"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety"--Benjamin Franklin
1.So many great takes on Silicon Valley business news. This helps you get the zeitgeist of Tech right now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8skbt979n2o
2."The American arsenal isn’t empty, but it is unbalanced. The military still has weapons, but not necessarily enough of the right weapons, in the right places, to sustain a long war while supporting allies and preserving reserves for another crisis.
Countries run out of ammunition when their political commitments grow faster than manufacturing capabilities. It wants to deter China, support allies, defend shipping, protect bases, and prepare for several contingencies at once. But its peacetime industrial base was built for smaller orders, longer timelines, and more predictable demand.
Golden bullet weapons may work, but cost exchange rates can be ruinous. A 400 dollar drone against a 250,000 dollar interceptor means the richer side loses money faster, and money is what buys the next round. Cost-exchange ratios set the tempo.
Good enough and available now can beat excellent and delivered eventually. Everything else, morale and tactics and alliances, sits downstream of that one subtraction."
https://pplsartofwar.substack.com/p/how-the-us-ran-out-of-interceptors
3."Throughout history there have been places where the government existed only as an optimistic suggestion. No tax collectors. No police. No governors. Just jungle or desert. Maybe mountains. Into these places rode a very particular kind of man. Traders. Smugglers. Mercenaries. Banditos. Explorers. History remembers kings and empires. These guys just set up shop and started taking people’s stuff."
https://statedebris.substack.com/p/frontier-bosses-and-their-exploits
4."Now let’s examine the chad generalist; the rat, raccoon, crow, the human.
Quite unremarkable in most aspects, we have no claws, no fur, no night-vision, some of us no bitches — but we’re able to eat mostly anything, live mostly anywhere, and adapt spontaneously to ever-shifting circumstances. Boring, but un-killable.
Sixty-six million years ago when an asteroid the size of a mountain struck the Earth and the sky caught fire and forests burned and plants died, the most specialized, most dominant creature during that time, the dinosaur, died with them.
The creatures that evolved out of the ash were small, boring, generalist mammals who could eat seeds, fungus, and insects.
We are descendants of generalists. Polymathy is the oldest, greatest, most marvelous evolutionary strategy there is. “The fox knows many things,” wrote Archilochus, “but the hedgehog knows one big thing.” The many-models mind is able to hold contradictory ideas and has fluid shifting skill-sets, allowing it to operate in reality far better than the hedgehogs who cram every problem through one grand (spiky) theory.
Second verdict received: generalists rule the Earth."
https://th3realsacha.substack.com/p/become-a-renaissance-man-how-to-build
5."I said this before, and I’ll say it again. The Trump administration and whichever color team follows in 2028 want to return the American industrial economy to the primacy it held in the decades from 1945 to 1980. After 1980, the Japanese, and then the Asian tigers led by China but also including South Korea and Taiwan, became the manufacturers of all important goods globally. Conceptually, every nation follows the same policy mix to achieve this mercantilist success: erect tariffs to lock out foreign goods, and weaken the domestic currency versus one’s major trading partners.
America’s real competitor is China, which adroitly runs this playbook. The Chinese market is off limits to American companies, and once whoever leads Pax America feels strong enough economically to handle the pain of separation, the American market will be off limits to Chinese companies. That means the most important economic battle ground becomes from whom the Europeans import goods? as Europe is the next largest economic bloc that can absorb American or Chinese exports. For America to win in Europe a few things must be true: the dollar must be weaker than the euro, the EU member states must act individually and not collectively which allows the US to divide and rule, and the dollar must be weaker than the other Asian tigers (yen - Japan, won - South Korea, Taiwan dollar - Taiwan)."
https://cryptohayes.substack.com/p/atencion
6.Trying to understand the shifting geopolitical power. US moving to secure supply chains and industry by moving away from dollar to finance to one tied to making physical stuff.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLG2WglIc0Y
7."The clock is ticking. The Russians will aim to position their forces for more direct assaults on Kramatorsk and Sloviansk no later than next year. The Ukrainians will aim to slow down the Russians, trading a little space for more time. Time Drapatyi may use to institute further reforms in the Ukrainian ground forces.
Zooming out and taking the long view, no one should expect major changes on the map of Russia's wider war as the fifth year of fighting grinds toward the sixth. Yes, the last two big free cities in the Donbas are in trouble. But "the overall situation remains unchanged since October 2023," Thorkill wrote.
The Russians slowly advance. The Ukrainians slowly fall back. And losses deepen on both sides."
https://euromaidanpress.com/2026/09/03/kramatorsk-pincer/
8. Gold positioned very well. Some good global macro & geopolitics discussion with Luke Gromen. The USD is our biggest strength and weakness.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQW2Mk_rvTU
9.The OG VC legend: Michael Moritz. Never rest on your laurels is the lesson.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6-6ZPkBPh0
10."The tech industry has long believed that software eats the world. That enough venture capital and a sleek enough interface can solve any real-world problem.
The Arctic proves this idea wrong.
Algorithms cannot allow an optical satellite to see during the six months of polar night. Instead, the region needs advanced, power-hungry radar equipment. No dashboard can manage a supply chain when the only road is a melting block of mud. Engineers must invent new ways to build on permafrost. Standard power grids do not work in places cut off from the rest of the world. So we must park a reactor in the harbor.
In a very literal sense, the brutal, unyielding climate of the Arctic serves as a natural barrier. It prevents anyone from simply coding their way into the region without first mastering the physical engineering required to survive it.
For the Arctic, the frozen-ruggedized tech stack is the moat."
https://ambitioncapital.substack.com/p/the-arctic-tech-stack
11."We must concede that at the LLM and infrastructure level, and in related areas like robotics and biotech, we are progressively living in an American and Chinese world. Not only the capital, chip and energy requirements demand a level of investment scale most cannot touch. Much of the greatest talent is hoovered up by them at exorbitant compensation packages. And it is their AI taking over the next generation of AI itself.
I don’t ignore efforts in the Gulf - shall we say somewhat distracted today (and I actually bet the UAE and others will be back.) I follow Mistral closely - it is impressive and for its competitiveness challenges France is a force in nuclear energy, and Europe has stepped faster than many expected into the AI-driven capabilities required for defense tech. ASML is a juggernaut. Defense tech globally and more broadly is learning from AI efforts in Ukraine.
But for the moment these exceptions prove the rule.
If Covid and war have taught us anything it is every country is rethinking supply chains and doesn’t want to over rely on others. Every country leader I meet does not want to be beholden to any other country for anything if they can avoid it. China, of course, is a leading example and has the scale to do this across almost any sector. But everyone is looking at their own version.
This is not a turning in or isolationism. It is prioritizing national ambition and ensuring there are national champions.
Sovereignty and unleashing national championship are a moat."
https://substack.com/home/post/p-207025997
12. Lots of on the bleeding edge news and takes on Silicon Valley here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0XQ4tslBibo
13.Wide ranging conversation on the declining meritocracy in the West, reindustrialization, China, AI, and global macro.
How to thrive in the new world: ownership, entrepreneurship and learn AI.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=al5qVAS8bY0&t=279s
14.Life of an independent speculator & private investor. An incredible investor with a good philosophy of freedom. Being a "person of means" & mentored by investing legends like Rick Rule & Doug Casey.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SocDjm7Jkmk
15.Keep scare assets and inflation is here. A solid global macro conversation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoAuuJyBg6E
16.The bull case for AI in America. Great convo which helps you understand the landscape and big players in the AI boom.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FGC4ofTcg2k
17.Very instructive conversation on the present status of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Lots of innovations on Ukrainian armed forces but matched by brutality of Russian ballistic missile and drone attacks on Ukrainian civilians. :(
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_d0s8YqGsfI
18."If you look at hedge fund holdings, investor inflows, and general online discussions, both of these countries are incredibly ignored right now.
The Philippines and Indonesia are classic contrarian investment opportunities that each present major upside.
You can go hunting for individual companies in each of these economies (I’ve mentioned several of them in the past), or you can simply buy the ETF’s I’ve mentioned above."
https://www.codyshirk.com/p/cheap-hated-and-ready-to-rip
19."Mark Zuckerberg coined the phrase “move fast and break things” in 2012 to describe the culture of innovation he built at Facebook (now Meta). More than a decade later, it’s clear that by things he meant us. Fines are supposed to be a financial deterrent against future breakage. Seventeen billion dollars is real money, but applied to an enterprise of Meta’s scale, it’s a speeding ticket."
https://www.profgmedia.com/p/little-tobacco-moment
20."Middle powers, for their part, must abandon the fantasy of a painless third way. They cannot enjoy American protection, Chinese commerce, European standards and complete diplomatic freedom without tensions among them. Nor can a handful of new weapons compensate for years of underinvestment.
The emerging order will not be divided neatly between American allies and autonomous states. The most successful countries will be both: more capable of acting for themselves and more deeply connected to partners.
That is what makes this the age of uncomfortable autonomy. Security will come not from escaping dependence, but from choosing dependencies wisely—and paying enough to ensure that no single partner can decide your future."
https://markkennedyusa.substack.com/p/the-high-price-of-strategic-autonomy
21. Understanding the oil markets right now. Venezuela, Canada, Gulf of Hormuz and the SPR.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdAxAnx92Z0
22. A crash course on scaling a defense manufacturing company. This was excellent.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNlGDWwUHZ8&t=18s
23."China can continue building factories, producing technologies, expanding military power and mobilising resources on a scale few countries can match. But, outsiders should not mistake that visible strength for underlying health. A powerful state can remain powerful even as it becomes less adaptive, less efficient and less capable of correcting its own mistakes. The danger is to look at the branches and assume the roots must be healthy.
There is a saying I increasingly hear: Xi Jinping may become the last emperor of the Chinese Communist Party. I do not know whether that will prove true. But the irony is clear.
Xi has concentrated power to protect the Party, weakened institutions to strengthen control, and closed political and economic space to make the system more secure. In doing so, he may be destroying the very capacity for adaptation that allowed the CCP to survive its earlier mistakes.
The greatest threat to the CCP may therefore not come from the forces Xi has spent his rule trying to suppress. It may come from what he has done to the system itself.
And the greatest mistake outsiders can make is to confuse the power that system can still project with the health of the system producing it."
https://desmondshum.substack.com/p/xi-jinping-and-the-slow-corrosion
24.A very important conversation. Institutional decline versus technological progress. Capital, ideology, technology + live players drives civilization forward. West seems to be losing here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzfqfxskCZI
25."Defense technology is no longer an edge case for venture capital and private equity. It is a central pillar of the ecosystem.
In 2025 alone, nearly $50 billion in global venture capital flowed into defense and dual-use startups. But the deals, the fund structures, and the paths to liquidity differ drastically depending on the geography."
https://thoughtsoninvesting.substack.com/p/funding-the-frontlines
26.This week's global macro convo was interesting. The AI Agent world changes everything & is the reason why Crypto is now relevant again.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UhtaqWLSG0&t=1976s
27."For enterprise-focused entrepreneurs looking for a potential business idea, being the system of record has historically been incredibly valuable. It’s also clear that many legacy incumbents face the traditional innovator’s dilemma.
That creates an opportunity to build the next-generation system of record: AI-agent native, optimized for vibe coding, neutral across applications, easy for developers and agents to adopt, and priced like modern infrastructure instead of legacy enterprise software."
https://davidcummings.org/2026/09/05/the-ai-native-system-of-record/
28.A great reminder on what really matters in life.
https://feld.com/archives/2026/09/the-real-luxuries-in-life/
29.The art and science of venture investing here, working at two elite firms like Thrive and Benchmark. This is well worth watching. I got a lot from this conversation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZ14rrkHVbg&t=3911s
30."Moderate intensity conflict in Iran expended critical amounts (in some cases north of 50%) of critical munition inventory, leading to framework agreements to ramp up production to resupply munitions (with a multi-year lag to accomplish this). On the back end, annual deliveries and factory utilization rates paint a different picture. Framework agreements for desired annual production rates, compared against historical annual deliveries over the last 30 plus years, show that once stockpiles are full, line utilization rates will plummet leading to layoffs and loss of manufacturing capacity.
As Iran and Ukraine have shown, future conflicts will be fought with autonomous weapons, where ultimate advantage is achieved through mass. Current DoW’s systems portfolio is not designed for this type of conflict. To adapt to new realities, one of key weapon system requirements is to design for robotic manufacturing."
https://marlinspike.substack.com/p/upgrading-dows-arsenal-for-21st-century
31."Humanity’s relationship with phosphorus has always been fragile. We started by looting the graves of Waterloo and stripping the calcified reefs of remote Pacific islands. Today’s high-tech agricultural system remains just as unstable, tied to desert borders and state-sanctioned monopolies.
Although biological optimization and ocean floor extraction offer potential solutions, neither approach has achieved the scale necessary to address existing supply constraints. Consequently, our global food security and energy systems remain dependent on rather unstable and unpredictable factors."
https://ambitioncapital.substack.com/p/rock-bottom-reserves
32."Financing the AI infrastructure boom is no longer a venture capital or corporate earnings story. It is a macroeconomic credit event that will rival the largest debt expansions in financial history."
https://tomtunguz.com/the-4-trillion-dollar-ai-data-center-debt-wave/
33.Always a balanced perspective on the biggest players geopolitically. US finance versus China's physical power. Both sides have massive strengths and massive issues.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9YZAvvavBfM
34."Until recently, Russia’s strike arsenal had two tiers: high-end cruise and ballistic missiles at one end, cheap piston-engined long-range drones at the other. Ukraine has found different answers to each. Western surface-to-air missile systems, arriving from late 2022 onward, handled the high-end threats, while domestically developed interceptor drones provided a cost-effective counter to the drone raids launched at the country in massive numbers.
Russia is now inserting a third tier between the two. Since early 2026, it has fielded a growing family of jet-powered, low-cost cruise missiles that combine the speed of high-end cruise missiles with the affordability of long-range drones."
https://missilematters.substack.com/p/cheap-fast-and-mass-produced-russias