Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads Oct 19th, 2025
“October is the fallen leaf, but it is also a wider horizon more clearly seen. It is the distant hills once more in sight, and the enduring constellations above them once again.” —Hal Borland
Another great discussion this week. Good takes on Silicon Valley topical subjects. Peak everything.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CgPKPAqTi0w&list=PLI0_clHshGZctchZkfCXmz7SPyuBSOoq1
2. "The other main problem is the fantasy world in which many American policy-makers live: a natural product many would say of the New Age Californian belief that it you want something hard enough, you can have it. A generation ago, an anonymous and possible apocryphal official in the administration of Little Bush is supposed to have said “we’re an Empire now, we make our own reality.” This was an extraordinary statement to have made at any time, but was typical of the unthinking triumphalism of those days, and if it’s not literally true, it does reflect an attitude that many of us noticed then.
And if you think about it, who’s going to object to following in the footsteps of the Assyrians, the Persians, the Romans and the Ottomans, and having half the world bow down before them in worship? After all, few countries have populations that actively hate themselves (even if contempt for one’s country tends to be an affectation of western liberal intellectuals) nor populations which actively consider their country to be of no importance. Thus, praising one’s country and its importance is always good politics.
But here, it’s taken to psychopathic extremes. The Empire Delusion, or the Empire Syndrome, becomes dangerous when it leads to a serious overestimation of the actual strength and resources of the country, and its actual ability to influence events in the world. After all, reality itself often demands a look-in as well: the last twenty-five years have seen an unbroken series of defeats, disappointments and political and economic crises for this alleged Empire, most recently the scuttle from Afghanistan, and the failure in Ukraine. But then as with all large-scale delusions, apparent defeats are rapidly assimilated into assumed even-more-subtle master-plans that one day will put everything right."
https://aurelien2022.substack.com/p/the-war-was-the-easy-bit
3. The case for working in defensetech.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lA_16MW6Rfw&t=2s
4. The future of drone swarms and counter UAS.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ge1rYfuvEwg&t=6s
5. "Whether that’s upskilling in business, fitness, whatever it is… One of the best ways to fast track getting into circles with world class practitioners, is paying them for their expertise.
I don’t give a fuck about a rolex or supercar, most of the money I spend is going to be learning from the best in the world to accelerate my progress and stack skills.
Skills compound & stay with you for life.
At the very least, I hope this piece gave you a different perspective to the ones where people say you need to relentlessly chase what you want.
Build an ecosystem so that what you want… Comes directly to you organically."
https://www.lethalgentleman.com/p/how-to-design-a-lifestyle-where-opportunities
6. "The winning hire today isn’t the one who has done it before but, instead, the person who can figure it out first and fast. We are seeing a dramatic shift in what the best founders are looking for when we talk through key hires. Instead of prioritizing experience, the focus is on horsepower, hunger, and speed: the tinkerers who dive into new tools before the documentation is written, the marketers who sense a cultural shift and ride it, the builders who will ship fast and furiously."
https://paragraph.com/@rebeccakaden/hire-the-experimenters
7. This conversation came at the right time for me. Tai Lopez, not just a successful entrepreneur but also life coach. Lots of wisdom here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mgn-EZLE6kc
8. "Customer value financing works like this: an investment company provides capital for sales and marketing efforts to acquire new customers. In exchange, the company receives a percentage of that new revenue until they are paid back, plus an equivalent of an interest rate.
It is a form of non-dilutive financing that is not debt. Instead, it is essentially buying the right to a percentage of new revenue generated until a formula representing the desired return on investment is reached. Unlike traditional revenue financing, it is not a loan against the entire business and it does not claim existing revenue."
https://davidcummings.org/2025/08/23/customer-value-financing-part-2/
9. "Sir Geoffroi de Charny’s life, his service, his death with the Oriflamme, and his words on chivalry secured his place as one of the greatest knights of France and Medieval history as a whole."
https://medievalscholar.substack.com/p/sir-geoffroi-de-charny-frances-knight
10. "Let me restate my hypothesis: Ukraine’s long-range strike operations reinforce that Russia cannot win this war.
Russia can only be handed a victory through a political process, which is why Putin is so desperate to convince the Trump administration about land transfers, to deny the presence of foreign troops in Ukraine and to influence Ukrainian foreign policy.
Nothing demonstrates this more than the increasingly dangerous (for Russia) long-range strike campaign being executed with precision, focus and discipline by Ukraine.
It is precise because the Ukrainian long-range attack systems employ a mix of indigenous and foreign intelligence and targeting assistance that ensures drones and missiles have the best chance of reaching and hitting their targets. It is focused because the Ukrainians are keeping a tight focus on just a few strategic classes of targets. And it is disciplined because despite the Russian focus on hitting civilian targets, Ukraine continues to avoid this practice as it has done throughout the war."
https://mickryan.substack.com/p/ukraine-is-striking-russia-harder
11. "If Ukraine were to possess a large arsenal of heavy missiles, perhaps 2,000 to 4,000 cruise and ballistic missiles, which could be launched within 24 to 48 hours of a Russian reinvasion to comprehensively disrupt and destroy Russia’s economic potential from the outset, it may independently convince Moscow that any future aggression is not worth the cost.
Of course, fielding a robust conventional countervalue deterrent is no easy task. Acquiring and maintaining a missile arsenal of that size costs money. Ukraine would also have to be able to safely store these missiles in peacetime while arranging for procedures to launch them on short notice. That’s operationally and logistically challenging. Still, Ukraine appears to have made the first step toward such a capability.
Russia is, of course, well aware of this and understands that a robust Ukrainian deep strike capability could create major problems for both ongoing and future plans. It can therefore be expected that Russian officials will soon insist that any peace agreement include Ukrainian disarmament and range restrictions in the missile domain.
Ukraine, however, would be ill-advised to accept such terms and should continue on its path toward becoming the most capable missile power in Europe."
https://missilematters.substack.com/p/the-flamingos-have-arrived-what-ukraines
12. Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Always wanted to visit it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6e0KVt8Dl6w
13. An interesting non-Western view on geopolitics & the future by a Singaporean business man and establishment elite.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tP7QksbJVQ
14. Fascinating discussion on mining-tech. Learned a bunch.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Q1EN7GXqzI
15. A disturbing discussion around the end of Pax Americana and decline of all of the powers, even China. Basically it's gonna be a chaotic mess over the next decade.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWsDHd143FM
16. Learning from Lovable, one of the fastest growing companies ever. Growing a business on hard mode.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EkAWWgrr8aI
17. "I wanted to shift into a lighter, more hopeful subject – fashion. I’ve long believed that the fashion sector is a great source of signals about where the world economy is heading. That’s because fashion designers are artists and artists are, as the great poet Ezra Pound put it, “the antennae of the (human) race.” They show us the way into the future.
Maybe that’s what’s happening now. As Pound said in his award-winning Cantos, history is a cycle of cultural flourishing followed by decay and corruption, followed by cultural flourishing. He blamed interest rates (usury) for cultural and moral decay and searched for a new ethical economic order. Pound started his ode to the future by harkening back to the ancient past, through Homer’s Odyssey. Christopher Nolan’s new film of The Odyssey is imminent. Artists like Nolan are epic at foreseeing the future. Was Pound a fascist? A Nazi? A traitor? Yes. He also told us something about the future we are now in, where everybody seems to be accusing everybody else of being a Brown Shirt and a Nazi and a traitor. Pound went mad. The world is going mad today. He wrote, “I cannot make it cohere.” Many of us cannot make it cohere today either. We are in the midst of a philosophical brownout shi*storm.
It’s time to read some poetry and remember that brown shi* is fertilizer. I wonder what will grow out of these times. I don’t think we are toast or cooked. We are renewing our ideas. Our priorities. Our true beliefs. Here are some political poems to help us navigate our way to new ideas about how the world should look. That is the job of the artist – to turn imagination into reality, to turn shi*ty circumstances into art. We are all artists now. Maybe mad artists, but artists, nonetheless. Grab a drink. Squirrel yourself away. Snuggle up to Bowie’s beats. Read The Wasteland and The Cantos. Embrace the brown. Maybe art can help us avoid ending up in a madhouse."
https://drpippa.substack.com/p/brownout-signals-art-in-a-world-gone
18. Important to understand the enemy's strategy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5jmlix2NZ3M
19. "But something fundamental has changed.
Many of these processes can be automated, improved, & reimagined. It’s hard for anyone who has been trained for years to work one way & then be asked to do it differently.
Carol Dweck’s research on growth mindset has never been more relevant than it is today. Growth mindset developing a mastery through effort, new strategies & collaboration."
https://tomtunguz.com/what-will-you-reinvent-today/
20. "By contrast, digital sectors, like e-commerce and media, rapidly compounded, iterating in code, scaling on cloud and mobile, and sidestepping the frictions of steel, concrete, and regulation. For physical sectors to match that trajectory, we first need a bridge that truly connects bits to atoms.
That bridge is the electro‑industrial stack — the technologies that enable machines to behave like software: minerals and metals processed into advanced components, energy stored in batteries, electrons channeled by power electronics, force delivered by motors and actuators, all orchestrated by software running on high-performance compute.
This is the shift from software that merely summons a taxi to software that takes the wheel. Software ate the world. Now it will move it.
Critically, winning will require treating the stack as a single, integrated system, not a set of disconnected parts. Siloed thinking only shifts bottlenecks. And while it’s not the focus here, powering these technologies will also demand far more generation capacity. Meeting this challenge will take world-class talent, deep operational expertise, and coordinated policy across the value chain — anchored in the United States, and aligned with trusted allies."
https://ryanomics.com/p/the-electro-industrial-stack-will
21. "The point is that, as with other wars the U.S. has fought, it must not underestimate the risks or overestimate its interests. The U.S. has an interest in weakening Russia, but an effective intervention would be massive and vulnerable in several ways. This is why I say the U.S. must calibrate its national interest with the risks it incurs. From my point of view, the Biden-Trump strategy of supplying intelligence and weapons for Ukraine to bleed the Russians and wait for a negotiated end is the only viable strategy and the best way to pursue America’s national interest."
https://geopoliticalfutures.com/calibrating-capability-and-interest-in-ukraine/
22. "In Scheinfeld’s worldview, we live in a holographic simulation that was created by our higher selves as a life story to be experienced. The whole illusion, the whole Story, is powered by the infinite energy of the Author.
The coolest part of Busting Loose is that Scheinfeld says you can manipulate and use the infinite energy that your higher self used to create the simulation.
The book teaches a process that feels like emotional judo: when something in your life triggers you: an invoice, a stomach ache, a passive-aggressive email from a business partner, you focus on the emotion it causes. Not the problem. Not the story. Just the raw emotional texture of it.
Then you amplify the emotion. Kind of like wallowing in a pure swamp of feeling. Then imagine yourself drawing energy out of the illusion around you, like sipping juice from the Matrix through a crazy straw. The emotional energy eventually fades. Your shoulders drop. You’re a metaphysical ghostbuster!"
https://sanjaysays.substack.com/p/i-didnt-want-to-break-free-but-it
23. If you want to understand how the banking and global financial system actually works. This was illuminating.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9nSmSvV0K4
24. "[Countries outside the West are] very fertile territory intellectually, culturally, and ideologically [because of their] residual anti-American, anti-Western, and anti-imperial sentiments," says Stephen Hutchings, a professor of Russian Studies at the University of Manchester.
Russian propaganda, he argues, is also spread smartly: its content is calibrated to cater to specific audiences, even if it means adopting different ideological stances in different regions.
Ultimately, Prof Hutchings believes we should all be concerned about Russian state activities - particularly in the context of the future of the global world order and democracy.
He believes the West is taking its "eye off the ball" by cutting media funding and "leaving the field open to the likes of Russia Today."
"There's a lot to play for and a lot to lose… And Russia is winning ground - but the battle is not lost."
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cm2vr37yd4no
25. "Ukraine has the most advanced drone operations program today, followed by Russia, with the US and China far behind. Experts believe warfare has changed irrevocably, with the drone in the forefront of tactical battlefield changes. That is why Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth on June 10th called for "Unleashing America's Drone Dominance." He foresaw a three point program. These were, First, to bolster US drone manufacturing. Second, Hegseth looked for a technological leapfrog" to arm US combat units with a variety of low cost drones and, Third, to improve training for the US military "as we expect to fight in future."
Hegseth's overall proposal, however, did not reform any sector sufficiently to obtain the end result he hoped to achieve. To do that, the US would need to adopt either the Ukrainian or Russian approach to supporting drone operations from the factory to the battlefield.
Both the Ukrainian model and the Russian one share some noteworthy similarities. Both aim at an efficient logistics system to deliver weapons to the battlefield where they are needed, both set up administrative systems to provide tactical information and set up feedback loops to continually adjust both tactics and product performance; and both offer specialized training focused on different drone types, such as FPV drones, unique drones like the Russian Lancet, and methods of intercepting drones. Both experiment aggressively with new tools to move forward literally anything that works, as rapidly as possible."
https://weapons.substack.com/p/the-us-needs-to-take-ukrainian-and
26. "Perhaps the greatest mistake we make when it comes to travel is that we only think of it as fun and relaxed; that it should be an escape. Emil Cioran’s favorite leisure activity was to travel by bicycle around France, exploring the countryside—always making sure to stop by the cemeteries he came across to meditate on death and the meaning of life. Nietzsche spent long stretches traveling through the Swiss Alps and northern Italy. His stays in Sils-Maria weren’t vacation but pilgrimage: he would walk the mountains to wrestle with his thoughts, shaping Thus Spoke Zarathustra.
Theodore Roosevelt lost his wife and mother on the same day, and he went to the Dakota Badlands where the harsh frontier rebuilt his toughness; later his River of Doubt expedition in the Amazon nearly killed him but served as a test of will. Herman Melville shipped out as a sailor not to see the world but to confront it, and his voyages through the Pacific islands became existential schooling that fueled Moby-Dick.
These examples showcase how travel can be therapeutic only if it serves a clear and noble purpose; these adventures wouldn’t be the same if they weren’t founded on a mission, project, or spiritual healing process. Mircea Eliade wrote that “reflections make you great, not experiences per se.”
https://vizi.substack.com/p/on-the-decline-of-travel
27. Fascinating conversation here from one of the most original thinkers in VC. Some different views on AI, Crypto, Biotech and Robotics. It's really good.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UzSbG6DL8CM&t=5480s
28. "If my thesis is correct and stablecoins are part and parcel of Pax Americana’s monetary policy to expand the use of the dollar, the empire will protect US tech giants from local regulator reprisals as they provide dollar banking services to the plebes. And there is nothing any of these governments can do about it. Assuming I got this right, what is the TAM of potential stablecoin deposits from the Global South? The most advanced bloc of countries in the Global South are the BRICS nations.[4] Let’s exclude China because it banned Western social media companies.
The question is what’s the best estimate of local currency bank deposits. I asked Perplexity, and it spat out $4 trillion. I know this might be controversial, but let’s add the Euro-poor-eans to this group that use the euro. I believe the euro is a dead garcon walking as Germany-first then France-first economic policies will splinter the currency union. With the coming capital controls, by the end of the decade the only thing a euro will be useful for is paying the cover charge at Berghain and the table minimum at Shellona. When we add Euro bank deposits of $16.74 trillion, the total comes close to ~$34 trillion up for grabs."
https://cryptohayes.substack.com/p/buffalo-bill
29. The rise of Crypto from one of the biggest winners in the space the last 5 years. Fascinating conversation. Big massive global macro impact here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mSToBYLSSew
30. "AI is providing a new tailwind not just to the major infrastructure players but to vendors who supply software that are components of AI. Hyperscalers’ growth rates suggest the effect on some of these adjacent businesses could be dramatic."
https://tomtunguz.com/mdb-earnings-2025-08-27/
31. "From a behavioral science perspective, treats function as classical conditioning mechanisms. Like Pavlov's dogs associating bells with food, we've learned to pair neutral stimuli (difficult tasks, stressful appointments, mundane Mondays) with conditioned responses (lattes, lipsticks, luxury goods).
This learned behavior often begins in childhood. My immigrant parents rewarded academic achievements with small luxuries rather than verbal affirmation, creating a neural pathway between accomplishment and consumption that has shaped my adult reward system. I was neurochemically designed to do hard things followed by material rewards, thus, making me an effective economic instrument and corporate athlete.
But today's Treats Economy operates differently than traditional reward structures. We're witnessing what I call "compensatory consumption"—purchasing small luxuries to offset larger systemic failures. When homeownership feels impossible, we dress our Labubu dolls in designer outfits, living out aspirational fantasies through collectibles. When vacations become unaffordable, we reach for Louis Vuitton's $160 lipstick, echoing Leonard Lauder's famous "Lipstick Index" that correlates cosmetic sales with economic downturns."
https://bosefina.substack.com/p/the-treats-economy
32. The importance of energy in the race for AI & AGI. The critical & overlooked components in industrialization and civilization.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3cDHx2_QbPE&t=4s
33. "At home, by every metric, Moscow’s economy is imploding. Though buoyed up by monthly gas and oil sales to India, China and Turkey, shipped by the ‘shadow fleet’ of around 1,400 tankers, whose murky ownership and inclination to turn off their transponders are essential in evading EU sanctions, most Russians are aware their economy is in dire straits.
According to Rosstat, Russia’s own Federal State Statistics Service, GDP has been hovering at one per cent for much of the year due to the deepening wartime mobilisation of industry. In
non-defence sectors, domestic output has slumped: throughout the first half of 2025, production of televisions and washing machines fell by 30 per cent, footwear by 29 per cent and refrigerators by 12 per cent. Huge imports of white goods from China have not reached the Russian public, as the microchips that operate them have been stripped out and repurposed for drones that would be otherwise inoperable due to sanctions. Car production has plunged by 28 per cent, while truck output plummeted by 40 per cent. The building materials sector, particularly of cement, is also in freefall. Russia’s coal industry has just recorded a $3 billion loss as it struggles to cope with the effects of sanctions on exports during three years of war.
In the same period, inflation has been running at ten per cent, with interest rates at a punishing high of 20 and only recently reduced to 18 per cent. To paper over these cracks, Russia is dipping into its National Wealth Fund reserves, but since the start of the 2022 war, roughly half has been spent. Continued drawing at current rates will exhaust the fund in less than two years, when Moscow will have little choice but to raise taxes and increase state borrowing.
Fearing another 1917 moment, more of Russia’s armed service personnel are engaged in monitoring and policing internal dissent than are supporting the war against Ukraine. It has just been revealed that Russian cyber-officials are now systematically restricting access of their citizens to the world wide web, social media abroad and international phone calls. Even though he has no plans to scale back military spending, budgeted at 40 per cent of all federal expense for 2025, this is obviously a war Putin cannot continue to fight forever."
https://engelsbergideas.com/essays/russias-reckoning-is-coming/
34. "If the hundreds of companies currently selling “cheap mass” are really selling software-as-a-service, this leads to a conundrum: they cannot all win this race. The military does not need dozens of competing command-and-control systems, nor can they all efficiently be knit together, even through modular open systems. The future is not going to be five primes replaced by 100 contractors or 1000 medium-sized businesses. It will probably just be six or seven primes.
It may be true that neo-defense technology companies are selling important products, but they are also selling a narrative. It is only fair to question a narrative written by those who stand to profit from it. One question is whether the weapons used in Ukraine today are really as useful to the United States as these newer companies say. More important, however, is whether buying those weapons locks the United States into a particular way of fighting. Being skeptical does not make one a Luddite. It makes one prudent, and prudence is no less a war-winning virtue than innovation."
35. Understanding the meta, to understand the global macro and micro. Helpful to decipher what is happening in the world right now.
Your Ego & Startup Reporting for Founders: Fight Your Instincts
As most readers know, I have invested in a lot of early stage startups. The hardest challenge is knowing what is going on with the business you invested in. You are supposed to get a quarterly report even as a minority investor. However, this tends to be pretty haphazard. Most of the time the founder is just way too busy. An interesting phenomenon I’ve noticed for startup reporting, when things are good, you get the report. But when things are going wrong, which is most of the time, the reports start to fall off. And then you don’t hear from them until things get back on track or the company shuts down.
From my conversation, this seems to be what every VC and angel investor faces. This is why so many investors push for board seats so they can understand what is happening and have some sense of control, whether this is reality or not.
Why does this happen? Fear of being judged. I might add, this also tends to be more the case for male founders than female founders. Female founders are much more willing to open up and ask for help. Guy founders just hide and isolate themselves. The ego is our enemy.
And I totally get it. I act this way myself. When things are going wrong, I just hide. I HATE asking for help. But this is so silly & self destructive. Swallow your stupid pride. Everyone needs help at some point in their life. The sooner you realize this, the better.
So you have to fight your own stupid instincts. Don’t hide. The sometimes wise Tai Lopez said it very well:
“When you aren’t making enough money, do not make the mistake of becoming an isolated hermit. Do the opposite – get more extroverted - make more phone calls, post more to social media, set more in-person meetings to close deals.”
You have to act positive and take action, and then surprising things happen. Motion creates emotion. Things start to turn around. So when things are bad, get out there. Start reaching out to people and meet them. Go to events. Do something. Action ALWAYS beats passiveness.
The Rowing Machine Exercise: a Parable for Life
As part of regular workouts, one of my personal trainers has assigned me circuits using the rowing machine. 3-5x sets of 500 meters. Pure cardio and pure physical hell. Cardio is brutal.
So my first approach is to look at the meter and track my progress as I exercise. It’s exhausting and tough, as your brain focuses on how far you are from the goal and how behind you are. After trying this approach and getting demoralized I realized I needed a new approach.
So I figured out it took me about 70 rows to get to 500 meters. So all I did was close my eyes and focus on getting my form right. And surprisingly I got through it pretty fast and enjoyably. Basically when I focused on the process and not the end goal, things became way more smooth and fun.
This is why it’s a good parable of life. Goals are good but put too much focus on it and it feels harder or further away. Focusing and enjoying the inputs and the process helps you get there faster. And this way, it’s more enjoyable.
The Magic of Air Travel
It’s so easy to complain and criticize the airlines, the packed seats, regular flight delays, poor service. But I still find wonder in the entire process.
What other time and experience exists in modern day life like air travel. We literally travel continents in a few hours. One moment you are in America, the next day you are on the other side of the planet in a completely different culture, pace and environment like Japan, Saudi Arabia, Georgia. Seeing new things, meeting new people, eating new foods. Variety is the spice of life.
It’s jarring and invigorating. The regular context switching changes your brain. You get new ideas and you get the look at the world in a completely different light. Think about how amazing and magical this is. Perhaps this is why I still find myself excited about life. Lots of travel tied to interesting work.
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads Oct 12th, 2025
"Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower"-- Albert Camus
One of the most important new companies around. Sophisticated manufacturing for rare earths magnets.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2K-g3UpaOE
2. "Cradled between the Tien Shan and Alay mountain ranges, the Fergana Valley stretches across eastern Uzbekistan, southern Kyrgyzstan and northern Tajikistan. It is one of Central Asia's most fertile regions; this lush intermountain basin, irrigated by the Naryn and Kara Darya rivers, has nurtured both crops and culture for centuries. It is also the birthplace of Uzbekistan's celebrated silk, ceramic and fruit production – a veritable holy trinity that forms the backbone of Uzbek culture.
Like much of modern-day Uzbekistan, the Fergana Valley lay along the fabled Silk Road, serving as a conduit for trade, ideas and artistry between China, Persia and the Mediterranean for centuries. In recent years, Uzbekistan has been leaning into its Silk Road roots with an ambitious new tourism drive that is seeing its historical trading hubs of Samarkand, Bukhara and Khiva developing at breakneck speeds."
3. "For years we incorrectly framed some of these categories as “ESG” or “climate risk.” That was wrong. Instead of investing in Environmental, Social, and Governance, we should be investing in Global Competition and Innovation (GCI). Meeting those other goals is a pyrrhic victory if we don’t maintain our ability to operate in a contested and unstable world where rivals like China are outpacing us in critical domains.
A recent CGCI (Council on Global Competition and Innovation) report makes the stakes crystal clear. While the United States led in 60 of 64 critical technologies in the early 2000s, we now lead in just seven. China leads in 57. From AI and biotech to critical minerals and advanced manufacturing, Beijing has surged ahead — not just in R&D, but in the ability to commercialize, scale, and control global supply chains. The United States, meanwhile, remains dangerously dependent on adversaries for essential goods and technologies."
https://a16z.com/investing-capital-to-defend-the-nation/
4. Continually one of the best conversations to understand what's happening in the B2B Software space.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rTaf9sBqZwM
5. “The vehicle-mounted missile system is designed for asymmetric warfare,” a member of the 209th Arsenal, identified only as Colonel Su, says in the video, according to a machine translation. “In wartime, we may face enemy air threats in anti-armor missions. We’ve integrated the air-based Hellfire missile into a land-based Hellfire system.”
For Taiwan, the truck-based Hellfire system reflects a larger ongoing debate about the correct mix of traditional high-end military capabilities and more asymmetric ones to challenge the much larger and increasingly advanced PLA. For some time now, U.S. officials have been pressuring Taiwanese authorities to focus more on things like kamikaze drones, which can be acquired in large quantities relatively quickly and cost-effectively, rather than more exquisite assets like main battle tanks and attack helicopters. This has most recently taken the form of a concept commonly referred to as Hellscape, which envisions filling the airspace and waters around the island with huge numbers of uncrewed systems to try to overwhelm invading Chinese forces."
6. Military tech sectors that sound very promising for the future.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qv3arzsorCc
7. Another good episode if you want to learn about the latest Silicon Valley news.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MKMFlUaICXs
8. "Most people associate crypto with speculative gamblers who are trading internet money for drugs.
In reality, major publicly traded financial companies are embracing crypto and crushing their earnings reports."
https://codyshirk.com/banking-with-miss-piggy/
9. What a great conversation. Kevin Rose and Tim Ferriss' Random Show. Biohacking, tech venture investing, home and self defense, so many timely topics.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2lxGXwqZTEA&t=3884s
10. "Anton Verkhovodov, a partner at the Dare to Defend Democracy (D3) fund, noted that Ukraine has product know-how: what is created in our country works dozens of times better in real combat conditions than Western developments. Moreover, Ukrainian solutions cost less, and getting feedback and releasing an improved version is much easier and faster.
Developers in Ukraine, Verkhovodov said, often create new doctrines for the use of defense technologies. This all applies to "applied" technologies—drones in various fields of application, electronic warfare (EW), electronic reconnaissance (ER), communications, demining, drone autonomy (swarms, navigation, targeting), software, and combat systems. However, Ukraine lags in more fundamental developments—radars, lasers, new communication tools, and architectures for drones."
11. "Aspirational Ignorance" is the energy policy of most Western countries. Doomberg is always illuminating.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxNgK4vNV1g
12. "Earlier this month, President Donald Trump issued
an executive order that encourages employer retirement funds to invest a portion of employee contributions in alternative assets like hedge funds, real estate, crypto, and, notably, private equity.
What is private equity, exactly? It’s basically when finance firms swoop in and buy companies or assets — from nursing homes to soccer clubs — and allow others to invest for a piece of the action. The industry is often criticized for extracting profit while running companies into the ground and creating an opaque, less-regulated alternative to public markets.
Nonetheless, it’s grown into a $5.3T behemoth."
https://thehustle.co/originals/how-private-equity-may-affect-your-401k
13. "As always, history provides crucial context to understand where this is going. During electrification from 1880 to 1930, industrial output rose significantly only after grids, generators, and industrial wiring were widely deployed. The invention of the dynamo alone delivered limited economic benefit. AI may follow the same pattern: infrastructure determines value capture, not algorithms or models.
My view is that few people understand this. Today's AI leaders behave like software evangelists when they should study infrastructure masters. As I'll discuss later in this essay, the real models for AI dominance are not Silicon Valley's startup wizards, but the infrastructure builders who created the monopolies and networks that defined earlier technological eras. These masters—from telecommunications to utilities to cable to e-commerce—understood what today's AI leaders miss: in capital-intensive networked businesses, infrastructure dominance beats technical superiority.
History offers a warning. When Google began building its own data centres in 2005, it assumed software excellence would automatically translate into infrastructure mastery. It didn’t. Cooling systems, power distribution, and physical security posed entirely different challenges. Google had to hire experts from traditional industries—power generation, real estate, industrial cooling—to make the centres work. Today’s AI race faces a similar discovery: excellence in one layer does not guarantee control over the stack."
https://www.driftsignal.com/p/ai-depends-on-more-than-software
14. A top episode on some very important recent topics, AI, Nvidia & Bitcoin.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2Vc-NabSb8&t=2382s
15. "Taiwan is on everyone's lips and always at the center of global conflicts. A handful of factories in Hsinchu, Tainan, and Taichung decide whether data centers roll out new AI models, whether defense electronics work, and whether the global hunger for data can still be satisfied. In these clean rooms, the world's most advanced logic chips are manufactured, packaged, and installed in servers—a nervous system that thrives on designs from American companies, depends on Dutch tools, and ultimately converges in Taiwan. Without this chain, there would be no “Blackwell” era at Nvidia, no mass inference, no next wave of generative industrial software.
The political-economic punchline: both major powers—the US and China—are simultaneously dependent on Taiwan and eager to reduce that dependence. The question that arises is: will the battle for semiconductors, packaging capacity, and standards escalate into a heated conflict, or will it remain—for now—a war of tariffs, embargoes, and naval exercises?"
https://getsuperintel.com/p/ai-geopolitics-36c076f3d9dd7887
16. "I see neither a collapse of Ukrainian forces nor a loss of Russian offensive capability before year-end. Ukraine's best case is maintaining current defensive lines while building up reserves. The supply lines now function mainly through air and ground drones. The question is who will win this struggle for dominance in drone warfare in the low altitudes of airspace. Whoever wins this contest could have a major advantage in the war's further course. I wouldn't recommend counterattacks or offensives—Ukraine should focus on inflicting maximum losses on Russia while minimizing their own."
https://thehundred.substack.com/p/interview-why-ukraine-is-struggling
17. This is one of the best personal finance and personal development interviews I've listened to in a while. Recommended.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dz35xiX0SYE&t=2430s
18. "Once you accept that this is the future, you need to be careful about who you associated with. Over the long-term the world gets divided into life’s winners and life’s losers. Sounds harsh because it is.
Doesn’t matter if you’re a nerd, a jock, a combo of the two, a real estate developer, a software developer etc. The world eventually just gets shaken down into two people: 1) improving over time and 2) falling further behind. The nuances are hard to spot but we’ll try to do exactly that in this post.
Once you’ve trained your 6th sense of finding winners/losers in life? It’s time to ruthlessly cut the fat and aggressively hang out more with the winners. The cliche saying is true. You are the average of the 5 people you speak to most."
https://bowtiedbull.io/p/winners-vs-losers-the-only-filter
19. "Afterall after 3.5 years Ukrainians have proven able to fight to a standstill a much superior military power, Russia, that on paper at least is multiples more powerful in terms of manpower and kit. And the fact has been that Ukraine has survived this long after being only drip fed only 3rd and fourth generation Western military kit. So the idea is if Ukraine, like Israel, was assured of the top of the range Western military kit - think of F35s et al - it would be more than able to deter Russia from future attack. It also adds the advantage of providing a front line defence for the rest of Europe.
Now combining the State of Israel defence with support from the COW (Coalition of the Willing), the idea I think is that the COW provides a backstop in terms of training and support services, but not front line boots on the ground, in the event of attack by Russia. COW provides training, intelligence and equipment for Ukraine, but Ukraine would do the fighting. The COW in effect provides a multiplier effect for Ukraine’s own arms forces. And particularly for European members of the COW the big advantage in that in investing in making the Ukrainian armed forces more effective, i.e. and more able to stand up and against Russia, they actually are investing in their own defence as obviously Ukraine is the front line for them against Russia."
https://timothyash.substack.com/p/a-state-of-israel-type-security-guarantee
20. Great book recommendation for B2B Marketers.
21. I don't always agree or like the assessments here but reality is reality. Good to have your narratives challenged.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOM68g0f3_M
22. The battle for Global Domination. Geopolitics and world building.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWdDFglK20g
23. This is a smart guy. Neros: Building America's military drone industry for the warfighter.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9OcRUMxAiY
24. "The United States faces a shortage of high-IQ workers, yet instead of treating international talent as resource, every immigrant is cast as a threat. Today, it can take months to years just to get an interview to visit the US. At the same time, we are deporting international students, making them feel unwelcome, cutting research funding, and, as a result, losing ground in the competition for academic talent.
Attracting global talent is not China’s strength—the world’s best would rather join the United States. But if America abandons the openness that has long underpinned its exceptionalism, it will squander one of its biggest advantages and decline into a second-rate power."
25. An insightful discussion on China and its economy and innovation. This is an important interview. Every American should listen to this. We are behind.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3yAVZk3tyA
26. The clock is ticking. 36 months to make it. Time to get locked in.
This is a must watch.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ve1L21l1GW4
27. The art of doing preseed and seed deals as a small fund. It's really an art. Learned a bunch. Recommended.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pM_HiQavFdA&t=8s
28. Some recent topics: SChamath's SPAC is back, Intel & South Park Billionaires. This was good.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykx4yBevzdk
29. "On February 3, just a few days into his second term, President Trump issued an executive order calling for the creation of a U.S. sovereign wealth fund. The usual rationale for a sovereign wealth fund—investing foreign currency surpluses generated from exports—does not apply in a country with large, chronic trade deficits and more than $30 trillion of debt. But if used to finance scale production across a broad portfolio of strategic sectors, the fund could be an essential vehicle for promoting reindustrialization and economic growth.
As I wrote in the Techno-Industrial Policy Playbook, private sector investment hurdle rates (the minimum returns sought in an investment) are often well in excess of both firms’ cost of capital and the expected returns in capital-intensive strategic sectors—particularly those sectors subsidized by other countries’ industrial policies. Government interventions are therefore necessary to “crowd in” private capital, either through providing extra leverage for private investments or de-risking projects to make lower returns attractive to investors."
https://www.commonplace.org/p/how-a-sovereign-wealth-fund-could
30. The best weekly show on B2B VC and business topics. Catches the zeitgeist very well.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZ5AZ6bt_r8
31. "T.X. Hammes, an autonomous weapons expert and Atlantic Council fellow, said the Navy is in uncharted waters, trying to overhaul decades of tradition at high speed.
"You’ve got a system that’s used to building big things, taking years to make a decision, and now suddenly you’re asking them to move fast," he said."
32. One of the most important new companies to be established in America. General Matter.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d2y5Lem4tI
33. A major supporter of Ukraine but Dark Star is one of the first purely defense focused VC fund in Europe.
He is right, are you truly a defense tech investor if you aren't in Ukraine?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6HZzuo8acE&t=6s
34. A must watch to understand what is happening on global macro side. Basically stocks, Bitcoin and gold will be what save your portfolio. Makes sense to me.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOPc2itEXbQ&t=1115s
35. Learning from history. Implications of the end of this debt cycle. Global macro at its finest.A flight to hard assets.
You Can Just Do Things: Being High Agency
Most people probably don’t know I spent a stint as Chairman of North Macedonia Fund of Innovation and Technology Development in 2021 to 2024. I got to spend a bunch of time there and it was an interesting experience. I met lots of young smart kids. Most of them talked about just following academic paths, doing Master, PhD etc. I was like, “Hey you have the whole world. You can go to the EU. You can start a company. Move to a new job.”
But what was weird was despite their smartness, they all seemed like they were trapped or resigned to the limited opportunities in the region. This is exactly the problem with my experience with folks in Canada and UK/EU at large, everyone just seems to accept the situation. Actually worse than that, they accept it and also whine and complain about it.
This is why it’s so important to watch this great interview with George Mack on “High Agency” people: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iVl5FLRuGXI. People who think for themselves, who don’t wait for others and take action. People who happen to life, life does not happen to them. These literally are the people who move the world forward. The most accomplished and usually happiest too. This should be ALL of us. “You can just do things” as they say. Love this saying.
And to further dig into this, I went to Grok to see where “You can Just do Things” meant and came from.
“The phrase "you can just do things" has emerged as a motivational mantra, particularly in Silicon Valley and tech/entrepreneurial circles, gaining traction around 2023-2024. It encapsulates a mindset of taking action without overthinking barriers, often likened to Nike’s “Just Do It” but tailored to a tech-savvy, startup-driven audience.
Its exact origin is murky, but it’s closely associated with indie hacker Pieter Levels, who embodies this philosophy through his prolific solo software projects and public posts on X about building and launching ventures with minimal hesitation.”
Grok goes on to elaborate:
“The phrase "you can just do things" is a motivational call to action, emphasizing that you don’t need permission, extensive resources, or perfect conditions to start pursuing your goals. It encourages a mindset of initiative, experimentation, and resilience, particularly in creative, entrepreneurial, or personal endeavors.
Rooted in tech and startup culture, it suggests that barriers like fear of failure, lack of expertise, or societal norms are often less restrictive than they seem. Instead of overplanning or waiting for ideal circumstances, you can take immediate, practical steps toward your objectives.
Key ideas behind the phrase:
Action over hesitation: Start now, even with small or imperfect steps.
Empowerment: You have more agency than you might think to create, build, or change things.
Iterative progress: Doing something—anything—gets you closer to your goal through learning and refining.
Defying constraints: Many limitations (bureaucracy, credentials, funding) are navigable with creativity and persistence.
This is a good way to think about life. Do things with “minimal hesitation.” Overthinking is a curse for many smart and educated people. It’s also why they accomplish nothing. Grok does give some great tactical suggestions which I highlight below.
“To apply this mindset, follow these steps tailored to your goals, whether they’re entrepreneurial, creative, personal, or otherwise:
Identify a Goal or Idea:
Pinpoint something you want to achieve, like starting a side hustle, learning a skill, launching a project, or even making a lifestyle change.
Example: You want to create a simple mobile app or start a blog.
Break It Down to a First Action:
Find the smallest, most immediate step you can take without needing special resources or approval.
Example: For an app, sketch a basic idea or watch a free YouTube tutorial on coding. For a blog, write a single post or set up a free website on a platform like WordPress.
Start Immediately:
Take that first step today, even if it’s rough or small. The goal is momentum, not perfection.
Example: Spend 30 minutes researching or creating a rough draft. Pieter Levels often emphasizes starting with “day one” actions, like coding a basic feature.
Embrace Imperfection:
Accept that your first attempt might be flawed. The phrase encourages “shipping” (releasing or sharing) early to learn from real-world feedback.
Example: Publish your blog post even if it’s not polished, or share a prototype with a few friends for input.
Iterate Based on Feedback:
Use what you learn from your initial action to improve. Adjust, build, or pivot as needed.
Example: If your app gets user complaints about a feature, tweak it. If your blog post doesn’t resonate, try a different topic or style.
Overcome Mental Barriers:
When you feel stuck or doubt yourself, repeat “you can just do things” to counter excuses like “I’m not qualified” or “I need more time/money.”
Example: If you think you need a degree to start a business, research successful founders who didn’t have one, or test your idea with a low-cost experiment.
Leverage Available Tools:
Use free or low-cost resources to keep moving forward. Today’s tech landscape (e.g., no-code platforms, social media, AI tools) makes starting easier than ever.
Example: Use Bubble or Glide for app development without coding, or post about your project on X to find collaborators or feedback.
Build a Habit of Action:
Make “just doing things” a daily practice. Set small, achievable tasks to maintain momentum.
Example: Commit to one hour a day on your project, or post weekly updates on X to stay accountable.
Practical Examples
Entrepreneurial: Want to sell a product? Create a basic landing page with Carrd, list it on Gumroad, and share it on X to gauge interest—all in a day.
Creative: Dream of writing a novel? Write 200 words today, even if they’re messy, and share a snippet with a friend for feedback.
Personal: Want to get fit? Do a 10-minute YouTube workout now, no gym required, and schedule another for tomorrow.
Career: Interested in a new field? Take a free Coursera course or email someone in that industry for a quick chat, rather than waiting for a “perfect” entry point.
Tips for Success
Stay Curious: Treat failures as learning opportunities. Each step teaches you something.
Connect with Others: Share your progress on platforms like X to find support, advice, or collaborators. The phrase gained traction partly through such communities.
Set Micro-Goals: Big goals feel daunting, so focus on what you can do in the next hour or day.
Reflect Regularly: Periodically assess what’s working or not, as the 2024 Medium writer did when tying the phrase to their year-end project review.
Cautions
Balance Action with Planning: While the phrase pushes action, reckless moves (e.g., quitting a job without a plan) can backfire. Take calculated risks.
Avoid Burnout: Constant action without rest can lead to exhaustion. Pace yourself.
Context Matters: As seen in the 2025 Current Affairs article, the phrase can be co-opted for questionable causes (e.g., political extremism). Ensure your actions align with your values.
By internalizing “you can just do things,” you shift from waiting for permission to creating your own opportunities.”
Living is about being active, not passive. So Be ACTIVE. You literally can just do things.
The Path to Happiness is Being material Asset-Lite
I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to take the family up to Whistler Blackcomb mountain for a family trip. Part of reconciliation. It was beautiful up there. My family had a fun time skiing while I worked at the hotel.
We packed light and rented everything. Took the shuttle bus up there from the airport, and pretty much worried about nothing. Didn’t have to carry heavy ski equipment around. It was great.
Ski trips with equipment, ski passes and everything are damn expensive. Monetarily and for your piece of mind. For your soul even. It always was in some ways but more so now. I never could have afforded this 15 years ago. How grateful I am to be here.
But the main insight, besides the fact that having money really matters, was that most of the things we were told we needed to own aka assets turned out to be liabilities. Your house. Your car. Ski equipment. Most of the material things you own. Most of these things can be rented as needed. Ownership is a trap.
And I think many young people grok this already. Rent and own as little as you need. A bare amount of clothes, a laptop, phone, gear, guns, weapons and bullets as an exception. Everything else should be put in real assets like investments in real estate, stocks, crypto, bonds, gold and even cash. The real ownership you should focus on is ownership ie. Equity in businesses. Cash flowing businesses or Silicon Valley growth ones. The more the better. Net net: Stack real assets, not fake ones.
Then use these assets to fund the lifestyle you and your family truly want. This is the way. Be material asset-lite but investment asset heavy. Seems obvious but this is clearly not how most people actually live.
The Brutal American: Custom Made for the Chaotic and Rough Times We are In
“Donald Trump and J. D. Vance have created a brand new stereotype for America: Not the quiet American, not the ugly American, but the brutal American,” @anneapplebaum wrote in the Atlantic (Source: https://x.com/TheAtlantic/status/1903722178463273263).
I believe she meant this as an insult. The irony is that this is being held up as a good thing by many Americans. I saw many follow on tweets with many frankly iconic American images of soldiers, tough movie stars or professional fighters with the comment: “Stop making us sound cool.” Very funny. But there is something to this.
Our enemies are on the rise. The CCP, Russia, North Korea, Iran, Venezuela, are ruthless and brutal. To beat them, we need to be ruthless and brutal too. Soft power is fine but it’s worthless without being backed up by hard power.
Quoting @chilvaryguild: “you can count on your enemies to be cunning, committed, opportunistic, and brutal. You need to be preparing in every way possible. Half-heartedness stands no chance against these guys.”
(Source: https://x.com/ChivalryGuild/status/1904260609148866628)
Just look at most of the countries of European Union and Canada. No one takes them seriously despite their wealth. Having a limited military has not done them well at all. They cannot be counted on. I’ve said this before, the world is very cruel to the weak.
So here we are: “The Brutal American”. This is unfortunately what is needed to win in this new ugly competitive multipolar world. Losing is not an option.
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads Oct 5th, 2025
"Be moderate in order to taste the joys of life in abundance." —Epicurus
The K-shaped economy. Another great interview on the art of investing. This time from a distressed asset perspective.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7E9euLwWtE
2. A timely discussion on China's military threat to Taiwan, real or not?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9cY9UeyxStQ
3. Battery wars, electric tech stack is critical for the future. China is kicking our ass right now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3B9bh29wAb4
4. Know thy enemy. The CCP's PLA.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tz7zEaz4Olg
5. "The fact that the Russians probably have no territorial designs on Western Europe actually makes things more difficult, not less. If a conventional military confrontation were likely, then states like Poland and Rumania could build up their forces a little, and have limited contingents from other countries on their soil. But even then, it’s clear from the Ukraine experience that the Russians would simply use their superiority in missiles and drones to destroy western forces, together with their headquarters, logistic and repair depots, transport systems and government structures, without any risk of reprisal.
But that’s not the problem: a weak and divided collection of countries with very different strategic situations and priorities, sitting at varying distances from a major military power, is going to have to find some way of preserving as much of their freedom of political manoeuvre as possible. Yet this is almost certainly going to be on a national, or at least multilateral, basis, simply because the situations are so different. In this context, we’re not talking about war, but the use of military forces as cards on the table in any political bargaining, and every state will have a different collection of cards. Some may have none.
So for countries bordering Russia, or near it, building up ground forces somewhat, and preparing defensive fortifications could make sense as a gesture supporting political independence. It’s hard to see, though, why Belgium or Portugal should do the same. Countries further away will want to invest in assets to patrol their air and maritime borders: again, not to fight, but to provide visible indications of sovereignty. The British and French nuclear systems—perhaps the only genuinely powerful political factors in European defence—are going to have to play a rather different kind of role in the future, but at the moment we can’t say what that will be.
It’s hard to see any of this being centrally organised, or indeed organised at all. Some small countries will drift towards an accommodation with Russia because they see it as in their best interests. Others will try to preserve more independence, perhaps through ad hoc alliances. NATO, and to an extent the EU, will become ghost organisations, increasingly cut off from the real security questions that will be increasingly re-nationalised.
Such a transition will be enormously difficult and dangerous, and there will be furious resistance to it by those unwilling to leave fantasy land. The conviction that if you only make the money available everything can be bought will take a long time to disappear, as will parallel fantasies of re-industrialisation and rearmament. The fact that the US and European armaments industries simply can’t produce what might be needed, though obvious enough, will still come as a terrible shock."
https://aurelien2022.substack.com/p/it-gets-worse
6. "If you’ve been struggling to raise for a CapEx-heavy startup — you’re not crazy. The structure is broken, not your vision (most of the time).
There’s over $100B in non-dilutive capital sitting on the sidelines — ready to fund the next generation of industrial startups.
But most of it never reaches the builders who need it most.
Why?
Because we’re still asking capital-intensive startups to fund infrastructure, equipment, and factory buildouts with high-cost venture equity — even when they have real, financeable assets."
https://adastracapital.substack.com/p/stop-using-equity-to-buy-steel-unlocking
7. "Bryan urged the DoD to shift its mindset from being an industrial provider that designs, builds, and operates major systems to acting as a customer leveraging services from multiple sources. This transition would enable the DoD to operate its enterprise more effectively by integrating diverse, industry-provided capabilities."
https://defenseacquisition.substack.com/p/military-capabilities-as-a-service
8. A fun and really interesting episode of NIA this week. Lots of topical subjects discussed in cultural & creative businesses.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bk8wExXONWw
9. Lots of topical subjects this week in Silicon Valley. Excellent takes and educational views here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=chulY4futpI
10. 100 Year Pivot. Geopolitics, the end of trust & the rise of Gold and BRICs. Direction of travel is moving away from the USD system in the long run by most central banks in the world.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abGgk1Je7bI
11. "On the front line things have stabilised. Ukraine’s manpower shortages are being fillled to an extent by the use of drones. But both sides are now engaged in a longer term battle for military industrial/tech domination. Who can outproduce the other in drones and long range missiles - tanks, and men count less.
Russia is using longer range missile and drone attacks to degrade Ukraine’s military industrial complex. Both sides are awaiting the invent of a war defining technology that can deliver the knock out blow to the other. Neither has this yet, but one could, and we are seeing really rapid technological advance.
Europe could step up and outgun/out-tech Russia, but it is still making progress at a glacial pace. Given the long term threat from Russia they should be working overtime to dovetail their military industrial production and military tech innovation with Ukraine, but they are not doing enough. That’s a lack of leadership and strategic perspective.
The two sides are miles apart in terms of their perspectives: Putin wants the end of
Ukraine as an independent entity, and that’s obviously existential for Zelensky and Ukraine. Hard to see where the compromise is."
https://timothyash.substack.com/p/ukraine-dont-hold-your-breath-on
12. "As technology erodes the value of human labor, whole industries have begun treating us more like livestock. We are fattened on processed calories, churned through the parasitic healthcare system, and our attention is stripmined by addictive dopamine loops that sell us to advertisers. Financial desperation funnels us into the digital casinos of stocks, options, crypto, and sports books, while the epidemic of loneliness is monetized by algorithmic brothels flooding us with onlyfans and pornography.
Like the surplus horses after the rise of the automobile, today’s surplus humans are being recycled by the capitalist system in a form of livestock economics. We are metaphorically being ground into meat, boiled into glue, and canned into dog food.
Yarvin is right in that the calculus of power is shifting from that of egalitarianism to that of hierarchy. As technocapital sidelines human labor, the incentive to give ordinary people political power disappears. The open question now is how a system handles a growing class of humans it no longer needs. Rising surveillance, algorithmic bread and circuses, and universal basic income all point to a likely strategy of pacification, not empowerment. When liberty aligned with increased labor, freedom made economic sense. Now that human labor is increasingly redundant, system may begin to seek cheaper tools for controlling a surplus class whose labor and, by extension, political voice, is no longer necessary for the technocapital machine. And so a power struggle looms on the horizon…"
https://www.scimitar.capital/p/state-of-the-machine
13. Catching up on NIA but this is always good. Wide ranging view from the edge of the internet and the creative world.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wDDHoS-MNQ0
14. Crazy times on the edge of the internet. Crypto news.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvUkHcB6jF0&t=485s
15. "To achieve that standard, supply and demand must be precisely balanced—too much electricity can be just as problematic as too little. A baseload power source is one that operates 24/7 at a steady, predictable output. A dispatchable source, by contrast, can be ramped up or down quickly to match fluctuations in demand.
Coal and nuclear are classic examples of baseload power, but they are not ideal for dispatchable use due to their slow ramp rates. Natural gas and impoundment hydroelectric plants, however, are typically both baseload and highly dispatchable, capable of adjusting output within minutes. Battery backup systems are dispatchable but not baseload, as they can respond quickly but cannot sustain output for extended periods without recharging. Intermittent renewables like wind and solar, both dependent on weather conditions rather than demand, are neither baseload nor reliably dispatchable.
Once these fundamental truths are understood, two things become clear. First, the ideal grid is built on a solid foundation of cheap baseload power, supplemented by highly dispatchable sources to manage fluctuations in demand. Second, a grid composed solely of solar, wind, and batteries is preposterous on its face—the volume of batteries required to provide baseload power for days or weeks at a time borders on the absurd. This is why no such system has ever been piloted at a reasonable scale: the moment it is, the flaws would become immediately and fatally obvious.
Which brings us to Australia. Over the past two decades, the country has systematically been replacing its baseload capacity with intermittent solar and wind, without meaningfully increasing its dispatchable capacity. Indeed, natural gas-based generation has been steadily declining in share. When intermittency overwhelms dispatchability, things begin to break. Armed with just this chart, an analyst with no more training than what’s been presented in this article can clearly see that a dangerous threshold has been crossed."
https://newsletter.doomberg.com/p/the-exception-that-proves-the-rule-7fb
16. "The modern breach is compounded by pervasive and cheap ISR techniques from roadside cameras connected to Wi-Fi for early warning to overhead satellite constellations. And while these systems can be spoofed, degraded, and deceived, it’s a constant battle to poke out the enemy’s eyes while protecting yours. So you have to add even more planning and additional enabling elements to your breach. More subtasks in your operation means more things that can go wrong or threaten the operation by giving away the target.
Let’s not forget about the proliferation of precision fires from one-way attack drones armed with collection mechanisms and warheads so they can pass back intelligence to the second and third waves of strikes before they identify and strike their priority targets. This all makes breaching that much more costly and the breach site even more deadly, demanding more and more resources from the attacking force.
This is why both Ukraine and NATO nations (including the US) are researching and testing autonomous systems specifically for the combined arms breach. If we can perfect the equation for cost x mass x efficiency for autonomous systems in the breach then we can successfully restore the attacking force advantage. And as an expeditionary force, the US Army favors the attack and maneuver, rather than planning for heavy, slow attrition in the offense (defense is a different story and for another article.)"
https://www.breakingbeijing.com/p/into-the-breach
17. "If you have a world in which everyone is encouraged to be a total individualist, they tend to get trapped in that mindset. It’s wonderful when things are going well, because you, your own desires and thoughts are the centre of the world. But the moment things go wrong, you retreat into yourself. And the only thing you can trust is your own ideas. You come to believe in them intensely, because that’s the only thing that makes you feel safe. And I think that’s where we are now."
18. “European companies bring strengths in manufacturing and scaling; Ukrainian companies bring battlefield innovation and speed,” says Fedorov. “Together, we can deliver game-changing capabilities.”
For Kyiv, the program is a strategic breakthrough—a bridge between Ukraine’s frontline ingenuity and Europe’s defense procurement systems. Ukrainian tech will be integrated into the European market, co-developed, co-funded, and co-owned.
“Ukraine is definitely the new Silicon Valley for defense tech,” says Romaniukov. “We have a truly unique experience, and it would be a crime not to use this advantage and develop it.
Whether Ukraine becomes the “next Silicon Valley” for defence technology is still an open question, but the pieces are falling into place. The war has forged an ecosystem where necessity drives invention, investors are engaged, and the output is tested in the most demanding environment on Earth. Given the trajectory, it may be less a question of if than when.”
https://united24media.com/business/is-ukraine-becoming-the-silicon-valley-of-defense-tech-10494
19. "This is something we have written about before on our Substack, when we looked at the consumer market size in Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Uzbekistan. For this letter, we wanted to take a top-down perspective on some of the sectors in Central Asia that we believe have the capacity to support multiple venture scale startups.
In a region where the majority of the economy is still early in its digitalisation and inefficiencies continue to plague the day-to-day lives of businesses and consumers, we hope that this letter will serve both to demonstrate the scale of the opportunities for prospective investors as well as to serve as a call for founders who are building or plan to build in these sectors to speak with Sturgeon.
Specifically, we are going to look at the following sectors: financial services; natural resources; logistics; agriculture; and SMEs. Others we considered were auto, real estate, healthcare and education."
https://sturgeoncapital.substack.com/p/key-sectors-on-the-silk-road
20. "In any realm of endeavor where you think short term and focus on immediate returns at the cost of long term returns, you will end up being mediocre. To get ahead you have to think about the future now and steer your ship with that in mind."
https://lifemathmoney.com/always-think-5-10-years-ahead/
21. "These conditions create a situation that resembles Nassim Taleb’s Barbell Strategy.
We increasingly have a world split between young people 1) forgoing college to pursue the trades or 2) gambling everything on digital moon shots.
Taleb writes that the barbell strategy is a “method that consists of taking both a defensive attitude and an excessively aggressive one at the same time.” Here, we see people doing maybe one or the other. The barbell economy creates its own culture:
Safety seekers: Those skipping college debt to pursue trades, finding identity in stability amid chaos. The toolbelt generation is choosing steady work over uncertain professional paths.
Digital gamblers: Those embracing the creator economy, crypto speculation, and AI startup moon shots. Finding identity in potential rather than stability.
Young people aren’t broken. They’re adapting to a world that’s fundamentally different from the one their parents knew. But their parents aren’t wrong either for feeling like the ground has shifted beneath their feet. The attention economy has created new forms of value and new pathways to wealth. The old ways of understanding ourselves and one another are straining to keep up.
The attention economy isn’t going anywhere. It’s too powerful, too integrated into how value gets created now. It’s a system, though, and systems can be changed."
https://www.profgalloway.com/the-attention-economy-and-young-people/
22. A fun discussion here. Wide ranging takes on Silicon Valley news.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D5Y-WZqsAlE
23. If you want to understand how banks work, how the economy works and thus why the world is the way it is. I hate Tucker but this was a great interview.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=StTKHskg5Tg
24. "It was a stark warning from a man whose journey from besuited grain trader to bearded talisman of Ukraine’s defense is a powerful symbol of the way Kyiv has harnessed ingenuity and entrepreneurial spirit to hold off a relentless onslaught from one of the biggest armies in the world. NATO is woefully unprepared for similar attacks, he said.
“We’ve already crossed the threshold of 400 drones [attacking Ukraine] per day,” he told the LANDEURO conference. “I don’t know of a single NATO country capable of defending its cities if faced with 200-300 Shaheds every day, seven days a week. Your national security urgently requires a strategic reassessment.”
Brovdi, who started as a conscript, was appointed as commander of the Unmanned Systems Forces in June, capping a remarkable rise. Swashbuckling, plain-spoken and with a controversial past, he is emblematic of a new generation of social media-savvy, nonconformist commanders rising to senior positions as Ukraine’s military attempts to rid itself of the stultifying habits of the Soviet era.
Ukraine’s drone units make up 2% of personnel but account for one-third of enemy casualties, Brovdi told his audience at the conference in Wiesbaden. His units now focus on hitting the drone operators who have made life so hard for Ukrainians on the frontline.
More broadly, he says drones must aim to kill or wound as many Russian troops as are deployed in Ukraine each month — a number estimated at 35,000. This can be achieved by creating a deep “kill zone” between the frontline and traditionally safer rear areas."
https://cepa.org/article/ukraines-new-drone-boss-and-the-kill-zone/
25. Always frank, I disagree with his take on Ukraine but agree with everything he says about America, about the useless oil sanctions, braindead European energy policy, Western arrogance and China's dominance in key industries seems spot on.
Recognizing reality is needed for smart geopolitical moves.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YncOunP4GSQ&t=29s
26. "Andy Grove, the first employee at Intel and its third CEO, disagreed with this belief. In 2010, Grove explained in hindsight the damage this type of offshoring did: “We broke the chain of experience that is so important in technological evolution… Abandoning today’s ‘commodity’ manufacturing can lock [us] out of tomorrow’s emerging industry.”
For the first two decades of the 21st century, most American companies didn’t see dependence on TSMC for the majority of semiconductor fabrication as a problem. But chip shortages from COVID-19-related supply chain disruptions in 2021 and the frenzy for AI chips after 2022 have changed the prevailing opinion. Suddenly, everyone realized it was a problem important enough to be considered a national priority.
The history of the semiconductor is the history of the United States. From inventor, to manufacturer, to consumer, to hostage. The US has had a complex relationship with the semiconductor industry historically. Going forward, it will remain the single most important building block upon which American technological independence will live or die. The only solution to dig ourselves out of our current vulnerabilities is by building an American Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (ASMC) from the existing Intel Foundry business."
https://research.contrary.com/deep-dive/building-an-american-tsmc
27. "Riding the flows of the frontiers requires being flow with the leading researchers and practitioners. Getting flow from as many legit people as possible is the grind it takes to distill your own perspective on what is real and what is not. Getting flow from other VCs (particularly the bottom 75%) is akin to the childhood telephone game where any signal is quickly muddied by incoherent noise of people badly regurgitating what they heard and pumping their own bag.
Being ubiquitous across the correct information flow is a 24/7 game. Those who get a bit too rich and a bit too lazy are very quickly left behind. I won’t name names, but many of the top GPs who gained notoriety 5-10 years ago are out; they can't keep up on the technicals, are no longer relevant, and just aren't tapped in. I’ll give you a hint: today’s best are tapped into the AI research community.
So your job is to ride with the right people pursuing the right trends at the right time. And knowing who the right people, right trends, and right time is all about how smart you are, how fast you can learn, and developing intellectual taste. The best VCs will help put you on trend (but you as a founder should already be there).
If we aggregate the five variable attributes as defined above, the formula for vc goodness can be defined as follows:
VC goodness == game x insight x speed x vibe x aura
Founders: measure your VC against my formula. VCs: work on your stats against my five attributes."
https://www.geoffreywoo.com/what-is-a-good-vc/
28. The world through data and the cold eyes of energy and industry. Doomberg.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmnQleZgnzc&t=306s
29. This seems like a holdover from Soviet military times. I hope AFU command is learning from this, hence the drone wall initiative.
"Ukrainian defenders will hold on to a location as Russian forces flank them like a pincer. You'd expect the pincer to close, or for the Ukraininan defenders to retreat before that can happen. But something more curious happens. The Russians forces appear to have no great appetite for taking the territory. Instead, the pincers extend, leaving the Ukrainian defenders in what is now called an "impossible salient." But as Defense Politics Asia says..."Impossible salient is impossible." At some point, you realize the guys in there are dead. Or as good as dead.
This happened again and again. Bakhmut. Adiivka. Chasiv Yar. I think Pokrovsk soon. It takes the Russians absolutely AGES to take each town. Ukrainians boast "yeah, we've turned them into killboxes...meatgrinders for the Russians." Excuse me. If you are the ones INSIDE the impossible salient, you are the one that's being killboxed. If you're the one who don't get the command to retreat before retreat becomes impossible, you are the meat inside the meatgrinder."
https://taipology.substack.com/p/war-in-our-time
30. “It has become high status to invest in manufacturing,” Christian Garrett, a partner on the investment team at 137 Ventures, noted at a fried-chicken-filled after-party downtown. Mr. Garrett said the factories that deals coming out of the conference would build would also create high-tech, “high status” jobs for blue-collar workers.
Speaker after speaker emphasized that military power flows from industrial power, which they said had been eroded by the offshoring of factories and an overemphasis on software, apps and financial products.
From the welcome by Chris Power, chief executive of Hadrian, a defense manufacturing start-up, to remarks by senior administration officials, the speeches drove home a single theme: Maintaining the country’s superpower status requires regaining the ability to produce physical goods at scale."
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/20/us/manufacturing-tech-trump-reindustrialize.html?smid=li-share#
31. The critical importance of rare earths and the dangerous dependence on China for these.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Qlz4ITakkM
32. Glad to see the US military is finally learning from the Russian invasion of Ukraine. This is job one. Big doctrine change is needed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=clvzFWa9VSE
33. "Now we operate exclusively with one gun from hidden positions. This happened for two reasons.
The first is thanks to our reconnaissance drones, which allow pinpoint targeting.
The second is that enemy FPVs and Lancet drones are constantly on the hunt for our equipment and responding to clusters of forces.
Who's winning artillery duels these days?
I'd say we are, because our counter-battery operations rely on high-precision weapons, like American HIMARS. It's also about good intelligence, especially satellite-based. On top of that, we've got lots of other tools, like various types of surveillance cameras, acoustic sensors and American counter-battery radars.
Often it's enough to detect a muzzle flash, then you can roughly locate the enemy's firing position, gather more intelligence and strike it with precision-guided weapons.
In contrast, the backbone of Russian counter-battery efforts is the Lancet drone. But a Lancet hit doesn't necessarily mean the artillery system is destroyed. Many howitzers are repaired and eventually return to the battlefield."
34. "There's something annoying about the obstinate that's not simply due to being mistaken. They won't listen. And that's not true of all determined people. I can't think of anyone more determined than the Collison brothers, and when you point out a problem to them, they not only listen, but listen with an almost predatory intensity. Is there a hole in the bottom of their boat? Probably not, but if there is, they want to know about it.
It's the same with most successful people. They're never more engaged than when you disagree with them. Whereas the obstinate don't want to hear you. When you point out problems, their eyes glaze over, and their replies sound like ideologues talking about matters of doctrine.
The persistent are attached to the goal. The obstinate are attached to their ideas about how to reach it."
https://paulgraham.com/persistence.html
35. "All of this made me wonder about competition in AI and where exception handling comes into play. If AI automates more and more tasks, most of that capability should be available to everyone in the industry. A thesis of mine for a long time has been that AI will commoditize all sorts of things as it makes expertise, automation, and assistance more widely available. What if the differentiator becomes - how do you handle the exceptions to AI?"
https://investinginai.substack.com/p/can-ai-exception-handling-be-the
36. "If you are storing the majority of your wealth in Fiat, you will lose long-term. While everyone needs money to spend, the goal is to be an asset accumulator. This means: stocks, real estate, crypto, wifi businesses, etc. Anything that goes up in value of the long-term. Assets, assets, assets!
The second step is the *most* important and the hardest to get through mentally. You must become a business owner or at least an equity builder. If you try to make it with a W-2… those days are long-gone. $400,000 for a doctor in 2000 was real money, in 2025… it is not real money in major cities with a family. Times have changed. Things don’t go back to the past.
The winners front-run money printing by owning scarce assets before the next wave of liquidity hits. This is why ultra-wealthy families don’t keep cash for the long-term. They keep productive assets (businesses, real estate, commodities, equities). They also teach their kids to do the same. Build or die."
Customs Frontline: Hong Kong Cinema Action
I think International Cinema fans have long known that Hong Kong has a thriving movie scene. I grew up watching HK action movie classics like “Running Out of Time”, “Breaking News”, “Infernal Affairs”, “The Killer”, “In the Mood for Love”,“The Young and Dangerous” series. So many fond memories.
You always get nuggets and gems of wisdom from the strangest places. I watched this Hong Kong action film, Customs Frontline on a whim: “pits customs officers against weapons dealers as they tackle a case of arms smuggling” that ranges through Africa but takes place mainly in Hong Kong. Lots of action, drama and twists. And like most HK movies the main characters usually get killed off so you are always on edge.
But plenty of great quotes & lessons.
After the elite customs team suffers several fatal losses the main character starts to act up and tries to drink on the job. His mentor and commander slaps him and says:
“You are on duty. Respect the uniform. And Respect yourself.”
Basically you have to do the right thing and act properly even when you don’t feel like it. Don’t do something that will make you feel bad about yourself later.
His commander also gives some good advice about life.
“Once in a while I daydream about buying an island, building a house by the sea…and live in isolation. But before that becomes reality…I have to be realistic.”
“The truth can be painful sometimes but we have to accept it.”
“A million things are out of our control. But we can at least control our emotions.”
Maybe this is so very Asian but we tend to be pragmatic. It’s not an optimistic culture. It is a driven culture though.
But as I’ve learned the hard way, your goals & drive sometimes take you to the outcome you least expect. You overlook what’s most important in your life. And most times it’s too late to get back.
“The things I once coveted seem meaningless now. What I didn’t treasure before is what I yearn for most.”
Something to this. Don’t take anything in life for granted.
Woe to the Conquered: Failure is Slavery in this New World
I finally watched Gladiator 2 and I have pretty mixed feelings. It’s a jumbled mess, but yet had some great action scenes. Shows Rome in all its splendor, horror and glory. Yet the characters are strange, the storyline middling, the speeches not so inspiring or quotable like the first movie. Who can forget “what you do in this life, echoes in eternity” or “Are you entertained?” Or “Strength and Honor.” It’s hard to recapture the essence of a classic.
But I’m not writing this as a movie review. I’m writing this as the big lesson that I think most people missed. There was a quote in the early part of the movie by the victorious Roman General Acacius after he had conquered Numidia. He says: “Woe to the conquered.” And truly is, all the survivors made slaves and shipped back to Rome to fight in gladiator games or serve as literal slaves to Rich Romans.
So many of you are wondering so what? It’s just a movie. Well this movie is reflective of reality. Reflective of the state of human history for most of our known world. The strong win and conquer, the weak serve them. And usually in not so pleasant environments.
We presently live in a world where most people believe that slavery is bad, that you help, protect and take care of the weak. Judeo-Christian values. Ones that drive the West. It’s not perfect. But it’s not terrible either. But this is all under threat. We have squandered the peace and gotten weak.
Most of the world, especially the Axis of Autocracy don’t believe in our values. Most of the Global South doesn’t believe this. Not saying they should either, they have their own proud histories, beliefs and cultures. Perhaps this fight was inevitable. Borders will change. Sovereignty can only be defended with strength. The weak will be eaten, literally and figuratively. Might makes right.
“The greatest temple Rome ever built. The Colosseum. Because this is what they believe in. Power. They gather here to watch the strong strike down the weak…..He spoke of dreams. I speak of truth. And in my Rome, it’s the law of the strongest.”
It’s probably a return to the way human history always has been. The formerly strong get weak and stupid. And new and hungrier challengers come forth to topple the old order. And the winners are absolutely merciless, treating the losers horrifically. If they did not completely slaughter or wipe them out all the men and enslaved all the women and children.
I truly believe our way of lives are under threat. This fight this upcoming decade whether hybrid, economical, or kinetic will be existential. If we lose, it will not be pretty. Remember that America helped rebuild Japan and West Germany after defeating them in World War 2.
Our enemies CRINK will not be so kind or merciful if they win. You don’t have to go too far into history to find evidence to prove this. Katyn Woods in Poland when thousands of Polish officers were executed by the Soviets in 1939. Holdomor in Ukraine during the 1930s where an estimated 5 million Ukrainians were starved to death. Russia literally raped and pillaged most of Eastern Europe in 1945 and after WW2. The genocide of the Uighurs at present by the CCP. Russia in present occupied Ukrainian territories with their torture centers and summary executions. It’s all there for the observant to see.
So wake up everyone in the West. Pax Americana is over and the jungle of chaos is creeping forward. The multipolar world is here and we, America and our allies (or the ones that the Trump administration has not alienated yet) are in the fight of our lives. I feel this closely and deeply with my deep personal ties to Ukraine, Taiwan and Japan. I fear for the future of my child especially with my teenage daughter in JROTC (Reserve Officer Training Corp). The stakes are high. And very personal now.
This will be impacting all of you soon too. Each of us needs to be acting accordingly. America ain’t perfect but I much prefer an American order or empire even than to the alternative of CCP led one, which is a new form of surveillance state tyranny.
Get angry for the dire situation our incompetent corrupt Western elites have put us in. We are in the death ground. There is no front line. The frontline will be everywhere and we will all have our part to play. “A man can choose to fight and stay alive. It’s the same in life as it is in the arena, is it not?”
The main bad guy Macrinus, played by the excellent Denzel Washington goes on to say:
“It is an art, choosing gladiators. Some choose entertainers. Some chops brute force. I choose rage. The crowd loves blood. And they love those who love blood as much as they do. Rage pours out of you. You will be quite the fighter.” Rage and a sense of urgency is all I have now. “The Greeks call it thymos. Smoke. Rage. That rage is your gift. Never let it go. It will carry you to greatness.”
I will end this with a quote from the movie, repeating Virgil: “The gates of hell are open day and night. Smooth is the descent and easy is the way. But to come back from hell and view the cheerful skies, in this task mighty labor lies.”
“Strength and honor” is needed now more than ever in our world.
Logan Roy’s Wisdom: Take the F–king Money
I’ve been on a Succession tv series binge recently. Succession a satirical black comedy-drama as described on Wikipedia:
“The series centers on the Roy family, the owners of global media and entertainment conglomerate Waystar RoyCo, and their fight for control of the company amidst uncertainty about the health of the family's patriarch.”
I’ve never watched a show where literally every character is a completely horrific, absolutely terrible human being. Maybe that is the point. Probably also a morality tale. As the Defector wrote: “Succession is about a lot of things, and one of them is the ways in which the richest, most powerful, and most sociopathic people in America go about shaping the world that the rest of us have to live in. These people have the power that they do, in part, because they can describe and manifest the world to fit whatever vision most pleases them.” But anyways, it’s damn entertaining. Like watching a dramatic train wreck in slow motion. It sticks in your memory after a long time.
The Patriarch Logan Roy, modelled off Rupert Murdoch & Andrew Carnegie, is always good for a quote. "You're such f**kng dopes. You're not serious figures. I love you, but you are not serious people." His threats during corporate intrigues: "I’m gonna grind his f**king bones to make my bread." Or when he tells his eldest son, Kendall: “You’re not a killer. You have to be a killer. But now a days, maybe you don’t. I don’t know.”
He gives great life advice: “You make your own reality. And once you’ve done it, apparently, everyone’s of the opinion it was all so f—ing obvious.” Sometimes even prosaic insights: “The future is real. The past is all made up.”
But there was one quote that stood out to me: “America, I don’t know….When I arrived, there were these gentle giants smelling of gold and milk. They could do anything. Now look at them. Fat as F-ck. Scrawny or on meth, or yoga. They pissed it all away.” My God is this not true. Especially in 2025.
It’s the barbell effect in America. Extremistan. One side of the barbell, a small group of ultra fit, competitive and ruthless (and lucky) individuals who own all the assets and have crushed it. And on the other side of the barbell, unhealthy, uninterested, video game playing, Netflix watching, fast food eating, lumpen mass. The great divergence. It’s so strange and the difference is so extreme. It’s a volatile mix and history shows that inequality only leads to massive societal violence. Not sure how it gets better.
All I can honestly say is that things in America are only gonna get more competitive, meaner, rougher and tougher. As Logan Roy said: "Life’s not knights on horseback. It’s a number on a piece of paper. It’s a fight for a knife in the mud."
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads Sept 28th, 2025
"It is not the hours you put in, but what you put into the hours." - Unknown
"But for the rest of the world, Xi’s blunders and his increasingly inward focus might provide a temporary reprieve. China’s economic and technological power at this moment in history is truly spectacular; if its leaders wanted to turn that power toward conquest and domination, they could. In fact, every other great power did try to use their power to dominate weaker nations to some extent.
But if Xi Jinping spends the next one or two decades suppressing internal challengers and committing economic blunders, it could save the rest of the world from the threat of Chinese hegemony. An inward-looking, mildly sclerotic China would be a bit of a tragedy, but it would also allow countries like Japan, India, Vietnam, and Korea — and of course the United States — to breathe a sigh of relief.
Right now, with Donald Trump busy smashing everything that made the free world such an effective bloc in the first Cold War, Xi Jinping and his personal shortcomings might be our best hope to avoid domination by the most powerful autocracy the modern world has ever seen."
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/xi-jinping-is-the-main-thing-holding
2. "This efficiency gain will accelerate with AI. As productivity tools enable founders to build more with less, we’ll see teams generate more ARR per employee while valuations continue to climb. The best founders are already achieving with five engineers what previously required twenty.
We’re witnessing a shift in startup financing. The small, disciplined seed round that launched thousands of companies in the past decade has been replaced by bigger rounds, higher valuations, compressed timelines, & loftier expansion expectations."
https://tomtunguz.com/death-of-small-seed-round/
3. This is truly a master class on the art of venture capital. Learned a lot listening to this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-5IsqFgrZM&t=3760s
4. "The old American Dream is dead: It has been like this for a while. It will be difficult/impossible to work a single W-2 with a stay at home mom + 2 kids and white picket fence. The new reality is that you’ll be buying that house, however, you’ll be working online in some sort of internet based business (E-com, SaaS etc.).
Instead of hiring a bunch of people in Bangladesh, you’ll be hiring AI software to do the vast majority of the work. We went from hiring people to 1099/free lance to straight up “no need for anyone except AI/software unless a sales person”
If we were to leave you with anything in 2025 niche business world? The winners of the next decade are not scared of AI. They are not scared of crypto. They are not scared of new technology. They absolutely love all of it.
They are using it to scale their business. They are using it to get better returns. They are using it to survive and thrive.
Darwin was right and will always be right. It isn’t the strongest that survives, it is the most adaptable.
If you want proof that no politician is going to come along and save you? Just look at the latest schedule for money printing. Another $1 Trillion in borrowing to come in Q3."
https://bowtiedbull.io/p/why-most-are-still-poor-and-what
5. "For centuries, a shadowy consortium of private bankers – the "Financialists" – have woven a global web of debt and legal chicanery, designed for one ultimate purpose: to own the world. Rooted in treaties like the 1648 Peace of Westphalia and the power shifts of England's 1688 Glorious Revolution, their system methodically stripped princes and nobility of their lands through wars, economic upheaval, and punitive laws. The prize was always the land itself, acquired not through conquest with armies, but through the silent conquest of debt."
https://emburlingame.substack.com/p/the-great-reset
6. "It's incredibly difficult to be a long term successful investor.
Other than the extreme mental focus and patience it takes, you also have to be very comfortable with feeling wrong.
I don't mean feeling wrong about your personal thinking and research. I mean feeling wrong relative to the narratives that are being projected all around you."
https://mailchi.mp/d597ee5adebd/stretching-the-value-spectrum
7. A sober assessment on rare earths, energy and geopolitics here. But reality is hard, China is the one who has escalation dominance.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CErnoEgiPp0
8. Interesting take. Alt-Geopolitics.
"The modern tools are sharper. Cleaner. Stealing from man and State alike. It's only a matter of scale and structure.
A man owns a building. He thinks he owns it. He holds the title. Good paper. Thick paper. But he borrowed money. Big money. The loan has covenants. Buried deep. Like traps in the jungle. His other business fails? A small thing. Unrelated. It triggers the cross-default. The big loan dies. A vulture fund buys the dead debt cheap. They take the building. They evict the man. The title was his. The debt was theirs. The debt won. Because it was enforced by guns. The State's guns. Violent property managers, are States.
These are but some of the ways how they took it. Financialists in Venice. Amsterdam. London. Wall Street. Dubai. A thousand years. Patient. Relentless. The nation-state was their shield. Their manager. Westphalia, the Glorious Revolution, made it all legal. The US model worked for some. The French model for others. And where these failed, the good ol'British Empire model would do.
Now they finish it. Tokenization. Crypto. Digital chains. They lock the debt into code. Forever. No nation-state needed anymore. The theft is permanent."
https://emburlingame.substack.com/p/the-great-reset-c2
9. Always fun to listen to this alt-geopolitics from Tom Luongo. Don't agree with everything but it's an entertaining take on world affairs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ckq4NuVFls
10. "First and foremost, I would say that the speed of iteration of everything is just extraordinary. I know people think of Ukraine and drones. That tends to mean aerial drones, but Ukrainians have been innovating tremendously, also in ground vehicles and sea vehicles. And it’s not just the drone bodies themselves, it’s all of the components. It’s navigation systems. It’s resistance to electronic warfare. It’s the ability to fly in GPS-denied environments. It’s all of these pieces, in terms of the technology. The Ukrainians have really had this incredible focus on homegrown drones that they are building, the long-range drones striking deep inside of Russia.
I have to tell you, the fact that the West is not paying a lot of attention to what’s going on here is deeply alarming. The speed at which this technology is evolving, and that the U.S., Europe and NATO are all really slow. And the thing that people really have to understand is that this is how Russia and China are going to fight. It is going to be just vast numbers of relatively low-price-point things that are extremely destructive …
But in the context of the damage, just even the psychological initial damage that Russia could do in Europe, or if the Chinese send something over the mainland United States – just thousands of drones that there’s no good way to take down- as a preliminary start to some kind of a ground war. There are a lot of very scary scenarios that are out there that I am not seeing a lot of response to yet."
11. One of the best weekly discussions on Silicon Valley news with a B2B view.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRJMlvxOJ9o&t=3063s
12. This is a harsh splash of reality. It's hard to listen to but reality usually is. Lots of food for thought but I have given up on America and the West yet.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSVOQl-vFKk
13. This is another splash of cold water on America's geopolitical & economic position. The Unipolar moment has clearly passed but our elites and politicians refuse to act accordingly.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUaEUCNAIcM
14. "With Azure and Google Cloud Platform growing faster than AWS, the once-strong incumbent’s market position may lead to three equal players. The next trillion dollars in cloud revenue will flow to the platforms that best integrate AI into every layer of their stack."
https://tomtunguz.com/cloud-market-share-shift-2025/
15. "While it would be prudent to acknowledge the complexity of the US-China tech competition – not simply the story of the rise of one and the fall of the other – it is also I think necessary to look beyond it. The global tech race is often framed as a two-way contest with everyone else a mere also ran. And while it is true that there is unlikely to be a third competitor who can become relevant across the entire spectrum of new technologies, we do have hard to ignore countries and centers of excellence in specific domains coming up in various parts of the world.
Asia’s dominance of the battery industry would be a case in point. All ten of the largest battery manufacturers are now Asian: six Chinese, three Korean, and one Japanese. In the time it took me to write my new book Northvolt went from promising upstart to Europe’s best funded startup ever to a collapsed has been. When I interviewed its founder Paolo Cerruti in 2020 he was upbeat that the company could own 25% of the continent’s market for batteries which would ensure that Europe “takes a strategic part of the value of the future car in its own hands.”
The ambition struck me as realistic, even modest, given it was regional and not global in scope – which in my mind set it apart from companies in the Valley which sell far more fantastical visions. But the fact that it couldn’t deliver on what seemed to me to be circumscribed ambition shows the stranglehold that Asian players have on this corner of the tech industry."
https://99tech.alexlazarow.com/p/the-global-contest-for-breakthrough
16. "Socially engaged men face the decision of whether to cap the number of their friendships or not. My advice: Never shut down possibility. Get in the way of chance. I’m always on the lookout for new friends. As we’re the average of our five closest friends, wouldn’t it make sense that I’d want to keep expanding and upgrading that friend group?
The goal isn’t to surround myself with doppelgangers, it’s more about me learning, getting better, thinking differently. I find friends by pushing the limits. By not being afraid to put myself out there. By going beyond my comfort zone, e.g., staying home and watching Netflix. By assuming other people are on the lookout for friends, too.
Example: George Hahn reads the audio version of my weekly newsletter. During Covid, he came out with a bunch of very funny viral videos. One day I sent him a Tweet: Can we be friends? Sure, he wrote back. What are you doing now? Nothing, I said. Okay, said George, let’s grab coffee. An hour later, we were having brunch in Soho. Recently, the CIO of an investment firm texted me out of nowhere: I think we’d be great friends. Think of it as friendship cold-calling. It takes courage and resilience. If others aren’t interested, they’re not interested. If they bite, you might find yourself having breakfast or lunch with someone great."
https://www.profgalloway.com/friending/
17. "On one side, we’re witnessing the rapid emergence of exquisite systems—sensitive, advanced, and highly capable technologies. These include space-based platforms, hypersonic weapons, and proliferated sensors that stretch the boundaries of what’s technologically possible.
On the other, there's a growing demand for inexpensive, expendable materiel—drones, loitering munitions, and mass-manufactured components. Ukraine’s Operation Spiderweb, Israel’s recent FPV drone swarms, and the Replicator initiative all highlight this trend toward scalable, attritable systems enabled by advanced and even federated manufacturing."
https://buildingourfuture.substack.com/p/the-split-in-the-spear
18. "We've seen this before.
When the internet exploded into everyday life in the 1990s and early 2000s, my parents’ generation had to adapt to a world that suddenly expected email addresses, online forms, and digital literacy. Many did. Some learned more quickly than others, often with the patient help of their children or coworkers. Some never fully caught up, though, instead finding themselves excluded from opportunities that assumed technological competency, like being able to send a cold email or file taxes online.
The difference now is that AI moves even faster, and its work is often invisible—it outputs a seemingly palatable information soup through a complex transformation of its inputs that we can’t precisely trace. Even if you can comfortably prompt ChatGPT, you need to parse its outputs. Unlike traditional web search, which presents multiple sources to compare and weigh against each other, AI gives you a single answer—confident, coherent, and low-friction. That ease is part of what makes it so powerful, but it also makes it easy to stop questioning.
My parents have professional-level English, yet reading through a dense AI-generated response can feel overwhelming, like trying to drink from a firehose. The simple-looking interface expects you to bring not only language and prompting skills, but a whole set of unspoken literacies: how to skim and scan quickly, how to spot what’s boilerplate AI-speak, how to steer the tool with a firm yet flexible hand."
https://every.to/p/how-i-m-preparing-my-parents-and-myself-to-be-fluent-in-ai
19. "The July 31 U.S. trade deadline has passed, and the United States has delivered its harshest blow yet—a staggering 35% tariff on Canadian goods, justified under the dubious pretext of combating illegal fentanyl imports. With the door slammed shut on negotiations, Canada faces a stark new economic reality. But from crisis springs opportunity, and Canada must seize this critical moment to redefine its economic sovereignty.
Washington's decision is not merely protectionism—it is economic coercion, weaponizing trade policy to subordinate Canadian sovereignty to American corporate interests. This is no ordinary trade dispute; it is economic warfare disguised as trade policy.
Canada has—rightly—refused to capitulate to Washington's latest trade ultimatum. But as Canadians consider this moment of backbone, we must confront an uncomfortable truth: this is not the end of American economic coercion. This is the beginning of a new phase."
https://barryappleton.substack.com/p/trade-by-threat
20. China and Open Source AI, really valuable discussion on the tech wars going on right now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTqINzeudJ4&t=147s
21. I enjoy these takes on Silicon Valley news.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LEOpqKGHIA0&t=1398s
22. "What deals get him excited? “I've always been on the deeptech side, it’s far more interesting than the fucking commoditised software plays.”
Is European tech in a good or bad place? “I'm very bullish on European entrepreneurs. I'm not very bullish on European markets,” he says.
“The quality of entrepreneurs is going up just because there's so many more — whatever you want to call them — mafias or clusters who are able to pass on their knowledge. Silicon Valley is a state of mind , it's not necessarily geographic today.
“But boy does Europe love to navel-gaze,” he adds. “Europe has to realise that it's not gonna be the US, it's not gonna be China, and that's okay, yeah?"
https://sifted.eu/articles/michael-jackson-interview-brunch
23. "The graphic below, from the presentation, is one of the most important insights. I’ve seen in a presentation. AI capabilities grow exponentially, but companies absorb the capabilities linearly. The companies that can change their workflows to adopt AI at the pace it improves, will win."
https://investinginai.substack.com/p/ai-needs-clinical-trials
24. "Today, that geographic link between energy and power—central since civilisation began—faces its deepest disruption. Solar panels, wind turbines, and batteries are maturing at the same time, allowing energy generation anywhere with basic industrial capacity. Small modular nuclear reactors, an almost mature technology, promise factory-built units that ship like heavy machinery. The constraint now shifts from controlling land to building and deploying technology.
As I’ve argued in my late-cycle investment theory, today we're generally seeing dynamics much like the 1970s. That decade saw oil markets fragment when producer nations seized control of reserves from Western oil majors. Libya nationalised in 1970, followed by Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and others. By 1973, these newly empowered producers could restrict supply through OPEC, quadrupling prices. The smooth, integrated system that had delivered cheap energy for decades shattered overnight into volatile spot markets needing new intermediaries.
Today's fragmentation follows a different path but causes similar market disruption. Instead of producers limiting supply, consuming nations are building domestic generation to escape import dependence—all while energy demand rises fast, notably due to AI. China's fossil fuel imports peaked in 2019 as renewables scaled. Europe aims for energy independence through vast wind and solar projects. Like in the 1970s, today’s transition creates profitable complexity for those able to navigate fragmented markets, volatile pricing, and shifting trade flows."
https://www.driftsignal.com/p/from-petrostates-to-electrostates
25. "Critics raise three key objections to American reindustrialization: We don’t have the time, the workforce, or the money.
They argue that fixing our defense manufacturing challenges alone will take years, require hundreds of thousands of workers, and cost hundreds of billions of dollars.
But that view looks at the problem from the wrong end. By revitalizing the sector most vital to our national security, the defense industrial base, we can spark positive ripple effects across the broader economy.
Before World War II, the US held 40 percent of global industrial capacity. Today, that number is just 17 percent, and China is the one with the dominant position.
To catch up, we must deploy advanced technologies and bold policies to reinvent manufacturing, starting with defense."
26. "Chapman’s bizarre story – which culminated in an eight-year prison sentence – is a curious mix of geopolitics, international crime and one woman’s tragic tale of isolation and working from home in a gig-dominated economy where increasingly everything happens through a computer screen and it is harder to tell fact from fiction.
The secret North Korean workers, according to the federal government and cybersecurity experts, not only help the US’s adversary – a dictatorship which has been hobbled by international sanctions over its weapons program – but also harm US citizens by stealing their identities and potentially hurt domestic companies by “enabling malicious cyber intrusions” into their networks.
“Once Covid hit and everybody really went virtual, a lot of the tech jobs never went back to the office,” said Benjamin Racenberg, a senior intelligence manager at Nisos, a cybersecurity firm."
27. "So the next time you think about startups and innovation, I hope one of the first words that comes to mind is permissionless. No permission required to invent the future. No permission required to start a business. Build a permissionless mindset—and create something from nothing."
https://davidcummings.org/2025/08/02/entrepreneurship-as-permissionless/
28. "There is widespread ignorance on the current state of American industry and manufacturing technology relative to China. Industry in the United States is hollowed out and backward. Why is this? It’s not so easy to put it under one word or concept. Environmental regulations aren’t bad: in fact the words of these regulations are quite reasonable. But they’re enforced by fanatical, stupid or malicious bureaucrats who interpret them in a way that makes building of new factories basically illegal or too costly in most of the United States, especially in places like California where the human capital and other conditions exist for very modern factories to be built. This is why it would be less costly to build factories in China or Vietnam even if you raised tariffs 300%…aside from these regulations, the introduction of advanced manufacturing technology and automation is prohibited by union regulations in most of America.
You can put all up all the tariffs you want, but until you change these kinds of things, you won’t actually have any kind of reindustrialization that matters. The extension and corruption of environmentalist norms, with which I fundamentally otherwise agree, but which now in warped form tyrannize over the American economy is a subspecies of a bigger problem, the moral fanaticism and purity tests that go a long way to explain the rot at the core of America’s functions. It’s been obvious for a while for example that oil and coal are “icky” in an aesthetic, sociological and maybe moral sense to a large section of American polite society, so during Democrat administrations the United States cuts off its own knees in those fields.
But it’s not just Democrat things: manufacturing as such violates America’s new moral sense regarding labor fairness and environmentalism, so it gets shipped off to China; energy in general as well, so off to China; America had the world’s leading rare earths mining, and it got closed and shipped off to China, with the public justification being environmental. Ditto, drones, which the FAA regulates and puts on hold to study for 15 years for noise & such, while China ends up owning the industry. America had a great vapes industry, & was on its way to high-quality vapes free of toxic substances, but it got legislated out of existence so now it imports sketchy vapes from China. And so on. What is all this? It has little to do with tariffs or trade. It’s unclear what “these things” are. “These kinds of things” consist in part of an atmosphere of moral purity tests and taboos, in part of a selection of “elite” classes that are susceptible to such: but it has to do with human decision, mindset, and culture.
In all this debate, the poor quality of America’s “elite” or managerial class, which is unserious & self-righteous, is maybe the biggest weakness, & it’s again hard to decide if this is a cultural, social, economic or political problem."
https://www.bronzeagepervert.yoga/p/american-industrialization-and-china
29. Balaji is frigging smart. He has a very dark view of America's future and culture, but he is not wrong. He has a hard take on China's future too. He is a reality shill as he says.
This was hard to listen to, just like reality is. Listen and judge for yourself. We have so much work to do to turn things around in America, Canada and the EU.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-CjidoeMaE&t=6146s
30. "With smaller models, the model has less capacity to recover from mistakes, so the tools must be more robust & the selection logic more precise. This might seem like a limitation, but it’s actually a feature.
This constraint eliminates the compounding error rate of LLM chained tools. When large models make sequential tool calls, errors accumulate exponentially.
Small action models force better system design, keeping the best of LLMs and combining it with specialized models.
This architecture is more efficient, faster, & more predictable."
https://tomtunguz.com/local-instructions/
31. Elite Slovak NATO soldier and officer to joining the AFU and fighting in Ukraine. It is a good frontline view.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bo3TZXrRwms
32. Some really interesting global macro discussion.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nlzyDwZDYfo&t=887s
33. What a fun and educational conversation with the online legend Tim Ferriss. Recommended.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7D_AGAb_A-4&t=2728s
34. "Emotional discipline is built through investing, personal life and even as a boss/employer. There is a reason why CEOs are pretty good investors. They are good at reading emotions.
You earn all of this by surviving volatility and by getting burned a few times.
Most people simply say “I coulda shoulda woulda”. The smart ones reflect back with self awareness and say “how did i feel at that time”. If you’re being honest with yourself, you’ll recognize the emotional state you were in (either high or low) that caused you to make the bad decision.
When It Comes to Investing Be Cold and Robotic
Sound terrible? Great. Welcome to the big leagues.
Your employer would love to fire you. Instantly. You’re just a cost and impact him negatively. The only way you are valuable is if he is paying you *less* than you are making the firm. Otherwise the firm would go out of business.
Now apply this to investing. If you have no emotions, you’ll become a significantly better investor. Instead of investing based on how you feel or how the population feels, you’ll invest based on *who* is involved. If Warren Buffet just bought the stock, probably a good sign. If the guy who sold marijuana at your high school is pitching you the stock… not great."
https://bowtiedbull.io/p/emotions-reading-is-more-important
35. "Warfare has always been performative — the means of actions carry significance beyond their explicit destructive effects. What distinguishes the June operations is not their performative nature, but their post-operation communications methodology. Like the “shock and awe” of the 2003 Iraq War or CNN’s coverage of the first Gulf War, the June operations captured global attention using novel tools — social media, real-time distribution, and comprehensive disclosure.
However, the strategic communication gains likely justify the costs in information. While it is challenging to fully understand the perceptions internal to the Kremlin or the highest rungs of the Chinese Communist Party, the adjacent impacts demonstrate a magnitude that would make the meaning hard to ignore. Ukraine’s revelation of coordinating 117 drones across five time zones and 4,300 kilometers of Russian territory sent an unmistakable message about Russian vulnerabilities, while simultaneously boosting Ukrainian morale and international credibility. The extent of Mossad’s infiltration into Iran likely serves to reinforce regional deterrence, rather than limit future operations.
For the United States, the complexity and distance of Operation Midnight Hammer — involving over 125 aircraft, seven B-2 stealth bombers, submarine-launched Tomahawks, and true global coordination — served to reinforce a message of unambiguous American technological superiority and global reach, with a more consequential target audience in the Indo-Pacific rather than exclusively in the Middle East."
https://warontherocks.com/2025/08/is-warfare-becoming-more-performative/
Learning from Everyone, Especially Those you Disagree With Part 2: Advice for Men
I really hate to write about Andrew Tate (and his more debonair brother Tristan) but the man has sound bites. And clearly smart. Moral? A different thing although all there seem to be are accusations and no convictions. I have trust issues with mainstream media narratives. But the point is you learn from everyone.
I was listening to a podcast interview he did and it really helped me as a family man, parent and man.
“If I wake up and say I don’t care how happy I am, I want to be proud of myself and I want to make other people proud of me, so I have to do these things irregardless of how I feel, then I am going to have a fantastic life.
How else are you going to get instant happiness unless it’s temporary. To get long term happiness is something that is only going to come from dedication and hard work, which requires short term suffering. It’s just delayed. If you are dedicating yourself and working hard for future happiness but considering most people are never happy with what you get and only want more, your life just becomes hard work, dedication, struggle and suffering just to exist within. And you don’t operate under the paradigm of happy or sad.”
He goes on: “You achieve your contentment when we make others happy. We give, we go to work, we struggle, we make money, we suffer so others can be happy because of us. It’s not our job to be happy ourselves.”
This is a powerful frame to look at your life. Pain and suffering is the gateway to growth and success. Even more important is where this attitude takes you.
“Unless you are competent and capable as a man, you can’t even love anything unless you are competent and capable as a man……..If you have no competence, you have no skills, no use case, your love is completely useless. Men are nothing but success objects. We are valued by what we do. Men are competency objects. Men are “what can he do”? What is he good at? That is all we are measured on is our capability.”
Amen. The minute I understood and incorporated and lived this attitude my entire life got better. Happiness is a psy-op for men.
You have to be a personal responsibility maximalist. “As a man every single thing that happens to you in your life, you absolutely and completely deserve.” If you want your life to become better, rewire your brain, step up and do the hard work.
Playing Hard Ball: Surviving and Thriving in Trump 2.0’s World
One of the best reads I’ve had to understand this new world of operating. Counter to everything I’ve learned and practiced in my 26 years here in America. We really are entering a brand new world. Frank Rotman of QED Investors wrote an observant tweet early March:
“The Zero Sum Society
Our society seems to be moving in the direction of embracing a troubling premise: That one person's gain must come at another's expense. The disturbing willingness for an individual to profit a little by causing the masses to lose a lot reflects a profound moral disconnect. It feels like people are increasingly comfortable playing a PvE (player vs. everyone) game regardless of the net impact on the collective. You see this in politics. You see this in crypto. You see this in human rights. You see this everywhere.
Speculation About How We Got Here
• The hyper-financialization and broadcasting of everything
• Growing inequality creating separate realities where the suffering of others becomes invisible or normalized especially when personal profit is involved
• Increasing social isolation and declining community ties, making it easier to harm faceless "others"
• The widening physical and psychological distance between decision-makers and those affected by their decisions
• Structures that diffuse moral responsibility, allowing no individual to feel accountable for collective harm
• A cultural shift from "citizen" to "consumer" as primary identity, narrowing our perspective to personal benefit
• Social media algorithms that reward outrage and tribalism over empathy and nuance
• The rise of "optimization" as a value that prioritizes efficiency over human well-being
• Short-term incentive structures that reward immediate gains over sustainable outcomes” (Source: https://x.com/fintechjunkie/status/1897101926078042521)
Explains a lot. Explains why everyone is so on edge and stressed. We are living in the new Hunger Games now. Especially in America.
I also read Kairon’s newsletter religiously. I don’t agree with his politics but he has excellent insights on the world. Here is what he wrote about Trump's negotiation style which seems super relevant in this new winner take all world.
“This is perhaps the biggest obstacle when it comes to Trump. People don’t understand how the name calling, crassness and blustering on Social Media can result in competent foreign policy. For people who took political establishment/corporate training like myself, Trump is antithetical to everything you’ve ever known.
Every convention, every rule, every norm must be tossed aside to understand and deal with him.
He is a different kind of Statesman, (some would say not one at all); one who will press the advantage when he knows he holds the winning hand, grace isn’t apart of Trump’s winning rhetoric. If he can win and take 80% he will do so. If he can push and get 100% and some of your winnings, he will do so.
Because he expects everyone else to do the same.
Why is he suggesting buying Greenland again, is he going to conquer half the World?
What is it with 25-200% tariffs, is he serious?
Why does everything around him look like chaos?
Trump grew up during the time where sales and negotiation was hardball. Every inch won, is hard-won and Trump has taken that to heart. If he asks for the moon, a rocket doesn’t seem so bad. Many in the institutional class won’t know this, but this is what every poor man knows now as: the Facebook Marketplace Negotiation. Or what everyone in the 80’s just referred to as sales.
Everything is a bargaining tool for Trump, nothing is off the table. The polite society Neo-Liberal “tit for tat”, arguing over “table-stakes” percentages is over. Tariffs are a bargaining tool. Retaliatory and Reciprocal Tarriffs are the same reasoning. (Trump also knows and views Subsidies as “Reverse Tariffs”)
Why did Canada and Mexico acquiesced to demands immediately, because Trump’s final demands were “reasonable”. But Tariffs are still on the table if they don’t follow through.” (Source: https://mercurial.substack.com/p/understanding-trump)
I’m known for being very direct, sometimes harsh but it comes from caring. I’ve always tried to be fair and reasonable. I’ve always tried to do the right thing albeit with lapses. I’ve always tried to be generous with my time and help. Overall, I think it’s done me and my reputation well here in Silicon Valley and around the world. But I sometimes wonder if this is outdated in this new world order.
I’m tired of seeing so many awful people get ahead in the world. I wonder if I should not be more selfish, ruthless and hard- edged in this world. Maybe it’s time to be more assertive and less tolerant. To be more selfish and transactional. “To get the bag” as they say. To push back and retaliate more. As always, more food for thought personally. We shall see.
Learning from Everyone, Especially Those you Disagree With & Even Hate: Violence is Real
I try to learn from everyone. I listen to opposing views from mine, and even from awful horrific folks. The All-in-Podcast guys, Mike Cernovich, Tucker Carlson, Cyrus Janssen, Betrand Arnaud, the list is endless. But I always learn stuff from them. I learn from everyone. This is how you grow as a person. It’s good to have heroes but to follow people blindly is dangerous. This is why you also want anti-heroes in your life.
I used to be a fan of Andrew & Tristan Tate but for obvious reasons things have changed. I admired them for their erudite discussions, ultra masculine and fighting form and hustle. And like that they teach young men to work & train hard and more importantly to expect that life is hard. It’s been personally very helpful. But I disagree with their views on women and the pro-Putin and right wing views. The Tates are the extreme and obvious counter reaction to the left wing woke stupidity. One might even say over-reaction.
However in a March 2025 interview on the PBD Show, Andrew Tate said something really insightful: “If a line is crossed, violence appears. If you run your mouth, you will get checked. Violence is the underpinning of civilized society. Violence runs everything. This world we live in is run by violence.”
This is 100% true. And this is why every man needs to learn how to fight, wield a blade or shoot a gun. It’s a must in your tool set of skills. It gives you confidence. It’s a core part of male competence especially as we are entering the time of the beast and as the world becomes more chaotic.
“Men have a burden of performance. Men should be capable.” Many of us in modern society have forgotten this to Western society’s overall detriment. But this gets fixed one man at a time.
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."
War Mode: Dan Koe Wisdom
I saw this incredible video by Dan Koe, Godfather of Solopreneurs, up there with Justin Welsh.
It can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0AB6pZpotg.
He introduces the concept of “War Mode”, we know Monk Mode when you disappear, remove yourself from the world, reject anything fun and go to incredible focus to get stuff done.
“War Mode” is “exactly opposite. You attack your goals. You simulate a hunt. You say YES to everything. You expose yourself to massive experience. You overwhelm your mind with chaos and force yourself to expand into a new identity. You become the person who can bear a massive load of responsibility. Someone who doesn’t crack under pressure because that means death (metaphorically of course).
So I use this war mode as a means to take my mind, body and business to another level when I need to. Because the problem here is the problem with modern life right now in general. People work on simple tasks they hate all day, never challenge themselves creatively, and think they need a break from work.
Now personally I think people would benefit from more work than they would more rest. One, because rest for most people is synonymous with a pleasurable escape from boredom rather than a deep recovery session from stimulating work.
The second is that the average person lacks periods of pure intensity toward a meaningful goal. They lack true balance, which lies, in contrast, meaningful work & meaningful rest, both with pure focus. Not the middle path, but the path of high highs & low lows, catastrophic failure and blissful success. Those are where the most profound lessons are learned. And if you are floating in the middle, life becomes a blur of boredom and anxiety. Too many people simply want to escape the stress & mundaneness of everyday life, so they think more rest or a fancy vacation will do it for them.
I’d like to propose another solution, to go a little insane, to flip the switch overnight, to transform into an entirely new person.” Find an Alter Ego and build your new you. All in the direction of a big massive goal and vision.
“To change who you are, you must educate, practice and experience new information to reprogram your mind’s faulty wiring that was installed by society. You must rip yourself out of the environment that is keeping you the same.You must force yourself into places you don’t belong until you do. You must channel what you learn into a project that moves you toward your vision.Take your alter ego and go war mode. You attack your goals. You simulate a hunt. You say YES to everything. You expose yourself to massive experience.” Commit to war mode for 2-3 months. Rest and then do it again. This is where growth happens.
I love it. What a great concept to follow. A time to “Lock in” as they say in the Crypto world. Traveling and busier in business than I’ve been in a while, laying down the foundations for the future. All while training: staying fit and strong and repairing my broken family relations. After resting in July and August, I’m now gearing up again for “War Mode” in September.
Go to “War Mode” people, because that is what it will take to get through this mess of the year and the rest of this decade.
Rip Cole’s Yellowstone Cowboy Wisdom
Rip Cole is one of the main characters of the Yellowstone show and is the foreman of the ranch. Hardcore. Capable of incredible violence. Brutal when he needs to be. He does what he needs to do to protect his ranch, crew and family. A real man. To be so physically and mentally strong. A leader that his people respect.
Yet he is kind and warm with his loved ones. He takes care of them. Incredibly loyal. And he is surprisingly wise and prosaic. He is calm, cool and collected, especially in a crisis. Something I aspire to one day instead of reverting to anxiety and anger.
He is very “Adlerian”, which I think is the way we progress in life. There was a conversation he had with his troubled wife Beth.
“Beth: Do you ever think about us?
Rip: Us is all I ever think about.
Beth: When we were kids. You ever think about that?
Rip: I think about now. I think about tomorrow. I don’t give much time to yesterday.
Beth: Yesterday is what eats me.
Rip: Maybe yesterday is what eats everybody. That’s why I don’t think about it.”
At age 50 I realize I need to just let go of the past sometimes. Reliving bad memories, old insults and indignities. My grudges drive me way too much to be healthy. It leads to unnecessary angst and conflict. Moving on is the right and smart move.
Rip said once: “You know what, I never think about what happens a year from now or ten years from now. I always worried about today with an eye on tomorrow.”
I know I should be more like Rip, focussed on the present, with an awareness and view of the future.
Salaar Ceasefire: Army of One
A crazy and ridiculously silly, yet violent movie that is a modern day gangster movie, a story around powerful descendants of Dacoits (bandit warriors from ancient India). “The fate of a violently contested kingdom hands on the fraught bond between two friends turned foes in this safe of power, blood shed and betrayal.”
Two best friends Deva & Varadha grew up together in the gangster capital of Khangsaar. A unique imaginary world. Amazing world building here. Deva in his youth, swears loyalty to his friend for saving his and his mothers life. “Only for you, I will be a bait or a shark. Only for you, whenever you call me, I will come back to this place.”
“During the time of the Persian empire, the Sultan, however big the problem, wouldn't deploy his formidable army. He would only go to one man. For whatever the sultan wished for… and destroy whatever the Sultan rejected.”
As usual there are lots of wise lessons in this movie. “Children are like molten iron….mold them well and they become lamps that spread light. If you don’t they become blood shedding swords.”
“You can stop a river with a dam but you can’t stop a raging ocean.” The point as exemplified by our main character Deva is that human vitality and energy overcomes most challenges and issues. Yet for many of us, myself for sure this energy is usually spent on our darker impulses.
“I know for a fact that no hunger can match the hunger for vengeance. Our time has come.”
When his friend Varadha asks for help 25 years later, Deva answers the call. And it gets very bloody soon. “A hunter is not pained by not being able to find prey, as by not being able to hunt. So In that case declare hunting season. The crimson of flowing blood is always beautiful.” Deva, a violent, one man army unleashes hell on Varadha’s enemies.
We learn the eternal lessons that power is always taken. Never given. “The strongest shall prevail. The Strongest shall rule.” Something the world is relearning again the hard way in 2025. Unfortunately the world is very harsh and cruel to the weak.
Deva delivers the Khansaar empire to his friend in a bloody evening of killing a la John Wick but with swords & axes. But there is a crazy twist in the end. A fun and interesting movie. Can’t wait for Part 2.