Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads Sept 14th, 2025
"The only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle." — Steve Jobs
"All in all, the trading houses delivered three essential services to the manufacturers partnering with them. First, they financed long-term commodity contracts, keeping input prices stable. Second, they built distribution networks to open foreign markets. Third, they gathered and shared intelligence that helped firms adapt products to regional demand.
Yes, Japan had the Toyota system, a radical new way of making things. But that alone wouldn't have changed the game. It's one thing to invent cinema. It's another to build Hollywood. What the sōgō shōsha added was the institutional infrastructure to turn technical advantage into national economic strategy. Japan's post-war boom was about more than better manufacturing. It was about building sophisticated intermediaries that linked domestic production to global markets.
We talk endlessly about equity funding, when hardware businesses need much more. They need equipment financing, project-based capital for large-scale deployments, working capital to smooth cash flow, relationships with reliable suppliers, market intelligence on foreign competitors, and distribution into overseas markets. These capabilities lie outside venture capital's skill set. And culturally, Americans are ill-suited to it. They don't look outside their own market because they rarely need to. And inward-looking firms don't become global exporters.
That's where Erebor might come in. As the first serious attempt to build a modern American sōgō shōsha, it could be designed for the reindustrialisation of a high-tech, capital-intensive America. If my hypothesis holds, Erebor may be a sign that the real work of rebuilding national industrial capacity is underway.
More specifically, Erebor's charter application targets four specific sectors: virtual currencies, artificial intelligence, defence, and manufacturing. These sectors share common characteristics: high capital intensity, long development cycles, uncertain revenue timing, and strategic importance to American competitiveness. They're precisely the industries that need patient capital and sophisticated financial services but struggle to access them through conventional channels.
The stablecoin focus distinguishes Erebor from both traditional banks and failed predecessors."
https://www.driftsignal.com/p/digital-shosha-how-america-could
2. "What’s emerging as a result is a fragmenting monetary order: on the one side, a more top-down, state-driven system, exemplified by central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) from Frankfurt and Beijing; on the other, a more free-wheeling system built and driven by the private sector.
It is a confrontation between rival visions of the power of money and how it should be deployed: each responding to the same structural pressures and slowly moving toward a model where banks can no longer create money as freely as they have since the Renaissance.
Lagarde’s vision is of an enhanced monetary sovereignty for Europe, one in which the dollar is no longer, in the words of Richard Nixon’s Treasury Secretary John Connally, “our currency, but your problem”.
But the eurozone’s ambitions now face a formidable challenge from a newly emerging alternative: a world of private digital currencies blessed and underpinned by U.S. regulation."
https://www.politico.eu/article/genius-act-donald-trump-euro-dollar-stablecoin/
3. "“As Grayson explained, you make the best decision you can based on what you know, but the success of your decision will be heavily influenced by (a) relevant information you may lack and (b) luck or randomness. Because of these two factors, well-thought-out decisions may fail, and poor decisions may succeed. While it might seem counterintuitive, the best decision-maker isn’t necessarily the person with the most successes, but rather the one with the best process and judgment. The two can be far from the same, and especially over a small number of trials, it can be impossible to know who’s who.”
If you want a balanced and properly diversified portfolio, you want your component parts to be uncorrelated to each other. For some years now, stocks and bonds have essentially been joined at the hip, their prices increasingly driven higher as interest rates have collapsed, courtesy of our friends at the central banks. But what happens when interest rates and inflation start to rise – perhaps in a disorderly manner ?
We have written of late of our concerns about inflationary pressure. If inflation does turn out to be a higher risk factor, or if you are simply seeking portfolio insurance for your cash and other investments, then all roads lead to gold, and precious metals more generally.
Our favourites are the monetary metals, gold and silver, because we are increasingly concerned about the possibility of central banks losing the confidence of market participants in the paper money system. Gold and silver, to our thinking, are not so much commodities as alternate forms of money that, unlike conventional money, cannot be printed on demand."
https://timprice.substack.com/p/winning-the-great-game
4. Learning from history (yes, dude mentioned here was insane though)
"From Russian soldier, to God of War, to Khan of Mongolia — this was the legacy of Baron Roman Ungern Von Sternberg.
Is it possible for a Westerner to simply show up in Central Asia and conquer the steppe like Ungern today?
Yes!"
https://roguephilosophy.substack.com/p/how-to-live-like-ungern-von-sternberg
5. This was a deep but insightful conversation on the American Dynamism movement by the cofounder of the A16Z American Dynamism Fund. Well recommended.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GePNdT790gU&t=2475s
6. "For entrepreneurs in the hurricane of building their businesses, remember that this is one moment in time, and that as you keep pushing forward, it too will evolve and hopefully improve. What might be a fun team activity around a foosball table might not be the same vibe the following year. But holding onto those memories—even if there’s a little financial hiccup, like signing up for a credit card to try to keep the foosball vibe alive—makes it that much sweeter. Enjoy the journey today, right now."
https://davidcummings.org/2025/07/12/foosball-and-the-startup-journey/
7. "Do not trust those older than you, simply because they are older than you. The modern world allows many fools to reach old age - it is no longer proof of wisdom. An elder was not historically esteemed simply because they were old, but because it was implicit that to reach that age required a certain level of skill, from which could be inferred a certain degree of insight and understanding of the world.
In the modern world, these assumptions collapse because advancement into one's older years is no longer contingent upon wisdom, and because society changes at an ever greater pace for which they did not come of age in, are not adapted to, and subsequently cannot keep up with. This is not to say there are not timeless (dare I say, immutable) fundamentals inherent to human nature that can be passed on, and still remain as true today as they were 2,000 years ago - but it does mean that someone who made their money or dated say, 20, even 10 years ago cannot give you solid advice on how to replicate the successes they had, because the world they achieved those things in is so vastly different from the world you're trying to achieve them in.
Good advice today becomes obsolete tomorrow - this is the unfortunate downside of the beast that is a socially decaying but rapidly technologically advancing society, initially catapulted by the revolution that is the internet, followed by the hyperconnectivity of social media, which has at present culminated in the fever pitch that is the emergence of AI. You never really get a chance to catch up, because you're in a process of infinite adaptation. And so just as you've adapted, all of a sudden you're maladapted again. Not because you've changed, but because the environment has."
https://thesovereigncitadel.substack.com/p/a-letter-to-the-young
8. This kind of felt like the good old days of All in Podcast. Similar vibes. I enjoyed it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KypnjJSKi4o
9. "The people are angry - inflation is cutting their purchasing power; immigration is challenging proud social norms; and the post-war national consensus trust in America as Japan’s benefactor, guardian, special partner and ultimate role model is quickly turning from disbelief-at-what-is-happening to mistrust and discontent.
Make no mistake - this is about so much more than the tariffs: the ruling LDP’s foundational raison d’être was to be America’s independent but loyal agent in liberated-by-America-now-democratic Japan; and this core is exactly what is is being disrupted — the emerging realities of America’s new national priorities, economic agenda and undemocratic leadership style are, simply put, unacceptable to the Japanese people, thus undermining LDP credibility.
The elite bureaucracy will become even more empowered to run the nation.
Good thing: they actually do know what they are doing and bring not just of best-in-class technical competence, but also highest integrity to the national interest. Importantly, they are both trusted and feared by the business and finance elite. Without consistent majority-backed orders from elected leaders to do otherwise, the technocrats are poised to keep Japan a relative bastion of stability against populism, nationalist exuberance or nostalgia. Boring, perhaps….but highly competent, certainly.
As an aside, and in sharp contrast to the new US dynamics, Japan’s elite technocrats are very committed to consulting with private sector innovators, plutocrats, techBros and financial pirates; but they are also committed to keeping them as far away from dictating the policy agenda as possible. This is not a contradiction - Government is to serve the public, not private interests.
So Japan will stand out on the global stage. In a world increasingly dominated by strong leaders with strong visions, Japan’s policy decisions being directed primarily by the elite technocracy may not be such a bad thing for Japan.
Here, I do not worry that, as both America and China, but also India and Europe, get increasingly assertive in imposing their respective grand visions onto their partners and allies, Japan’s political paralysis and lack of vision makes Japan less relevant.
Quite the opposite — as the global ideological battlegrounds harden, Japan’s insistence on best-in-class administrative competence and conservative pragmatism could very well result in global trust in Japan rising. Japan become the voice of reason."
https://japanoptimist.substack.com/p/cracks-in-the-consensus
10. Honestly, from what I learned from the Woke insanity in Silicon Valley during the 20-teens through 2023, it's better not to apologize even if you said something stupid. The zealots see weakness and just go at you more.
https://techcrunch.com/2025/07/11/sequoia-bets-on-silence/
11. AI & Geopolitics. I always learn from Pippa Malmgren, her insights can be uncomfortable but she has been right more often than not.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgmn5PyJzfQ
12. "In today’s age of AI where everything is moving at an incredibly fast pace, the idea of acquiring a company and going through a prolonged review process is completely unrealistic and unfathomable for both acquirers and startups. If you take Windsurf as an example, Google acquiring the company and having to wait for 12+ months to take over the IP and employees is certainly a dealbreaker. It is completely unrealistic given the intense competition in the market.
Even if Google had absolute certainty that the acquisition would clear the HSR process, the delay would render this acquisition impractical and uneconomic. A year in the world of AI is eternity. Speed is everything and speed is the driver for this new Blitzhire structure. It circumvents the HSR review process, allows the acquiror to take over the key employees and IP of the startup, and have the employees with a badge in their office the next day.
In summary, Blitzhires are another form of an acquisition and should be evaluated through that lens. Certainly, not everybody may be thrilled of the outcome. Certainly, employees left behind may feel betrayed and unappreciated. Certainly, investors may feel founders may have broken a social contract. But, for a Blitzhire to work, usually everybody needs to work together and align. The driver behind these deals is speed. Maybe concerns over regulatory scrutiny are part of it, but more importantly speed. Not going through the HSR process at all may be worth the enormous complexity and inefficiency of foregoing a traditional acquisition path.
Finally, the structure is incredibly inefficient and it just tells you how far acquirors are willing to go in order to achieve their strategic objectives. The structure results in double taxation, which is a huge leakage in value. The acquired startup pays corporate income tax and the investors pay taxes on the distribution of the proceeds, whether via a share repurchase or dividend. The structure is also grossly inefficient in that you need to create a credible case that it is in fact not an acquisition, which prevents the acquiror from acquiring all of the employees of the target."
https://medium.com/@villispeaks/the-blitzhire-acquisition-e39361ed00bb
13. Austin Gray of Blue Water Autonomy on autonomous ships. These guys are the real deal, I'm not an investor but it's a really important company.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S967znM8mR0
14. "Though most NATO allies have agreed to spend 5% of their GDP on defense, absent a major war, it’s unlikely to happen except in a very few places like perhaps Poland or one of the Baltic republics. They won’t do it because they promised the USA, they will do it because they believe it is in their interest to do so.
You see, in 2025, it is expected that the USA won’t even break 3% of GDP on defense. We will probably wind up just at 2.9%. If Uncle Sam isn’t going to break 3%, I don’t see our allies stretching for 5%. We would be lucky if they match us, and we’re drifting to 2.5%."
https://cdrsalamander.substack.com/p/the-big-defense-budgets-are-not-coming
15. This is a must listen to for all young and old business people. Lots of great insights.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VxAwUb86MUE&t=1860s
16. For anyone trying to understand the chaos and GAG (Golden Age of Grift) of the present day world. A must listen if you want to thrive in this nutty moment.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMpuFACusAU&t=1s
17. "We need a rebel alliance: not a single product or company, but a diverse ecosystem of technologies that work together across the stack to demonstrate the tangible value of user-owned memory.
Most important to this alliance will be entrepreneurs who know how to build practical products that make data ownership matter to real users.
This rebel alliance is creating a powerful kind of connective tissue that's structurally incapable of evil because power is distributed, not concentrated in any single entity. Whether these solutions ultimately converge at some point or thrive as an interconnected network matters less than the fundamental shift they represent."
https://blog.usv.com/the-rebel-alliance
18. “Made in China”
For those in the West and of a pre-Gen-Z generation, the label often signifies something cheap, of poor quality, or counterfeited, like “Reebok” with one “e.”
Soon, it may signify something completely different.
Together with the general pivot to quality in the global luxury (all of the sudden, there are so many craftsmanship ads and so many types of cashmere to recon with), Chinese brands are winning through quality in their local market."
https://andjelicaaa.substack.com/p/the-quality-advantage
19. "Outside of being early to a major winner in FAANG or another huge company we’re unaware of today (such as Tesla), nothing really keeps pace with inflation. You can run the numbers backward and forward into excel.
You spend practically 40 years in spreadsheets, go and calculate the one that matters. Your personal net worth growth with reasonable assumptions. Don’t assume you’ll be the star (you already know if it’s true) and just do the classic up until 33-34 followed by a flat line.
Let us know how it goes.
Oh. And do the same assuming you started a small biz that did $50K and you sold for $150K. Sure beats trying to save $5 by skipping coffee at Starbucks…"
https://bowtiedbull.io/p/is-any-industry-keeping-up-with-inflation
20. "The Fourth Law has several products already under its belt.
Its two flagship devices — the Lupynis-10-TFL-1 unmanned aircraft system (UAS) drone and the a TFL-1 autonomy module that can be used with third-party aircraft — have gained traction, it said, in the category of first-person vision (FPV) drones, “more than doubling mission success rates while increasing costs by only 10-20%.” (It doesn’t disclose costs, nor what percentage of missions are typically successful.)
The tech is capable of "overcoming EW jamming, acquiring, and striking targets in challenging conditions,” according to Colonel Ruslan Shevchuk of the Ukrainian Armed Forces.
There are dozens of third-party companies already integrating TFL-1 tech into their systems, Azhnyuk added.
Urgent need meets consumer-style usability
In a fascinating interview earlier this year, Azhnyuk described how the startup was born out of the need he saw on the front line, but also his background in consumer technology.
Namely on the defence front, the company addresses one of the most important problems in unmanned warfighting – jamming. The Russian Army has been investing heavily in electronic warfare capabilities since the Cold War, and that has meant that on the front line in the war in Ukraine, Electronic Warfare is both a major challenge and the focus of serious innovation. This topic is sensitive, and is at the heart of a battle that means life or death for soldiers in the field."
https://www.resiliencemedia.co/p/ukraines-the-fourth-law-raises-funding
21. "Miners in the West have long called for a separate pricing system to help them compete in supplying the rare earths group of 17 metals needed to make super-strong magnets of strategic importance. They are used in military applications such as drone and fighter jets, as well as to power motors in EVs and wind turbines.
Under a deal made public last week, the U.S. Department of Defense will guarantee a minimum price for its sole domestic rare earth miner MP Materials, at nearly twice the current market level.
Analysts say the pricing deal, which takes effect immediately, should have global implications - positive for producers, but may increase costs for consumers, such as automakers and in turn their customers."
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/analysis-us-rare-earth-pricing-174836811.html
22. A masterclass in special situations investing. One of the most interesting alternatives investment firms around. Sixth Street.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPFor81KJx0
23. This is one of the better geopolitical & global macro conversations in recent days. This will help you make sense of where the world is going.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Unc84swwVH0&t=1880s
24. "The Ukrainians have been getting smarter about Westerners just showing up to “check the box” on combat validation. “…They (Western firms) do beautiful pitch books, beautiful presentations about how they’re operating in Ukraine. But actually they’ve done just a couple of flights in Lviv [the western city more than 1,000km from the front line]…The big problem, after that, is that billions of dollars go to the companies that still don’t have any idea what they’re doing.” said Roman Knyazhenko, CEO of Ukrainian drone firm Skyeton in a particularly damning piece in the past week’s Telegraph.
This is a recurrent theme with Ukrainians we talk to: western defense co’s showing up to do the testing equivalent of seagull managementand then bugging out after fairly benign testing to “check the box” of combat validation for marketing purposes- that’s why the Ukrainians are so cynical about western UAS and CUAS systems."
https://bowoftheseus.substack.com/p/it-worked-in-ukraine-is-not-a-substitute
25. "To win at scale and unlock enduring economic gains, the United States should pair sheer production capacity with software-driven technological flexibility. A modular code stack turns swarms of small autonomous systems into “hardware-enabled, software-defined” platforms whose function changes with a simple firmware update. One week it’s a loitering munition, the next a crop-sprayer, warehouse picker, or oil rig inspector. The same low-cost microcontrollers and AI libraries that animate aerial drones can also drive factory robots, subsea monitors, and medical assistants. Opening this architecture to both public and private sector developers will spur real-time solutions across industries worth hundreds of billions of dollars and generating more growth and tax revenue on top of the initial defense investment.
Stack all these numbers atop one another, and the picture clarifies. It is possible to hit a million-drone per year pilot line in 12 months, scale to ten million in year three, and if there is a commitment to parallel capacity builds, reach 100 million units by year five. That trajectory does not close the entire gap with China, but it gives Washington a credible deterrent and a bridge to the billion-drone annual target the moment Congress decides the stakes warrant it.
Industrial policy in the United States works best when it focuses on demand signals, not central planning. The Pentagon memo frames drone supremacy as “a process race as much as a technological race,” aligning perfectly with this call for demand-signal government programming. The Franklin D. Roosevelt administration did not design the B-24 Liberator — it guaranteed Ford that if Willow Run built one an hour, the government would buy every last bomber. The same clarity is needed today."
https://warontherocks.com/2025/07/factories-first-winning-the-drone-war-before-it-starts/
26. "True lethality doesn’t come from slogans.
It comes from designing a force where every warfighter is fully supported, every piece of gear works when needed, every bit of ISR feeds into decision-making, and every logistic chain functions under fire.
It means funding the unglamorous: maintenance, repair, and overhaul agreements with Allies and partners, systems to ensure resupply when logistics are contested, C2 redundancy, EM spectrum superiority, targeting networks, and precision manufacturing.
It also means training, educating, and empowering gifted individuals to understand policy and strategy and able to design campaigns of discrete tactical actions to achieve those policies and strategies.
It means not only building warriors—but giving them the tools, teammates, and trust to fight like professionals."
https://buildingourfuture.substack.com/p/the-myth-of-declining-lethality
27. Best conversation on B2B investing and solid breakdown on the Windsurf X Google X Cognition deal.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSudjTgRm7o
28. "The US and NATO allies have rolled out the “Eastern Flank Deterrence Line,” prioritizing ground-based capabilities and weapons interoperability as a bulwark against Russian aggression.
General Christopher Donahue of the US Army Command in Europe and Africa unveiled the plan at the inaugural LandEuro two-day conference in Wiesbaden, Germany."
29. "That led to Sceptre, a rocket-propelled 155mm artillery shell that Steelberg says can hit targets up to 95 miles away— nearly triple the range of standard rounds — with precision, even in GPS-denied environments.
Given its differences from standard rounds (those without rocket assist) — which have a range of about 15 miles and require add-ons for rocket propulsion and precision guidance — it's a category-defying munition more comparable to an extended-range GMLRS. But, like the original 155mm round, it's fired from a howitzer.
In artillery battles, range is critical; after all, that's part of the reason the HIMARS, a rocket artillery system, was so effective when it initially arrived in Ukraine: it gave Kyiv's forces much-needed reach in combat. Steelberg says it will "change the balance of power" on the Ukrainian battlefield and beyond, though it would need to be widely fielded first."
30. "Among those in the defense tech industry, there’s been growing chatter about the rise of these defense disruptors—what you might call the neoprimes. We—one of us a technology investor, the other a former portfolio manager at the Department of Defense’s Defense Innovation Unit—are often asked: Is the rise of neoprimes real? What exactly is a neoprime? What defines one? We set out to answer those questions, using data to support our observations. We believe neoprimes are changing the culture of defense acquisitions and developing technologies that will reshape how wars are fought. Shifts in defense spending and policy are empowering neoprimes to grow and move faster.
While many of these traditional primes trace their roots back over a century, a new tribe of Silicon Valley players has entered the arena. They are accelerating deployment timelines and pioneering a different model—defined by rapid iteration, software-first architectures, and a greater appetite for risk. They're deploying operational systems in months rather than years or decades. They’re not just building prototypes for demos and exercises—they’re scaling production and securing billion-dollar contracts.
While they may not yet match the traditional primes in total contract volume, they are closing the gap year over year. A handful of key firms are leading the charge, with an expanding set of startups gaining traction. Backed by venture capital and supported by a growing network of influential advocates shaping policy and public opinion, neoprimes are starting to redefine how the government approaches the acquisition, fielding, and sustainment of new technologies. They are becoming mission-critical to the defense industrial base of America."
https://www.thecipherbrief.com/defense-neoprime-innovation
31. "Just a month after raising $2.5B at a $30.5B valuation, officially entering “neo-prime” territory, Anduril looks more than ready to take on the real primes—this time in the cruise missile game."
https://www.tectonicdefense.com/andurils-barracuda-blasts-off/
32. "If the U.S. wasn’t enshittifying the platforms that it controls, then other countries wouldn’t be considering how best to get away. It is quite amazing how rapidly the public debates in places like Europe and Canada have shifted, even while they are still looking for practical ways to protect themselves from their past protector. As the US tries to use platforms to re-engineer democracy in many of these countries, their choices are going to be increasingly difficult.
Equally, they should note that if the US was truly secure in its platform power, it wouldn’t be making increasingly deranged threats against other countries that dare to consider other options. Trade uncertainty and trade wars are painful, but the alternatives are so much worse."
https://www.programmablemutter.com/p/the-enshittification-of-american
33. "To fuel this industrial renaissance, we need innovative financing tools—new asset classes and platforms that creatively blend grants, subsidies, venture capital, private equity, debt, and infrastructure financing. Founders shouldn’t have to navigate this complex landscape alone, crafting solutions from scratch. Just as venture capital revolutionized startup funding decades ago, bold new models can unlock the capital needed to scale advanced manufacturing today.
Alternatively, the government could fast-track IPOs for industrial startups, letting them tap the stock market’s capital. Striking accredited investor rules could also help, but pitching to the masses is still a time suck when founders just want and need to build.
This capital problem is draining energy. Solving it turbocharges our American Industrial Renaissance."
https://adastracapital.substack.com/p/beyond-vc-funding-the-american-industrial
34. "For entrepreneurs thinking about their next idea, my recommendation is to research the robotics space. Talk to companies and ask how they might use robots in their business. When researching, consider both the creation of new robots and all the businesses that will be built to install, manage, service, and finance them. Robots will soon be ubiquitous, and thousands of new startups will be created in the process."
https://davidcummings.org/2025/07/19/robots-everywhere/
35. Solid conversation this week on latest Silicon Valley news: Meta vs. OpenAI.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjjCWsqem8g&t=1041s
36. "We're in the thick of peak hype on AI right now. Fantastical sums are chasing AGI along with every dumb derivative mirage along the way. The most outrageous claims are being put forth on the daily. It's easy to look at that spectacle with European eyes and roll them. Some of it is pretty cringe!
But I think that would be a mistake. You don't have to throw away your critical reasoning to accept that in the face of unknown potential, optimism beats pessimism. We all have to believe in something, and you're much better off believing that things can get better than not.
Americans fundamentally believe this. They believe the hype, so they make it come to fruition. Not every time, not all of them, but more of them, more of the time than any other country in the world.
That really is exceptional."