Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads Aug 10th, 2025
"To travel is to live." - Hans Christian Andersen
"But drones are different: representing are a step towards detaching humanity from the kinetic fight. War is no longer only about mobilising soldiers, but rather about sending autonomous machines to survey, target and even strike the enemy. This transforms war for would-be attackers: even if Spider Web’s drones had all been discovered or destroyed, the pilots operating them remotely from inside Ukraine would still have been safe.
There are broader implications here, especially given the way organised violence shapes society. Whoever deploys violence most effectively is best positioned to secure territories and resources, the foundation of political authority. The Gunpowder Revolution helped drag the West into civic modernity: by increasing the scale and scope of war, it increased the money needed to fund it. That, in turn, sparked the need for more sophisticated revenue-gathering systems, requiring greater centralisation, a trend that persisted until the end of the last century.
Drones, then, have reversed this dynamic, decentralising power and putting it into the hands of groups and individuals — or indeed war weary states facing a continent-sized enemy. Only governments have access to fighter jets and similar: an F-16 costs around $30 million and requires years of training to fly. Spider Web used drones that cost just thousands dollars, and which you can learn to pilot in days, even as they eliminated $7 billion of sophisticated military hardware in mere minutes. How’s that for power dispersal?
The result is inevitable: greater independence for smaller, poorer, or less militarily capable states. The Ukrainians remain reliant on US hardware, especially for air defence systems. As Russia daily pounds Ukrainian cities, they represent a lifeline for Kyiv. But the Americans are refusing to supply any more.
So Ukraine flipped the script: rather than beg for more systems to ward off Russian attacks at the last moment, Zelensky’s generals used drones to disable them at source. This sends a clear message to Washington: while we need your support, we can execute high-level operations on our own."
https://unherd.com/2025/06/the-kings-of-the-drone-age/
2. "Here along the Sumy border, Ukrainian forces lured Russian units into counterattacks and then traced their movements back to hidden staging grounds across Kursk. With their positions exposed, HIMARS batteries struck hard, delivering devastating blows to troop concentrations, command posts, and infrastructure critical to Russia’s planned offensive."
3. Sober conversations, things are bad in the USA but they are just as bad in China too. Rest of the world too.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2S1TR6-F8U
4. "The last streaming war was Netflix vs. Hollywood. Spoiler alert: Netflix won. It reduced production costs by globalizing production, leveraging broadband and cheap capital to make Amazon-like investments that nobody could compete with. The result was a transfer of value from Hollywood studios and talent to Netflix shareholders and subscribers.
The next streaming war? A: YouTube takes on the world. This year, more people in the U.S. watched YouTube on TVs than on mobile devices — a first. YouTube is now the No. 1 distributor of TV content, according to Nielsen. And for the past three months, YouTube registered the largest share of TV viewing (12%) among media companies; Netflix accounted for 7.5%. As one anonymous streaming executive told Vulture, “[YouTube] already has the crown. Most networks have essentially thrown up their hands in response.”
Last month, I asked the Prof G research team to calculate YouTube’s valuation independent of Google. They estimated YouTube’s market cap would be approximately $550 billion. Netflix, the most valuable streamer, currently has a market cap of $520 billion.
When I look at YouTube, I see public access television (Google it) at internet scale with exponentially better production values. According to my Markets co-host Ed Elson, Gen Z views YouTube as an algorithm-driven “pendulum swinging power away from brands and toward individuals.” The individual who’s levied the greatest damage on Hollywood is not Reed Hastings, but YouTuber MrBeast, who mastered the art of the parasocial relationships. In 2023 he racked up 1 billion-plus hours of viewing time, more than any of the top shows on Netflix.
But just as individual content creators disrupted Hollywood, AI may disrupt content creators. Netflix will spend an estimated $18 billion on content this year. YouTube’s content budget is effectively zero, and it therefore splits revenue with creators. According to MrBeast, a typical video costs him $2.5 million to produce. This month, an AI muzak channel overtook him, becoming the fastest-growing channel on YouTube."
https://www.profgalloway.com/stream-on-25/
5. Good weekly discussion of Silicon Valley news. ROI on talent is so high now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ApUUsUYRUTY
6. "Thus, the first Software Technology Park of India opened in Bangalore in 1991. For an entire year, it would be the only such facility in the country, with the second one coming in Pune in 1992.
But that one-year head start was enough to change everything.
The STPI became a gravity well for software talent. Entrepreneurs, engineers, and service firms from all over the country flocked to Bangalore to stake their claim in the Information Age gold rush.
And the growth never stopped.
Today, India’s software industry employs over 5 million people, generates more than $250 billion in annual revenue, and contributes ~25% of India’s total exports. The heart of this industry is still very much in Bangalore, not far from where that initial software park was built back in 1991.
So when the first big wave of Indian tech startup founders emerged in the early 2000s and started looking for engineers, there was only one logical place to go. Things just kept snowballing after that.
And that, dear reader, is how a boob-calculator-making company helped kickstart the chain of events that turned Bangalore into the tech and startup capital of India."
https://www.tigerfeathers.in/p/how-bangalore-came-to-be-indias-tech
7. "Having lived in Japan for 20+ years, I can tell you that nobody scores points for popping off in public here. When Japanese get angry, they tend to get quiet. Sometimes they even disappear. In the 1996 book Hikikomori: Adolescence Without End, psychologist Tamaki Saito goes to great pains to explain that the phenomenon is by no means limited to Japanese.
(In fact, the word hikikomori is nothing more than Saito’s translation of the English word “withdrawal.”) In England or America, he theorizes, these same sorts might run away, go homeless. It’s the Japanese socio-cultural system, Saito says, that makes it easier to channel anger inward, retreating from society, rather than casting it outward, and attacking it.
Will Japan’s aversion to disruption isolate it from the revolutions that have eroded democracies in the West? Or is it simply a matter of time? Looking out the window at a society that is far more placid than what I’m reading about in American headlines, I’d like to believe the former.
But only time will tell. For the moment, I’m glad that Japan’s biggest problems center on the price of rice and the attitudes of anime voice actors."
https://blog.pureinventionbook.com/p/america-is-burning-why-isnt-japan
8. "Nominal stages (seed, A, B etc.) don’t really matter. Instead, the only important distinction is between risk and scale. Everything else is nomenclature and posturing along a gradient. So the typical distinctions of a seed fund are basically meaningless.
What you really need to do is commit to being a risk-on early stage fund finding good risk/supralinear bets (where if you’re right, you’re right) no matter the named stage. Use your money to flipillegible bets into undeniable stories."
https://99d.substack.com/p/six-themes-for-2025
9. "Today, the most interesting operators at the fastest growing software companies are not writing code or selling to customers. They’re heads-down conducting research, publishing industry-leading white papers, and using their own methodologies and AI tools to conduct the equivalent of a decade or more of research in a matter of weeks.
For many repeat founders and even the most highly regarded venture capitalists, you’ll notice a shift where going deep and taking a more research-intensive approach is leading to more robust product building and thinking. There’s a reason why some of the most highly respected voices in the Valley have hit pause on any short-term ideas or opportunities to thoroughly understand what’s being built today and how AI will change every aspect of our lives in the future."
https://brianne.substack.com/p/the-rise-of-industry-academics-in
10. Trying to understand what's going on in China under the CCP.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1TeeIG6Uaw
11. This is a neat format for discussions. Enjoyed this show on founders and venture capital.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbY-Pszis0M
12. "Acquihires, acquisitions typically under $20m for talent, may become de rigeur as incumbents seek to bolster their teams with AI talent & update existing products with new capabilities."
https://tomtunguz.com/the-coming-wave-of-acquihires/
13. How to get customers in the DoD. It's a different beast.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CoNJEx9MGGY
14. This was interesting. If you care about increasing your healthspan and living well, this is a great conversation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4vmeo_tfOs
15. "SaaS isn’t software. It’s just an interface charging you rent.
And if you stop paying? They lock you out. Your own data, held hostage behind a monthly subscription. SaaS isn’t software. It’s just an interface charging you rent.
And here’s the part SaaS doesn’t want you to know: this isn’t magic.
Execution-First AI works because all software is just data. Every SaaS tool — whether it’s Notion, Trello, Airtable, or Asana — is just a UI that lets you Create, Read, Update, and Delete (CRUD) data.
That’s it. That’s all.
SaaS convinced you that managing a UI was necessary. But if AI can directly interact with data, why do you need the UI at all? You don’t.
For decades, businesses assumed they needed software to track projects, document ideas, and manage workflows. But SaaS never solved those problems — it just created new interfaces for them.
Execution-First AI removes the interface. It eliminates the friction. It executes."
16. Always learning from these conversations. Rabois is at the top of the investing and building game.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbtuPP1f_Go
17. "Sometimes there are very good reasons to avoid certain places. There really are some dangerous places in the world, where you can get in a lot of trouble.
Fortunately, most of the world is perfectly safe to explore. Of course, that’s if you keep your head on a swivel, don’t look for trouble, and practice basic street smarts. I’ve personally been to dozens of “dangerous” countries and have never had a serious problem. (Well maybe a couple times I’ve had some sketchy situations, like this one.)
Despite the fact that most places are safe to travel to, there is a basic human instinct that tells you to avoid unknown lands. And that’s what keeps crowds away from some of the greatest places to explore right now."
https://codyshirk.com/going-where-others-wont/
18. "My recommendation to aspiring entrepreneurs interested in B2B software is to work with various companies, assisting them with AI-related change management. This approach mirrors my efforts decades ago, helping organizations derive value from the Internet. While the future is uncertain, I firmly believe AI is the next major technological wave.
A tremendous amount of technology implementation and change management will be required, particularly in helping businesses unlock AI’s potential. This work will uncover countless opportunities for new software products, paving the way for thousands of new startups."
https://davidcummings.org/2025/06/14/starting-over-as-an-entrepreneur/
19. "What changed is AI. The underlying anima of LLMs is jagged and rugged. These systems are probabilistic and the output is different every time. Missionaries, while committed, often chase inelastic goals—space or bust. This works in some industries. It doesn’t work when AI becomes the core technology of everything.
Now is the time to hire the misfit: the polar opposite of the mission-driven persona. Their career is weird and illegible. Their personality may be prickly. But if you can figure out how to work with them, they’ll accelerate your growth past anything you can imagine.
They take a first-principles look at the world and question the structure of it. Why can’t they just sell it all and start over? Why shouldn’t they major in English? Books are awesome. Their life is oriented around figuring out what is right (for them) regardless of what school counselors will say.
Misfits are exactly right for AI because they don’t try and get a degree before they do a task—they just figure out how to do it with what they have. Similarly, LLMs allow people to tackle anything. A person can write code, create marketing copy, and design graphics without needing a professional degree."
https://www.gettheleverage.com/p/hire-misfits-not-missionaries
20. "In practice, however, counter-leadership targeting has rarely delivered decisive results. Political and military leaders often prove too elusive, avoiding elimination, while command-and-control structures remain resilient and adaptable. Even when leadership is neutralized, disruption tends to be limited, with replacements stepping in quickly and effects failing to cascade rapidly enough to produce meaningful tactical or operational-level effects.
While the full impact of Israel’s counter-leadership strikes remains to be seen, early reporting indicates that the removal of key figures across military, political, and scientific sectors may have left the Iranian leadership unprepared to respond decisively, and effectively disrupted its immediate military reaction.
If this reporting is confirmed, Israel may have executed one of the most effective state-to-state counter-leadership campaigns in history, and, in fact, one of the rare cases where such targeting may have delivered strategically decisive results."
https://missilematters.substack.com/p/operation-rising-lion-initial-assessment
21. This was a surprisingly deep conversation on the art of venture capital.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=opUf3bS9tuM
22. Learning the new concept of antimemetics: why some ideas don't spread.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TkRJfqus2aw
23. An invigorating and inspiring conversation with Jocko Willink. One of the toughest men in America.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9gz6aEjSxZM
24. This was a fun and solid discussion on how to be your best self. Especially if you are a young man.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_QDanOH67c
25. "In response, British leaders took action. Saltpeter exports to France were cut off.
Supplies from India—once traded openly across Europe—were redirected exclusively for British use. This wasn’t just a matter of economics or diplomatic friction. It was a deliberate act of war by other means. Britain understood that saltpeter wasn’t simply a commodity—it was a dependency. And when your enemy depends on a resource you control, you don’t need to storm the gates.
You just shut the valve. By tightening its grip on the Indian supply lines, Britain weaponized trade itself—proving that the hand on the supply chain often holds more power than the hand on the trigger.
What followed wasn’t an immediate collapse—but a slow throttling of France’s war machine.
French chemists scrambled to produce saltpeter domestically using animal waste, manure pits, and nitrification beds. The results were inconsistent and slow. Where British cannons fired clean and hot, French weapons often misfired or underperformed.
Napoleon’s armies still marched—but with powder that was weaker, less reliable, and in short supply.
This material disadvantage compounded over time. By the time Napoleon invaded Russia in 1812, his army was stretched thin—logistically and chemically. When his Grand Armée began to collapse during the brutal retreat, the problem wasn’t just cold and distance. It was also the absence of the critical materials that had once fueled his conquests.
Britain didn’t beat Napoleon in a single battle. It bled his empire over years—by weaponizing trade and closing the spigot on the raw material he couldn’t replace."
https://jaymartin.substack.com/p/the-supply-chain-that-crushed-an
26. "As venture investors, we often talk about exporting U.S. models globally. But geo-arbitrage works in reverse too. Sometimes the best way to understand an opportunity at home is to see what’s already been proven abroad.
Chime looked like a bold bet. But to anyone watching the neobank revolution unfold from São Paulo to Seoul, it felt inevitable.
Critically, geo arbitrage is not copy-paste. But it provides mental scaffolding to believe Chime could work—uniquely adapted to the U.S. market. It is also what led my investment in other neobanks globally, including Neon (a unicorn in Brazil)."
https://99tech.alexlazarow.com/p/what-the-world-taught-me-about-chime
27. "The Noucentists understood that a people's capacity to take the reins of its own destiny must be demonstrated through their ability to create lasting beauty.
All of this comes down to the fundamental question: if your politics cannot create beauty, then why should we follow you?
However, not all of those who today claim to oppose the managed decay of the West truly understand the political importance of aesthetics, even if they do realize the importance of defending beauty.
Without an aesthetic dimension, human communities lose their capacity to inspire loyalty, to transmit values across generations, and to justify the sacrifices that meaningful collective projects require.
In the present moment, to reclaim beauty is not to frivolously escape from political reality, but to reclaim the foundation of politics itself."
https://www.businessofpower.com/p/aesthetics-as-the-politics-of-vitality
28. "Moreover, being the top earner in your peer group in your 20s is, in absolute terms, insignificant. The difference between $110k and $80k might mean a bigger TV. The difference between millions in disposable income and a typical professional salary is the ability to completely redesign your life. The hedonic treadmill is no match for high agency.
I know wealthy people who used excess money to construct fundamentally lower-stress, higher-joy lives. They spend time on meaningful projects rather than projects that pay bills. The utility jump from "comfortable" to "wealthy" is probably enormous. If you see my writing a post every day and spending more time on Substack, you won’t have to wonder why.
What does all this point to?
1. Money is good. It’s utility doesn’t diminish nearly as fast as pop psychology will have you believe. And it probably gets better with age. It’s worth thinking really hard before making career decisions that will foreclose on the possibility of higher incomes or picking career paths that have a hard ceiling.
2.Compounding is real. It’s spending that needs justification, not saving."
https://www.optimaloutliers.com/p/money-gets-better-with-age
29. This is a super impressive young human being. Ethan Thornton of Mach Industries: The Future of Warfare.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=INXw8QVnQwc
30. "Two successful operations in two weeks demonstrated the validity of this concept to the world. Here’s what we can expect;
This type of warfare scales, particularly if these drones are used to disrupt critical infrastructure. For example, a dozen drone containers in the US, located near major metropolitan areas or critical infrastructure, would be sufficient to take out the entire US electrical grid and shut down US commercial aviation for months. The collapse of the US border during the last administration was the perfect opportunity to do this.
We don’t have any defenses against this type of attack. Our entire defense industry is focused on the wrong threats. For example, the recent attempt to fund Golden Dome (Star Wars redux) is focused on strategic missiles, not drones. If this is supported, 90% of the funding should be focused on detecting and protecting against drones and associated threats.
This threat, or as a method of warfare against a foe, becomes decisive once (air/sea/land) drones become fully autonomous using AI. With sufficient intelligence and the ability to tap into the Internet for updates (targets, triggers, or revisions to its neural network), these drones could remain in place for years, undetected until activation."
https://johnrobb.substack.com/p/brief-1-zero-day-warfare-is-here
31. "There are three business models responsible for creating crypto wealth outside of just hodling Bitcoin and other shitcoins. They are mining, operating an exchange, and issuing a stablecoin. Taking myself as an example, my wealth comes from my ownership of BitMEX (a derivatives exchange), and Maelstrom’s (my family office) biggest position and largest generator of absolute return is Ethena, the stablecoin issuer of USDE. Ethena went from nothing to the third largest stablecoin in under a year during 2024.
The stablecoin narrative is unique in that it has the largest most obvious TAM for a TradFi muppet. Tether has already proven that an onchain bank that just holds people’s money and allows them to transfer it to and fro can become the most profitable financial institution per employee ever. Tether succeeded in the face of lawfare perpetrated by all levels of the American government. What would happen if the US authorities were at a minimum just not antagonistic towards stablecoins and allowed them some modicum of operational freedom to compete for deposits against legacy banks? The profit potential is insane.
Now let’s consider the current setup where the US Treasury staff believes stablecoin AUC could grow to $2 trillion. They also believe that USD stablecoins could be the tip of the spear to both advance/maintain USD hegemony and act as price insensitive buyers of treasury debt. Whoa, this is a serious macro tailwind. As a delicious bonus, remember that Trump has a simmering hatred of the large banks because they de-platformed him and his family after his first presidential term. He is in no mood to hold back the free market from offering a better, faster, and safer way to hold and transfer digital dollars. Even his sons jumped into the stablecoin game."
https://cryptohayes.substack.com/p/assume-the-position
32. A very eye opening and frightening conversation on the extreme threat that the CCP is to America and the West. It's not a comforting discussion here but facts are facts, we are very behind here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oghBVS0QvOM
33. How AI will help America bring back manufacturing. Makes me optimistic. Reindustrialize.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mIzRsLgxfQc
34. Learning from a VC legend. Jay Hoag of TCV.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15dCw7lxqRk
35. This is a must watch. What is GDP for? The new mercantilism and end of globalization.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yycgQGx2peg
36. Garry is a G, even OG. What a fun conversation. I would hate to be competing against YC now.