Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads Sept 21st, 2025
"Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and go to work." — Stephen King
An investors view on defense tech. This was an interesting conversation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZEcy25ICIA
2. The Chip wars and the new rise of Hardware in AI.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Va6sKJQv-u4
3. "The big problem is that, historically, we’ve been very concerned about data privacy and most terms of service limit the usage of the data we create in apps. Plus the last wave of software innovation was SaaS those companies charge for workflow and don’t really use or aggregate data in any way. We may have to wait a few years for AI startups with novel data acquisition strategies to show the market the best way to create value generating unique data sets.
But I believe its coming. And I think its important for investors to consider where models are going next, what data they need, and who generates it."
https://investinginai.substack.com/p/ai-takeover-targets-for-data-and
4. "The ranges at which modern shore-based systems can strike ships means that any nautical action must focus first and foremost on geographical points: to eliminate enemy batteries, to establish anti-missile and -ship umbrellas, to emplace radars and airfields, etc. In practical terms, it is outright impossible for a purely fleet action to occur at scale.
The missile age only exaggerates these dynamics. Current weapons can strike ground targets several thousands of kilometers away and create anti-air and anti-ship bubbles hundreds of kilometers wide. The question of sea control around any objective of strategic value is now dominated by key terrain. Merely sailing within an enemy’s missile and aircraft engagement zones requires careful consideration, and any decisive campaign would entail numerous fights for position.
Targeting enemy ships in open waters put a premium on intelligence. News of arriving convoys (whether via intercepted communications or espionage) informed patrol routes, while raiding squadrons pushed out fast vessels or aircraft to scout. In the 21st century, satellites, UAVs, and sonar buoy networks, making it increasingly difficult for ships to protect themselves by hiding in the blue expanse."
https://dispatch.bazaarofwar.com/p/naval-warfare-is-positional-the-influence
5. Balaji and the concept of the Network State. The Sovereign Individual future.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBAbSsPFTcY
6. Extreme results require extreme efforts and drive. The Italian eyewear tycoon Del Vecchio.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bijdxv0lG7w&t=1512s
7. "With software-defined defence, and the use of autonomy, you can invert that capability triangle and have sensors and autonomy as the key driver of effect and speed, with the platform there to support the software. In this way, in the air Helsing wants to dominate electronic detection and fast response; on land they want to solve the fragmented kill chain; with maritime, detection is a huge problem. Scherf and Reil believe that AI can solve this complexity.
The team explained their view that the previous prime model for defence saw companies wait until government had defined a requirement, and then contracted one company to build that requirement. This has led to a lack of speed, and to companies spending around 3% on R&D.
The new model that Helsing is part of sees venture funded companies spend nearer 30%-40% on R&D without waiting for the contracts. This moves risk away from government to the company and its investors, and should deliver better innovation faster, which is what the speed of modern warfare requires."
https://www.resiliencemedia.co/p/the-long-read-how-helsing-sees-the
8. "The other strategy is to remain consistent, not worrying about trends or engagement and simply sticking to what you know best – staying authentic to a personal ethos or brand identity in the deepest sense. In a way, coffee shops are physical filtering algorithms, too: they sort people based on their preferences, quietly attracting a particular crowd and repelling others by their design and menu choices. That kind of community formation might be more important in the long run than attaining perfect latte art and collecting Instagram followers. That is ultimately what Anca Ungureanu was trying to do in Bucharest. “We are a coffee shop where you can meet people like you, people that have interests like you,” she said.
Her comment made me think that a certain amount of homogeneity might be an unavoidable consequence of algorithmic globalisation, simply because so many like-minded people are now moving through the same physical spaces, influenced by the same digital platforms. The sameness has a way of compounding."
9. "Founders are expected to adopt a linear wealth mindset and take big risks that maximize expected value as cogs in the venture capital machine dependent on power law home runs. The tales of Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg risking everything they had and emerging with the largest personal fortunes on planet Earth reinforce the mythos that drives the entire risk taking sector, while survivorship bias conveniently forgets the millions of founders who go to zero. Salvation comes only to the select few who clear an ever steepening power law threshold.
That taste for outsized risk has seeped into everyday culture. Wage growth has severely lagged compounded capital, causing ordinary people to increasingly see their best shot at real upward mobility in negative EV jackpots. Online gambling, 0DTE options, retail meme stocks, sports betting, and crypto memecoins all testify to the phenomena of exponential wealth preference. Technology makes speculating effortless, while social media spreads the story of each new overnight millionaire, luring the broader population into one giant losing bet like moths to a light.
We’re becoming a culture that worships the jackpot and increasingly prices survival at zero.
And AI exacerbates the trend by further devaluing labor and intensifying winner take all outcomes."
https://www.scimitar.capital/p/the-jackpot-age
10. A top tier Silicon Valley investor on turning around a storied venture capital firm, KP. Lots of interesting insights on running a vc fund.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PzEzKbsAp5E
11. "This is just a numbers game. The chances of meeting someone legit in a city is less likely than the internet. The internet has everyone on it all day everyday. Similarly, you will learn more from the internet vs. classical education. All the edge/new research items are tested by people in the real world. By the time it becomes “science” it is dated.
The internet is also real life. If you want it to be. Just 35 years ago, you couldn’t do anything. The social circle you got is what you were stuck with. Now? Totally different. If everyone around you is a certified loser, you just go on the internet and connect with like minded winners. No hurdle. No $50,000 a year social club. Nothing.
One of the fascinating things about “moving up in society” is that the internet still wins. If you want to solve something and you can choose the internet vs. the country club, the internet still wins. The problem with luxury areas is that a chunk of the people are actually *not* successful! Their parents may have been the winners and they are simply mediocre just living off the success of the family.
In short, if you want to be on the edge of information/new things. You actually need to spend more time using the internet and connecting with people. Hence, max bullish on digital immersion.
If you’re actually living life and constantly learning stuff you won’t really get writers block. After a long period of time, people will know you only do stuff you’ve tried."
https://bowtiedbull.io/p/major-things-weve-learned-writing
12. "Rockefeller, Ford, and Carnegie were able to build empires because they operated in an era of rapid infrastructure build-out, limited regulation, and national urgency. Today’s builders face red tape, unrealistic compliance regimes, and capital markets that have favored software over steel.
What is the point of making money if you don’t have the country to make it in? What is the point of service unless you’re looking past the promotion to why you serve in the first place? What is the point of writing policy unless it’s a mandate
to fix the problems that we set out to fix?
This is a republic, but only if we can keep it. We gave China all our capital and skills and deindustrialized the nation for decades—now, we’re stuck squaring up against them with a 1,000-to-1 industrial disadvantage.
The hour is late. The game is on. And America has an incredibly short window to return to its position as the industrial superpower of the world—and bring back the millions of skilled-trade jobs we need and should have never lost in the first place."
https://www.thefp.com/p/america-wont-exist-if-we-cant-build-things-china-industrial-power
13. "Do you feel like the PRC is playing everyone? Also, where are the European leaders? Every one of those ports is in a NATO nation. Does anyone have full confidence that should a general war break out in the Pacific with the PRC that those ports in NATO nations will just continue to function as normal?"
https://cdrsalamander.substack.com/p/the-battle-of-the-ports-is-afoot
14. "But honestly, why should employees stay loyal when founders are the first to jump ship for a bigger payday? The real issue is structural: when a founder can unlock billions by licensing IP instead of seeing the company through to an exit, the system doesn’t just allow it—it rewards it.
Silicon Valley’s game of musical chairs now includes everyone—even founders of billion-dollar companies with hundreds of employees and nine figures on the balance sheet. These are the same founders who once pitched investors and recruits on a lifelong mission, only to step away the moment a better seat opens up.
In the high-stakes race to AGI, careers in Silicon Valley have become liquid assets—negotiable, transferable, and always for sale to the highest bidder. Founders and employees alike are playing the market.
Still, I believe restoring loyalty—especially among founders—is essential if Silicon Valley wants to preserve its unique ethos."
https://www.newinternet.tech/p/show-me-the-money-founders-loyalty
15. Building the electrostate and driving reindustrialization in America. Learning from China.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ca3a4bPOoag
16. "Like a predictive index for how the military intends to fight in five to 15 years, shifts in this year’s RDT&E proposal suggest the emergence of software-defined weapons, agile acquisition models, space-based sensing architectures, and a growing emphasis on autonomy and electronic warfare."
https://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2025/07/what-rd-budget-proposal-says-about-future-war/406467/
17. “Ukraine operates in ‘wartime R&D mode,’ with direct feedback from the frontlines, no bureaucracy, and a focus on what works,” Maksym Vasylchenko, Co-owner and CEO of Tencore told me. “Decisions that take months elsewhere happen in days here. Additionally, the government, volunteers, and private sector collaborate closely, and the end-users – soldiers – are also involved from day one.”
18. A good tear down on the principles behind the success of the Chain Smokers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGROj4R9tnQ&t=2123s
19. "If you agree with my view that seed investing is getting squeezed by YC and the mega-funds, then it is obvious that the pressure is very high to pursue sustaining innovations vigorously just to hold ground. Not being aggressive will mean ceding market position pretty quickly to these two formidable forces, as well as the other seed players and new entrants into the space.
So, what does sustaining innovation look like for seed investors? Don’t overthink it–sustaining innovation will be about leveraging AI to transform the way VCs source, select, win, and support portfolio companies.
The challenge with disruptive innovation is that you have to get a lot of things right at the same time. You have to be non-consensus AND have the right timing AND have the right execution. A lot of the ideas above have been tried before in some fashion, but most have failed. Is it because the ideas are fundamentally flawed? Non-alcoholic beer was not a new idea, but no one was all that excited about O’Doul’s when Athletic Brewing came around. Was it the wrong premise? The wrong execution? Or just bad timing?
Similarly, a non-core geo “rise of the rest” strategy has been tried many times before. And although isolated examples of winning companies in second or third-tier cities abound, most of the firms that specifically targeted these markets failed to capture this value. Is the premise wrong? Or was it timing or execution? Hard to know.
I also think that some of these experiments can be pursued by individual partners if not by entire firms. Perhaps some of these non-standard strategies can work beautifully, but it’s tough to build an entire firm around them. Or perhaps you need to combine a few different disruptive innovations together to enjoy a sufficient portfolio effect. Either way, individual investors or entire firms need to make some tough calls about what disruptive innovation to pursue to drive meaningful alpha in their returns."
https://nextview.vc/blog/a-path-forward-for-seed-vcs/
20. Hoping this Ukraine-US Drone and weapons deal happens.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l04pp_Ly638
21. "So, seed funds are stuck. If you are a highly regarded or proven founder, mega-funds will offer you unbeatable terms. If you are a less proven founder, YC is a very attractive option. How much of the market is captured by these two unstoppable forces is hard to pin down, but I think they represent at least 25%+ of the market and growing. Yes, there are many great founders who don’t choose one of these two paths, but no matter how you slice it, the seed funds are fighting for a smaller piece of the pie."
https://nextview.vc/blog/a-crisis-moment-for-seed-vc/
22. One of the best weekly discussions on venture capital in B2B & AI. Lots of insights and lessons here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4lFDEWFzHVk
23. "To make a long story short, the US and its allies are not well prepared against saturation missile attacks and don't have enough coverage to protect military installations, command and control centers, airfields, naval ports, or even logistic centers and factories (putting aside attacks focused on critical infrastructure, as we see on a daily basis in Ukraine).
It should be obvious that the US industrial base is not ready for the challenge, that there are not enough factories, and efficiency (understood in terms of output) is low. The Pentagon is still relying on ordering missile production from existing factories rather than really trying to reform the manufacturing infrastructure so we can match the output of Russia, China or even Iran."
https://weapons.substack.com/p/the-concerning-future-of-missile
24. China Shock 2 and the unprofitability problem of manufacturers there.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UhsdTx7dJwg
25. Drones and the growth of marcher lands.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vq0e6hJUfw8
26. This is an important conversation besides the topics of Silicon Valley. Bringing back fun, investing in fun. Actually liking what you are building and investing in. Silicon Valley has gotten too greedy, too serious & too meh.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JhK7tEv_lK8
27. "The journey between those two points—from insolvency to influence—reads like fiction, the kind of story editors reject as implausibly neat. Yet here sits the evidence: a man who parlayed supernatural hustle, pattern recognition, and an immigrant’s refusal to accept limitations into one of the Valley’s most successful seed firms, backed by Stanley Druckenmiller, Bill Ackman, Kevin Warsh, and Michael Ovitz.
“I’ve been discounted by so many people in my life,” Naimi says, and the scar under his eye seems to deepen in the fading light.
Word of Naimi spread quickly through Silicon Valley’s network. By early 2017, everyone wanted to hire him. By August, when he had momentum doing his own thing, he was declining those offers and fielding proposals from VCs wanting to become LPs in a fund he didn’t yet have. He wasn’t convinced the approach would scale to a full fund, but when the conversation evolved to buying equity in his management company, the equation became too attractive to ignore.
In the deal that emerged, Marc Andreessen, Chris Dixon, David Sacks, Keith Rabois, Michael Ovitz, Kevin Hartz, Bill Ackman, Stanley Druckenmiller, and Kevin Warsh bought 20% of his management company, Abstract, for $10 million in upfront cash. Naimi was 26 years old with a theoretically worthless company that had maybe $10 million in total assets under management.
“It was a group that I’d only read about and would have given the equity to for free if they’d asked for it,” Naimi says. “But if they were willing to pay for it, then that made it even better.” The deal included a seven-year sunset provision, whereby the investors earned economics on everything Abstract did in that window. By the end of 2024, Naimi owned 100% of his firm again.
Since that initial $100 million fund in 2018, Abstract has raised capital at an accelerating pace: $270 million in 2021, $300 million in 2023, and $500 million in 2025. The firm manages $1.8 billion in assets today, including $600 million in realized and unrealized gains, making it one of the largest seed investors in the world.
Half of Abstract’s funds rank in the top decile for their vintage; the other half in the top quartile. The portfolio includes seed and early-stage investments in breakout companies like Neon (bought for $1 billion), Replit, Krea, xAI, Partiful, Hebbia AI, Garner Health, Crusoe AI, and Polymarket."
https://joincolossus.com/article/ramtin-naimi-man-hot-hand/
28. "Attractive opportunities: as Goldman Sachs put it, Europe is a fertile hunting ground for opportunities with a great risk/reward ratio and the chance to outperform. If you want to find alpha, come to Europe! The US market is entirely grazed over, while European markets remain relatively unexplored.
The message is loud and clear: we are likely to see sustained, large-scale reallocation of capital into European equity markets. This will not play out overnight, and it's not over just because markets have already seen a rally.
Just to be clear, asset allocators won't be abandoning their US exposure anytime soon. However, many are currently overexposed to the US market and will likely seek to rebalance their portfolio, both to manage risk and to position themselves for the next leg of the economic cycle.
Non-US, and in particular European equities, are the most attractive underpriced call option currently available in global equities markets. US investors who haven't yet diversified globally have already missed out, given how weak the US dollar has been of late. This is likely to encourage others to join the trend."
https://www.undervalued-shares.com/weekly-dispatches/allocating-to-europe-a-new-3-part-series/
29. If you want to understand China's economy and their growth & dominance in manufacturing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=qb644F-iE_s
30. "I left the conference impressed that Washington D.C. clearly understands the importance of industrializing. We're in the early stages of the game here, so a lot of these voices and efforts are uncoordinated, but seeing this level of focus from Democrats and Republicans alike confirms my belief that reindustrializing the United States is deeply important generational project with broad support, a project that is extremely difficult but has the potential to deliver enormous benefits for the United States if we can pull it off. It's a project that can knit us back together as a nation.
In other words, this is the kind of effort I can devote the rest of my life to."
https://blackpowder.ghost.io/notes-from-reindustrialize/
31. "The Europeans of Zweig’s youth did not grasp the fragility of their world, with its growing domestic tensions and fraying international order. Many of us in today’s West have suffered the same failure of imagination. We are stunned and dismayed that what we took for granted appears to be vanishing: democracy in the United States, which was a model for much of the world, and international institutions and norms that allowed many nations to work together to avoid war and confront shared problems, such as climate change and pandemic disease.
As a historian, I study those moments in the past when an old order decays beyond the point of return and a new one emerges, but I never expected to live through one. I should have. Today’s world is lurching toward great-power rivalry, suspicion, and fear—an international order where the strong do what they will, as Thucydides wrote, and “the weak suffer what they must.” Imperialism, which never really disappeared, is back. Governments and think tanks now speak of spheres of influence, something the U.S. long opposed. If history is a guide, this will not be an easy or pleasant transition.
Under the Trump administration, the United States no longer demonstrates the will to dominate the globe, and China does not yet have the capacity. History offers yet another model for the present situation, and perhaps for the future: spheres of influence, in which great powers dominate their own neighborhoods or strategic points, such as the Suez Canal for the British empire or Panama for the U.S., while lesser powers within the sphere accept, not always willingly, their sway, and outside ones steer clear to preserve their own dominions."
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2025/04/world-order-europe-trump/682639/
32. "In Ukraine and Israel, there is a tight feedback loop between battlefield experience and technical execution. If a new system works, it is used. If it fails, it is replaced. Success is measured in battlefield victories, not project management green ticks.
By contrast, in countries like the United States and the United Kingdom, procurement cycles can last longer than some wars. Risk aversion, complex chains of command, and strict acquisition protocols all work to slow down innovation. These militaries certainly have the technical capability to build Trojan Horse-style drone systems. What they lack is the institutional flexibility to deploy them in time to matter.
No other government could have pulled off these attacks. Because they haven’t had to. Ukraine and Israel’s systems are designed to adapt quickly and deliver results. The ancient Greeks knew that the willingness to act on a new idea is just as important as the idea itself - something that the Pentagon seems to be starting to understand."
https://www.resiliencemedia.co/p/pete-hegseth-the-battle-for-troy
33. So many lessons from history. In this case, the Russo-Japan history and the importance of grand strategy and knowing when to stop. The Meiji generation was the greatest generation of their time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxIeJjEGLdo&t=2s
34. Big changes happening in Japanese politics which will have big impact on bond markets and the world.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3yjqtkSdAXM
35. "Overall, this kind of growth isn’t just hypergrowth—it’s something even more dramatic. But regardless of the growth rate, the core principles remain the same:
Stay close to the customer.
Build opinionated functionality for your ideal user.
Deliver something they couldn’t do before your product existed.
Growth of this kind is rare, but I hope more entrepreneurs get the opportunity to experience it. And no matter how fast the business grows, the ultimate goal stays the same: to deliver real, lasting value to your customers—not just today, but well into the future as they continue to evolve alongside your product."
https://davidcummings.org/2025/07/26/beyond-hyper-growth/
36. "They make up my book BREAKNECK: China’s Quest to Engineer the Future. It’s driven by a few simple ideas. That Americans and Chinese are fundamentally alike: restless, eager for shortcuts, ultimately driving most of the world’s big changes.
That their rivalry should not be reasoned through with worn-out terms from the past century like socialist, democratic, or neoliberal. And that both countries are tangles of imperfection, regularly delivering — in the name of competition — self-beatings that go beyond the wildest dreams of the other.
The simplest idea I present is that China is an engineering state, which brings a sledgehammer to problems both physical and social, in contrast with America’s lawyerly society, which brings a gavel to block almost everything, good and bad."
37. "76 out of 96 countries surveyed now report net favorable views of China, while 55% of all countries hold net negative views of the U.S. Just last year, the U.S. had a comfortable net favorability of +20 points (versus China’s +5), but today China sits at ~+14 while America has plunged to around –5. That’s a massive shift in barely twelve months.
First and most importantly, the way America is pursuing its “America First” foreign policy is actively alienating the rest of the world. Wanting to prioritize your own interests is normal and every country does that. But the U.S. has chosen to do it in the most hostile, disrespectful, and loud way possible. Publicly ridiculing allies, demanding loyalty without reciprocity, and openly treating global partnerships as burdens has consequences. You don’t win influence by telling the world you don’t care about it and then act surprised when it stops caring back."
https://substack.com/home/post/p-169295506
38. "And yet in terms of the actual on-the-ground reality, I don’t see MAGA doing much pioneering. Instead, I see a fundamentally deconstructive movement — a furious assault on progressive culture, liberal institutions, and the structure of the U.S. economy in general, with no idea of what should replace it. On culture, factories, infrastructure, energy, technology, and institutions, MAGA is tearing things down without building things up.
Manufacturing production and employment barely budged during Trump’s first term, and they haven’t budged yet in his second.
And in his second term so far, Trump has been doing things that actively inhibit business investment.
First, and most obviously, there are the tariffs. Trump and his people believe very deeply that foreign competition is holding U.S. manufacturing back, and that if America closes off its markets, domestic factories will appear to replace the vanished imports with their wares. But they fail to understand the economics of supply chains. Tariffs starve U.S. manufacturers of the parts, materials, and components they need to make high-value products. If America is forced to mine all its own metals, chop all its own wood, and do low-value assembly work, that will pull American workers off of more valuable jobs doing the more technologically advanced parts of manufacturing. The result will be rising costs, diminished profitability, and decline.
The problem isn’t just that burning America down is bad; it’s that the Trumpists don’t actually know what they want to start over with. Unlike the Christian Right or the business conservatives of my youth, they don’t seem to have a vision for what the country should look like after all the tearing down is complete.
As a result, MAGA looks less like a normal political movement than a protracted backlash — a lengthy blast of rage against all the ways progressivism was changing the country in the 2010s. It’s surprising how long that rage has managed to last, but eventually that fire will have to fade. And when it does, MAGA supporters will look around and realize that they didn’t have a constructive vision for the future of their nation."
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/maga-doesnt-build-anything
39. Even the talent in the big media world will be moving into small team, big business mode.
"Colbert, Fallon, and Kimmel shouldn’t be worried. They are caged in a broken business model, and it’s only a matter of time before they break free. In his first broadcast since CBS pulled the plug, Colbert earlier this week warned Trump that the “gloves are off.”
When his contract ends in 10 months, the economic shackles will also come off. Instead of leading a $60 million business with 200 staff, Colbert will likely helm a $20 million business with 12 highly skilled people. These shows might lack the glitz and glamor of late-night. But that can be an advantage, as Colbert demonstrated during the pandemic, when he delivered monologues at home without a live audience, his wife, Evie Colbert, by his side."
https://www.profgalloway.com/last-laugh/
40. "At so many big companies, executives are marginal optimizers and can’t do the work we need them to do to really make major AI deployments. They can’t revamp value chains to take advantage of this technology, and most of them won’t be able to do so until they see how someone else does it and have a clear roadmap to follow.
AI technology is far from perfect. It is moving fast, and has a very long way to go to fulfill the expectations of the AI industry. But it’s good enough to be deployed much more widely and in much more useful ways than it has been to date. And I think that’s because most executives don’t know what to do, and don’t have the skills to navigate something like this. The AI gap is exposing just how incompetence there is at the executive level in corporate America."
https://investinginai.substack.com/p/how-ai-is-exposing-executive-incompetence
41. "US investment could unlock this unused potential without competing with existing production. A $100 billion defence manufacturing effort—based on NATO's capability gaps and European procurement budgets—would put idle workers to work while meeting NATO commitments. Green energy projects could absorb $200 billion, reducing Europe’s reliance on Russian gas and generating returns for American investors. Advanced manufacturing partnerships might add $150 billion, building allied capacity without threatening US jobs.
This works because European investment keeps dollars circulating abroad instead of quickly flowing back through exports to the US. Defence equipment stays in Europe, and infrastructure can’t be shipped across the Atlantic. This turns Europe’s weakness into a shared strength.
Still, physical investment alone won’t reach the full $900 billion target—digital innovation will be essential to fully escape Triffin’s trap.
The emerging escape plan—replacing trade deficits with foreign direct investment while building digital dollar infrastructure—holds real promise. Europe’s idle capacity could absorb $400–500 billion in American investment. Strategic resource projects might add another $200 billion. Stablecoin systems could create structural dollar demand of $200–300 billion annually. Together, these could supply global liquidity without causing deindustrialisation."
https://www.driftsignal.com/p/can-america-escape-the-triffin-dilemma
42. "In fact, German and European decision-makers must finally recognize that there are no quick fixes. Only a sustained, long-term missile industrial effort can get Europe back on track in the missile domain. This requires acknowledging that modern war demands thousands of conventional long- and deep-strike capabilities, backed by a robust and continuous order intake.
The core problem, of course, is that even a major effort launched now — of which an order for the Typhon system may or may not be a part — will not deliver quick results. If German decision-makers still believe in the 2029 timeline for having to be ready to deter Russia, there is no time to lose. And under a pessimistic reading of the situation, the window may already have closed. Still, a delayed start is better than continued inaction."
https://missilematters.substack.com/p/homeopathic-missile-doses-for-europe
43. "so the market for data did grow over the last ten years. it is certainly bigger today than it was. but it not grow nearly as fast as any of us predicted. and that’s because getting value from data is still SUPER hard.
does AI make it easier? yes. but so did all the other innovations in the last ten years and those innovations did not meaningfully grow the market for data.
Data businesses (companies that sell data – think rows and columns) are good businesses. They make good profits. They grow (albeit slowly) well. But they are not great businesses – and most should not take venture capital funding."
https://auren.substack.com/p/data-is-actually-not-a-great-vc-backed
44. "Surround yourself with individuals committed to real growth. Whether they move quickly or slowly, operate intensely or calmly, what matters most is their intentional progress.
Some people are built for sprints; others excel at marathons. That's fine. Speed and style differ, but intentionality and continuous improvement are non-negotiable.
As a founder, your job isn't just to encourage growth, it's to ruthlessly eliminate the busy-for-nothing, the ego defenders, and the pretenders from your environment.
Improvement starts where ego shuts up.
Choose your team wisely."
https://2lr.substack.com/p/choose-your-team-wisely
45. "Within the last six months, everyone working in AI or leading a company seems to be saying some form of “all the jobs are going to disappear.” And if they aren’t saying that, they are saying that we are headed for some sort of massive disruption. If not that exactly, then anyone not using AI is going to be steamrolled by this new digitally automated economy.
What’s true here? What are these people trying to signal when they make these bold pronouncements?
Jobs are so much more than a basket of tasks, and I think a lot of people miss this when talking about employment trends. They are a way of transferring wealth to large amounts of people, ways to give people dignity, ways to grant status, vessels for feeling useful, and so much more. I don’t even think we understand how central the job is to modern society, but one way to think about it would be to think about the backlash if all large companies laid off 90% of their workforce.
First, it would crush the economy unless there was immediate fiscal stimulus, not to mention the obvious backlash and protests that would ensue. Most companies don’t even push past 10% layoffs (Microsoft laid off about 7% of the workforce in its recent announcements), not to mention widespread firing aversion among the people in charge of hiring decisions at every level of a company. The job, in other words, is not just a bundle of tasks; it is a container that stands in for a complex web of beliefs that undergird society.
For this reason, I suspect the job will far outlast most of these predictions, and I’d predict we’ll have an unemployment rate in the US below 10% for the coming decades."
https://newsletter.pathlesspath.com/p/why-is-everyone-in-ai-talking-about
46. "The next generation of legendary companies are smaller and faster than ever before.
Leverage at every layer—sales, ops, product, finance, support.
That doesn’t make them AI companies.
It makes them efficient businesses maximizing every resource they have."