president. I was a vice president, become a senior vice president. I was a senior vice president, become a principal at a venture firm, then become a general partner. I was at Facebook, I was part of the management team. I

wanted more equity.

It's all these dumb objectives. And these dumb objectives took me away from the core 100% version of me. And it made me caricatures of myself. And it make it made me amplify small facets of myself to represent a much larger part of who I was. Not just to myself, but to the people around me.

And I don't think that that's a successful way to live one's life. Again, I think the problem with what I'm telling you is it can only be learned over time. Now, you can choose to listen to it because everybody else when they get to their late 40s, early 50s will nod their head when they listen to what I have to say. Everybody in their 20s and 30s will be like, "This is BS, This is not for me."

So, you have two choices, which is you're going to get there the easy way or the hard way. The easy way is just do these couple of simple things. The most important one is give yourself complete optionality. Preserve optionality at all costs. I try to preserve optionality in business. I try to preserve optionality when I'm negotiating. Find the space where there can be win-wins. It's a hugely powerful thing that's helped me. And what that does and how it manifests is it preserves relationships. It preserves other people's egos. It preserves other people's emotions. It forces me to be more subdued, to listen more, to talk less.

which is actually about showing you that these secrets exist and it gives you a chance and I feel like I find this now in my late 40s about to turn 50 that they're exposed to me and I'm like wow this is an incredible thing.

I didn't realize this when I was younger and as much as somebody would have tried to tell me when I was younger I ignored them. So, I only offer it up as you know, most of you will ignore it, too, but you're going to go through it.

For most of us, the biggest and most important decision is who you marry. And also how you maintain that relationship. I picked well but frankly completely screwed up the relationship. Something I’m still in the process of fixing. You will all learn quickly that peace at home leads to peace of mind. If you don’t fix this, it will bleed into the rest of your life, especially your business life.

“The most important relationship lesson I've learned is that it is really, really crucial to be married to somebody that 100% has your back. And the only way you get that is by

being completely completely honest. And that is really hard for a lot of people.

I didn't know how to be honest. I shared most things. I didn't share everything.

And that was sort of part of how I was taught just living in my family. But if

you don't learn that lesson, it comes back to bite you in the ass. In relationships,

it is so important to have your co-founder there beside you, your wife, my wife.

And you know, having gone through a divorce, which is almost like a death in the family, what I will tell you is what was missing. What was missing was just complete raw, unfiltered, unadulterated honesty. So that when things were good, we could celebrate that. But when things were bad, you could call it out and point to it and name it. And we

didn't do that. Second time around, it's completely different. And I think it's been a blessing to find that.”

Location, location, location. You have to curate and choose your environment. I would not be where I am if I did not make it to San Francisco 26+ years ago. Go to the center of the network. The middle of the action. Opportunities will abound and come your way.

“If you're young and you're ambitious, the first and most important thing is you have to be on Broadway. So depending on what it is that you want to do, if you're into politics, you need to be in Washington DC. Now, it may take you one or two turns to get there. Maybe you need to be in a state capital. That's fine, but start there. Get to Washington. If you want to be in finance, you need to get to New York or London. If you want to be in crypto, you probably need to be in Abu Dhabi. And if you want to be in tech, simply put, you just need to be in Silicon Valley.

There is no shortcut for any of these decisions. So that's number one. You

have to be where the fish are. And then the second is you should not be optimizing for compensation. This is why again you need to live humbly. You need to optimize for opportunity. When an opportunity opens itself to work with people that are smarter than you in a thing that feels like it could be a rocket ship, you just jump on and hold on. And when you don't do that and you put all this other nonsense in front of it, you will fail and ultimately you will look back and you will be miserable.”

Commit. Go hard. Stop being so weak. Build some grit and resilience. This is the biggest predictor of success in every avenue in life.

“But it's because you let all of this other stupid indirection get in the way. The number of young people I encounter who talk about all of these idiotic things like work life balance. I don't even understand what that means. When you're in a vibe state and in a flow state, what that means is that you are working in a way that gives you purpose and you're living your life in a way that gives you purpose and you blend them together. That is what you want. Where you're in a constant process where you are adding things to make your life better.

There was this incredible experiment where they took these big jugs of water and they would drop mice into the water and they would measure how long it took these mice to drown and on average, let's say it was four 4 and 1/2 minutes. Then they reran the experiment. They would drop the mice in about 30 seconds before they thought the mice would drown, they would pluck it out. They would dry it off. They would comfort it, but then they would drop the mice back in. And then that same mouse was able to survive in that water for on average 60 hours.

Now, what is the difference between a mouse that drowns in 4 minutes and a mouse that survives 60 hours? Nobody knows except what we can speculate, which is it's the brain.

And it's the brain that is unlocking and that's just in the mouse of levels of resilience and survival. That is what everybody deserves to find a place where they can go into the deep inner recesses of their mind and unlock levels that you didn't think you were capable of. Navy Seals talk about it. Athletes talk about it.

in a position where you can be one of those mice that treads water for 60 hours because it will profoundly change you in a way that you will not appreciate except until

you've gone through it. And then you'll look at everybody else and you just won't understand why nobody else gets it.”

Avoid status games. I’ve learned that you want to do things that are authentic to you regardless of what the rest of the world or the cool kids think. You want to work on things for a long time. Chase your curiosity and interests. I’ve never gone wrong when I did this. When I chased something that truly interested me and not because it was cool or monetizable right away.

“The most important thing around status is that it's completely manufactured and

irrelevant. It is what people do to trick other people into wasting their precious time. And if you know that, one of the most powerful things that you can do is just to ignore all of the ways in which society tries to give you status. Because what it is actually doing is

putting a small little hook into you that it can use to pull you back.

Because if you start to buy into these things, these are things that are externally validated by somebody else. It is then somebody being able to hold some amount of judgment. It could be small, it could be large over you. And when you chase enough of these things and you chase enough status, you will be completely beholden to people who do not have your best interest at heart.

And I have learned this the hard way because there are all of these things that I've always wanted because I thought they were important. To be on this list, to be in that club, to be invited to this thing. But all of these things don't matter because they are completely contrived and you contort yourself and sometimes you'll even bend your expectations and your behaviors to be a part of it or to be acknowledged and then you're just less of a person.

Status is a completely manufactured corrupting thing that society does to hold you back. And the more that you can divorce yourself from it, it's a superpower.”

Man, this is powerful advice and insight. You can learn from anyone and should learn from everyone. Learn from your heroes. Learn from your enemies. Learn from anti-heroes. Just continue to learn.

But as usual regarding advice, most of you will probably not pay attention. People usually only learn these lessons the hard way. But as the eminently quotable David Senra says:“The hard way is the right way.” Probably because it then actually sticks.I admit during the 2010s, I was a fanboy of Chamath Palihapitiya. A fellow Canuck, but from a very poor & troubled family life, he made it to Silicon Valley. Chamath really made it big as an executive at Facebook. He parlayed his fortune there into VERY successful investments in the Golden State Warriors, Slack, Groq. He was critical, outspoken, passionate, called things as he saw it and people loved it.

He put out a video in February that was excellent. 30 Years of Business Advice in 13 Minutes. It’s very wise.I strongly recommend you watch it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-LAT4HjWPo

I pulled out some key points from this video.

“And I think as I get older, that's really the most important goal. And if someone had told me that that was a goal, I would have made slightly different decisions. I would have optimized less for money. I would have made some very specific decisions very differently. I would have taken more risk, even more than I did when I was younger.”

“If you're going to live a life without objectives and you're actually going to live a life of process, you have to create some really good boundary conditions. What is an example of one?

Chamath also says: Don’t believe social media and the influencers with their curated photogenic lives. You get the wrong idea of what is real. Or compare yourself to their fake life.

There's never a person that really is celebrated for a lifelong commitment to process.

Maybe Kobe Bryant and unfortunately he's not with us anymore.”

“Three, you have to surround yourself with people that are younger than you. The way that they see the world is just completely different. Their biases are different. Their frameworks are different. And it's hard because a lot of the time I believe that I've learned enough where I don't have to be told I'm wrong. But that's not true. In fact, the opposite is totally true. The more time I'm with younger people, the more I realize that everything I know is stuck in a moment in time. And while it's relevant, it'll decay in relevance.

So, those are three practical things that somebody can do to not riddle yourself with superficial dumb objectives that'll bog you down. I was littered with dumb objectives. I was a director, become a vice president. I was a vice president, become a senior vice president. I was a senior vice president, become a principal at a venture firm, then become a general partner. I was at Facebook, I was part of the management team. I wanted more equity.

And it turns out that there are so many opportunities for people to just blow themselves up and self- emulate by doing something stupid. And for me, that framework has helped me minimize that a lot. And then the second thing is just a more philosophical one which is just to realize that if we are actually in a simulation there's a there's a level of the game which is actually about showing you that these secrets exist and it gives you a chance and I feel like I find this now in my late 40s about to turn 50 that they're exposed to me and I'm like wow this is an incredible thing.

“The most important relationship lesson I've learned is that it is really, really crucial to be married to somebody that 100% has your back. And the only way you get that is by being completely completely honest. And that is really hard for a lot of people.

I didn't know how to be honest. I shared most things. I didn't share everything. And that was sort of part of how I was taught just living in my family. But if you don't learn that lesson, it comes back to bite you in the ass. In relationships, it is so important to have your co-founder there beside you, your wife, my wife.

There is no shortcut for any of these decisions. So that's number one. You have to be where the fish are. And then the second is you should not be optimizing for compensation. This is why again you need to live humbly. You need to optimize for opportunity. When an opportunity opens itself to work with people that are smarter than you in a thing that feels like it could be a rocket ship, you just jump on and hold on. And when you don't do that and you put all this other nonsense in front of it, you will fail and ultimately you will look back and you will be miserable.”

Commit. Go hard. Stop being so weak. Build some grit and resilience. This is the biggest predictor of success in every avenue in life.

Now, what is the difference between a mouse that drowns in 4 minutes and a mouse that survives 60 hours? Nobody knows except what we can speculate, which is it's the brain.

But I can tell you in business the great thing is there is no shelf life to us feeling that because unlike a Navy Seal or an athlete where you have a physical shelf life of 10 or 15 years, you can be in this game forever. So, you got to get to a place that will put you in a position where you can be one of those mice that treads water for 60 hours because it will profoundly change you in a way that you will not appreciate except until you've gone through it. And then you'll look at everybody else and you just won't understand why nobody else gets it.”

“The most important thing around status is that it's completely manufactured and

Status is a completely manufactured corrupting thing that society does to hold you back. And the more that you can divorce yourself from it, it's a superpower.”

Man, this is powerful advice and insight. You can learn from anyone and should learn from everyone. Learn from your heroes. Learn from your enemies. Learn from anti-heroes. Just continue to learn.

Marvin Liao 6/28/26 Marvin Liao 6/28/26

Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads June 28th, 2026

“In summer, the song sings itself”--William Carlos Williams

Energy and the Middle East in light of the Iran war. Another good analytical discussion on what is going on and implications for the world.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7W6cVMRDdyQ

2.This is an excellent interview. Very insightful and surprisingly introspective and thoughtful. Also good description of Ritardmaxxing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4tvVKDhpiY

3.An optimistic view of AI and its impacts. Jordi Visser approaches tech and AI via a global macro lens.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2Mf3OotGrQ

4."Most men misunderstand respect. It is not given freely, nor is it earned through words. It is revealed in our conduct and built through consistent actions over time.

Being a gentleman is not about perfection, but it is about discipline. It is the daily decision to carry yourself in a way that reflects not only who you are, but who you want to be in life. In a world where standards have been lowered, the man who holds the line will always stand apart."

https://thewaysofagentleman.substack.com/p/ten-things-a-gentleman-never-does

5."Our strategy can be summed up as defense in depth plus diversification across multiple sovereigns (governments). The goal is that no single government, corporation, or policy can significantly disrupt your operations."

https://defieducation.substack.com/p/intro-to-decentralized-tech-and-why

6."Wars involve a process akin to price discovery in finance: they make clear what the underlying realities actually are. The Crimean War, for example, simply demonstrated that the British Army and state were not modern and not fit for purpose. The regimental system as it then was, where commissions could be purchased, the life of an officer was primarily social, and there was little training and no doctrine, could be and was defended before the War: Wellington, Waterloo, aristocracy as the backbone of the nation etc. After the War, such defences were simply not possible.

And much the same was true of Ukraine. It suddenly became obvious to all that the US already had little military power in Europe and was no longer a major player in the region, that much western weaponry was poorly adapted to modern war, that western ammunition stocks were inadequate and that the quality and quantity of Russian military power had been greatly underestimated. And in some ways the most worrying realisation was that there was nothing practical the West could do about any of these problems in the short or medium term. This could be denied before 2022: it could not be denied afterwards.

The fact is that the ability of the defender to damage and destroy very expensive weapons platforms is already prohibitive, and can only increase. The other is that western ability to even sustain, let alone operate, its armed forces, requires a constant supply of strategic commodities. One of the things that has been “discovered” over the last few years is that modern western “just in time” militaries are optimised for peacetime, not for fighting. Such problems as limited quantities of equipment and even more limited spares and ordnance are not accidents, but the product of a system which prioritised “management,” in the commercial sense of keeping the minimum inventory to save money. It was assumed that any conflicts would be sufficiently short and low-intensity that this would not matter.

But even if by some miracle western forces could be expanded and defence industries relaunched, globalisation has ensured that components for western defence equipment and materials for manufacture are now sourced from all over the world. In the past this has not been a problem, but I expect that more than one nation is watching the Iranians use the economic weapon with interest.

We are going to see a substantial change in the terms of political trade, as component suppliers and producers of primary products start to realise the power that they could potentially wield over Western governments, and by extension on their military capabilities. But that’s how it is."

https://aurelien2022.substack.com/p/how-it-is

7."Modern culture equates accessibility with success. We are told to be responsive, to network, and to be “available for a quick chat.” This is a trap. In the economy of 2026, Scarcity is the only real currency. When you are easy to reach, your time has no value. You become a resource that others use to solve their problems, rather than a Sovereign who solves his own. If your door is always open, any idiot can walk in and steal your focus."

https://luxlifestylelab.substack.com/p/why-your-open-door-policy-is-a-death

8.What an excellent episode and discussion on Silicon Valley news. Lots of good insights.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cUngseNueP8&t=3820s

9."The most likely scenario ahead is neither full peace nor open war. Instead, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) is expected to maintain de facto control over the Strait of Hormuz, supported by a broad consensus across Iran’s political spectrum, including both hardliners and reformists. Transit will remain restricted for vessels linked to the U.S., Israel, or their allies, while other ships — already including those from China, Russia, Iraq, Turkey, Thailand, Pakistan, and India — are permitted passage under an informal framework.

Trump has miscalculated again. He is trying to win the battle; Iran is focused on winning the war. In Tehran’s plan, the strait is not a tool to end the war, but a permanent fixture for its aftermath."

https://responsiblestatecraft.org/strait-of-hormuz-and-iran/

10."The hard problem is not holding heretical ideas. Anyone can do that. The hard problem is designing selection mechanisms that filter for productive unorthodoxy without filtering for conformity. This is what Prometheus attempts: presenting heretical ideas openly as a way of breaking social barriers. These are experiments in selection mechanism design.

The ideas that matter most are often the ones the machinery is designed to suppress. Not because suppression is evidence of truth, but because the machinery does not distinguish between the heretic and the crank. The ratio of world-changing insights among the uncomfortable ideas is higher than zero."

https://svrgn.substack.com/p/promethean-progress

11.This is pretty grim listening. Zeihan is always provocative.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8EJ-L534fXE

12."Tracking competitors used to make sense. Who shipped the feature first. Who priced lower. Who hired the sales rep you wanted. Execution was hard, the race was about execution, and watching was a legitimate part of the playbook.

AI killed that logic. Forty minutes vs. six weeks. Anyone can build the obvious thing now, the market map, the landing page, the MVP that does what the customer said they wanted. When execution is free, there’s nothing left worth copying. The surface is drowning in adequate, and the playbook everyone’s studying is already a commodity.

What wins in the near term are secrets. Things you can only learn by going somewhere nobody else thought to look, a distribution channel that only works because you understand a specific buyer’s workflow, a technical decision that seems wrong until you’ve spent months inside the problem."

https://writing.nikunjk.com/p/your-only-competition-is-you

13."It’s an Iron Law of the Universe. No one can be achieve success without earning it for themselves.

You have to climb to the top yourself, rung by rung.

And once you’re there you’ll learn the truth: successful people don’t want to meet anyone new because every time you do all you get is: weird desperate energy; not-so-subtle attempts suss out how successful you are so they can see if you’re ‘worth their valuable time’; and pathetic attempts to get you to invest in some harebrained bullshit or, worse, become their partner in a business where you do all the work and they just kick back and tell you about their ‘valuable ideas’ "

https://www.tetramarketing.io/p/lies-that-normal-people-believe

14."Willpower is a finite resource. You wake up with a full tank and every decision you make throughout the day drains it. By 7 PM your brain is running on fumes. That is why the midnight scrolling and the junk food orders happen at night, not at 8 AM. Your defenses are down. The Sleepwalker comes out when your willpower tank hits empty.

So the Sovereign Architect builds around it.

Front-load the important actions into the morning when your tank is full. Remove decisions from your evening by pre-committing earlier in the day. Design your week so the right things happen on autopilot and the wrong things require actual effort to access. This is how the men you admire actually operate (I can tell you from experience, every sharp man I’ve met who seems “disciplined” really just has a schedule that seemingly “does” the work for him). You are building that system this month."

https://www.thefinalman.com/p/the-blueprint-that-builds-you-while

15."If you are taking your life seriously, you will recognize that your time is extremely limited. The standard path sold to you doesn’t work in excel. Go ahead and plug it in (only works under perfect conditions of no lay offs + star performer straight to hedge fund manager/Managing director/Partner etc.)

While you need that W-2 to just pay bills, its really funding the correct “Funnel” which is: 1) any recurring revenue business, 2) asymmetric investments, 3) skill stack that will be useful in 5-10 years - such as sales and 4) consistent purchase of new cash flowing assets (or building them)

If you follow the tea leaves from step one, it means that you need to become self sovereign. This means avoiding a single point of failure. You do not want: 1) one boss deciding your worth, 2) one source of income, 3) one industry determining your future and 4) one skill to pay for everything.

What usually happens? People figure out they can earn money on skill A. That’s great. Then they ignore skill B, C and D. All three of these could be new revenue streams but it is just too “painful” to get started.

Psychologically if you are earning $200K from skill A, it doesn’t make sense to earn $50K from skill B. This is how NPCs think.

A person who understands cycles? They will realize, if A plummets by 50%? Skill B may go up to $100K+. Think that through. Who is in a better position to survive the future. One guy who makes $250K from one task or a person who makes $150K from business A and $100K from business B (with neither business being in the same industry?). It’s clear as day."

https://bowtiedbull.io/p/how-to-escape-the-rigged-system

16. "Hormuz has always been a chokepoint, going back thousands of years. Using it as a weapon for trade and military has been used MORE than once, as we’ll soon see.

The answer is in short:

Geography is destiny.

Chokepoints like the Strait of Hormuz alter the balance of power and economics in a region. They determine the rise and fall of empires, century after century."

https://pplsartofwar.substack.com/p/the-thousand-year-chokepoint

17."What most cannot realize is that the only way you will win in this attention economy is by promoting yourself (selling + distribution). Selling yourself. Selling your work. Selling your ideas. Thinking that because you have made something, you deserve to be noticed is wrong. Producing the output has never been easier, and the barrier to entry has entirely disappeared.

Everyone is fighting for others attention. Important part? Back in the day, fighting for attention simply was not part of the game. It didn’t matter the way it does now. Simply because the world went full-on digital and now you are competing with everyone. Especially when it comes to getting someone’s attention and holding it.

Your parents were taught to blend in and not be different from each other. Why? Because it would make them look like fools. Different. Not part of the norm. The whole goal was not to stand out or do anything differently. That is not how the game is being played today, and things won’t work out in your favor if you do so.

When we say sell ourselves, we mean:

When you know how to do storytelling (sell your work and your story) and position yourself in a way that you are someone who can be trusted and counted on.

When we say distribution, we mean:

When you know how to drive traffic and hold the attention of the masses (attention hacking) in a way that makes you someone who can be trusted and counted on.

Lesson: Being humble has nothing to do with promoting yourself. The self-promotion part is mandatory, and the only way you will move forward is by doing it. Not by waiting to be recognized and rewarded accordingly.

For those who have no idea where to start with this one. Just pick one relevant platform (YouTube, Twitter…) and start posting on it. Documenting. Don’t worry about selling or marketing. Just make sure you are putting something out there for the world to see. This should help you get out of your head and overthinking phase."

https://www.beautyofsaas.com/p/get-a-degree-get-a-job-buy-a-house

18. "A student asked whether we invest in “AI companies.” The honest answer: for most companies, that is the wrong question.

Nobody introduces themselves as a “cloud company” today. Nobody says they are an “internet company.” Those became horizontal platforms that every business uses. For companies not providing core infrastructure in AI, I believe the world is going the same direction. It is not a category to invest in, but rather it is infrastructure that every company will build on. And if you’re not building with this infrastructure, you are building for the past."

https://99tech.alexlazarow.com/p/never-a-good-moment

19.Understanding where the AI agentic world is going. Lots of interesting takes and predictions.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f43JCxhKLEg

20.Lots of good ideas here on how to have a better life.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FdxhkwLERaM

21.Learning from Elon Musk. Model the traits, not the person. Good stuff here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ad2owphPILY&t=144s

22.The man exemplifying founder mode. New CEO of Opendoor. Or refounding mode. I was super impressed by this conversation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZlmsA4Bzk0

23."Important I think though is Europe understanding the specific prime threat - Russia - and the likes of the U.K., France, Italy perhaps not getting sidelined by broader defence ambitions. Russia is the threat and the question is how do we defend the U.K.’s shores and Europe against that specific threat. Surely with a population four times the size of Russia, and a combined GDP perhaps fifteen times, Europe can get its act together and fill the void left by the U.S.

But critically I think we need to cast off the feint hopes still that the U.S. still shares the same interests or values, or if not now will mean revert very shortly. No, what happens if it does not? We have to assume the worst, and plan for that now. If we don’t then the U.K. and Europe will be on the menu in the Great Power World seemingly craved now by Trump, Putin and Xi."

https://timothyash.substack.com/p/daddy-killed-nato

24."Despite a global bull market in energy and a shortage of liquefied natural gas (LNG) caused by the closure of the Strait of Hormuz and Iran’s attacks on Qatar’s LNG export facilities, spot prices for natural gas in the Permian Basin traded at deeply negative levels throughout the war.

Front-month prices at the more commonly cited Henry Hub also ground lower as the war dragged on, and currently fetch an energy-equivalent price of approximately $16 per barrel of oil. Why? Because globally elevated oil prices spur more drilling, which produces more associated natural gas than the market can handle."

https://newsletter.doomberg.com/p/price-discovery

25."The disconnect between the epicenter of AI (San Francisco, and. more broadly, a certain subsection of Twitter) and the rest of the world is just wild. The former truly believes we’re on the verge of a world-changing paradigm shift. The latter just doesn’t care. Perception doesn’t just shape reality; it is reality. And, really, I think both can be true. In a world that lives and dies by the power of bits, well, yeah, an automatic bit generator certainly changes everything, doesn’t it?

But in a world that just wants its Uber to arrive on time, (or, even better, a Waymo with no mystery man behind the wheel), which is most of the “real world,” by the way, some super-powered coding assistant is just, like, irrelevant. And that’s what’s funny about this whole AI boom: most people don’t care. And, hysterically, they don’t have to care. I mean, like, yes, they could, hypothetically, get a lot of leverage from all of this stuff. But does it “really” matter? I’m honestly not sure."

https://substack.com/home/post/p-189218441

26.Wide ranging conversation and wisdom here. How to think and live better. By Naval: The philosopher king of Silicon Valley. (outside of Peter Thiel).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TafDme-GCc

27."Let’s recap. Most early-stage innovation comes from biotechs. But the primary exit strategy for biotechs is to sell to pharma, rather than to incur the costs of late-stage development and commercialization themselves.

This is arguably a good setup for both parties. Biotechs can have a laser focus on R&D. And there are less duplicative efforts to build massive sales forces for every company. Pharma can amortize these costs, putting “multiple products in the bag of sales reps” in a way that single-product drug companies cannot.

But there are consequences. One major issue is that the preferences and risk tolerance of big pharma can bound the set of ideas that biotech companies pursue. In other words, taste can be top down rather than bottom up."

https://centuryofbio.com/p/eroom

28."The strike campaign alone does not win Ukraine the war, nor does it eliminate Russia’s economic potential. Russia’s refining capacity remains among the largest in the world, with excess capacity to buffer the domestic fuel supply. Gasoline prices have risen, and export bans have been imposed intermittently, but fuel availability has not collapsed. Some manufacturing and processing capacity is also being dispersed eastward, beyond the reach of Ukrainian long-range drones and cruise missiles.

These points are valid, but these efforts cannot shield Russia’s war-industrial system from the blow. Dispersal is slow, costly, and logistically inefficient; it does not restore destroyed capacity and introduces supply chain friction that compounds production shortfalls. Capital expenditure on new facilities also reduces fiscal resources available for the primary war effort. Surplus capacity was already being drawn down before the deep-strike campaign intensified in 2026. Most critically, export infrastructure cannot be relocated. Primorsk, Ust-Luga, and Novorossiysk are fixed assets that will remain as vulnerable as they are central to Russia’s economy.

The cumulative effects of these constraints are real, bearing meaningfully on Russia’s budget and planning even if they fall short of collapsing its capacity to wage war. In this regard, the analogy to the Allied strategic bombing campaign against the Nazi German war economy in World War II, which I have drawn previously, remains as valid as ever.

The success of Ukraine’s effort cannot be judged solely by the absolute reduction in output achieved. It must be judged against what remains of Russian capacity relative to where it would be without the campaign. Nazi German war-industrial output continued to rise through mid-1944, yet remained significantly below what it would have been absent Allied bombing. Similarly, Russian oil-related revenues have not collapsed, but are measurably lower than they would otherwise be, and the Russian state’s fiscal planning around oil income has been materially undermined."

https://missilematters.substack.com/p/ukraines-deep-strike-drone-campaign

29."Here’s the thing that doesn’t get talked about enough. The downstream effect of having real hobbies isn’t just personal wellbeing or evolutionary signalling. It’s that it makes you a fundamentally more interesting person to be around and to talk to.

The most magnetic people you’ve ever met weren’t necessarily the most successful or the best looking or the most conventionally impressive. They had texture. They’d done things and made things and tried things. They’d failed at things publicly and kept going. And when they talked you wanted to listen because every story they told was connected to something they’d actually lived rather than something they’d consumed.

Hobbies give you material. Not in a calculated, strategic way. In the natural way that a life actually lived produces things worth saying."

https://lifemaxxers.substack.com/p/no-hobbies-no-stories-to-tell

30.What an interesting list of European cities for families.

https://substack.com/home/post/p-193981261?source=queue

31."From 2023 to 2025, the dominant logic of the AI industry was simple: whoever controls the most compute wins. Companies raced to stockpile H100s. Hyperscalers poured hundreds of billions into data centers. The implicit assumption was that the biggest model, trained on the most data, on the most hardware, would capture most of the value.

That assumption is now wrong.

In mid 2026, the ratio of inference spend to training spend is approaching 10:1. The models exist. The question now is who gets paid to run them—and at what margin. We’ve moved from a scarcity of compute to a scarcity of margin. The strategic competition has migrated from who can build the biggest brain to who can deliver intelligence at the lowest marginal cost and highest reliability."

https://investinginai.substack.com/p/the-3-year-inference-landscape-a

32."The Creator Economy is actually the trust economy.

The person who has the most trust wins.

You build trust, nurture relationships, and sell your products through long-form content.

Podcasts, newsletters, guides, and YouTube long-form.

You get to show people you actually know what you’re saying (because a beginner won’t be able to be so persuasive and demonstrate such high understanding of the topic like you).

You also get to build trust because you also share personal perspectives with your audience. This will repel a few people, but it will attract a lot more people.

Create a genuinely helpful product (one that you wish had existed before in your life) and ask your audience, those who have the same problem as you, to support you and your work by buying your products.

You’ll make more money and have more control over your income and lifestyle than relying on a platform that doesn’t care about you.

Productize yourself."

https://hussainibarra.substack.com/p/the-world-economy-is-fcked-right

33.What a refreshing conversation. Very interesting and alternative take on building a massive company. This is a must watch. I'll be rewatching this a few times. It's the anti-Silicon Valley VC approach and I love it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFIvttHf0oo&t=67s

34.This seems to be an optimistic take. Hope it's the case.

"Washington enters the cease-fire holding all the cards: military dominance, financial strangulation and a regional architecture that has isolated Tehran from the Arab world it once sought to mobilize.

Iran’s response has been to threaten the Strait of Hormuz, the final lever a regime reaches for when it has exhausted all others. That threat is a measure of desperation, not strength.

The operation has not concluded, but the conditions for Iranian defeat are in place.

The entity that emerges from what comes next will bear little resemblance to the Islamic Republic that launched its doctrine of resistance four decades ago. What remains depends entirely on whether Tehran meets Trump’s terms."

https://www.zinebriboua.com/p/how-irans-mosaic-doctrine-is-fracturing

35.Basic etiquette for founders in Silicon Valley. Basic but surprisingly not common. Fun convo.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hp2xAwDUIB4

36.Ukraine as a winner coming out of the Iran war right now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-acUKR8XqXw

Marvin Liao 6/27/26 Marvin Liao 6/27/26

Be Like Joules Sullivan: “The Secret to Power, Wealth & Freedom”

I stole the subtitle from the London Real interview with Joules Sullivan. Every young man needs to watch this: https://londonreal.tv/joule-sullivan-modern-men-are-failures-ex-soldier-turned-tailor-explains-the-secret-to-power-wealth-freedom/

I’ve written about Joules Sullivan before, he was an Australian soldier, turned intelligence agent before he joined the corporate world in the protection agency space. Since then he has gone on to build several businesses & become financially independent. He is best known now as a close friend of the Tates and runs one of the top tailor shops in Dubai. He is a wise man having been on the battlefield and traveled the world. He is the epitome of “Have gun, will travel”. So there is plenty to learn from him. He is one of the few folks out there who can back up what he says.

I mined a lot of insights from the talk. He talks about preparedness. Prepper is more of an American thing but his philosophy is similar.

“Humans, like any animal, need to stay combat-ready. Most animals are always aware of predators, but modern society encourages men to be passive and unprepared.”

Basically it’s all on you and your fate in life is in your hands. You have to:

“Master a valuable skill

Outwork the competition

Take full responsibility for his life

Whether in business, relationships, or personal security, his message is clear: be the guy who’s ready for anything.

“It’s not about using those skills – it’s about having them so you don’t have to.”

“Don’t rely on others for your security or success. Be the guy who’s ready for anything – whether that’s in business, relationships, or life in general.”

To be a capable man you need to master a few things. The Big Four:

-Financial literacy

-Physical fitness

-Situational awareness

-The Softening of Men: Rejecting Modern Weakness

Especially number four. We are fed so much propaganda and slop. He believes it’s for the purpose of weakening men. And if you step back it makes sense. Most governments want control, who is hardest to control? Young men. Hence, which positive male role model have you seen in mainstream tv shows or movies in the recent decade. Maybe F1, HBO Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, Top Gun 2? Otherwise, I struggle to come up with anything else. In most shows, the male is dumb, hapless, browbeaten and outsmarted by their wives and girlfriends. The narrative of sensitive men is pushed and it’s pretty damaging when you look at how weak many young men are right now in the West.

Joules: “If your dog dies, sure, cry. But if you’re breaking down over a tough day at work, you need to re-evaluate.”

As London Real wrote: “He champions stoicism, discipline, and traditional values, urging men to embrace struggle, not avoid it." I discovered this late in my life to my detriment. Well it’s never too late.

“Joule’s message is simple:

-Master a skill

-Outwork everyone

-Surround yourself with high-value people

-Reject weak societal narratives”

A good reminder for myself and others to get my Sh-t together. Singularity and chaos is coming and you have to be your own cavalry. Your family, your family line, your neighbors and your country are relying on you. So go embrace the challenges and conquer.

Marvin Liao 6/25/26 Marvin Liao 6/25/26

Slow Down to Speed Up: Working Like a Lion in 2026

What a nutty year. I feel like I’ve been saying this every year since 2020. But as we close out Q2 this has definitely been the case. Yet when I think back to Q1, it was relatively quiet. Several of my business trips were cancelled. Consequently,I spent most of January and February at home in SF, which is highly unusual for me. Yes, you still do calls, meet up with folks here in SF, I even managed to do a deal or two. But it was quiet. Slow even. And I started feeling guilty and wondering if I was doing something wrong.

However, then I remember: Work like a Lion. Don’t mistake activity for actual progress. You aren’t a corporate salaryman drone pretending to work. I also remembered the concept of resting ethic. Take the time to think. Build your health and build your relationships. Read and think. So that’s what I did for most of January and February. Hard to do when it feels like everyone else is in a frenzy around here, especially in Silicon Valley.

It was great. I got in great shape, took naps. Went to church mass more regularly. Spent lots of time with my family, dropping off and picking up my daughter at school and dance class. We even took a day trip to LA for some Erehwon smoothies and Korean BBQ in K-Town. I worked on some personal finance issues, cleaned up my personal portfolio and reset budget and expenses (or tried to at least). I played around with some AI tools. I wrote more blog posts. I read a lot of books, watched and listened to many podcasts to stay on top of the latest geopolitical, global macro, VC investing and tech startup trends. All were critical to keep up as we are in the midst of some of the biggest changes happening in the world.

I am so glad I did this, especially considering how insanely busy Q2 has been so far and based on my schedule for the rest of the year. Lots of travel, lots of conferences, lots of deals to be done, and lots of big projects I’m involved in within my business.

It’s a reminder that sometimes you need to slow down to speed up. While things seem like a waste of time during the quiet & inactive periods, you quickly realize how critical it was to position and prepare myself for the busy-ness and intensity of the rest of the year.

I equate your brain and body to a fallow field. In farmers parlance according to RE Tipster: “Fallow land is farmland left idle for one or more growing seasons to let it rest and regain nutrients. Farmers do this as part of crop rotation, maintain soil health, and prevent the buildup of pests and diseases.” In this analogy, like a field, you need to give your brain and body rest so you can grow again.

To do this you need patience. Patience is not one of my strong suits but it’s certainly helpful if you want to have longevity in your industry. So don’t be scared of quiet time and inactivity. Treasure this time. Use it as the tool for improving your life that it truly is.

Marvin Liao 6/23/26 Marvin Liao 6/23/26

Surviving the Fourth Turning: Learning from Doomberg

I’m a longtime subscriber and fan of Doomberg, the anonymous green chicken and newsletter writer. I’ve gotten some really sober yet enlightening takes on the world of economics and geopolitics. Doomberg writes about the world through the lens of energy and believes energy can explain what is happening in geopolitics. One of their common quotes is: “Energy is Life” and I agree with this view.

In an interview done in February, he does a good summary of his views and his takes on recent geopolitical news. It’s quite sobering and counter the dominant media narrative: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSAN5JmgvAk

I pulled out some things that stood out to me.

His view on personal finance and the portfolio he has built. Ie. what he invests in. Hard assets like land and gold and things he can control, like building his own businesses and venture capital & private equity-style investments.

“So why do we have a lot of Bitcoin subscribers even though we don't own Bitcoin. We own a lot of gold, our philosophy I think resonates with people who like to own Bitcoin when we earn money in fiat. We have to live in a fiat based world. I got to buy groceries. Got to pay my kids tuition. Got to put gas in the guzzler. And we save by buying real assets, gold, land, collectibles. This is where Bitcoin would come in. And then we earn and we invest privately where we can impact the outcome. So I can't bring myself to invest in the stock market because like most of them are Ponzi schemes.

But I can build businesses. We've built Doomberg and you know we have friends and networks and contacts and expertise and if we see the startup or we invest in a company and we know the management team, we can help them out get an introduction. Hey, they need a talent, I know somebody on the bench over here, you know you can affect the outcome. Sweat alpha as I like to call it and that's our philosophy. And then look and just prepare, so I would say the acres and ounces I own, put a floor under my net worth in all scenarios. They're not making any more land.

There's only so much Bitcoin that'll ever circulate. I understand that scarcity is one of the reasons why people like to invest in Bitcoin. There's only so much gold. The stock to flow for gold is very impressive. 2-3% a year. And 20 American Eagles will buy

you a really nice appointed midsize SUV. It would have 20 years ago and it will in 20 years. And so you know when I buy another American Eagle and toss it in a safe somewhere, I'm preserving purchasing power for my kids. That's how I view it.

And so, you know, at the individual sovereign level, I totally understand the attractiveness of Bitcoin. Not for me personally, but that doesn't mean I don't understand why many of my friends own a fair bit of it. Just remember what it's for. It's not for an investment. It's the preservation of value. It's the ability to port some money over a border. Not that I would ever do that, but you know, just make sure you don't lose your keys. :)”

His specific recommendations as a Prepper-minded individual are Bitcoin and Gold.

“Like part of this journey is being authentically who you are. And so I understand Bitcoin. I have lots of friends who own it. I wake up tomorrow and Bitcoin's a million dollars. I'm going to be happy for my friends who own it. I'm going to be scared about what it means for the rest of my portfolio because a lot of it is dollar denominated. But you know, my home and the other land I own and the gold that I own and the collectibles that I own, you know, those things will probably do well if Bitcoin's at a million dollars. I think there's a high correlation between gold and Bitcoin.

Perhaps the volatility of Bitcoin is a little higher these days than gold, but I mean, again, not to get too overly philosophical about the whole thing, but that's kind of where my head is. I actually agree, too. I mean, I think that something that gets discounted as well is like if Bitcoin goes to a million tomorrow or very quickly, just even call it the next month or the next couple months or whatever.”

You can tell the prepper and conservativeness here in Doomberg. I suspect he is a fellow Gen X guy like me, who has seen so many people get screwed in the workplace, on Wall Street and by their government all around the world. We learn a lot from history.

Doomberg does too. History is helpful for global macro investors and helps you with pattern recognition. This way nothing phases you too much.

“If you want to see max pain, read When Money Dies, the you know, hyperinflation in the Weimar Republic. And I mean like give it a serious read. We're nowhere near that. You and I and others like us are blessed and condemned with good pattern recognition, which means we see where things are going perhaps before most. And by the way, in the financial world, being early is being wrong, right?

So it's one of the great lessons of my own personal investing journey, which is, I'm not a good trader. Don't trade. You're not good at something, don't do it. I'm on a hunch and I stare at losses for too long. So, those aren't great attributes for a trader. No matter how right you are on things directionally, you can't get the timing or the portfolio management right, you're going to fail. So, I see all of that.”

He gives some great advice on how to make it through the upcoming chaos of the Fourth Turning. Charity starts at home. Build your tribe. Take care of your people. Then you can help others more. Be prepared.

“Again back to the very first question you asked me, right? Don't be a martyr. Don't be a whistleblower. The stories we tell ourselves about the hero martyrs of the past probably didn't quite go down that way. You know, I think it's okay to be a little selfish, to optimize for you, to be generous with your inner circle. The further somebody is from you, it's okay to care a little less about them. That's a natural human tendency, you know.

I care about my wife, care about my kids, care about my neighbors, care about my family, care about my business friends who've helped me along the way, care a little less about the ones who screwed me over. You know how it is. And so you know it's okay to be aware. It's okay to prepare. It's generally not okay to dwell and generally not productive to panic. So I’ve spent a lot of time on preparedness.”

And Doomberg has the right mindset which he describes below further:

You know, I'm what a psychologist would say, a defensive pessimist. I spend a lot of time pondering worst case scenarios and risk developing plans to abate it. That frees me up, you know, gives me the freedom to take more risks in life and have been managed to parlay the torture of seeing where things are going and not being able to really affect the arc of it with putting myself in a much better position than I would otherwise be. So again, you know, I don't have all the answers, but that's my answer. That's my worldview.”

It’s not all doom and gloom, there is always hope in the long run if we study history.

“You know, Grant Williams, a good friend of ours. He's a content creator. I'm sure you're aware of him. He has a great podcast, the Grant Williams podcast. He's good. Simon Macallovich was a guest of his and Simon is a big gold bug. In fact, put his money where his mouth is. He has a gold storage business and comes from Russia. Comes from the Soviet Union, I guess. It's probably more accurate.

Defected or, you know, was made to leave the Soviet Union at a certain time, I think, in the 70s. He was talking about everything his grandparents had gone through and um World War I, the Russian Revolution, World War II, 20 mill, you know, 20 million Russians. Soviet Union, the Cold War, and like you go to St. Petersburg or Moscow today as you were saying. And you know, Japan was nuked, Germany was totally raised, like totally destroyed. Human beings are very resilient. Cultures are resilient. Societies are resilient.

There's a lot of reasons to be optimistic about the US, about Canada, about North America, the Western Hemisphere. Let's hope the friction of the upcoming transition is such that we can make it through to the other side with as much value and you know monetary and ethical and cultural value as possible preserved. And that you don't make any fatal mistakes, do anything that will bring shame to your family and so on. And that's hard to do. It's hard to see that vision, especially when you have a credible claim that much of the spoils of what your prior generations were able to enjoy aren't available to you. Doesn't mean they won't ever be available to you and you need to position yourself to take full advantage when the opportunity arises.”

So the whole point from all of this as always, get smart and learn from history. Stay alive, get strong and position yourself and your family to make it through the chaos. There will be light at the end of the tunnel. There always is.

Marvin Liao 6/21/26 Marvin Liao 6/21/26

Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads June 21st, 2026

“The summer night is like a perfection of thought.”--Wallace Stevens

The New Startup Stack: Founders in the Age of AI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5ybaEqOEsU&t=2s

2. "What comes next is harsher because it is more intelligent. The next repricing is not about software as a category. It is about where each company actually sits once AI agents start reorganizing the stack.

That is the real divide now.

In an agentic world, being useful is not enough. The question is whether the product owns the workflow, the data, the permissions, or the control surface the agent has to pass through. Software that governs those layers gets stronger. Software that merely helps at the edge gets compressed, bundled, or subordinated.

That is the shift."

https://sightbringer.substack.com/p/the-saas-fragility-map

3."Jump is successful. It has a huge audience who is locked-in to their favorite series. Yet it has never enshittified. Why?

One of the biggest reasons, I believe, is that Shueisha is privately held. It is not beholden to shareholders who demand profits quarter over quarter. This allows them to take a longer-term view to nurturing talent.

The point here isn’t that taking investment or going public is bad. Whether individual creator, entrepreneur, or business, everyone has their own situation, their own calculus for what’s necessary at the moment. The point is that making something truly great requires time. Do you as an individual, or as an organization, have the courage to provide it?

The same might be said about Weekly Shonen Jump as a publication. In its fifty-eight years of existence, it has launched many hits — but even more failures, at least from a black-and-white, “did it become a megahit or not?” standpoint. Yet it more than endures. It continues to evolve and thrive. That isn’t thanks to money, or algorithms, or pursuing efficiency. It’s thanks to people. And perhaps that’s the most important principle of all."

https://blog.pureinventionbook.com/p/so-you-want-to-be-a-manga-millionaire

4.Lots of good takes on Silicon Valley news: OpenAI + Anthropic & AI implications in general.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMTrd9Hn3e8

5."For over a century, Iran has been a major source of capital and talent for Dubai. When Persian ports raised taxes in the early 20th century, Dubai moved in the opposite direction, establishing itself as a free port and attracting hundreds of Persian merchants. Since then, repeated policy missteps — tariffs in the 1970s, the Islamic Revolution, and ongoing restrictions — have pushed wave after wave of Iranians across the Gulf. Some 40–60% of the Emirati population may have Persian roots. Each time, people voted with their feet for a more open system — at considerable cost to the Iranian economy. Of course, the ayatollahs are not happy, to put it mildly.

And this is a lesson for all aspiring Free Cities. The world, sadly, is not becoming freer or more peaceful. To win the competition for talent and capital, your place does not have to be 100% safe — after all, there are fewer and fewer places like that. It simply has to offer more safety than alternatives.

Dubai’s experience under attack is a real-time stress test of the Free City model. The early results suggest that small, autonomous, business-oriented jurisdictions can hold their ground — by combining innovation, institutional design, and a certain refusal to panic. But the greatest test is not whether they can intercept missiles, but whether they can resist the far more familiar impulse to undermine themselves. In times of crisis, governments are tempted to overreact, overregulate, and abandon the very policies that made them successful in the first place."

https://free-cities.org/can-startup-cities-defend-themselves-ask-dubai/

6.Investing in culture, tech and youth. Anti-Fund.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0kBhGCP9Sk&t=4s

7."There’s a moment - and you won’t know exactly when it happens - where you stop asking “Will this go okay?” and start asking “What do I actually want here?”

That shift is quiet. From the outside it looks like confidence. From the inside it feels more like ease. Like something that used to cost you a lot of energy now just takes a decision.

You’re not becoming confident. You’re becoming someone who acts despite discomfort. Someone who has enough evidence to know they’ll survive whatever comes next.

That person naturally handles more. Opens more doors. Gets more out of life. Every decision you make in your courage zone expands your courage zone.

This is the actual cheat code. Not a personality trait you were born with or without. A skill. A relationship with failure that you build one uncomfortable decision at a time."

https://conductlab.substack.com/p/how-to-become-dangerously-confident

8."Is China the Don King of the Persian Gulf?

If the Strait reopens on American terms and Western commerce resumes, China will remain America’s indispensable manufacturing partner. The supply chains don’t change. The rare earth dependencies don’t change. America still can’t build the next generation of weapons systems without Chinese inputs. China keeps the contract.

If Iran wins — if the Americans withdraw and Iran maintains sovereign control of the Strait — China stays Iran’s primary weapons supplier, its largest oil customer, and its most important trading partner. Iranian crude flows to Chinese refineries at a discount. Chinese cargo flows into Iranian ports unopposed. China keeps the contract.

Show me a conflict where one country supplies both sides, and I’ll show you the country that’s actually “winning”.

The question the world should be asking is not whether America can defeat Iran. The question is whether America can afford to fight a war in which its primary economic competitor is bankrolling both corners of the ring."

https://jaymartin.substack.com/p/the-don-king-strategy

9."Identify one recurring expense or one helper in your business that is there to manage “complexity” rather than generate revenue. Cut them today. If the system breaks, it was built on sand. Fix the Architecture, not the symptoms. Stop being a Boss and start being an Architect.

Size is a vanity metric for those who lack leverage. Don’t build a giant; build a ghost. Ghosts are harder to kill and much more profitable."

https://luxlifestylelab.substack.com/p/the-growth-fetish

10."America’s greatest competitive advantage isn’t its manufacturing capacity. There is no moat there; other nations can replicate that over time. It’s the US dollar’s reserve status, the depth and liquidity of American capital markets, and the sophistication of our financial risk infrastructure. These aren’t just downstream benefits of a strong economy. They are the fuel that powers American exceptionalism and dollar hegemony. A manufacturing renaissance that doesn’t leverage the depth of American capital markets is incomplete.

We need to embrace capital markets maximalism. The age of the Financial Engineer is upon us.

Every great industrial buildout in American history — oil production, railroads, the internet — was unlocked by breakthroughs in technical engineering coupled with novel financial engineering. The builders who understood both didn’t just participate in the transformation. They shaped it and profited most from it."

https://cruciblecapital.substack.com/p/capital-markets-maximalism

11."And so both industries have landed at the same destination via different roads: F1 as a taste proxy. A cultural object that is genuinely difficult to fake engagement with. You cannot simply show up to a race and absorb its credibility the way Zuckerberg tried to absorb Prada’s by sitting in the front row. The sport resists that. It’s too technical, too historical, too specific. True taste is stubbornly individualistic - it emerges gradually, through personal choices that might seem puzzling or eccentric to others but make perfect sense internally. It’s not sexy to build. It’s slow, frustrating, and sometimes embarrassing. F1 fandom, at its core, works the same way. What I’m trying to say is that I think we are going to see a rise of tastemakers and curators of taste in Formula 1, just like we saw the rise of educational content creators in sports over the past few years.

What tech and fashion are both discovering - somewhat to their discomfort - is that F1 offers something their own industries have been struggling to protect: the feeling that you earned your place in it. Fashion’s power needs to be coaxed out like a flame in the damp. You can’t do that with a wad of cash. Neither can you do it with a title sponsorship or a branded trophy trunk.

And the irony - rich and appropriate - is that the people who’ve spent the least time trying to own it understand it best."

https://substack.com/home/post/p-192686441

12."The Strait of Hormuz. One man’s satellite network. An autocracy cosplaying as a government. Three cloud providers. One island. We didn’t stumble into these chokepoints, we built them. The invisible, bipartisan hand of the market has been wrapping itself around our throat this whole time. We mistook shareholder value and purity tests for resilience, finding welcome distractions in Big Tech earnings calls and arguments over pronouns."

https://www.profgmedia.com/p/chokepoints

13."Looksmaxxing crowd is 100% correct in their current youth/dating/culture assessment. The suggestion that it is new? Not so much. Has just gotten more extreme due to massive spam related to social media. Men and women now have visual access to what the truly wealthy can and will do.

You’ll see all of these trends pick up, lots of money will be made and it’ll be up to you to adapt or not!"

https://bowtiedbull.io/p/the-looksmaxxing-trend-much-of-the

14.AI Agents in Silicon Valley and Japan! Lots of news.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gv-VUTGVNT8

15."Speaking with entrepreneurs and hearing their stories is an incredible gift. Entrepreneurship remains one of the most impactful ways to move society forward through innovation and invention. After hearing a pitch, I enjoy asking these questions to better understand the “why” behind the massive undertaking of building a startup. The next time you meet an entrepreneur, consider asking a few of these questions and listen closely for the story behind the story."

https://davidcummings.org/2026/04/04/the-first-five-questions-to-ask-after-a-startup-pitch/

16.Listening to this makes me very concerned about the upcoming negative impact of higher oil prices & larger geopolitical issues from the Hormuz closures. Different scenarios as of early April.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bmMxtNHxHi8

17."Just as SWIFT displaced the Telex machines of my youth, digital currency innovations are changing the SWIFT settlement game. But these innovations don’t address another global problem. If the U.S. were a company, it would be seeking bankruptcy protection. All the while, its debt keeps growing and it will continue the regular printing of dollars to pay the interest and growing deficits. Over time, debasement—whether it’s the ancient Romans using less silver in their coins, or the U.S. churning out more greenbacks— destroys the value of a currency.

The only lasting solution is to back all currencies — including digital ones — with something solid and scarce: gold.

In the meantime, the world will keep refining and inventing ways to bypass SWIFT and move away from the U.S. dollar system. This trend is unstoppable, and it will have profound, worrisome, unpredictable implications for the global balance of power."

https://frankgiustra.com/posts/the-end-of-swift-dominance/

18."The coming era won’t just be about stability, but also about energy independence, food security, currency credibility, military exposure, and demographic sustainability.

Very few jurisdictions score well across all.

The real question to ask isn’t: “Where can I grow fastest?”

It is: “Where will my capital still feel boring in 15 years?”

In a world of fragmentation, currency debasement, and geopolitical stress, stability becomes the new hard currency.

Capital has already started re-pricing. Wealth is flowing to jurisdictions that offer predictability over leverage. The UAE attracted thousands of millionaires not because it was exciting, but because it was boring in the right ways – until recently.

Singapore continues to draw family offices because institutions deliver year after year. Uruguay quietly accumulates expats from unstable neighbors because nothing dramatic ever happens there.

Switzerland remains the benchmark not because it’s perfect, but because it’s been reliably perfect/imperfect in the same ways for centuries.

That’s the test."

https://palombo.substack.com/p/the-switzerlands-of-the-world

19.Understanding American maritime strategy and the infrastructure underlying the shipping industry.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HG5Ui05_2wE

20."Across the country, there are idle shipyards, underutilized land, dormant industrial sites, and generations of people connected to them whose skills are more transferable than anyone has told them. Communities like St. Mary Parish, LA, Cherokee, AL, and Carey, ID, ready to contribute. And beyond them, millions more Americans who can either be shown a future they can help build, or be shut out of it and left to distrust the people doing the building.

The companies above, whether they know it or not, are offering the unifying vision that politicians and the tech community have so far failed to provide. They’re not just building products. They’re making an argument, with their hiring decisions and their site selections and their community partnerships, that the future is for everyone.

That’s the call to arms that can actually move people. Not “Beat China” — but build something worth fighting for, in places worth fighting for, with people who’ve been waiting for the invitation."

https://michellevolz1.substack.com/p/beating-china-isnt-enough

21."Part of investing in the tails is that firms operate on conviction. Generally to do something truly out of the box, one partner on the team has to feel it viscerally, be unable to sleep, keep bringing up the idea at partner meetings until the rest of the team eye rolls and says “ok fine, if you love it so much you should just do it!”

Every deal requires a “burden of proof” to get done. Diligence. Calls with customers. Reference checks on the team, the cap table, the co-investors. But when one partner is going farther out into the tail, that burden of proof has to go up. You have to prove with unreasonable conviction that you want to make the investment anyway. Despite convention, despite disagreement, despite consensus opposition. Great deals are not lukewarm, they are polarizing. And if you’re an entrepreneur and some people don’t absolutely hate your idea, or think you’re crazy, you’re not swinging big enough."

https://ideas.scotthartley.com/p/alpha-lives-in-the-tails

22."When Jaswa and Katzenberg found each other through Berdakin’s introduction, they both saw an obviously complementary relationship. Katzenberg brought a lifetime of storytelling instinct, a network spanning Hollywood, Washington, and the Fortune 500, and a work ethic that borders on the superhuman (he sleeps five hours and fifteen minutes a night, a genetic trait he has had since adolescence). Jaswa brought deep product sensibility, operational experience at scale, and a first-principles approach to talent assessment inherited from his mentors at NEA, Dick Kramlich and Scott Sandell.

The holding company model gives WndrCo an unusual advantage in a world where most venture firms are dependent on management fees and carried interest. The cash generated by the Build portfolio offers the firm a degree of financial independence that most of its peers lack, and allows the partners to be patient with their venture investments in ways that the typical fund lifecycle does not permit.

What distinguishes WndrCo from other firms with operator backgrounds, and there are many, is the specificity of the value it offers founders. Every venture firm in Silicon Valley claims to be more than capital, but few can articulate exactly what that means.

Katzenberg’s contribution is perhaps the most unusual. He functions, in effect, as a storytelling consultant and an enterprise sales weapon for the companies he backs. He will sit down with a founder, go through their sales deck, and help them frame their narrative with the precision of someone who has spent forty-five years constructing stories for mass audiences."

https://blog.joinodin.com/p/the-storytellers

23."The competition with China is different. Not in its structure, but in its substrate. Great power rivalry is not new. What is new is the degree to which technology has become load-bearing in that competition. The Cold War was primarily an ideological, economic, and military fight, with technology as an important enabler. Wars we fight today may well be determined by technology, and the pace at which the underlying stack is evolving is unprecedented. What’s more, the technologies that matter today are too tightly coupled to focus on winning just one. Quantum computing requires advanced semiconductors. Those chips increasingly rely on AI to design them. AI demands far more cheap, reliable energy than the U.S. currently produces.

Technologies no longer enable competition. They are the competition, and they are compounding faster than any single offset strategy can track. That’s why the next offset strategy must look different.

Founders — not technologies — are the answer. A single bet on a single breakthrough won’t suffice. We must place thousands of bets across thousands of founders, unleashing America’s entrepreneurial ecosystem across every critical frontier simultaneously—energy, AI, space, defense, biotech, advanced manufacturing. Founders are the only organizational unit capable of keeping pace with the rate of technological change. Institutions optimize for known problems. Founders are structurally built for unknown ones. Let the best of them surprise us with solutions central planners could never predict.

Call it the Founders Offset."

https://www.firstbreakfast.com/p/the-founders-offset-why-entrepreneurs

24."As unlikely as such pondering might sound now, like all mental models, it does lead to a series of milestones to watch for in the weeks and months ahead. If we see regime-change revolutions in any of Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, or the United Arab Emirates; if any of these countries asks the US military to leave; or if Western countries cut individual deals with Iran, any or all would be signs that events are evolving in a favorable direction for China.

And if we don’t? If the US somehow manages to open the Strait of Hormuz via military means? Or achieves regime change in Iran? Or the US has enough munitions to bomb Iran “into the Stone Age”? Then perhaps the Chinese miscalculated.

Somebody certainly did. We’ll find out who soon enough."

https://substack.com/home/post/p-193353109

25."Seen from a distance, those Halloween crowds could almost make Shibuya still look like a “youth town.” But once disorder loses its boundaries, it starts feeling dangerous. In his view, that kind of atmosphere may also have helped push more ordinary visitors away.

For Osaka, the deeper problem is not just redevelopment or tourism, but the slow erosion of identity. Shibuya was once valued as a place where you could encounter a side of Tokyo that felt vivid, unpredictable, and unmistakably local. Now, he wonders where the district’s old pull

has gone."

https://www.tokyoscope.blog/p/why-shibuya-no-longer-feels-like

26."Selling your time means you get paid last. Government gets paid first, then living expense and you take what is left

Asset owners get paid first. Revenue hits owner figures out what can be expensed and how the rest gets paid out. (Dividends, salaries… you get the idea it matters a lot)

People always talk about Gross Salary when you should look at Net. If someone runs a business with $250K and another guy lives in NYC with $300K, you can easily take the $250K person and get them a high net income number ($250K just assumes pre tax income)

There is no limit to business growth, there is a pyramid and pecking order in corporate. Unless you’ve got your degree in nepotism or blackmail, the chances are slim of bypassing the entire game

By building assets you’re putting yourself into the drivers seat. You control where the car is going. And. At what pace. If you’re above average, this is a dream come true. If you believe in the old 40 year career path… well its “scary”

Control + Judgement. Build these two and you will make it. Not might. Will."

https://bowtiedbull.io/p/asset-builders-vs-time-sellers-new

27."The truth of the matter is that the United States has never been as isolated as it is today. Mark Rutte, the Secretary General of NATO, has made some supportive noises in the current crisis, but that was done out of cynical calculation. No sane European leader can think that support for the United States today will be reciprocated by a Trumpist United States down the road. And while American actions have greatly benefited rivals like Russia and China, they can hardly delude themselves that the United States will reliably serve their interests in the future.

Donald Trump has claimed that the United States has never been as respected as it has been under his presidency. Of the very many untrue things he has said in his career, this is among the most absurd. There has never been a time when the United States was more distrusted, by both traditional friends and by rivals, as at the present. A successful dealmaker needs to generate a minimal amount of trust that he will uphold his end of the bargain. But reciprocity is a virtue that Trump has never understood or practiced."

https://www.persuasion.community/p/the-world-simply-does-not-trust-america

28."You want to understand what The Final Man philosophy looks like in practice? Study this man. He was far from perfect. But he cracked the code on something 99% of men never will: your presence, your taste, and how you operate in a room will always outperform your genetics and your inheritance. Always.

Most men hear that and nod along. They think they understand it. But they don’t. Because they still spend their energy on the wrong shit. Still chasing the 99th percentile physique instead of the lifestyle. Still scrolling instead of building the social architecture that actually changes your life.

Onassis didn’t come from money. Greek immigrant kid. Family fled Turkey with nothing. Started in Argentina working at the telephone company, saved his pennies, and began buying old cargo ships that nobody wanted during the Depression. Twenties. By his thirties the man had a shipping fleet. By his forties, world leaders on speed dial and a 325-foot yacht that Winston Churchill vacationed on regularly.

And the craziest part? The money was his fuel. What made him a legend was how he spent it. How he moved. How he locked down every room, every restaurant, every island he walked onto."

https://www.thefinalman.com/p/how-to-live-like-playboy-mogul-aristotle

29."Taste is knowing what you like and why you like it. That’s the whole definition. A man with taste has thought about the things in his life and chosen them on purpose. The watch, the car, the glass he drinks from, the chair he sits in, the cologne if there is one. He picked all of it, and the picking itself is what gives his life a point of view.

Most men have never done this exercise. They wear what’s normal, drive what’s practical, eat what’s convenient, and drink beer because thats what men are supposed to like. Their lives are the cumulative result of a thousand tiny defaults."

https://hayescarrera.substack.com/p/the-refusal-to-be-generic

30."Walking along Japan’s Kumano Kodo trail, I found a quiet and a spiritual journey of renewal. A phrase I learned traveling the Kii Peninsula is “borrowing scenery.” When you look at a landscape, you don’t own it. You’re simply borrowing the view. It belongs to everyone and to nature itself.

Rebirth in Japan means emptying the worries from your mind, sitting in stillness, and being present in nature. Wellness here doesn’t shout. It’s quiet. And if you’re quiet long enough, you can find peace where the mountains are gods."

https://matadornetwork.com/read/kii-peninsula-japan-wellness-kumano-kodo-trail/

31."To get more insights about how such a FARP would be set up and operated, we reached out to Kyle Rempfer, a former Special Tactics Squadron (STS) airman who served in Afghanistan and Iraq. STS units are an elite cadre of operators who work to control aircraft in the air, including from airfields they establish deep inside contested territory, and direct airpower onto the enemy, among other duties, including rescuing personnel trapped behind enemy lines. They are often paired with special operations units, such as SEALs, Delta Force and Rangers, to bring their unique skills to their missions."

https://www.twz.com/news-features/how-a-dusty-stri-deep-in-iran-can-be-turned-into-a-u-s-special-operations-base-in-hours

32."I want to explain why America’s innovation economy is not a cultural phenomenon, not a regulatory one, and not simply a matter of having more capital or talent than everyone else. Instead, it is the product of two forces: deliberate state engineering over three decades of genuine urgency, and a macroeconomic structure that continuously floods the US with foreign capital. When those two forces combined, in the 1980s and 1990s, they created something no other country has been able to replicate.

I call the mechanism at the heart of it the overflow mechanism: the process by which foreign capital, flooding into US Treasuries and blue-chip stocks, displaces domestic institutional capital up the risk curve and into venture, financing innovation at a scale that no deliberate policy could produce. Understanding it also explains why China took a radically different path, why Europe spent thirty years competing on the wrong terrain, and why that may be about to change."

https://www.driftsignal.com/p/the-overflow-mechanism

33.I read this guys' takes to get out of my bubble, even though he is pro-Russia a-hole. But sometimes he gets it right.

"Trump is one of those classic big-thinkers who is all vision and no completion, all ambition, no follow-through. Psychologically, such a profile typically develops in people with highly entitled lives who had never had to deal with the consequences of their failures due to being endowed with infinite padding for ‘soft landings’ in the form of monetary safety nets to the tune of billions of dollars. Such people develop extravagance of vision and taste, but little in the way of mental capacity for critical evaluation of the attendant costs and consequences.

In fact, it’s difficult to imagine how any deal can possibly work with a hostile third party that will openly sabotage it at every turn. How can Iran keep Hormuz open and cease all attacks if Israel simply ignores the US and continues hitting Iranian infrastructure? Will Trump stew in his ‘impotent anger’ at Bibi again?"

https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/from-dire-straits-to-done-deal-triumphant

34.This was a solid interview to understand the view from top leaders & pioneers in the Defense-tech space.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjNP5IOzCbA&t=2s

35.Asia-Maxxing session. This was so good.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CO3y5RgO-c0

36.Probably one of the most rational and sober assessments of the Iran war right now. It helps you make sense of what is happening and possible scenarios forward.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-GhCi2nYXc

37.This is a must watch to understand what's happening in the investment business and financial system at large. How we got here in 3 phases. Will be watching this a few times.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5RnPko2HviQ&t=1695s

Marvin Liao 6/20/26 Marvin Liao 6/20/26

Noblesse Oblige: An Old Idea Needed for Modern Times

I keep wondering how everyday Americans turned against the rich. They used to really look up to them. But with the growing wealth inequality, this may be one of the big causes. I think this is a trend that has happened all over the West. Less so in Asian countries yet.

Yes, most American wealthy are actually quite charitable compared to wealthy people in other countries, but not sure how much this trickles down or how much the public is aware. It does not help that so many wealthy are showing up on social media or disconnected from their communities, unlike in previous ages. This is why it’s so important to understand Noblesse Oblige.

Chivalry Guild writes about this in their excellent newsletter https://thechivalryguild.substack.com/p/reviving-noblesse-oblige-here-and:

“To recap: noblesse oblige (French for “nobility obligates”) is the old idea that those who with power, wealth, status, and prestige ought to do good to those with less. Much like chivalry, it has a deeply Christian character, captured by the words of Baltasar Gracian: “Tis the chief glory of the high and mighty to be gracious, a prerogative of kings to conquer universal goodwill. That is the great advantage of a commanding position—to be able to do more good than others.”

The noble is a center of their community. He has responsibilities to everyone in his community, just as everyone in the community has responsibilities to him and each other. You have power because it is given to you. This power is meant to be used for the greater good. To do good things for the community. To fight and defend them if need be whether through arms or legal means.

“A culture of noblesse oblige reminds the powerful that their blessings are to be used for good and not for plunder—and it attaches prestige and honor to good conduct, shame and disgrace to bad conduct.”

He goes on to say: "The first step is to understand the twin aspects that make noblesse oblige such a powerful ideal: aspiration and generosity. This is about much more than just being nice or being a [EXPLETIVE] decent person or even just giving money away to this or that cause. It’s about 1) becoming as strong as you can be, as metaphorically noble as possible, and 2) proving your quality by helping others.

These two—strength and help—are intertwined with a mutually reinforcing effect. A man’s strength and nobility grows with the help he gives to others, and his growing strength also provides him with more to give.”

I find it personally inspiring. It’s such an important concept and I hope it makes a comeback here in the West again. Here is to making Noblesse Oblige a thing again.

Marvin Liao 6/18/26 Marvin Liao 6/18/26

Be the Light: Homestead

If you haven’t figured it out already, I tend to have prepper leanings. Maybe I’ve been in America too long. Or I have too little faith in my fellow man. Or I’m paranoid. Or all of the above. No surprise, I’m a fan of the Homestead book and tv series. The official description is: “A former green beret and other survivors take refuge inside an elaborate compound when an attack on America leaves the world in chaos.”

And it is awesome. A little bit dark but really entertaining. I appreciate it as there are clearly Christian undertones and the action and drama is good. I’d also say the tradecraft is good on the shooting and tactics side.

Jenna the owner ends up opening the gates and her supplies to the wider community. This puts the homestead on the radar of some vicious gangs and even power hungry government officials. So this homestead is attacked often. There is a scene after one of these major attacks where the homestead loses several people, Jenna starts to regret her generosity. The scene is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gbGFl9zCr0

But one of her lieutenants tells her: "I wish it didn't have to be like this. People like this, they would have been coming no matter what.

But I'll tell you this caught a glimpse of the other side. What the homestead really means to people. We're talking about you, talking about what you do here. How you opened up the gates and shared the bread. Your bread down there means hope to people. Not only did you restart trade and you restarted trust. Be proud of that. Means something to people. Including me.”

She still feels regret: “This is my fault. Ian was right. But maybe we should have stayed to ourselves. We shouldn't open the gates.”

Her brother-in-law says: “Listen to me. I wasn't gone that long and I didn't get that far, but I saw enough to know this. This place, your homestead, you are a light. It's worth defending. So, yeah, there's going to be some hard times and some hard decisions, but without that light, what's the point?"

So besides the drama, what is the point here? For me, I believe hard times are coming. It’s a certainty. We’ve had it too good for too long. And there will be turmoil and lots of bad people out there.

But there is always hope. And you can always do good for others, everyday. So I aspire to be the light for my family, my friends, my neighbors and my community. Strength, honor, hope & light will be what will get us through these challenging times.

Marvin Liao 6/16/26 Marvin Liao 6/16/26

The Kill Line: The Precariousness of Life and Prosperity in the Age of AI

I learned a new concept today:“Gamers call it the “Kill Line.”

In gaming, the Kill Line is a damage threshold. Once your health drops below a certain percentage, an enemy can execute an instant, unblockable finishing move. You don’t die slowly; you die immediately.

The American middle class — and specifically the high-earning tech elite — is currently dancing on this line.”

Source: https://medium.com/activated-thinker/the-kill-line-why-making-450-000-is-no-longer-enough-to-survive-c906ba1f19b1

There is a silent mass unemployment crisis in Silicon Valley right now. Anecdotally, there are many folks who have been out of work for over a year and half now. Far more than you would expect. People who previously were very highly paid, in high demand and were seen as bulletproof and invaluable. This will bleed out to the rest of the American economy.

So as per some of my previous posts, you better get your house in order. And the basics matter: building skills, building health both physically & mentally, building wealth by stacking cash and assets, investing in your community and network at large aka your tribe. This is the foundation for making it.

As the Bowtiedbull guys wrote: “Many of you guys seem to forget rule number 1. Save yourself before you try to save the world. Who cares about the long term impacts of AI taking jobs, do you want to be eaten first or last? Game of survival.”

Marvin Liao 6/14/26 Marvin Liao 6/14/26

Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads June 14th, 2026

“Don’t Count the Days. Make the Days Count” –Muhammad Ali

"The market rewards this shift. Goldman Sachs found that low-labor-cost stocks outperformed high-labor-cost stocks by 8 percentage points in 2025.4 Labor’s share of GDP hit a record low of 53.8% in Q3 2025.5 The implication : every dollar shifted from labor to software improves margins & stock performance.

Across the S&P 500, labor costs represent about 12% of revenues on average.6 Software costs sit around 1-3%. As agents absorb labor, that ratio inverts. Labor shrinks. Software expands. The total addressable market for software grows at labor’s expense, while profitability grows."

https://tomtunguz.com/observations-about-agent-pricing/

2.Inside Palantir: empowering heretics and driving innovation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1LcH4lP9XbA&t=496s

3. "But even if China did beat America in a limited war, that wouldn’t change any of their fundamental problems. War production might give their economy a temporary boost, but the incentives for overproduction and over-loaning would still be there, along with all of those bad debts. Sinking some of America’s carriers or destroying some of America’s bases wouldn’t change the trajectory of AI. Nor would a war allow Xi to feel secure enough on his throne to stop his purges — if anything, war empowers generals and weakens civilian leaders, which would put Xi even more on edge.

In other words, although some Chinese nationalists might believe they need to seize Taiwan and drive U.S. power out of the Pacific before the “deadline” imposed by China’s long-term vulnerabilities, this is actually just a fantasy. As Putin and Trump are now both discovering, wars don’t revitalize declining countries — in fact, they often simply accelerate the decline.

China, of course, is not currently in decline. It is arguably the world’s leading civilization and nation-state at this point, and it is at its peak. But I’m starting to suspect it won’t occupy that peak for as long as the U.S. did, in its day. It’s not yet time to declare that “the sun also sets” on China, but I think there’s reason to be more skeptical of the long-term success story compared to a year ago."

https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/china-is-quietly-looking-weaker

4."Taiwan’s future. If the ships are turned away—or worse still, boarded and seized—it would not only represent a serious escalation against a nuclear superpower, but also a direct precedent the Chinese would be sure to seize on. Under what rationale could US diplomats object to China implementing a similarly complete blockade of Taiwan?

Let’s remember, Taiwan is uniquely vulnerable to such a blockade. As we and countless others have documented, the island relies exclusively on imports to meet its domestic hydrocarbon needs, which account for 93% of its primary energy expenditures. Worse still, Taiwan has precious little in the way of alternatives to natural gas, which arrives exclusively via liquefied natural gas (LNG) imports and on which it relies for more than 40% of its electricity generation.

Since Taiwan is known to have just 11 days of natural gas demand in storage, a blockade of the island by China would bring the situation to a full breaking point in far less time than the Strait of Hormuz has already been closed. If our Australian readers think they have it bad, is it perhaps small solace for us to point out that it could be worse?"

https://substack.com/home/post/p-191615703

5.I'm not a UAE fan at all. I can't stand Dubai but there is still a strong case for what they are trying to build.

"For another, talent. “Abu Dubai” today is a Miami to many Latin Americans: Westerners are familiar with the rich setting up shop in the two cities. But beyond them, Central Asians, Africans, South Asians, Southeast Asians, Arabs, and Iranians call the UAE home (or, perhaps, a second home) as well as a primary base for business. Rivals — Indians and Pakistanis, Armenians and Azeris, Russians and Ukrainians — coexist, even if begrudgingly. In a sense the UAE is not a melting pot but a tossed salad — beyond leaving one’s politics at the door, there are no expectations of social conformity.

Why do they come and why do they stay? Because the UAE offers something that is in short supply globally — competent, predictable governance by a country courting migrants. What skeptics of the Emirates don’t understand is how rare this is. Faced with the prospect of an anti-immigrant West and a non-functioning rest, there are few places for the world’s population to go. Beyond Abu Dhabi’s museums and Dubai’s skyscrapers, what makes the UAE truly singular is that it works."

https://www.semafor.com/article/03/16/2026/how-about-them-emiratis

6.Catchy title: "How to trade the end of the world." Froedge is a pretty good commodities investor despite his bombastic angle at times. Learning from the 1970s.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Dwc8JSSFHc

7.The man driving much of the AI wave. Learning a bunch from this conversation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwW8GKwHB3I&t=375s

8."When thinking about these eight moats, one approach is to assign a point or partial credit for each category and then total the score. Moats are a critical component of building a sustainable business, especially for software companies.

Entrepreneurs would do well to evaluate their ideas through this lens, recognizing that most of these moats take significant time, effort, and success to build. Achieving one or two is difficult. Achieving three or four is rare. Companies that reach four or more are best positioned for long-term, durable success.

That said, entrepreneurs should not limit themselves only to ideas that check multiple moats upfront. Instead, they should understand how software is evolving in the age of AI, where barriers to entry are falling, and be intentional about how they build defensibility over time."

https://davidcummings.org/2026/03/21/8-moats-for-sustainable-software-companies/

9."But my north star is simpler and more structural: you want to own things that will not let you become someone else’s exit liquidity. In that framework, the last things you want to own, in order, are housing, bonds, and U.S. equities. These are duration manipulation instruments engineered, whether intentionally or not, as the greatest generational wealth heist in history.

What you want to own instead should satisfy the three conditions simultaneously, in reverse.

First, what is demographically least-owned today with the greatest potential to be owned more tomorrow

Second, what is most likely to serve as a jurisdictionless safe haven when capital mobility becomes severely taxed, restricted, or seized entirely

Third, what most closely resembles the form of capital that an autonomous, agentic world will actually use seamlessly without intermediaries to perform the productivity functions that will replace the cost of human labor

When the Ottoman Empire breached the walls of Constantinople in the fifteenth century, the Byzantine merchant class lost everything denominated in imperial trust: land, titles, treasury bonds. You name it, everything was gone. But the young ambitious scholars and the young enterprising traders who had moved their portable wealth, such as manuscripts, gold, knowledge westward into Florence, ultimately ignited what would be later known as the Renaissance.

What you want to own is nomadic capital. Capital that is portable across the demographics of time, political borders, and AI-native ecosystems. Capital that can bypass the monetary Strait of Hormuz. Nomadic in the 21st century means digital. The specific instruments may vary as reasonably high agency people will each arrive at different conclusions; the Radical Portfolio Theory provides one such viable framework across owning 60% compliance assets and 40% resistance assets. But if you follow the three conditions with disciplined deliberation—to own what the young will eventually need, to own what no government can easily reach, to own what the autonomous economy will actually transact in—the destination becomes less a prediction and more an outcome. The uncertainty becomes the inevitability."

https://dgt10011.substack.com/p/the-generational-prisoners-dilemma

10."Continuing on the current oil theme for a moment, the main concerns for market participants relate to how long we’ll have an oil crisis. How long will the Strait be closed?

The data is clear: The longer oil prices stay high, the more devastating the results.

Investing is often a game of musical chairs. When one opportunity disappears, you have to find a new one quickly to keep your capital hard at work. Not deploying your capital - as in, not finding a chair to sit in - means you’re out of the game.

By the logic of many investors, including my mentor, you always need to be in the game. Even long term data shows that staying in the market always pays off."

https://www.codyshirk.com/p/going-almost-all-cash

11."Since we try to weave in human nature into our writing, within a month or two you will see a new trend of people blaming the war in Iran for the crypto downturn/stocks/insert everything. It won’t matter that crypto entered into a bear at the end of 2025, the new scary headline will explain the present (despite the timelines not adding up).

We already see this today with job numbers as well. Trump is being blamed as a bad jobs president while Biden is being seen as a hero. This is only because people have poor memories and Biden numbers are being compared to COVID (when practically everyone was unemployed).

When you see this pattern pick up, it’ll help you prevent narrative creep in the future. Look at what happened 1-2 years ago (no different than cumulative inflation). There is no way Biden would have fixed AI layoffs (see being politically neutral with a positive Trump note in there as well).

Action Step: For now continue to accumulate and wait until summer. By then spending patterns will shift. We have high conviction in that and will say the same “90%+ chance spending shifts”. At this point you’ll have a new window for e-com sales, other wifi business and of course investment options.

Until then, don’t drink the kool-aid. Wait for a real resolution instead of 48 hour flip flops."

https://bowtiedbull.io/p/the-iran-war-emotional-map-and-update

12.Harsh reality and facts of the energy and implications of the Iran War.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tnw_0M3kUnU&t=1135s

13.Trying to get a sense of the Iran War and implications from the eyes of the Dollar Milkshake.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjUIudopgKs

14.Listening to this makes me more optimistic on AI, energy and reindustrialization in America. It will be challenging but it's possible.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4QVoht3YsI

15."There are guys who make great money and live like they’re still in their first place out of college. Not because they’re saving aggressively toward something. Because they’ve never given themselves permission to want a life that looks different than the one they fell into. They could afford the better house, the better car, the trip that changes their perspective. But they’d have to admit that they want those things. And wanting things, for some reason, feels dangerous to them.

It’s not dangerous. What’s dangerous is spending your only life in a holding pattern because you’re afraid of what people might think if you started living like you actually cared.

I still feel the knot every time I reach. It doesn’t go away. You just learn to recognize it as the RIGHT feeling instead of a warning. The day it stops showing up is the day you’ve stopped moving."

https://hayescarrera.substack.com/p/the-things-you-own-should-scare-you

16.The Defense-tech wave was really driven by Anduril. So better to listen and learn from the leader.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qc6hjJ9Zze0

17. "Open source is how startups compete with giants. The next Cursor will be built on the best open-source foundation available. The question is whether that foundation will be American."

https://tomtunguz.com/cursor-kimi-open-source-ai-imperative/

18."It is not an easy exercise to determine where we are in the war on Iran. A weekend of endless commentary and analysis from all directions tells you either that either the regime in Tehran is about to collapse, or that we are about to enter another bloody slow grinding Ukraine-type war. And everything in between.

With it come the macro-economic assessments and they are almost all negative, even a ceasefire and a resumption of oil and gas exports will apparently not quickly address the damage done to energy markets so far. And you are no doubt feeling it, inflation across the board is getting another unwanted boost."

https://pieterdorsman.substack.com/p/fog-of-war

19.Lots of really interesting suggestions on how to think about investing in tech. I say this a lot, but this really is a masterclass.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0G1st54tRBI

20."Preparation is a ritual for those who are afraid to win. Stop sharpening your tools and start cutting. The world belongs to the fast, not the ready."

https://luxlifestylelab.substack.com/p/the-preparation-trap

21.Processing, not just knowledge. A wise discussion here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=et9fifanm3g&t=2475s

22."The short answer is this: the toolkit most professional investors are using to manage tail risk was built for a world that is disappearing. Long volatility strategies, options, VIX products, variance swaps, these instruments are calibrated to a fundamental assumption that almost nobody states out loud because almost nobody has needed to question it until now. The assumption is that things mean-revert. That a shock, however severe, eventually resolves back toward a prior equilibrium. That the institutional architecture, the Federal Reserve, the dollar system, and multilateral trade agreements, provides a durable floor beneath which things do not permanently fall.

That assumption held from 1945 to roughly 2020. It is not obviously true today."

https://substack.com/home/post/p-191933695

23.Always very topical news from Silicon Valley with great educated takes. This is the weekly must watch to stay on top of the tech business.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yLmM3M7d9v8

24."To put it bluntly, the second- and third-derivative effects of an extended closure of the Strait of Hormuz (the prices of diesel, jet fuel, and petrochemicals surge as supply chains get reengineered, and food and political stress rises) would have far-reaching negative consequences for the global economy. Nearly every path leads toward extraordinary fiscal and monetary easing as policymakers attempt to support growth in the face of commodity inflation, an increasingly multipolar global monetary order, and the rising friction and costs of deglobalization as more countries put up walls.

Gold is no longer just a trade; it is an essential asset."

https://robertsinn.substack.com/p/luke-gromen-succinctly-explains-the

25."If you’re preparing to raise a Seed round, keep the following in mind as you fine-tune your pitch: in addition to analyzing the usual details on problem, solution, traction, etc., many Seed VCs are now asking themselves the following question as part of their investment process:

Can this team win (generate a return) even if one or more of their core assumptions is disrupted by AI? (In other words, can they still win if their market hypothesis gets disrupted?)

Unfortunately, it’s not at all clear yet how Seed VCs are testing for this. As a result, I suspect that we’re going to see a significant “crunch” at the Seed stage in the next few quarters. Startups that historically could raise funding based on a clear market hypothesis and reasonable early traction will struggle, especially if they can’t convince investors that the market hypothesis is viable over a long-term horizon.

Most Seed VCs don’t know what the future is going to look like, so they’re increasingly betting on founders who they believe can figure-it-out."

https://chrisneumann.com/archives/whats-going-on-with-seed-rounds

26."Naturally, industries have formed to monetize this nihlism through promising solutions. But the solutions never arrive, because the nihilism, the giving up, must persist in order for these products to survive. It’s a version of Ivan Illich’s Limits to Medicine, where he argues that the medical establishment itself produces illness by making people dependent on professional intervention rather than building health.

That effect carries across all these optimization tools, creating dependency on the fix rather than addressing the cause. The optimization economy can't deliver control, because the desperation is the market condition, and the pursuit of control through optimization is itself a loss of control."

https://kyla.substack.com/p/the-ozempicization-of-the-economy

27.Listen to this guy. OG of Silicon Valley and one of the best operator and investors around.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QcQD7ZCtDQQ

28."The western system of public finance has been testing whether sovereign debt can be issued without limit and held without consequence. The data already shows it. Yields must rise for the market to absorb the supply, currencies weaken when they should strengthen, and fiscal buffers are eliminated by the yield moves they were designed to survive.

Gold at $4,200 prices a belief that this time the rules will hold and that western money is being restored rather than transferred away from those who hold it. That belief may be right for weeks or months. It will not hold indefinitely, because every major western government in the current cycle has demonstrated, when tested, that the spending comes before the rules. Gold is priced by investors who think the experiment is still working. The fiscal data is accumulating on the other side of that argument, one gilt auction at a time."

https://polemicpaine.substack.com/p/gold-gilts-and-the-wrong-kind-of

29."The key takeaway is that timing, experience, and persistence compound. The first company builds the foundation, including market insight, scar tissue, and relationships. The second company is where those inputs often translate into sharper execution and better results."

https://davidcummings.org/2026/03/28/the-second-time-around-why-founders-come-back/

30."Acrimony has become the national mood, not a symptom but a diagnosis. The country hums at a higher emotional frequency: outrage serves as background radiation, bitterness as civic glue—each a heaping pile of dry powder ready to explode with the faintest spark.

The headlines change, the hatred stays. Welcome to the United States of Acrimony, where the three Gs—Gerontocracy, Generational Conflict, and Gambling—together form the invisible architecture of decline.

We are the United States of Acrimony: addicted to outrage, risk, and the faint hope that one lucky spin can rewrite a lifetime of loss.

The gerontocracy hoards time; the youth gamble what little they have left.

One side clings. The other spins. Both are terrified to stop.

There’s no policy fix for a spiritual vacancy.

We’ve lost faith in patience, in compounding, in slow building. The only cure for acrimony is renewal, but renewal requires surrender, and nobody wants to fold.

Sadly, Max Planck’s principle comes to mind: “Science progresses one funeral at a time.”

As with science, so too society.

Until then, we’ll keep rolling the dice—burning down institutions, tearing down statues, and immolating both our future and our faith—hoping against hope in our youthful naïveté that this time is different; that somehow, someway, the old, grey croupier’s throw lands in our favor."

https://www.whitenoise.email/p/the-three-gs-of-global-decline-gerontocracy

31."Society has weaponized “Loyalty” to keep you tied to inefficient systems and people. It’s an emotional anchor. In the age of Hyper-Volatility, loyalty to anything other than the Mission and the System is a suicide pact. When you keep a person, a tool, or a location out of “loyalty,” you are paying a Stagnation Tax. You are subsidizing their inability to evolve with your own potential. Real loyalty isn’t staying together while you rot; it’s staying together as long as you both Compounded."

https://luxlifestylelab.substack.com/p/the-loyalty-debt-140

32."The gangster operates in a world with real stakes, real consequences, and real rewards. A world where your reputation is built through action, not optics. Where loyalty is tested under actual pressure. Where the hierarchy is earned, not assigned by a committee.

It is the photographic negative of the milquetoast existence modern civilisation has engineered for men.

The hunger hasn’t disappeared. It’s just got nowhere legitimate to go.

That’s the crisis. And the gangster film is the pressure valve."

https://www.lethalgentleman.com/p/why-do-men-love-gangsters

33."Because the deepest lesson of the Opium Wars is not about Britain, or China, or opium. It is about the nature of consequences in complex systems. Every actor in the story — the East India Company, Lin Zexu, Palmerston, the Qing court, Gladstone — acted on intentions that were coherent within their own frameworks. And every single one of them produced consequences that dwarfed their intentions, consequences that cascaded across decades and continents, consequences that are still arriving now, in places and currencies and chokepoints that the original actors could not have conceived.

A trade deficit produced a drug epidemic. A drug epidemic produced a war. A war produced a treaty. A treaty produced a rebellion that killed twenty million people. A rebellion weakened a dynasty. A weakened dynasty fell. A fallen dynasty produced a century of fragmentation. Fragmentation produced revolution. Revolution produced a nuclear power. A nuclear power now offers its currency as the alternative to the system the West built — in corridors and straits where the world’s energy passes through spaces so narrow a captain can see both shores from his bridge.

That chain is not a metaphor. It is a mechanism. And mechanisms, once understood, carry an obligation: to ask, before the next force is applied to the next chokepoint, whether anyone in the room has truly traced the consequences to their end. Whether the men making decisions about narrow waterways and precious commodities today have studied what happened the last time men made decisions about narrow waterways and critical commodities — and whether they have the honesty to admit that the forces they are acting upon are wilder than any strategy document can contain."

https://nazem.substack.com/p/what-lin-zexu-started

34."Now that you have your list of who has leverage, now you can move to asking a simple question. “What does this create long-term”. If your goal is to make big strides over the next 5-10 years related to wealth, you have to remove all activities that will decline in value.

Here is a simple yes ladder. Does This:

Increase long-term equity

Improve sales/marketing skills

Improve skills related to leading edge tech

Increase visibility

Create a cash flow for you that occurs while you sleep

If it is a yes to any of those? Continue. If it is a no to all of them. Best to move on.

You know where the dividing line is going to be. Copy pasting numbers from a computer to another spreadsheet isn’t a useful skill. Learn things that the older generation won’t process as fast and where demand will be highest. Most are doing the opposite, holding onto tasks they know are going to be automated away."

https://bowtiedbull.io/p/white-collar-recession-starts-before

35."The regime has proven to be far more robust than the polls indicate. Furthermore, historical experience (WW2) suggests that a country at war, suffering strategic bombardment, becomes more cohesive rather than less. Forcing a political collapse will be very difficult.

Iran’s drones are still far more effective than the US military concedes. Specifically, it allows Iran to exchange damage with the US on a tit-for-tat basis. If an electrical grid is hit, it will do the same to the Saudi’s, the UAE, and Israel. If upstream oil/gas infrastructure is hit, sites like Saudi Arabia’s Ghawar (the world’s largest oil facility) become targets. This makes it costly to damage Iran’s economic infrastructure. Furthermore, if Gulf oil infrastructure is destroyed, the damage will require a multi-year rebuilding effort to bring it back online.

This path will likely be a slow process that could last many months. Even without accounting for the additional damage this path causes, the system disruption already inflicted by the war is actively harming developing countries, draining their budgets, and increasing the risk of collapse. Soon, this disruption will reach developed nations, increasing inflation, causing economic slowdowns, and increasing default risk, among other effects."

https://johnrobb.substack.com/p/reorienting-the-iran-war

Marvin Liao 6/13/26 Marvin Liao 6/13/26

Surviving in the AI Age & Age of Chaos: Learning from Hispanic Nomad

This is one of the best descriptions of how many of us feel right now. Hispanic Nomad does a great job going through the details: failing democracy, growing populism, trust failing in financial institutions & growing white collar job destruction by AI. These are hard trends and indisputable.

It’s worth reading the whole thing here: https://x.com/hispanicnomad/status/2021590879685795886

“I don't know exactly what the world looks like in five years. Nobody does. But I know what kind of person lives well in uncertain times: someone who doesn't depend on any single system, who trusts themselves more than they trust institutions, who has options instead of obligations, and who treats adaptability as the most important skill they can build.

The old world is dying. You can see it if you're willing to look. The institutions, the career paths, the financial assumptions, the political structures... they're all under more stress than they were designed to handle, all at the same time.

Something new is coming. And the people who build their lives around flexibility, self-reliance, and diversification won't just survive the transition. They'll be the ones who define what comes next. The ground is shifting. You can feel it.”

No one is coming to save you. And the sooner you realize this, the better. Hispanic Nomad talks about one of the most important things to work on. Emotional resilience.

"You can have the perfect Flag Theory setup. Multiple residencies, diversified income, international bank accounts, optimized taxes. And if you don't have your inner world sorted out, all of it will crumble the first time things get hard. Because things are going to get hard.

The people I've seen navigate massive disruption successfully all share something that has nothing to do with strategy. They have emotional resilience. They know themselves. They can sit with uncertainty without panicking. They can make decisions under pressure without spiraling. They have a relationship with discomfort that allows them to keep moving when everything around them is shifting.

This is the unsexy part. The part that doesn't go viral. But it's the foundation everything else is built on."

Figuring out the inner game is key. Maybe it’s always been the key. I learned this late in my life. When the inevitable crisis happened, I just did not have the mental wherewithal to handle it properly. Which then leads to the very tactical and practical things that Hispanic Nomad suggests:

“There's a difference between surviving disruption and benefiting from it. Resilience means you can take a hit and recover. Antifragility means you've positioned yourself so that volatility actually makes you stronger. Here's what that looks like in practice:

Build location-independent income. Not because remote work is trendy, but because tying your income to one physical location in one economy is the modern equivalent of keeping all your gold in one vault. If you're reading this and your income depends entirely on showing up to one office in one city in one country... that's your most urgent vulnerability. Start building skills and income streams that work from anywhere. This doesn't happen overnight. But every step in that direction reduces your exposure.

Learn AI. Now. Not because you need to become a technologist. Because AI is the single most powerful tool available to an individual right now, and the gap between people who can use it and people who can't is going to become the most important economic divide of the next decade. Spend an hour a day with it. Not reading about it. Using it. Push it into your actual work. The people who get fluent now will have an enormous advantage. The ones who wait will be competing against both AI and the people who know how to use it.

Diversify everything. Income streams. Currencies. Jurisdictions. Skills. Relationships. Networks. The principle is the same everywhere: concentration is risk, diversification is resilience. This applies to your money, your career, your social circle, and your geography.

Lower your fixed costs ruthlessly. The people who get crushed by disruption are almost always the ones with high fixed costs: big mortgages, car payments, lifestyle obligations that require a specific income to maintain... On the other hand, the people who navigate it well are the ones who can downshift quickly. Give yourself room to maneuver. That room might be the most valuable thing you own in three years.

Get a second residency. Just keep it as a practical option. There are countries where the cost of living is a fraction of what it is in the West, where the quality of life is high, and where the legal and tax structures are genuinely favorable. Some of these places will give you residency in weeks. Having legal status in a second country is like having a spare key to a second house. You hope you never need it. But if you do, you'll be very glad it's in your pocket.”

It’s a nutty time here in the Fourth Turning. So you need to start prepping and position yourself. A reminder: The best day to start was a decade ago, the next best is today. So start taking some action. We may be a bit early here but better to be a year early than be a day too late.

Marvin Liao 6/11/26 Marvin Liao 6/11/26

Surviving the AI Jobpocalypse: Learning From Matt Shumer

We are not only getting bracketed by crazy geopolitical changes, the biggest driver in my opinion is technology. And as a participant in the tech industry for over 26 years now, you ain’t seen nothing yet. And this will have major shocks to our society. AI is like nothing we have ever seen before and the impacts on white collar jobs will be what technology and globalization did to blue collar jobs and our industrial base since the 1980s. Communities across America have never recovered from this.

AI is the new automation.

This time technology is coming for college educated white collar jobs: lawyers, accountants, analysts, programmers, roles previously seen as safe. The cognition class is in deep trouble. I’m not saying there won’t be white collar jobs.There will still be need for lawyers and accountants, just a lot less of them. Only the top 10-20%. With AI, the bar will be so much higher that only the best of the best will have these jobs. Anyone average or mediocre, which is most people sadly, will be in deep doo doo. It’s gonna be bad. The CEO of Anthropic has even publicly stated that he believes that 50% of entry level white collar jobs will be eliminated by AI in the next 5 years. He is well placed to know.

Gavin Purcell mentioned a term called AI Takeoff. “AI takeoff is the moment (or period of time) where AI models begin to improve much faster than ever before, mostly because they can work on themselves.” Basically this thing is gonna grow to levels we will not expect. Not sure if we are there yet but we could be close. There is a good write up here: https://x.com/gavinpurcell/status/2021292314291999182

Matt Shumer, who is an investor and operator in the AI space wrote a long X article on AI too and it’s excellent: https://x.com/mattshumer_/status/202125698987610940

Basically, he writes that AI development and effectiveness is growing at an exponential rate. Society and most people have no idea what’s coming and how fast it is coming. But it's not too late to prepare. Ignoring it will not help you and your family. Panic doesn’t help either. I preach: control the controllables. You can take action to prepare for the Age of AI. I took some recommendations from him and recapped the most important ones I found here:

“1. Get your financial house in order. I'm not a financial advisor, and I'm not trying to scare you into anything drastic. But if you believe, even partially, that the next few years could bring real disruption to your industry, then basic financial resilience matters more than it did a year ago. Build up savings if you can. Be cautious about taking on new debt that assumes your current income is guaranteed. Think about whether your fixed expenses give you flexibility or lock you in. Give yourself options if things move faster than you expect.

2. Think about where you stand, and lean into what's hardest to replace. Some things will take longer for AI to displace. Relationships and trust built over years. Work that requires physical presence. Roles with licensed accountability: roles where someone still has to sign off, take legal responsibility, stand in a courtroom. Industries with heavy regulatory hurdles, where adoption will be slowed by compliance, liability, and institutional inertia. None of these are permanent shields. But they buy time. And time, right now, is the most valuable thing you can have, as long as you use it to adapt, not to pretend this isn't happening.

3. Your dreams just got a lot closer. I've spent most of this section talking about threats, so let me talk about the other side, because it's just as real. If you've ever wanted to build something but didn't have the technical skills or the money to hire someone, that barrier is largely gone. You can describe an app to AI and have a working version in an hour. I'm not exaggerating. I do this regularly. If you've always wanted to write a book but couldn't find the time or struggled with the writing, you can work with AI to get it done. Want to learn a new skill? The best tutor in the world is now available to anyone for $20 a month... one that's infinitely patient, available 24/7, and can explain anything at whatever level you need.

Knowledge is essentially free now. The tools to build things are extremely cheap now. Whatever you've been putting off because it felt too hard or too expensive or too far outside your expertise: try it. Pursue the things you're passionate about. You never know where they'll lead. And in a world where the old career paths are getting disrupted, the person who spent a year building something they love might end up better positioned than the person who spent that year clinging to a job description.

4. Build the habit of adapting. This is maybe the most important one. The specific tools don't matter as much as the muscle of learning new ones quickly. AI is going to keep changing, and fast. The models that exist today will be obsolete in a year. The workflows people build now will need to be rebuilt. The people who come out of this well won't be the ones who mastered one tool. They'll be the ones who got comfortable with the pace of change itself. Make a habit of experimenting. Try new things even when the current thing is working. Get comfortable being a beginner repeatedly. That adaptability is the closest thing to a durable advantage that exists right now.”

More importantly, this affects what you teach your kid if you are a parent. If you thought your parent’s career advice was bad, well, the advice you are giving now probably is too. My folks were way off. (they meant well though). Matt has a good take here too.

“Rethink what you're telling your kids. The standard playbook: get good grades, go to a good college, land a stable professional job. It points directly at the roles that are most exposed. I'm not saying education doesn't matter. But the thing that will matter most for the next generation is learning how to work with these tools, and pursuing things they're genuinely passionate about. Nobody knows exactly what the job market looks like in ten years. But the people most likely to thrive are the ones who are deeply curious, adaptable, and effective at using AI to do things they actually care about. Teach your kids to be builders and learners, not to optimize for a career path that might not exist by the time they graduate.”

Basically, invest in yourself, invest in your community and learn the tools. We are in the early innings of the Age of AI. So embrace it. You still have a chance to get ahead of it. It will mean the difference between barely surviving to thriving in the new world we are entering.

Marvin Liao 6/9/26 Marvin Liao 6/9/26

Surviving the Fourth Turning

Ray Dalio, is one of the top global macro hedge fund guys in the world. He has been on the podcast and media interview circuit all first quarter of 2026. I especially enjoyed his conversation with Tucker Carlon (who I dislike to say the least). And what they talk about is grim. That basically we are at stage 5 out of stage 6, progressing to monetary and societal breakdown in America. Hence why he has moved to Dubai.

As Chet wrote on X: “Every time I hear Ray Dalio speak, my brain starts drafting blueprints for a bunker in the mountains stocked with canned food & gold bars.” (Source:https://x.com/NoCapCapitalLLC/status/2021034322820727055).

Dalio is like a modern day Cassandra, and it’s pretty dark when you think through the implications. He says we all have a few choices in this situation:

“One of three things: 1) You have to pick a side and fight for it , 2) or you keep your head down and hope you don't get shot, or 3) flee.”

I’m in the school of trying 1 first, then 3 if things get really bad.

Robert Sinn wrote about this interview and helped couch this in Fourth Turning terms and its really helpful to understand why all of this chaos is happening: https://robertsinn.substack.com/p/ray-dalio-how-to-survive-the-coming.

"In the final years of the Fourth Turning, according to the The Fourth Turning framework, societies enter a period of intensifying stress in which long-standing institutions lose legitimacy faster than they can be reformed. Political systems polarize, financial structures strain, and public trust in elites collapses.

What begins as diffuse anxiety hardens into decisive confrontation—often triggered by a catalyzing crisis such as war, financial collapse, or systemic failure. Compromise becomes rare; history accelerates. The defining feature of this phase is not chaos for its own sake, but forced choice: societies must decide what is worth preserving, what must be dismantled, and what new rules will govern collective life.”

So now that we know why it’s happening, we should have a model of what will happen so we can prepare for it. Who is best positioned to win coming out of this massive change?

“The beneficiaries are highly asymmetric. Those tied to the existing order—financialized elites, bureaucratic institutions, over-leveraged systems, and cultural gatekeepers—tend to lose power, credibility, and wealth. The Fourth Turning is hostile to rent-seeking and abstraction; it punishes systems that grew detached from productive reality. In contrast, people and entities aligned with real assets, national cohesion, and practical competence often gain.

This includes builders rather than financiers, producers rather than speculators, and actors capable of operating amid volatility—whether that means industrial capacity, energy, food, metals, defense, or social leadership rooted in tangible outcomes. Younger generations, especially those forced to mature quickly under crisis conditions, often rise into leadership faster than in prior eras."

As we learned during any crisis, those that survive and position themselves correct, can really get ahead. We didn’t cause this polycrisis, let alone be able to prevent this. Position yourself well & take action. Focus on what you can control and you will be alright.

Marvin Liao 6/7/26 Marvin Liao 6/7/26

Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads June 7th, 2026

“Success isn't always about greatness. It's about consistency. Consistent hard work leads to success. Greatness will come.”— Dwayne Johnson

American Icon Alex Karp. Always outspoken and quotable.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wj6ttdIeBnE&t=67s

2.Inspiring and insightful. CTO of Palantir. AI, Reindustrialization and war.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EB9V8d3ZYbc&t=8s

3.Trying to understand Trump 2.0's geo-strategic goals. Crazy like the fox?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3iqJQP8Y6w

4."One technique we have used to cut through disinformation and psych-ops is to navigate social media sites like Twitter/X using curated lists, segmented by political bent or point of view. To gain entry onto one of these lists, an account must regularly post interesting and relevant information, even if we wildly disagree with it. To remain on the list is simple: resist the temptation to create or propagate clearly fake information. What is the pro-renewables crowd telling itself today? The oil industry? The European elite? The Make America Great Again crew? As a tool of analysis, this approach is truly invaluable.

Another useful truth-finding method is inspecting how the same event is covered by various international outlets, especially useful during times when a single topic—like a terrorist attack or the snatching of Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro—is dominating the global news cycle. Historically, our approach has been limited to reading English-language versions of major media periodicals in foreign countries—especially adversarial ones. Doing so provides insights missed or purposely minimized in legacy Western media."

https://newsletter.doomberg.com/p/digital-fog

5."I believe Sam Altman is broken and, worse, could break us. In life there are “tells,” moments and behaviors that provide insight into a person’s character: How they treat their pets; if they make eye contact with service staff; how they talk about their ex. Responding to a question re the energy needs of AI, Sam highlighted how much energy and effort is required to raise a human capable of critical thinking. This is the tell. He embodies what I believe is most concerning about the virus that’s infected Big Tech: For them, ROI supersedes humanity.

The whole shooting match in life is to find people and causes who will let you love and invest in them, who require and accept a great deal from you — possibly more than you’ll ever get back. For me, it’s raising children with a partner, and the reward is the absence of any ROI. It’s the opportunity to invest without the expectation of any return other than that they, someday, become agents of care and comfort for others. AI, GDP, and shareholder value are just the means. The ends are being in a position to give more than you can ever get."

https://www.profgmedia.com/p/the-resistance-comes-for-openai

6."The irony of the American supply chain is we have everything we need to vertically integrate, be cost competitive, and serve our domestic and international markets.

America has all the feedstocks for nitrogen chemistry. We have cheap electricity. We have limestone. We have coal. We have natural gas. We have next generation processes to make chemicals with greater efficiency, purity, and output. We have the best scientists and engineers in the world.

This is not a rewind to the past. We can build modernized, automated, high throughput factories that are platforms for massive GDP growth for the rest of the century.

This requires capital, chemistry, and the will to build."

https://www.broscienceclub.com/p/why-creatine-supply-is-essential

7. "When entrepreneurs ask whether they should prioritize product value or revenue growth in the early days, my answer is almost always product value. If the cofounding team is exceptionally strong and financial resources are deep, pursuing both at the same time may be possible. For most entrepreneurs, however, the better path is to go deep on product value while keeping distribution lighter, maintaining enough customers to iterate quickly.

Once the switch flips and it becomes clear that the product delivers tremendous, must-have value to customers, that is the moment to go all in on product distribution."

https://davidcummings.org/2026/03/14/product-value-vs-product-distribution-in-the-early-days/

8."Modern culture often celebrates comfort and convenience. We are told to seek out pleasure and be true to ourselves. Roosevelt’s life reminds us that a meaningful life requires something far more demanding.

He believed that men should strive to build strength, discipline, and courage in all of our actions. This is not for wealth or personal glory, but for the benefit of the communities they serve. Roosevelt once wrote:

“Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure… than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much.”

In a society that often discourages ambition and discipline, Roosevelt’s message remains extremely relevant to us today. We must dare mighty things, even if we might fail. Not just for us, but for our friends, our families, and our communities."

https://thewaysofagentleman.substack.com/p/what-theodore-roosevelt-can-teach

9.Terrifying view of drones and war in the future. Unfortunately the future is here. Lots of takes here also from the frontlines of Ukraine.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Se4wi2-quaM

10."First, the market adopted the narrative that AI capex results in value creation — bidding up all layers in the AI stack. But the jury is still out on whether this massive capex spend will result in lasting value creation for every layer.

Second, the market is adopting the narrative that the “Cost of Intelligence” is deflating fast — soon to be worth zero. The adoption of this narrative by the market is the stock crash of every company considered to be under threat from AI proliferation."

https://www.philoinvestor.com/p/laas-layoffs-as-a-service

11.A cold hard look at the venture capital & the PE business right now. Worth watching.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPaWW0IDurI

12. This movie looks good. The story of Tamerlane.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVP-1XjTSmY

13.Dollar endgame debate. Fascinating conversation on where the USD is going and what is going on with the global reset.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-ZHu5IW_p8&t=2497s

14."Humans evolved to adapt to change over generations, not months or weeks.

Our psychological system is wildly adaptable but it evolved to digest these shifts when we have gradual technological change, stable communities, predictable life paths and clear cultural narratives.

That’s not the world we live in today. And it’s left many of us feeling shell-shocked."

https://thewakeupcallnewsletter.substack.com/p/the-psychological-cost-of-acceleration

15."Here’s what nobody tells you about developing taste: it doesn’t stay in its lane.

Once your pattern recognition sharpens, it starts applying itself everywhere. Not because you decided to apply it. Because the algorithm generalizes.

People. You start seeing who has substance versus who has performance. The same eye that recognizes a well-proportioned car starts recognizing a well-built character. You stop being impressed by volume and start being drawn to signal quality. The people you spend time with change. Not because you’re being elitist, but because you can see more clearly.

Work and business. You start seeing which companies are structurally excellent versus which ones are marketing shells propped up by narrative. Which products have a real floor versus which ones are hype cycles. Taste in business is the ability to see through positioning and evaluate the thing itself. It’s a better filter than any framework you’ll learn in a classroom.

How you spend your time. This is the big one. Taste applied to your own life is the willingness to look at the default path, the one that says defer everything, optimize for security, save the living for later, and recognize that it’s badly designed. It lacks the same qualities you’d reject in a car: balance, proportion, intentionality.

Taste becomes the filter for everything. And the sharper that filter gets, the better every decision that passes through it becomes."

https://hayescarrera.substack.com/p/taste-is-a-skill

16. "In my work with founders and CEOs, one of the most common patterns I see is the same one I know well in myself: an identification with pushing through, taking the hard way, and getting the job done no matter the cost.

It shows up as a willingness to white-knuckle our way through things. To sacrifice ourselves for the good of the company, the good of others, or the good of our families.

For many of the leaders I meet, this pattern has historically served them well. It helped them stay safe in their families of origin. It helped them contribute in ways that kept the family system steady. It helped them earn their way into great schools and early jobs where they achieved outsized things.

This was true for me, too.

But many of these same people eventually reach a moment when this white-knuckled, self-sacrificing approach begins to drive their lives, or their companies, into the ground."

https://www.mattmunson.me/white-knuckling/

17."In any case, there is no future for any AI company that uses a subscription-based approach, at least not one where they don’t directly pass on the cost of compute.

This is a huge problem for both Anthropic and OpenAI, as their scurrilous growth-lust means that they’ve done everything they can to get customers used to paying a single monthly cost that directly obfuscates the cost of doing business.

I need to be very direct about what this means, because it’s very important and rarely if ever discussed.

A user of ChatGPT or Claude Code is only thinking of “tokens” or “compute” in the most indirect sense — a vague awareness of the model using something to do something else, totally unmoored from the customer’s use of the product. All they see is the monthly subscription cost ($20, $100, or $200-a-month) and rate limits that vaguely say you have X% of your five-hour allowance left. Users are not educated in (nor are they thinking about) their “token burn” or burden on the company, because software has basically never made them do so in the past.

This means it will be very, very difficult to increase subscription costs on users, and near-impossible to convince them to pay the cost of the API. It’s like if Uber, which had charged $20-a-month for unlimited rides, suddenly started charging users their drivers’ gas costs, and gas was at around $250 a gallon.

That might not even do the price disparity justice. This theoretical example still involves users being in the back of a car and being driven a distance, and that said driving costs gas. Token burn is an obtuse, irregular process involving a per-million input and output tokens, with the latter increasing when you use reasoning models, which use output tokens to break down how it might handle a task. "

https://www.wheresyoured.at/why-are-we-still-doing-this/

18.Lightning interview: a fun yet fascinating look into a brilliant industrialist’s brain.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZfW3YTJ5Eg

19.This conversation makes me much more confident in the DoW and our Neo-Primes. We need to get our mojo back. It's a will & morale problem, not a capability issue in America.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Itdv5IKN2P4

20."This is, fundamentally, the work of venture capital. At its best, investing is not the allocation of capital to known outcomes—it is the identification of individuals and ideas operating at the boundary of the map. Great investors are not simply pattern matchers; they are frontier detectors. They look for the non-consensus, the contrarian, the ideas that do not yet fit cleanly within existing frameworks precisely because those frameworks lag reality. The goal is not to fund what is already legible, but to recognize what will become legible. The goal is not to be contrarian for its own sake, but to back explorers pushing the frontiers of new territory, building the map of where humanity is perhaps already going, but more importantly, desires to go.

In an AI-driven world, this role becomes even more critical. If AI excels at navigating and optimizing within the known map, then the highest-leverage human activity shifts toward expanding that map. The entrepreneur becomes an explorer—someone who ventures into domains that are under-explored, misunderstood, or entirely new. And the investor becomes a backer of expeditions, placing bets not on certainty, but on the possibility that the territory itself is larger than we currently understand."

https://ideas.scotthartley.com/p/investing-at-the-edge-of-the-map

21.This was fascinating. Don't agree with everything said but this was an encyclopedic review of the technology business and history. Lots to learn here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBVe3M2g_SA&t=3590s

22.Special Ops will be very busy in Latam.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VOF1etsAGxI

23."I know. You want to get rich as fast as possible. You want to live your dream life with total freedom and never worry about problems again.

But I’ll tell you the truth: Life is going to test you with absolute intensity. You will have to overcome massive challenges and face your deepest fears.

Is that fair?

It doesn’t matter.

That is how life works. These are the rules of nature, and we must respect them."

https://substack.com/home/post/p-191252641

24."The ultimate status symbol is being known as the person who is “impossible to read” but “always delivers.” It signals that you have successfully decoupled your Internal Fortress from the external noise. While others are busy being “relatable,” the Sovereign is busy being Indisputable."

https://luxlifestylelab.substack.com/p/the-empathy-debt

25.Two generational founder legends. TK & Michael Dell.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9y7TTU1jIvk&t=2609s

26.What a week. Lots of crazy news in Silicon Valley and some of the best takes too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lTuS7Ns8cZg

27."I believe Bangladesh, Egypt, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka each have the potential to be patient zero. Among European banks, HSBC and Standard Chartered are most exposed. The Middle East accounts for 9% of HSBC’s revenue and 12% of Standard Chartered’s profit before tax — different metrics, same direction of risk. Barclays, BNP Paribas, Deutsche Bank, ING, and Société Générale have limited exposure, at less than 1% of revenue. The danger, however, is one the markets can’t see.

The IMF’s Global Financial Stability Report, published just months before the war began, warned explicitly about “limited visibility into balance sheets and the interconnectedness of nonbank financial institutions.” Debt crises share a common feature: The threat isn’t the institution or nation that defaults first, but the opaque financial instruments that make everyone else an unwitting co-signer. The unknown unknowns aren’t the emerging economies, they’re derivatives in Zurich, London, or New York that nobody stress-tested for $110 oil."

https://www.profgmedia.com/p/patients-zero

28."Analysts warn that the longer the Strait stays closed, the more Asia's supply shortage becomes everyone's problem. Supply chains don't respect national borders. The factories making your phone, the ships bringing your goods, the airlines pricing your flights - they all run on Brent-priced oil."

https://tradinglessons.beehiiv.com/p/why-more-u-s-oil-cheaper-gas

29."The same forces that enabled American dominance—globalization, digitization, commercial innovation, and networked systems—are now enabling its competitors.

And, increasingly, opportunistic adversaries.

This is the central tension shaping the future of warfare:

Innovation creates advantage. Proliferation destroys exclusivity.

The United States is still operating as if technological superiority can be sustained.

Its adversaries are operating under a different assumption:

That parity is inevitable—and asymmetry is the path to victory.

This is the essence of national security arbitrage.

And it suggests that the future of warfare will not be decided by who builds the most advanced systems but by who best adapts to a world where advanced technology is no longer an advantage—only a baseline."

https://buildingourfuture.substack.com/p/the-end-of-technological-overmatch

30."The lasting lesson of this war should be that drones, decentralization and the proximity to vulnerable systems, can allow a weaker adversary to achieve a level of deterrence against larger foes that is similar to building nuclear weapons.

PS: Drone deterrence is something Taiwan, Japan, Singapore, and S. Korea should seriously consider. A conventional alternative to developing nuclear weapons."

https://johnrobb.substack.com/p/drone-deterrence

31."On a revenue per employee basis, the AI native companies are crushing. This is doubly impressive when you consider that every single one of their legacy competitors is frantically adding as many AI features as they can, and it isn’t slowing down the startups.

So the top-line story is clear: AI native companies are more efficient, and they’re winning despite every incumbent scrambling to catch up. But here’s what keeps me up at night, and why I worry more for the readers of this publication than for anyone else in the ecosystem.

If these investors and founders are wrong about AI native, the bubble pops with an unholy level of force, and tech careers take years to recover. If they are right, then betting correctly on the right AI startup, repositioning your investment portfolio, and timing your next career move could make this the most lucrative decade of your life."

https://www.gettheleverage.com/p/ai-native-or-death-choose

32."I think most men are walking around with a version of themselves they’ve never met. The version that would exist if they stopped making decisions based on what’s expected and started making them based on what they actually want. That version is more interesting, more confident, and more alive. Not because he owns different stuff. Because he stopped outsourcing his choices to other people’s opinions.

Cary Grant said it better than anyone. He was a poor kid from Bristol who decided to become the most sophisticated man in Hollywood. His method was simple: he pretended he was already that man until one day, he was. “I pretended to be somebody I wanted to be until finally I became that person,” he said. “Or he became me.”

People hear that and think it sounds fake. It’s the opposite. It’s the most honest thing you can do. You decide who you want to be and you start making choices as that person. The alternative is what most people do, which is never decide at all. They wait for some external signal that they’ve earned the right to upgrade their own life. That signal never comes. So they stay the same. They stay safe. They stay boring. For decades."

https://hayescarrera.substack.com/p/why-owning-an-exotic-car-will-change

33."An antidote to this conformist establishmentarian- ism is to build right at the edge of science fiction, in earnestness, in the name of the family, the nation, and even God—and preferably to do it in the Gundo. “There is a natural pendulum swing,” Doricko tells me. “Kids are always going to be rebellious. And my cohort have been told for our whole lives, ‘You will own nothing, and you will be happy. You will have a remote, e-mail job. You will not see any meaningful technological progress in your lifetime. You will eat bugs.’ A lot of the Gundo is about bringing together high-agency, assertive guys who are rebelling against the narrative we’ve been fed for so long.

Such a small place, and with so few people. Does it have a chance to survive the colossal forces sapping California of its vitality: the debt, the taxes, and the bureaucratic barbarism of the state’s dysfunctional, regulation-obsessed government? Don’t they know that history is determined by forces beyond their control? I fear that the Gundo may be California’s last gasp of creative energy. “We’re just a couple kids in El Segundo,” says Taylor. “But it’s always a small group of people that make history. It was decisions that individuals made that led to America’s decline, so why not the turnaround? It’s just people making those decisions.”

https://www.city-journal.org/article/the-next-arsenal-of-democracy

34."El Segundo is one of many towns that make up the suburban sprawl of the region, and it has a history even more industrial than most. Chevron has a refinery there. Major defense contractors have had facilities there for decades.

Entrepreneurs love El Segundo too.

The founders there, as I’ve engaged with them directly and watched them on social media, are not like the founders I see daily in Silicon Valley, or San Francisco, or on university campuses across America.

They have a distinct “type”.

https://aaronpickard.substack.com/p/moral-hazard-is-good-for-founders

35.Big week in Silicon Valley. Lots of cool stuff happening on the tech side.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYJawV55QcU&t=158s

36.The Defense space through the eye of a growth stage investor.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xlwFBsBxbWg

37."You have a choice. You can keep moving through this world reacting to things, chasing approval, surrounded by people who’d forget your name if you stopped being convenient. Or you can start building something that makes every room you walk into shift in your direction. Something that earns loyalty so deep that men would go to war for you. Something that makes your woman feel so safe and so proud that losing you becomes the most terrifying thought she carries.

Vito Corleone is fiction. But the philosophy he represents has been running the world since men first organized into tribes. Give before you take. Control your emotions when everyone around you is losing theirs. Say no when the whole room says yes. Build your power through warmth, through loyalty, through the kind of calculated patience that most men will never have the discipline to practice.

That man isn’t born.

He’s built.

One decision at a time.

Starting this week.

Get to Vito Corleonemaxxing."

https://www.thefinalman.com/p/you-need-to-be-vito-corleonemaxxing

38."Because oil and gas supplies for international markets have been significantly disrupted, those 15,000 US chemical facilities have become incredibly strategic. That’s especially true when you consider that the United States is a net oil and gas exporter. In other words, it’s possible that the final products that specialty chemical companies in the US produce could have massive margins when selling their products in to the world market. Cheaper US oil and gas inputs with more expensive specialty chemical outputs.

The war in Iran has created massive volatility, but it might also be making a structural advantage for American manufacturers. Cheaper domestic energy means fatter margins on the output side, especially when global competitors in the Middle East are offline.

It’s simple alchemy: low-cost feedstock in, premium-priced specialty chemicals out, sold into a world that suddenly has a shortage.

But not every name will capture this opportunity. The winners will be the ones with integrated US plants, strong balance sheets, and exposure to end-markets that stay resilient no matter how crazy energy prices get (think agriculture, autos, electronics, and infrastructure). That’s where the real opportunity sits right now."

https://mailchi.mp/f767f98a5949/ais-fantasy-season-13945134?e=cd1ba0eb1a

39. Lots of geopolitics and defense-tech stuff but also lots of random things. It’s fun.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-qhcM6EZOY&t=118s

40."The principle is the same at every scale: the space in which you live should reflect and reinforce what you believe. One’s home should speak with you.

The particular danger of our age is that comfort itself has become an enemy of conviction. The American case is instructive. The American character was forged in confrontation with the land — the frontier, the homestead, the church as the first building raised in a new settlement. The harshness of the environment demanded a response, and that response was saturated with faith because faith was the only thing adequate to the demand."

https://becomingnoble.substack.com/p/the-furnished-soul

Marvin Liao 6/6/26 Marvin Liao 6/6/26

Leave the World Behind

It was a movie that came out in 2023, so I was late to this. So the description on Wikipedia:

“Leave the World Behind" is an American apocalyptic psychological thriller film written and directed by Sam Esmail. It is based on the 2020 novel of the same name by Rumaan Alam. The film stars Julia Roberts, Mahershala Ali, Ethan Hawke, Myha'la, and Kevin Bacon as they attempt to make sense of the gradual breakdown in phones, television, and other regularly used technology which points to a potential cataclysm.”

It starts off very innocuously, a family out on a well deserved holiday outside the city. Then everything starts to break down. But having watched this, it’s terrifying. If this movie does not turn you into a prepper, not sure what will. It shows how fragile civilization is due to our interconnectedness and dependence on technology. Maybe even worse, our deep division in our now low trust society. Obviously not as bad as in many countries in the world but I can definitely say things have degraded over the last 2 decades here in America.

It all starts to come together near the end as one of the main characters explains.

"I had a sneaking suspicion, but I wanted more information first.

All signs were there, sure, but I… I didn’t want to scare anyone.

You’d have called me crazy because it is crazy.

It would have made more sense if we were on the brink of an all-out invasion, but this… I didn’t think we’d actually let something like this happen.

I thought we were smarter than that.

Because my primary client works in the defense sector, I spend a lot of time studying the cost-benefit analysis of military campaigns.

There was one program in particular that terrified my client the most.

A simple three-stage maneuver that could topple a country’s government from within.

The first stage is isolation.

Disable their communication and transportation.

Make the target as deaf, dumb and paralyzed as possible, setting them up for the second stage.

Synchronized chaos.

Terrorize them with covert attacks and misinformation, overwhelming their defense capabilities leaving their weapon systems vulnerable to extremists and their own military.

Without a clear enemy or motive, people would start turning on each other.

If done successfully, the third stage would happen on its own.

What’s the third stage?

Coup d’état.

Civil war.

Collapse.

This program was considered the most cost-effective way to destabilize a country.

Because if the target nation was dysfunctional enough, it would, in essence, do the work for you.

Whoever started this wants us to finish it."

It ends with a horrifying scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UHqRYAI72uM. Basically New York City being bombed and the sound of gunfire.

So yes, this is fiction, near fiction. But considering the direction America is moving, not totally out of the realm of possibility. A divided society both politically and socio-economically, lots of guns, incompetent elites plus plenty of powerful and crafty enemies out there like China, Russia or Iran who would benefit from our collapse.

It’s a reminder that charity starts at home. Fixing all this starts with your: getting your Sh-t together and making sure you make a strong family. Helping your friends and business partners & customers. Then followed by helping and backing your neighbors. Extending your network and building real relationships. Being smarter, richer, healthier, kinder & better armed. These little ripples matter. If enough people do this, we will ensure that “Leave the world behind” stays a fictional, entertaining movie and NOT become reality.

Marvin Liao 6/4/26 Marvin Liao 6/4/26

The Three Body Problem: Insights into A Culture & the Future

I love reading science fiction. It’s like a cheat code to thinking about the future and building a vision of what it will look like. Western science fiction is canon but I love reading Russian, Korean, and Japanese science fiction. But top of the top is Chinese scifi. Especially Liu Cixin. Wow. Mindblowing.

For those who have not read his trilogy. DO IT NOW. But to summarize his first book which sets up the rest of series well, I pulled this from Gemini:

“The Three-Body Problem is the first book in Liu Cixin's Hugo Award-winning Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy, a hard science fiction novel that begins during China's Cultural Revolution when a secret military project sends signals into space, leading to contact with an alien civilization facing extinction. The aliens plan to invade Earth, causing humanity to split into factions that either welcome or oppose the invasion, while the story explores complex themes of physics, politics, and human nature through a virtual reality game based on the chaotic three-body problem in orbital mechanics.”

What I loved about The Three-Body Problem as well as the rest of the trilogy is like all good science fiction stories, it really makes you think. But it also provides insight into the culture it comes from. In this case, the modern day CCP-run China.

Dan Wang wrote in his book Breakneck:

“The trilogy is a celebration of humanity’s ingenuity in an existential struggle. To defeat the alien threat, Liu depicts humanity’s total subordination to technocratic authorities. Scientists and engineers are the ultimate decisionmakers, leaving no room for humanists, the faint of heart, or sentimentalists. Governments are made to submit to the will of select geniuses who do not hesitate to sacrifice millions.

The prevailing idea in Liu’s trilogy is that the only hard truth is survival, where opposing civilizations resemble “blood drenched pyramids lit by insidious fires seen through dark forests.” Again and again, Liu resolves the plot in favor of the party that is willing to be the most brutal in its will to survive.”

Yikes, when you read this. And realize that this is a good description of the modern day Chinese Communist Party and their Russian, North Korean and Iranian allies. The CRINK. This is who we are fighting against.

The sooner the West wakes up, the sooner we might be able to compete again.

We are on the speedrun to the future which is up for grabs now.