Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads Aug 3rd, 2025
"In summer, the song sings itself." –William Carlos Williams
We are in the AI world: adopt AI or die. The velocity of business is only increasing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=53ADYulqo8w
2. Always worth listening to Zeihan, his blindspot is tech but otherwise really interesting takes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UltVl2Qlf6A
3. Great episode this week, BG2 covered some important topics like China, AI & talent.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4qG_f2DY_3M
4. The case for China's rise to becoming a weapons exporting giant.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycgNBGdRa3Q
5. One of the best conversations about Silicon Valley news. Lots of good topics covered on Snap spectacles, media & Build-a-bear.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HIyppACODqg
6. Fascinating discussion on AI for the defense industry.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MPwWOIdam10&t=34s
7. "What’s exciting now is that we can accurately forecast heart disease as well as the other major diseases of aging in high-risk individuals many decades earlier and achieve primary prevention, or, at the very least, a marked delay in their appearance. Doctors can’t promise to reverse or halt aging itself, but we can promise that the second half of our lives can be much healthier than that of our forebears.
This is the type of health span extension that we will be seeing far more commonly in the future owing to the phenomenal advances in lifestyle, cells, genomics, artificial intelligence, drugs, and vaccines. These dimensions all interact with one another: Our lifestyle factors influence our microbiome and cells. Our response to drugs and vaccines is modulated by our genomics and cells, and discovery of new drugs has been enhanced by gene variants and by AI.
There are still formidable obstacles—including profound health inequity across the U.S.—but as we move forward, we will inevitably see suppression of age-related diseases that for many is unimaginable right now. It will take years to accomplish the far bolder objective of slowing the aging process itself."
https://time.com/7283740/health-aging-eric-topol/
8. Lots of good topics: Dyson, PSG & Mary Meeker trends.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FSb2wvO_it4&t=10s
9. Lots of implications from the Ukrainian surprise drone attacks on Russian airfields.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKdLYuOorE0
10. Tinfoil hat alt-geopolitics. Really alt & don't totally agree. I hesitate to post these but it's an interesting frame to look at the world.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=85k5Jjna0EA
11. "More importantly, in a world facing broad disruption of incumbent systems, this focus on building solid, independent networks and institutions will allow us to survive the shocks of system-level disruption and to position ourselves for digital age leadership. Rather than fighting to sway decaying institutions largely stacked against us, we can invest that energy into building the types of institutions that will survive the transition period and ultimately replace legacy incumbents.
We have particular advantages here. Legacy models of trust are collapsing, and people will look for alternatives upon which they can rebuild. The smaller, trusted communities and networks (e.g., local churches, fraternal organizations, and even group chats) that exist in many conservative spaces will be strong contenders. If we embrace a more independent and inward-focused strategy today, we can position these institutions to offer something scarce and widely valued in the future.
Our inward focus is not a retreat but a strategic focus on efforts that will offer outsized long-term success. This reflects the “exit to disrupt” strategy that is popular in Silicon Valley. We are exiting legacy institutions with the clear intent not just to build small parallel alternatives, but to create disruptive alternatives that can challenge legacy institutions for supremacy."
https://www.newfounding.com/post/strategy
12. Neo-mercantilism or National Capitalism is coming back. This was a worthwhile and interesting conversation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPfTINePB5E
13. "This mix—speed of iteration, cost discipline, and increasing in-house manufacturing—has allowed Ukraine to quietly take the lead in key domains like electronic warfare, radio communication, and autonomous navigation. Most of the companies I met remain under-capitalized, often bootstrapped, but they’re on the radar now. U.S. and European defense primes are watching closely. Some are already working with local players via partnerships and joint ventures. Others are positioning themselves for future acquisitions—founders told me they get inbound regularly.
I expect this integration of Ukrainian companies into the global defense market will get even stronger this year. Governments and companies from the West have realized that being battlefield tested beats everything."
https://louiseboucher.substack.com/p/notes-from-kyiv-inside-the-worlds
14. Eye opening discussion on China's rise in important industries and how we are able to compete. Is it too late?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mRS0q0zGg0k
15. "The reason that upper middle class areas have a vibe of pins and needles is for this exact reason. Everyone is one slip up from disaster. A layoff, divorce or job loss could crumble the empire.
One year of not earning money is equivalent to losing multiple years of savings. It mathematically makes sense as most save around 20-25% of their income (if lucky). If spending is flat but income is zero or near zero (unemployment is meaningless), that would be at least a 3 year burn (75/25 = 3)
Guess what that means? If someone gets cut for a year or two, they will lose all of their savings from the high-earning years.
Put that into excel and now you know why practically no one is wealthy after a long career (even on Wall Street)
If you want to break free from this W-2 treadmill, the playbook is simple (but not easy):
--Cap your lifestyle. The fastest way to do this is eliminating housing cost. Buy the smallest asset you can reasonably live in. If you have no mortgage and no rent, the numbers get much better.
--Build cash flow. Use your income to build other assets. That $10K a year boring business selling stuffed animals online? Keep it. Get another one. If you have five of those, you’ve got enough money to cover practically all your living costs.
--Buy time, not stuff: Anything you put your money into? Think about how much time you will get from it. Measure your savings in terms of time not percentages. --If you save $$$ calculate how much *run-way* that gets you. This explains why tech investors obsesses so much about the topic. Cash runway.
--Own equity or build it. A job is just something they give you to fund your exit. It’s the rockhammer in your book at shawshank. If you don’t use it to build equity you don’t have a plan. You have hopes and dreams."
https://bowtiedbull.io/p/high-income-w-2-trap-how-to-go-broke
16. A masterclass on the state of venture capital and implications for GPs, LPs and founders.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3rrGzTDH4k
17. The most important proxy war in Africa that no one talks about: Sudan.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHhc-48JT3U
18. "It’s kinda similar to the enriched uranium problem. There Russia was the low-cost source but they got sanctioned. Industry knows exactly what to do, the source material of yellowcake uranium is cheap and abundant, but nobody wants to invest! This is because they know all that low-cost Russian capacity for uranium enrichment is still waiting in the wings. There’s zero guarantee that their investment won’t be instantly rendered worthless if geopolitical situation changes.
Same with rare earths. The problem is it’s a high capex low margin business the way the Chinese do it. As Blas pointed out, the US buys $160 million a year of this processed rock dust. It’s not enough profit there to get your nose out of joint about as a producer. And while you can command a pretty penny now the Chinese can literally kill your business at any time by flooding the market again.
(It’s instrumental to recall that the Japanese, who were initially menaced with the REE ban in 2010, did some exploration of potential rare earth deposits and then completely forgot about the threat. It’s not finding the rock that’s hard, it’s grinding and refining the rocks.)"
https://taipology.substack.com/p/is-rare-earth-chinas-trump-card
19. "Think about this - NVIDIA built one of the most valuable companies in the world by ignoring all the things we tell people to do in business.
CUDA did not “solve a hair on fire problem.”
CUDA didn’t help customers with a “job to be done.”
Customer development on CUDA would have told you there was no market, and no need.
NVIDIA invested in it despite knowing there was currently no demand and it was a zero dollar market.
I point this out because I think investors in most market stages have moved away from backing big visions, in favor of efficient iteration. But I remember meeting a very senior CEO at one of First Round Capital’s entrepreneur days in 2010, when lean startup thinking was getting really hot. He told me “great companies are built on bold vision, not iterating your way to product market fit.”
https://investinginai.substack.com/p/the-cuda-backstory-lessons-for-investors
20. "Why? Because the forces that started that generational up-cycle several years ago have not changed—and won’t in the foreseeable future. Japan has evolved from high-growth powerhouse in the 1960s to 1980s to deflationary stagnation and restructuring in the 1990s and early 2000s towards a new phase now firmly entrenched since at least 2020: competitive resilience. For today’s Japan, global uncertainty is a feature, domestic resilience is the operating system.
To be sure, the net result of these certain Japan trends is poised to result in significant industrial restructuring. The gap between winners and losers will grow. In five to 10 years, Japan is bound to have true national champions, more de facto oligopolies, and far fewer zombie companies. If so, the net result should be higher pricing power for the winners, which in turn means inflation will become much more entrenched than perhaps currently anticipated.
For US companies, the high likelihood of “macro pragmatism” and “micro optimism” should offer steadfast growth in Japan opportunities. The metabolism and liquidity of both human and corporate capital is rising, so actual access to the Japanese market will keep getting better.
Focus on what will stay the same: global uncertainty is a feature, domestic resilience is the operating system. Japan is open for business."
https://japanoptimist.substack.com/p/macro-pragmatism-micro-optimism
21. "Right now, we are entering a period of monumental technological change. Virtually every industry is going to be impacted by AI. At the same time, consequential technologies are on the verge of disrupting countless industries from energy to transportation to manufacturing to defense. Founders building in those spaces or who are able to convincingly argue why their company will benefit from the changing landscape are having more success fundraising than ever before.
But for founders of nice, incremental businesses. The type that solve a real problem and that very likely would have been able to raise VC funding 2 years ago, it’s a different story.
Not because they aren’t good businesses. But because they no longer capture the imagination. Which in the mind of an investor translates to a lower potential return (and always remember, the job of a VC is first and foremost to generate a return for their LPs). Moreover, in many cases, it’s not clear if the problem they’re solving will even be around in 5 years.
That e-commerce company you’re building? Is it relevant if AI changes how we shop?
That vertical B2B SaaS company you’re building? What happens if someone can vibe code a competitor next year?
These may sound like facetious questions, but I promise they’re not. We really don’t have any precedent for the adoption of AI. Which is why investors are piling into the relatively small number of companies whose founders can clearly articulate why they will be relevant in a post-AI world. And saying no to virtually everyone else.
It might not seem fair, but I think this is going to be the fundraising reality for the immediate future — at least until we have some more clarity around the rate at which AI and AI-driven technologies will permeate the broader market.
So if your company started out before the AI wave, you’re not building in deep tech, and/or you don’t have a convincing answer to the question, “why will this be relevant in 5 years?” then I’m afraid that VC (probably) isn’t right for you."
https://chrisneumann.com/archives/whats-going-on-with-early-stage-investing
22. "Why? Because Western producers can’t compete.
Indonesia—backed by Chinese capital and tech—has lower labor costs, looser regulations, and lightning-fast permitting. While a Western smelter can take five yearsto build, in Indonesia, it takes less than one.
Indonesia didn’t just grow its share. It crushed the competition, cornered the market, and created a near-monopoly—not by pricing nickel high, but by pricing everyone else out.
Once the competition is gone, what do you expect they will do to the price? My guess would be precisely what OPEC did in 1973 - halt supply and charge whatever it wants.
And to be clear, although the product comes from Indonesia, 74% of the infrastructure was built with Chinese money. So the leverage is shared.
So if Trump wants to reshore American steel production, I think he should.
But he might need to call President Xi first."
https://jaymartin.substack.com/p/pittsburgh-meets-beijing-the-real
23. "Hokkaido however is different, at least initially in appearance, and that shouldn't be too surprising, given it’s a far northern island with a distinct history, having only been colonized and settled and built late (1900s), with inspiration and assistance from Americans.
It also has more space, and consequently feels far more American than the rest of Japan, almost as if you are in a warped Wisconsin. That's especially true outside of the larger cities, where you find yourself in windy flat fields of potatoes and corn, as well as smaller towns with neighborhoods of sloped roof homes with garages, constructed to deal with the heaps of snow each gets.
While Hokkaido might look slightly different from the rest of Japan, it is still very much Japanese. There is still a shared building code, and a respected notion of the public good, and that means it is safe, clean, and efficient, and each night, no matter where you are, there are plenty of options on where to eat that are not simply franchises of national chains.
These small businesses, which are often run out of someone's home, owned by a family who are also the only employees, are what distinguishes Japan from all other developed nations, making life in it a notch above the rest. While the most obvious of these are restaurants (izakayas, monjayaki-yas, soba-yas, etc.), others are focused on specialized crafts, or small services."
https://walkingtheworld.substack.com/p/in-praise-of-japanese-small-hokkaido
24. "This atomization of combat power is not quite the same as attrition, with which it often gets conflated. It is instead incrementalism. By biting off one trench, one treeline at a time, a series of small-scale attacks can eventually accomplish more than the sum of their individual effects: cut lines of communication, dislocate defensive positions, and force costly withdrawals. Even at the speed of molasses, maneuver is maneuver."
https://dispatch.bazaarofwar.com/p/organizing-for-victory-force-structure
25. Fascinating conversation on Apollo's wide ranging finance and investing businesses.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17bGyLB00s0
26. A billionaire I didn't know much about but what an interesting guy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6YdOjoaQTOQ
27. A fun and enlightening episode this week of NIA.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25VPUq2UM7k
28. Arguably the most important company in America right now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztvCmler6no
29. "Spider’s Web offers a window into how AGI could supercharge similar attacks in the future.
AGI could analyse transportation routes to find the safest, fastest, and least conspicuous way to move cargo. It could plan truck routes that avoid busy checkpoints, choose transit times when border guards are understaffed, and even account for satellite overpasses or drone surveillance.
Such a system could coordinate multimodal logistics (think planes, trains and automobiles) with timing that no human team could match. Not to mention it could crunch traffic patterns, rail schedules, and weather data to find the perfect moment for an attack.
This hypothetical warfighting AGI could automatically generate corporate entities complete with registration documents, tax records, and websites to serve as cover. It could forge driver’s licenses, passports, and employee IDs that pass automated verification—much faster than humans today could.
Aside from paperwork, an AGI could manage a whole suite of deception technologies. For example, AGI could emit fake GPS signals to confuse satellite tracking or hacking into a facility’s CCTV feed to loop old footage while operatives move equipment. When it’s time to strike, AGI could guide each drone to its target as part of a single unified swarm, optimised to prevent collisions and spaced to maximize coverage.
As soon as the destination is in range, AGI could help drones autonomously recognise target types and aim for the most damaging impact points (say by guiding a drone to the exact location of an aircraft’s fuel tank)."
https://time.com/7291455/ukraine-demonstrated-agi-war/
30. "Here's my tell for founders: term sheet too fast plus close dragging equals trouble brewing. That gap between eager signing and delayed execution is where trust dies and gets replaced by leverage games.
The venture business is built on trust borrowed against future performance. Break that covenant once, and you're marked. The ecosystem has a long memory.
Founders remember."
https://www.airsugar.com/p/the-paper-tigers-of-venture-capital
31. "Maduro’s hybrid warfare strategy mimics many of the techniques used by Russia and China in low-intensity conflict. However, his main objective is clear – to distract his own population from his own illegitimacy by provoking conflict with his neighbor.
He is not only walking a dangerous line between war and peace and testing the patience of U.S. officials, but he is collaborating with U.S. adversaries a short distance from American shores. Meanwhile, the U.S. Government reward for the capture of Maduro stands at $25M. Florida Senator Rick Scott has proposed an increase to $100M."
https://robertburrell.substack.com/p/venezuela-launches-hybrid-warfare
32. "Our current definition of air dominance does not translate into control over the air littoral. Yet, if the ultimate goal of air power is to enable and empower ground forces to defeat the enemy, then we must also dominate the air littoral. This is how we must re-conceptualize air power in the unmanned age.
And let’s be clear, manned fighters and stealth bombers still matter — probably more so than ever when you imagine what a war against China would look like. Yet, we must also accept that these advanced aircraft are designed to win a different kind of air war than the one being waged at treetop levels in Ukraine.
Air superiority, supremacy, dominance — these terms mean something different today than in 1992, when air power theorists were after-actioning the Persian Gulf War to theorize how American air power would shape wars in the post-Cold War era.
Fighter jets and stealth bombers still matter but they aren’t enough to achieve our air power objectives in this new era of low-altitude, unmanned combat. We must pair our traditional air power assets with a dominant air littoral force established through the massed use of small, unmanned platforms. That’s how we enable and empower our ground forces to win, and that’s how we save American lives when the next war comes."
https://smallwarsjournal.com/2025/06/09/toward-a-new-understanding-of-air-dominance/
33. One of the best conversations on B2B Venture investing right now. It's such an insight rich discussion.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=peVPH8gBWts
34. Lots to process here. A great discussion on venture capital, building startups and the new environment in Silicon Valley.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=53FImKtf2i0&t=5s
35. "Changing your mind is one of the most difficult things to do. It can also be a career risk.
My good friend, who is a former US Congressman, used to tell me how angry his constituents would get when he’d flip-flop on a controversial topic. Ordinarily, when you’re presented with new information it’s very rational to change your opinion. But the outside perception can make you look indecisive or even unprincipled.
Similar to sailing, investing is a discipline where you should change your mind constantly."