Letters from the Past: Sacrifice and Appreciating What You Have
Another international flight and then another movie. I enjoy the opportunity to watch non mainstream and foreign films on the plane. I was missing Japan so much and found this movie called “Till We Meet Again on Lily Hill”, a sad and historical fantasy drama that takes place in both modern day and 1945 Japan.
Yuri is an angry, moody 18 year old girl who feels down because her impoverished and hard working single mother is raising her after her father loses his life when he heroically saves a child. Yuri, feeling sad, angry and abandoned, hides in an old bunker and ends up in 1945 during the last days of World War 2. She ends up working in an army bistro & meets a group of young men called the “hungry bunch”, training to be special kamikaze pilots about to leave on their final mission to fly into enemy ships. A suicide mission.
She gets to know the pilots, especially Akira who is around her own age. And as a modern person, she does not understand war, honor or the sacrifice these men are embarking on. The pilots, knowing it’s their last days, enjoy every moment of their time. Each meal they have. Eating sweet ice dessert. Or playing baseball together at the base. Sharing their dreams with each other. Sitting in a field full of lilies. Drinking sake and singing together on their last night.
Yet they are eager to do what they think is their duty even if it’s their end. “To acquire a new life of eternal righteousness.” The immense waste and tragedy of it all especially when we know the outcome of the war (for non-history people, Japan loses very badly).
Even when they talk about their colleagues, using euphemisms like there is “room for more new soldiers”, meaning pilots who have left on their kamikaze missions.. How the pilots talk about “protecting my wife and child with my own life.” Yuri is horrified and cannot fathom why they would do this when she hears this.
The veneration of the villagers toward the special pilots is touching though. The kindness they show to the pilots. Especially as they believe they will become spirits. And the immense loss of family members of every person from the war. The horror of American firebombing attacks on the village.
That deep sadness of knowing it is a few days till the pilots set off on their last mission, especially as Yuri knows the war is almost over. Saying goodbye forever on their last dinner at the bistro before their mission the next morning. That was a solemn and heart wrenching scene.
There was also one where the Japanese civilian crowds were sending them off waving flags at the airfield as the pilots flew off. (Something sadly my Israeli, American and Ukrainian friends are still experiencing).
But this experience wakes her up to how horribly she treated her mom, she also discovers how sacrifice is heroism, finally appreciating what her father did. And she learns to be happy with what she has. Living in the present, finding joy and appreciation in small things. We can all learn from this hopefully without experiencing war. To go live a good life and make the most of your time. “All I want is your happiness. Live your life with all your heart. That is my only wish.”
Tulsa King: A Gangster in a MidWest Paradise
Sly Stallone plays an old school Brooklyn gangster, Dwight Manfredi aka The General. He is exiled to Tulsa, Oklahoma by his family after serving 25 years in prison for his mob family. He quickly builds a crew and starts earning but makes enemies of the local law and local biker gang the MacAdams.
In the run up to the big battle with the biker gang, he rallies his troops and gives them advice.
“I always thought that life was this one way street. And you head down it as you do and it sort of disappears behind you. So you can only go one direction. Forward. And you look way down there and you see a city on fire. And it’s red hot. And as I said before, You can only go forward.
So you only got 2 choices. One you get scared, you give up and then you burn up. The second one, you say F— it, F—-k it, F—k fear. And you barrel through it. And when you come out on the other side, I guarantee you, you will be stronger than you ever thought possible.”
Seems like good life advice. You can only go forward. Acknowledge mistakes and learn from them. Make amends if you can.
Know what you stand for. Know what red lines are for you, that if someone crosses it you have to act. Take care of business. Take care of your family and take care of your people. This is why people respect you.
A simple clear code. Even if you are an aging gangster. What a fun series to watch.
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads April 20th, 2025
“Whether we know it or not, our lives are acts of imagination and the world is continually re-imagined through us.” — Michael Meade
Lessons for the Defense Industrial base from the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MqmUJ-eYVg
2. Alt-Geopolitics. I don't agree nor do I like these people. But you can learn from anyone. It helps to question popular narratives out there in media
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDQxzULLTgg
3. Justin Mares is crushing it by building businesses in the MAHA movement. Very interesting discussion.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=84DwJGdsuQ8
4. This was an instructive discussion on the art and science of venture capital. Yes, they are focused on B2B software but it's still very useful.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vdbMuq1SS8c
5. "I’m a believer in the ‘ software eats the world’ thesis, although I often change it to ‘software enables the world,’ which is not nearly as evocative but also not as consumptive. One byproduct of this movement, especially during the blitzscaling era, were new startups in areas such as finance, healthcare, housing, education, using venture capital to acquire customers at accelerated rates. And when these startups failed, the customers might find themselves confronting situations where a product they relied upon ceased to exist with very little notice.
For the investors it’s of course a disappointing outcome, but the failure is built into their model and they knew going in that ‘taking a zero’ was a potential ending — that’s why they’re ‘ accredited investors.’ For the human being who is your using your service, quite often they don’t have the same visibility or understanding of the risks — there’s no such hurdle to make sure someone is an ‘accredited consumer.’"
6. This guy Warwick Powell is in the school of "America Bad" which shows up in his perspective. Very clear he is pro-China. But it is good to understand our enemies' view.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wELAe9yTOL0
7. Anduril & Founder Fund's Trae Stephens. Valuable discussion on defense and good quests in life.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNMVl3hXvTQ
8. Shawn Puri is the man. What a fun and insight-dense conversation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMfvLnui-aU
9. When it comes to war, the military and geopolitics Erik Prince knows what he is talking about. This is an important presentation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WsKtfLRSo2c&t=272s
10. Important topic: the American military is behind and not set up well for the future of mass war.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0biBnbsAPE
11. Reindustrialization & the MidWest for the win.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07qpzLeVGKc
12. "Vice is also a malleable concept. What we consider as “vices” are purely socially constructed, meaning that they can morph and shift alongside changing social norms. Throughout history, activities once condemned as morally reprehensible — from gambling to alcohol consumption to certain forms of entertainment — have been reframed as acceptable, even celebrated. Meanwhile, behaviors that were once mundane, like smoking in offices or excessive social media use, can become widely frowned upon.
Lately, shifts in consumer sentiment, regulatory pressures, and advancements in technology — particularly artificial intelligence — are reshaping the vice economy. The age-old struggle of personal freedom versus societal acceptance is playing out in new ways, as younger generations redefine what constitutes indulgence and personal responsibility.
Specifically, the legalization of sports betting, once hailed as a major economic driver, is now facing backlash due to its financial and social consequences. Meanwhile, a cultural shift among younger generations has led to a decline in alcohol consumption, forcing the beverage industry to reconsider its strategies. Moreover, the continued deployment of AI is seeping through the vice economy, unlocking new opportunities while raising ethical concerns. Together, these trends indicate that the boundaries of vice are evolving, prompting stakeholders to adapt to an uncertain future."
https://medium.com/ipg-media-lab/the-shifting-norms-of-the-vice-economy-1baa5f544f23
13. Lots of good nuggets & learnings for B2B Sales leaders.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n32QNJWNrlE&t=2s
14. "Each of these magical winter refuges has its own particular flavor. The shy celebs go for the fortresslike log homes of Montana’s Yellowstone Club, which is in the midst of a major expansion. The Westchester moms point their upfit Mercedes-Benz Sprinter vans and Cybertrucks toward the Hermitage Club of Vermont, which was taken private by the mountain’s homeowners during the pandemic. And the LA and San Francisco tech crowd can have one of Powder Haven’s Rivian courtesy cars meet them at the Ogden FBO.
To join these clubs often costs millions of dollars in real estate, plus initiation fees, plus tens of thousands in annual dues—not to mention, sometimes, multigenerational personality vetting. In this way, skiing in America is becoming more like America’s most elite golf and racquet clubs, as well as the private social clubs proliferating across New York City, and less like skiing in Europe, where lift-ticket costs at public mountains remain so reasonable that they’re drawing cost-conscious American skiers.
But private ski resorts are a peephole into another strata entirely—one that’s not only flush but teeming. There are enough ultra-high-net-worth people in America to fill Aspen, Telluride, Deer Valley, and Jackson Hole, among a dozen tony mountain towns. Baby boomers are holding between $84 trillion and $146 trillion in assets, much of which will be inherited by millennials in what economists refer to as the Great Wealth Transfer. Add to that the spoils of the tech boom, American energy independence, the AI trade, crypto, and a fire hose of pandemic-era government spending, and you can start to see how millions of Americans may soon need a fancier place to ski."
https://www.gq.com/story/inside-the-new-private-mountain-clubs-where-billionaires-ski
15. "Canada and the European NATO nations, together or separately, face challenges in replacing or even replicating much of the sophisticated intelligence support the United States provides. While European countries are enhancing their defense efforts, they lack the comprehensive and massive intelligence infrastructure the U.S. possesses.
While NATO nations have all agreed to a substantial increase in defense spending, the development and integration of advanced intelligence systems within Europe are still in progress and will not compensate for the immediate loss of U.S. intelligence. This is one reason why alliances are so important: The combined force is always greater than the sum of the individual members.
The ramifications of Trump’s decision extend beyond the battlefield. Given Putin’s well-documented war crimes and Russia’s continued attacks on civilians, restricting Ukraine’s access to intelligence raises serious ethical concerns about American complicity. In limiting Ukraine’s access to intelligence, the United States risks not just strategic miscalculation but moral failure—becoming an enabler of the very war crimes it once sought to prevent."
16. This was so good and came at right time. So many things to learn here on building businesses, building wealth and a great life. Only things that matter will be personal brand or AI-based businesses.
Learned the 60/30/10 rule and real world numbers/formulas for marketing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ERpvvaEUZY
17. "The experience of an entrepreneur selling to the U.S. military is not unlike that of a video game player. The Defense Department and its acquisition system exist in their own universe, with its own language, characters, unforeseen obstacles and progressively complicated levels that players must surmount. (In fact, “The Pentagon” itself sounds like a game world.)
Entrepreneurs new to the universe may find themselves lost, confused, or facing setbacks as they navigate the Pentagon’s acquisition bureaucracy. They must contend with a daunting number of people, an unfamiliar social ranking system and a new language – from acronyms like SBIR, JCIDS, and OTA to military phrases like “force multiplier” and “situational awareness.” They must find their way through over 4,000 pages of acquisitions guidance, develop a network of allies who can help them get to the next level, the Technology Readiness Level to be exact, where higher levels unlock additional contracts and new customers."
https://stanfordh4d.substack.com/p/the-quest-for-defense
18. "The same is true when working with the DoD. Understanding the landscape and having knowledge of milestones to be completed and people to know is necessary to move forward in the defense sales process. As entrepreneurs advance, they will have epiphanies about the problem their products solves, the value it adds, and for whom that cannot be precomputed. Entrepreneurs will then be awarded contracts by learning and applying all of this knowledge to delivering value to multiple stakeholders in the bureaucracy.
Let’s start with the first task: learning the universe. The Pentagon is unlike any other market most entrepreneurs have encountered. Entering this labyrinth means working with seasoned bureaucrats with years of contracting experience, learning a bevy of new terms and timelines, and competing with other players, like prime defense contractors, who have more knowledge, resources, and connections than an entrepreneurial newcomer."
https://stanfordh4d.substack.com/p/selling-to-defense-the-quest-for
19. Always enlightening view on geopolitics with Peter Zeihan.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9e0IZv31820
20. "Our entire Pentagon acquisition system is not oriented to buy from, learn from, or deal with this new class of external vendors. We built a great system to work with existing prime contractors: The top 10 or 20 get about 80% of all the defense contracts. It’s not that [people in the primes] are dumb, it’s not that they’re bad, it’s just that they can’t hire the best and the brightest because startups are paying baseball star salaries to AI engineers and drone folks. And [the primes] business model is not designed to do iterative and incremental innovation. It’s designed for change orders, long lead times, and waterfall engineering.
We can benchmark our progress against our potential adversaries. Look at the speed that China puts destroyers on the water, the innovation in drones that happens literally on a weekly basis, or the battlefield in Ukraine. There is no prime that is keeping up with that quantity.
Private capital, however, is pretty good at that. We just haven’t built a DoD acquisition system at scale that allows us to leverage its speed and energy.
So far, the DoD has been a terrible customer. Its acquisition cycles don’t match the cash flow needs of startups. And who’s going to be an acquisition partner for these guys? Lockheed? They don’t pay 10x or 50x revenue. You might get bought for, like, revenue."
https://www.tectonicdefense.com/the-godfather-of-defense-innovation-a-qa-with-steve-blank/
21. "Despite these negative remarks, any observer of geopolitics knows that innovative defense technology is not an abstraction—it is an essential pillar of global stability. The modern international order, in which human rights and democratic governance can flourish, did not emerge by accident. It was won on the battlefield, secured by superior military capabilities, and is maintained through vigilant deterrence.
Critics of defense technology fail to engage with the realities of the world we live in. Europe, long complacent about its security, is now rearming at a pace unseen since the Cold War in response to Russian aggression. China’s military ambitions continue to grow, with an expanding nuclear arsenal and aggressive posturing over Taiwan. These are not problems that can be solved with wishful thinking or moral posturing. They require technological superiority to deter escalation."
https://stanfordreview-org.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/stanfordreview.org/in-defense-of-defense-tech
22. Alt-Geopolitics and Geonomics. I disagree with these perspectives, these a--holes are definitely pro-Russia and pro-China, hiding in the West.
But trying to understand the opposing view here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bPYoT24B2uc&t=2s
23. "One of the most elite Ukrainian units accepting foreign volunteers received “a massive spike” of applications, according to an international serviceman involved in recruiting. The source, who spoke anonymously due to his unit’s regulations, said that a few thousand applications came in after the Oval Office meeting, with “a significant amount of guys expressing outrage and shock over what has been happening with the shift in American policy.”
24. "After the Soviets found out about all this, they created a Doomsday Machine of their own. So, now we have two, each with vastly more than double the firepower. That’s what’s being revved up today – to back Ukraine. Or, is the goal something more mundane? Like ass-covering or generation of cash flows to hungry corporates? Ego? We must study this desire for a wargasm before the world is screwed.
To be clear, I am not saying President Putin is right or should be let off scot-free. Nor am I saying that the US Military Industrial Complex should either. But, diplomacy, as distasteful as it may be, can address these aggressions better than a nuclear conflict."
https://drpippa.substack.com/p/kumbh-mela-ominicide-and-wargasm
25. "The message is simple: If adversity is an opportunity for growth, how lucky are we to grow into something harder and badder today?
The next time you're facing something hard, welcome it. These moments forge us if we let them.
Work through the process.
Learn the lessons.
Reap the FULL BENEFIT."
https://jaymartin.substack.com/p/bring-me-goliath
26. "We already know our leaders can’t be trusted.
Not with the management of our tax revenue, not to do what’s best for the people, and sure as hell to not abuse their positions of power for personal gain.
We can’t trust them with the economic prosperity of our nations. Despite this, these same people will soon wield the powers of financial gods, allowing them to manipulate and abuse our monetary system at will.
Powers that will allow them to punish you if you step out of line.
These are powers that even Kublai Khan, in his position as overlord of one of the largest empires in history, couldn’t have begun to imagine.
I’ve been talking about CBDCs in one way or another since 2020—nearly five years now. And all that time, it’s been one of those things that’s always been at arms length, never close enough for us to get too worried about its impact on our lives.
Well, not anymore.
For Europeans, it’s here this year.
For everyone else? Likely, very soon.
It’s time to ensure all your assets, income, or earning ability isn’t tied to just a single nation. To have access to some payment options outside the fiat system, like gold, silver, or Bitcoin. And ideally, to have at least one additional residency permit or citizenship outside your country of nationality.
In other words, to have a solid backup plan."
https://anticitizen.com/p/obey-or-perish
27. This was a surprisingly fascinating & wide ranging conversation. Lots of interesting takes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvpw4_O25eU
28. How Shawn Ryan built his media empire. Very instructive.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MogxOvTa9Bg
29. One of the best conversations on the state of VC right now. Lots of zombie Unicorns right now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2wHzNOqRbDQ
30. Venture capital in the world of AI. Exciting times.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fEE5sfroDcw
31. Good view on the state of China and US relations right now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzncmG-Tgj8
32. Solid overview of what is happening in Ukraine right now & where US support is critical.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PtjDh4uI1jw
33. If anyone believes China's rise will be benign or good for America and the West, this interview should make it very clear this is not the case.
The CCP is looking to make a Chinese-run world order, they write and talk about this publicly. Read "The Long Game."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5VXqruTt5M
34. "This hypothetical Chagas scenario was presented to me by Jake Adler, the 20-year-old founder of Pilgrim, a company working to leverage nanotechnology, bioelectronics, autonomous sensors, and AI systems to usher in a new era of supersoldiers and anti-threat biosurveillance. The company recently raised a $3.25 million round led by Thiel Capital, Cantos, and Refactor to pursue this vision.
Pilgrim aims to navigate the minefield of government absurdity, leveraging its quirks and failures in order to rapidly deploy usable biotech that will act as a force multiplier on our troops and revamp systems that are meant to protect us against biological warfare. In other words? Pilgrim wants to make supersoldiers, produce futuristic dual-use medical technology, and catch the next pandemic before it even begins.
Jake, a previous recipient of the Thiel Fellowship, has been experimenting with biotech since his early teens. He originally founded a sleep-tech company called Neusleep, iterating on a sleep mask that was designed to “shock you to sleep,” out of his grandmother’s old folks home, raising $275k from various sources in the process. Starting a biotech company at a place where, by his recollection, there was a sign explicitly prohibiting the presence of adult diapers in the pool, is a wonderful brand of irony. He has since graduated to the resourceful oddities of purchasing “tummy tuck” skin for the ex vivo testing of rapid wound-repair solutions, sneaking into (and getting kicked out of) defense conferences, and (subsequently) pitching government officials on bioweapons protections from a makeshift booth of upside-down trash bins behind said conference center.
All of this to say, Pilgrim will do more than pay lip service to the archetypal “where there’s a will, there’s a way” methodology of getting things done as an undersized, roguelike startup."
https://www.piratewires.com/p/creating-supersoldiers-and-curbing-biothreats
35. These guys are in the "America Bad" camp but they are cold realists. This helps me think through the mainstream narratives.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7n9w5S9LZkY
36. The great VC AI debate. I'm in the Lessin school of AI, only folks who benefit are the big incumbents and super small startups. The middle will be sub-scale and not deliver VC returns.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YcObLyRM15U
37. Fascinating conversation on VC and state of the venture market. It's pretty Bubbly at the later stage (ie. beyond Series C).
Synchs with what I am seeing too.
There Is Always an Exit Tax: The Price of Freedom and the Future
I am a big fan of Codie Sanchez who I had the privilege to meet once at my friend Eric Siu’s Leveling up Mastermind. An accomplished investor, business woman, one person media company, she is also a great teacher. She buys and manages an empire of small unsexy offline and online businesses like laundromats, car washes and other traditional service businesses.
Well known for sharing her knowledge online and teaching people how to get financial independence via buying profitable small businesses to build mini-Berkshire Hathaway's (for those who don’t know, Berkshire Hathaway is Warren Buffet's immensely massive and successful holding company of big businesses).
But she is also an amazingly wise lady about life. In a podcast she talks about her divorce from her previous husband and the key lesson from her father. Her words here:
“Two words my dad said to me which was “Exit Tax”. When I left it was expensive. Both physically and emotionally. And I told my dad about it, he said there is always an exit tax to freedom. And it stuck with me, this is just a toll. A Payment. Once it gets paid, what’s on the other side? That word freedom.”
It made me think. A LOT. Everything that we do comes to an end. Our life is full of relationships, work, business, personal and family. But we sometimes stay in them longer than is healthy for us because we are scared or weak. Or too proud or care too much about what people around us think.
Or more likely we suffer from sunk costs fallacy: where we are worried that everything we have put in before will be lost or wasted, whether these are emotional or monetary investments.
But we have to get past it mentally. Being sentimental and stuck in the past does not serve us well. We have to treat these as lost forever and take the hard lesson. It’s like taking a loss in stock investing, so you can deploy what’s left to a better, more profitable investment in the future.
That is the exit tax we need to pay so we can move on and hopefully get to a better place. Life is too short to stay in unhappy jobs, unhappy relationships or bad businesses & situations.
Equalizer 3: An Assassin’s Italian Holiday
I was a fan of the original tv series The Equalizer during the 80s. About an elite gentleman CIA assassin who tries to atone for all the terrible things he did in the service, by helping people get out of trouble. He uses his skills and experience serving justice to those in need, especially the poor and helpless. A literal equalizer for those who cannot get help from normal means. A new age Robin Hood or even more violent Batman. Something we all wish existed in real life.
Antoine Fuqua and Denzel Washington have a modern remake that is updated and way more violent. True revenge flicks. The first movie was about the Russian Mafia, the 2nd one he takes down some of his former CIA colleagues turned renegade. But the 3rd edition is him taking on the Camora, one of the most vicious mafia groups in Italy.
He ends up injured from a mission and winds up in a small town Altamonte in Sicily. While healing there, he befriends many of the locals and becomes one of the community. He eventually becomes their protector from the powerful mafia lord terrorizing the town.
What I loved about it was the beautiful landscapes of this historical town. The Mediterranean seascapes, the old churches, the plazas full of people, the winding hillside staircases, the reflection of the closed but kind local community. Italian living really is attractive. Lots of sun, delicious food, even better coffee and plenty of warm, kind people. Oh and again, the amazing food. (As an aside Italian cuisine is in my pantheon of top food, up there with Japanese and Chinese food).
A welcoming environment that is slow paced and sometimes disorganized. But it’s such a lovely way of living. No wonder people from all over the world are drawn to the country. And if it can domesticate a busy former CIA assassin, it can do the same for you.
We can all do with more Italy in our lives. I realized this in 2023 when I went to Puglia for my friend Stefan’s wedding. It was such a great respite from my normal modern busy life. Or those of us who are lucky enough to jet set across the world for a career. A slower pace of life and the simple joys provide the reset we can all sometimes use.
Shortcomings: What you Hate Shows You Who You Are
I found an interesting new Asian-American romantic comedy, Shortcomings, which was based on a popular graphic novel. It was pretty damn funny as it acts as critique and observation of American and Asian-American culture that takes place in Northern California. It was also a bit dark and maybe hit too close to home but I saw it at the right time in my life.
I really disliked the main character Ben, who is this snarky, negative, arrogant, elitist & judgemental Asian-American guy who just pisses on everything and everyone. He is a snob and thinks he is better than everyone. Yet he is just a low level manager at a local movie theater. He cannot be happy for his loved ones and can only see the bad side of things.
There is this insightful comment when his long term girlfriend breaks up with him:
“you want to know what is f—ing embarrassing, trying to hold on to something just because you are pathologically afraid of change. That’s what you do and it felt like death to me. I also think you have problems with anger, depression, your weird self-hatred issues and just the relentless negativity. Your resistance to grow, to change….”
Then I realized that damn it, that’s actually a pretty good description of me. All of it. All spot on. I’m so negative (thank you Canada), angry and just awful sometimes. This is what gets me into fights with my family. Every single one of them. It is also probably why I hate doing anything with Asian-American culture (god, I detest that obnoxious Gold House and that group of people. A bunch of arrogant hosers).
But what I did enjoy was how Asian culture has become more mainstream. Showed a shift in the culture that reflects. An Asian American guy with a white girl on screen, which I have never seen until the last 3 years. Talking about the Korean wave hitting as well. But it’s also how people try to find themselves now and who can start to identify with people on screen. In the popular culture that doesn’t fit old stereotypes. When to be yourself and when to pretend to fit in. But also how people self-sabotage.
There is this scene when Ben’s new girlfriend breaks up with him and he is of course a total dick, she says to him: “I know you are going to want to blame society, or my sexuality or on your race or whatever. But one day you are going to understand that this really is just about you.”
So many of us don’t take responsibility for our failures. Or recognize our own flaws. The sooner you do that, the sooner you can fix it. But we usually do that only after we hit rock bottom. Sometimes you have to hear the hard painful truth from someone you love (or used to love you). Guess there is a big lesson there. That’s when you actually grow.
This should also be freeing: we are truly the architect of our own fate for better or worse. Let’s make it for the better.
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads April 13th, 2025
“Technology is a useful servant but a dangerous master.'' -- Christian Lous Lange
"Essentially, the history of warfare can be divided into two distinct epochs. The first epoch, which lasted from the Battle of Kadesh to the Siege of Vicksburg (3,137 years), was an epoch of armies that stood up straight in formation. The second epoch, our current epoch, is the epoch of the empty battlefield in which soldiers spend most of their time trying to conceal themselves from the enemy.
The war in Ukraine has demonstrated that the era of the empty battlefield is intensifying. The most powerful coefficient on the battlefield today is the nexus of modern ISR (Intelligence, Surveillance, Reconnaissance) and precision strike systems. This power is brought to bear through drones of all types – spotter drones surveilling the battlefield and strike drones which include First Person View (FPV) units. The ability of both Ukrainian and Russian forces to survey and strike the battlefield is so precise that they can find and hit enemy vehicles and positions at particular points of vulnerability: footage of FPV drones flying through doorways and windows of enemy strongpoints is now everywhere.
On modern battlefields, hiding is now a critical skill. Anything (or anyone) that can be seen can be hit and destroyed. Blanketing electronic warfare, which can deny airspace to enemy drones, remains far away, and until it arrives, the ability to win decisive victories has become very difficult. Armies are forced to disperse and conceal themselves to avoid enemy surveillance and strike systems and, therefore, find it difficult to gain momentum.
This reality was witnessed early in the war through Ukraine’s successes in using American rocket systems to strike Russian ammunition dumps – in response, Russia dispersed and concealed its supply depots. Dispersion has also now taken place with manpower and vehicles – despite the large numbers of personnel mobilized on both sides, assault actions are regularly conducted by relatively small groups (often company-sized or smaller) as these are the only forces that can be safely organized to attack."
https://im1776.com/lessons-from-ukraine/
2. "Zelensky is in a vise. Washington is no longer reliable – or even predictable – Europe is scrambling but under-gunned, and Putin’s dream of parading through Kyiv’s Maidan (Independence Square) is costing both Russia and Ukraine a generation of men.
Kyiv Post’s sources say Zelensky’s team is “regrouping,” but the vibe on the ground is grim. Ukraine’s leader can wait for Europe’s rhetoric to become reality, roll the dice on a settlement that stinks of surrender, or fight on with whatever’s left in the tank. None of it’s pretty, and none of it’s guaranteed. But if I’ve learned anything from war, it’s this: when the chips are down, you don’t fold – you bluff, you brawl, or you bleed. Zelensky’s still standing. For now."
https://www.kyivpost.com/opinion/48156
3. "Entrepreneurs would do well to think through the “magic moment” in their products—what wows people, what makes someone excitedly share their experience with a friend, and how they can reduce the time and effort it takes for a new user to encounter that magic moment. Magic moments, just as they sound, are incredible experiences. Even to this day, I vividly remember the magic moment from decades ago when I believed a driver could control the stereo in his car with his voice."
https://davidcummings.org/2025/03/08/unforgettable-tech-magic-moments/
4. "Now, imagine you — yes, you — created this entire universe for yourself. Like entering a maze in an amusement park, you’ve imposed these constraints for the fun of it, to create a challenge, an adventure. Why else would you do it?
Now, let’s take it further. Imagine a brilliant sun — your higher self — shining above a layer of clouds. The sun is always there, always radiating, but you can’t see it because of the cloud cover. The trick is learning how to poke holes in the clouds, letting more light through, until one day the clouds dissolve entirely and you merge with that higher self.
This is a profound shift — where you step through the illusion and start playing life instead of suffering through it."
https://newsletter.sanjaysays.co/p/feeling-tired-and-run-down-9179ee5c5ef9d381
5. Net net: it's just going to be more volatile in Ukraine and the world in general with Trump.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDf8YBuRIvU
6. Pragmatism matters. Europe's naivety has been deadly to their populace and their own interests.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eh1zmDi0qN0
7. These guys are a--holes but I try to understand the opposing narratives in the Russia-Ukraine war.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EuxMZmMOt3M
8. You have to break out of your own narrative bubble. Factually though China is kicking our a-s. I wouldn't invest in China personally but it seems to be an undervalued market.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SwHnJn0ubYs
9. Understanding the economic revolution in China right now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbpMPzCJetU
10. Understanding Thrive Capital, one of the top multi stage VC firms around.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIIQR_FlKnw&t=45s
11. "As an investor, there is a play here - be open to things that violate the tenets of the hardware lottery. If we fund new ideas, even if they take a bit longer to generate economics, we could create the really breakthrough technologies that will get us to AGI. Of course, given the current assumption by many that AGI is just around the corner, maybe that is a difficult bet to take."
https://investinginai.substack.com/p/the-hardware-lottery-and-the-future
12. "The most successful AI M&A strategies combine small, mid-sized, and large-scale acquisitions to create a diversified approach to AI adoption.
✅ Small acquisitions ($5M-$50M) provide technical talent and niche AI capabilitiesat a relatively low cost.
✅ Mid-sized acquisitions ($50M-$500M) offer fully developed AI solutions that can be integrated into existing operations.
✅ Large-scale acquisitions ($500M+) allow companies to establish themselves as market leaders in AI-driven transformation.
The AI race is already underway, and the winners will be those that make decisive moves now. Companies that integrate AI early—whether through acquisition, strategic investment, or partnerships—will be best positioned to lead in an increasingly AI-driven economy."
https://startupstechvc.beehiiv.com/p/buy-now-build-later-the-smartest-ai-play-for-fortune-500s
13. "Claude Code re-anchors what I expect to pay for software and the delivery time of that software, perhaps unrealistically. If it’s just a few minutes to build an Android app, how long could a fully functioning software product take to build? It might not be accurate to linearly extrapolate simple apps, build time to complex enterprise apps. But it makes me wonder.
Imagine applying this strategy across half to three quarters of a white-collar workforce & using another AI to label each action an employee takes with AI and aggregating that across an organization."
https://tomtunguz.com/cost-of-this/
14. Super fun episode this week with the boys at NIA.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UxWZiyLU_G4
15. "Increased demand caused by the prospect of European rearmament has sent shares in German defence companies surging as they ramp up production.
Against this backdrop, some car factories in Germany are being repurposed to make weapons as European manufacturers battle a market that has failed to recover to its pre-Covid levels."
https://www.yahoo.com/news/volkswagen-open-building-military-equipment-160011493.html
16. "Current estimates put the entire force necessary to replace the US contingent in Europe at 330,000 troops or 55 brigades. That will be a stretch. At present Germany can barely muster a single combat-ready division. But getting to a place in which large European states are able to competently defend themselves does not require unleashing the demons of World War II. It requires returning to something more like the normality of Europe in the age of NATO deterrence in the 1970s and 1980s."
https://adamtooze.substack.com/p/chartbook-360-war-economies-disentangling
17. "However, Moore and Pasarell couldn’t stomach seeing their event move to a different location, so they brought the deal to an unlikely source: Oracle founder Larry Ellison.
Ellison started playing tennis in the early 2000s after pickup basketball became too hard on his body. The billionaire received private lessons at his residence five days a week, and his instructor just so happened to be a mutual friend of Raymond Moore.
This is how Larry Ellison ended up buying the Indian Wells tournament for $100 million. He obviously has a lot of money and could afford it, but this wasn’t just a passion project. Ellison had been attending the tournament for several years and wanted to run it like a legitimate business, reinvesting profits back into the fan and player experience to build something truly special — and that’s precisely what he did."
https://huddleup.substack.com/p/how-a-billionaire-built-the-worlds
18. "Canada faces an urgent choice: continue relying on unpredictable partners and risk strategic irrelevance, or build genuine capability for autonomous action. The path forward demands recalibration of Canadian security thinking and expansion of capabilities in three domains: special operations forces, offensive cyber operations, and intelligence collection.
We must undertake a generational project to build these capabilities—not to repudiate alliances but as insurance against their uncertainty. For a middle power with limited resources, the most efficient path to strategic autonomy lies in asymmetric capabilities that provide disproportionate strategic effects relative to their cost. Special forces, cyber operations, and intelligence align with Canada's comparative advantages: a highly educated population, advanced technological base, diverse society, and reputation as a constructive international actor."
https://suthakamal.substack.com/p/canadas-moment-building-strategic
19. "All the pushups in the world haven’t prevented the vaunted Russian military from turning in a decidedly lackluster performance in Ukraine. But to the American right, perceptions and posturing and vibes are often more important than numbers and statistics. Russia gives off strength, so it must be strong.
And to the American right, strength is everything in international affairs. It’s a dog-eat-dog world out there, and concepts like the rules-based international order or international law are laughable. If Russia and Europe are to fight, Trump and company want to bet on the side with the shirtless pushups.
Of all the reasons why Trump has abandoned Europe, this is the only one that the region can do anything about. Europeans are not going to give up their fundamental values, and they won’t be able to disabuse Trump of his dreams of partnering with Russia and pretending it’s the 19th century. But what Europe can do is to look strong. It can beef up its defenses by a huge amount, implement universal military training, build up its nuclear arsenal, and boost heavy industry and defense manufacturing. Poland is already doing all of this, and the UK, France, and Germany are already moving in the direction of rearmament. That’s good.
Europe can’t make Trump or his party embrace their values. But what they can do is to become strong enough where Trump respects them instinctively. That strength will push Trump toward a posture of neutrality, instead of friendliness toward Russia. And maybe, after the weird rightist minority that has taken over the country no longer holds power, America and Europe can reestablish their storied alliance — on a more equal footing this time."
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/why-america-betrayed-europe
20. "Since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Russia has attacked the United States and Europe on a near-daily basis using what are often referred to as “hybrid” operations, meant to hide the hand of the Russian government and to remain below the threshold of war so as not to trigger a response."
https://www.thebulwark.com/p/trump-courts-putin-russians-trying-kill-americans-gray-zone-hybrid-war
21. A truly unique and interesting person. Cyan Banister.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c1eoWu8QVIU
22. "Putin wants a weak, failed Ukrainian state. Obviously Ukraine wants the opposite.
And this war, and negatiation now is not about NATO enlargement or Ukraine’s NATO membership. It never was. Simply put it is about Ukraine’s sovereignty, independent of Russia, or not.
Ukraine will not accept any deal that undermines/fails to secure its fundamental sovereignty. For Ukriane it is about the survival of the state, and it’s people. For Putin it is about the opposite. So while Trump might see this simply as a case of war or peace, for the two main protagonists in this war and negotiations is is about something different, and war has been the result of the underlining problem/dispute about Ukrainian sovereignty.
Not sure Trump et al get all this."
https://timothyash.substack.com/p/a-game-of-chicken-kyiv-or-kiev
23. Always strong sober analysis by George Friedman. Founder of Geopolitical Futures.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6XttbqpM_M
24. This was a fun interview.
https://agoldfisher.medium.com/ai-robotics-the-future-of-work-328baca898fc
25. I think both of these people are CCP shills. But I try to listen to everyone to try to understand the situation on the ground. China is a major threat.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFV7kHgctJ8
26. Lots of good nuggets on geopolitics measurements right now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLhhVDo4xGo
27. One of the more interesting characters in Silicon Valley. Alex Karp of Palantir.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jUK-VYCh5go
28. Lots of fun stuff this week in Silicon Valley news.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6myq5J5PjI
29. One of the more original and interesting investors: Sam Lessin. A Fun conversation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDjDzWCdlx0
30. "Achieving peace, security, and stability will require tough decisions and sacrifices. The kind of sacrifices that win wars. Is the EU willing to make them? As Trump advances with his America First agenda, it’s easy for proponents of liberty and democracy to despair. But there’s nothing like the threat of a brutal autocrat in Russia and an unpredictable president in the White House to bring unity to the continent. The bad news is the EU can no longer count on the U.S. The good news: They may not need us."
https://www.profgalloway.com/europe-becomes-a-union/
31. "For startups, working with the Department of Defense (DoD) can feel like stepping into a fortress of bureaucracy — procurement is slow, compliance is daunting, and knowing who actually makes buying decisions is like navigating a maze in the dark. Yet, for those who learn to successfully navigate these hurdles, the rewards can be enormous.
The DoD is one of the world’s largest and most stable customers, spending hundreds of billions on modern defense systems and technology annually. Unlike volatile consumer markets, defense contracts offer not just funding, but also long-term sustainment. Small wins can lead to multi-million-dollar deals, resulting in high-margin, predictable revenue streams. And beyond financial incentives, building technology that strengthens national security carries undeniable appeal in supporting our country and our interests as Americans.
But this market is not for the impatient. Sales cycles take years, compliance is non-negotiable, and understanding who buys what, and through which funding mechanisms, is as important as having a strong product. Startups must approach the DoD with a strategic, long-term mindset — because while the opportunities are vast, so are the barriers to entry.
While we hope for DoD procurement reform, the following is a high-level primer intended to arm you with a rough framework of how to approach selling to the DoD today."
https://a16z.com/dod-contracting-for-startups-101/
32. I don't agree with this perspective but it is Alt-Geopolitics with Alex Krainer. Always an interesting take.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QjSuUOa9TYI
33. Damn, this was a deep and valuable interview with Silicon Valley VC legend: Doug Leone.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xCWz0OxE16s
34. "While innovation and new production often steal the headlines, the future of U.S. manufacturing hinges on an often-overlooked component: maintenance and overhaul — what’s commonly known as the “aftermarket.” This vast ecosystem of maintenance, repair, logistics, and related jobs is essential to ensure these innovations operate seamlessly over time. Without addressing the aging infrastructure that underpins the country’s economic engine, even the most advanced progress in hardware and technology will fall short of its full potential.
Until we inspire a new generation of young people to enter these critical sectors, the momentum behind reshoring and revitalizing manufacturing may fall short. In the meantime, the key lies in leveraging technology to bridge the labor gap while simultaneously encouraging the next generation to see the potential and excitement in these massive, essential industries."
Departures: Passings & Comfort in Ceremony
Another flight and another set of movies. I’ve been wanting to watch this Japanese movie called “Departures” for a long time but never got around to it. It’s a movie that covers the depressing topic of death but it also turned out to be about life too. Life affirming actually. Seeing death makes you appreciate life and the art of living well. Beautiful natural scenery, the Onsen hot spring, lovely music and delicious food.
Daigo is a professional cellist in Tokyo who returns to his home town Yamagata after his orchestra is shut down. He takes a job as an assistant to a local undertaker who performs the passing ceremony for families of the dead.
After a rough start, Daigo starts to learn the way and begins to understand the comfort their ceremony provides for the family of the dead and the living. It’s a grim but important job. He starts to find meaning in this work. His wife and friends slowly come around to the immense value of his work.
There is a scene during a ceremony where they are met with an angry father whose wife had passed. But the caretaker lovingly and meticulously as only the Japanese do, restores the dead wife’s look, touching the mourning family deeply.
Daigo says:
“One grown cold, restored to beauty for eternity. This was done calmly and precisely….with a gentler affection than anything else. At the final parting to send them on their way. Everything is done peacefully and beautifully.”
This is also a restart for him, finding a new path to fulfillment. There is a scene of him watching the salmon swim upstream. He says: “Sad, coming all this way to die. it doesn’t seem worth it.” He is told by a wiser old man: “They want to go home, back to where they were born.”
I truly believe people go somewhere after death. Humans are energy and as the laws of physics show energy doesn’t just disappear. It just takes a new form.
There is a quote from the movie that stayed with me: “I’ve often thought that maybe death is like a gateway. Dying doesn’t mean the end. You go through it and onto the next thing. It’s a gate.”
Japanese death ceremonies are a beautiful way to send this new form on its way. And more importantly are a form of solace and closure for the living.
Weakness Invites Aggression: Peace is Achieved Through Strength
I know I write a lot about geopolitics. These things are important to understand. What’s going on? Who are our allies and who are our enemies. It affects where we do business and how. Which industries, sectors, companies and countries to invest or work in. Which countries or regions to live in.
I used to be Libertarian in the way of the “Sovereign Individual” book, which is a classic book worth reading and one ahead of its time in detailing important technology trends. It discusses the concept of escaping high tax and unfree places to lower tax and business friendlier climates.
However the great flaw in this is what happens when the places that are totally free are crime ridden anarchic hellholes like Somalia or dystopian sci-fi dictatorships like China under the CCP who have exported their surveillance state to their allies.
As @noahpinion writes libertarians eventually understand the importance of having a strong military and defense to enforce their borders against enemies coming over the hills and raping, killing and pillaging their populace as per the “Tamerlane effect” like Russia invading UKraine in 2022. Or the Hamas terror attacks in Israel on October 7th. The list goes on.
Unfortunately it seems the West and its complacent & brain dead populace has still not woken up to this. All these governments talk about doing stuff, but the only countries who seem to have stepped up is Poland who have increased their defense spending to a whopping 4-5% of GDP. Japan has truly doubled their defense spending and some of the countries like Finland, Sweden have always punched above their weight. The Baltics and many Eastern European countries who directly face the Russian threat are ramping up.
For most countries in the West, it is “performative theater as foreign policy” as American geopolitical strategist Eldridge Colby calls it. Weakly-led countries like Canada, Germany, the UK and most of the EU talk a big game but at the same time have let their militaries shrink and their industrial bases get run down. It took 3 years of war in Ukraine and Trump & his admin openly talking about leaving NATO has caused the UK, France and Germany to finally do something.
Truly unserious people there although this is also the case in America where our so-called leadership from Bush Jr to Obama to Trump and Biden have squandered all of our advantages coming out of the Cold War.
Unfortunately, we are not in a posturing world anymore but the real world now. I don’t like this at all but reality is a hard teacher. Bullies and criminals only attack the weak. This has always been the case throughout human history in every society. I hope we wake up soon and prepare our countries as the old and much repeated axiom goes: “If you want peace, prepare for war.”
In the end, countries get whatever they deserve based on the good or bad choices they made decades ago. While the West is behind, maybe the new sense of urgency and action will help us catch up and get strong. You can’t be sovereign if you are not strong. This is the hard truth of human history, now reasserting itself harshly after the unwinding of the Unipolar world of Pax Americana.
Fixing Yourself and Building Momentum in Life: The Aggregation of Small Things
Q1, Winter is always brutal. You are almost always extra busy as business usually ramps up.
Additionally the weather sucks badly, at least in SF in my neighborhood, it’s wet and dark. Not as bad as in Canada and Europe but the lack of sun really affects me. All probably not helped by my mess of a home life. I honestly was feeling a bit suicidal at that time in 2024, something I’ve only felt a few times in my life (2001 and 2020 specifically).
As I wrote in an earlier post, that’s where Thailand came in. I booked a full week of fight training at the excellent Stay Wellness Resort with its own world class on site gym & Muay Thai kickboxing facilities with amazing personal trainers. There was also a top notch health and wellness clinic as well as an excellent spa.
Nothing better than 1 on 1 Muay Thai boxing intensive training. Sweating and burning out all the rage. Followed by yoga, sports massage treatments or cryotherapy or IV energy treatments. That and a sauna with a soak in Onsen Hot Spring. I also had 1 on a Personal training to help finetune my training regime. I got plenty of sun and slept very well every night.
It was amazing and all these small things together completely changed my mood and turned around my outlook. You sometimes need to get out of your normal everyday environment and rut. In fact, I would argue this may be the only way to get a breakthrough.
My point is that sometimes it’s doing a whole bunch of small things together that can help change your momentum in your life.
I felt so much better after the trip. Better about myself because I worked out hard and felt proud of doing hard things. The workouts also gave me the physical and mental strength to tackle all the challenges I’m facing in my life at home. Sometimes that is all it takes. A turnaround, bit by bit, piece by piece.
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads April 6th, 2025
“April is a reminder that something better is always around the corner.”—Unknown
This looks great. Timely too as America becomes a gangster state.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qKGgw7Ob5f4
2. Good discussion this week on NIA.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jioOgPYRevc
3. "Where in the 21st Century could Letters of Marque and Reprisal come in handy?
Cartels and terrorists have bank accounts and cryptocurrency accounts? Huh. I am sure we can weaponize some autists to go after those. Take it to a Prize Court, and they can decide how to make it legally theirs. 38% for the government that gave them a letter of marque and they keep the rest?
A fleet of boats smuggling weapons to the Houthis in the Gulf of Aden?
A cartel head travels by private jet on a regular basis and some enterprising people find a way to divert it to a US jurisdiction? What reward is there for that?
Those are just the first three things that come to mind. There are more.
If privateering was good enough for the Father of our Country, it’s good enough for me.
At sea, in the air, in space, in cyberspace…yes. Let’s make privateering great again."
https://cdrsalamander.substack.com/p/privateers-now-more-than-ever
4. "You may not expect the President of the United States to crash the US economy on purpose, but that is what appears to happen. Hopefully this is a healthy correction that allows us to rebuild on a stronger base, but either way — put your seatbelt on.
We are in for a bumpy ride."
https://pomp.substack.com/p/the-age-of-economic-chaos
5. "The enthusiasm to create a multinational military comes on the heels of von der Leyen’s ambitious plans to reindustrialize the EU and establish a place of prominence in the AI arms race. Among the many problems with this vision, one is determinative: physics.
That Europe is a drone attack away from yet another energy emergency is scandalous enough, but it is also testimony to the impossibility of converting platitudes into bombs. Brussels might refuse to acknowledge this fundamental truth, let alone confront it, but it is the sort of problem that cannot be wished away. The numbers are truly shocking, so let’s break them down.
This brings us back to the EU’s fantastical plan to build a military capable of slogging it out with the Russians without US support. There is talk of investing hundreds of billions of Euros to “rearm Europe,” presumably through the issuance of Eurobonds. Even if the requisite political approvals are secured from member nations, the plan is doomed to fail from the start. The very industries essential to executing such a strategy are the ones being driven out of business by exorbitant energy costs. One wonders of what Brussels thinks bombs, bullets, tanks, planes, trucks, and ships are made."
https://newsletter.doomberg.com/p/project-porcupine
6. "We’re naturally optimistic about the USA coming out ahead in any sort of financial/economic warfare. That said, there is a dystopian version where this drags on for years. In that case you already know what we think: all this leads to more robots/automation.
Cost of production in the USA is just not going to work when compared to pennies on the dollar wages in places like SE Asia and South of the Border.
In the corporate world, you put in extra hours but if the company needs to restructure, you’re gone and forgotten within weeks.
The company survives, the execs cash their bonuses and you’re out scrambling.
The lesson? You are an expendable line item. A cog in a wheel. The second you forget that, you lose. The only way to win is to stop thinking like an employee and start thinking like an owner. Build skills, leverage, and multiple income streams so you’re treading water if you get hit vs. scrambling to make it on a month to month basis.
Your employer isn’t your family. The government isn’t family. Your boss isn’t your friend. You are on your own."
https://bowtiedbull.io/p/no-one-is-coming-to-save-you-not
7. View from Taiwan of the Ukraine & USA rupture. Studeman knows what he is talking about.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9AO978OsfXo
8. "If you’ve been in the online business space you’ve probably heard of funnels. They are not a well understood concept by most people (who are just winging their business relying largely on traffic)… to their own detriment.
EVERY business is essentially a funnel whether the business owner realizes this or not.
A funnel is essentially how a customer goes from “I don’t know you” to making a purchase from you."
https://lifemathmoney.com/what-the-fuck-is-a-funnel-breaking-down-a-business/
9. "But clearly, the uses of the minerals Ukraine has go far beyond the energy transition. And Ukraine has tried hard to interest the new administration in its mineral wealth.
Also, China controls much of the world's supply of these materials. Opening access to Ukraine’s supply could reduce U.S. dependence elsewhere.
"To the credit of the first Trump administration, they have always put critical minerals as a very important policy priority because they knew they were so heavily reliant on China," Moerenhout said. “That priority for the Trump administration doesn’t change at all because they are less, let’s say, less aggressive about clean energy deployment targets in the future.”
https://time.com/7262115/trump-ukraine-minerals/
10. "Actually the four point peace plan suggested by the U.K., and the BIFs, Britain, Italy and France, as leading the way, seemed sensible. Arm Ukraine, give it the tools to defend itself, try a one month truce (covering air and seas, which is more easily verifiable) with Russia first, before a full scale ceasefire. Europe made clear that Ukraine need security guarantees, and arms to defend itself.
Third, events in the WH must have been the final wake up call to Europe, that NATO is dead, the US security guarantee for Europe is over, and that they have to step up if they care about their own security. And I think we saw that over the weekend. There is zero excuse now for Europe not to massively step up its defence spending, and build back its hard power. Zero excuses.
European defence spending will step up, but as we all know it faces capacity constraints in military industries, hence a short term reliance on the US is inevitable.
But Europe has leverage, if it ever realised it.
It will increase defence spending but will need to buy off the U.S. in the short term. If it were clever it would try and get ahead of the curve by committing to a long term arms procurement programme from the US. Say $1 trillion over ten years, a deal that even Trump could not say no to. Call it the Trump Defence of Democracy Programme, whatever you need to play to Trump’s enormous ego. Likely Trump could not say not to the jobs, jobs, jobs created in the US. But this would enable Europe to get over the short term gap in defence production, giving it time to reorient its economies and industry."
https://timothyash.substack.com/p/ukraine-silver-lining-to-ambush-in
11. "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.
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”)"
https://mercurial.substack.com/p/understanding-trump
12. "These folks probably don’t own a lot of Ripple, Solana, or Cardano — not many people do, after all. And so if Trump’s crypto fund goes through, these folks will be on the hook for higher taxes (or higher inflation) to pay out whoever does own a lot of Ripple, Solana, and Cardano. Trump softened the blow a bit by belatedly adding that he would have the fund buy Bitcoin and Ether, which a lot more people own. But it seems clear that if Trump’s idea goes through, a relatively small number of people are going to get enormous taxpayer-funded payouts.
Who stands to gain? Well, that’s the first reason crypto is such an ingenious tool for regimes to send money to favored individuals. Crypto holdings are anonymous — the public doesn’t even know who has a bunch of XRP, SOL, and ADA. But if you have a bunch of one or more of these coins, you can go whisper in Trump’s ear: “Hey man, I own a ton of Cardano.” And if you’re someone Trump wants to pay out, he can then just include Cardano in his list of cryptocurrencies that he wants the U.S. government to buy. Everyone knows that someone got a big payday, but no one knows who, except for the parties involved. Regime crypto payouts are inherently secret, even when done in plain sight."
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/a-sovereign-crypto-fund-is-a-new
13. "In the US alone, the Fed and Treasury created approximately $4 trillion of credit between 2020 and 2022 in response to the Flu-19 pandemic.
The DOGE-inspired money printing could be 70% to 80% of COVID levels.
Bitcoin rose approximately 24x from its lows in 2020 to its highs in 2021 due to $4 trillion of money printing in the US alone. Given that the Bitcoin market cap is much larger now than then, let’s be conservative and call it a 10x rise for $3.24 trillion of money printing in the US alone. For those who ask how we get to $1 million in Bitcoin during the Trump presidency, this is how.
What Must Be True
I’m painting a very rosy future picture for Bitcoin even though the markets are currently in the shitter. Let’s go through my assumptions so readers can decide for themselves whether they are reasonable or not.
Trump will debt-finance America First.
Trump is using DOGE as a way to cull political opponents addicted to fraudulent income streams, curtail government spending, and increase the likelihood of a US government spending slowdown-led recession.
The Fed will respond pre or post-recession with a raft of policies that will increase the quantity and reduce the price of money.
Given your worldview, it’s up to you to determine if this makes sense."
https://cryptohayes.substack.com/p/kiss-of-death
14. "The good news here is that a country doesn’t actually have to produce a bunch of standout inventions and Nobel-winning scientific discoveries in order to get rich. Singapore, Korea, and Taiwan all have higher per capita GDP than Japan does. So the question of “Where are all the Chinese breakthroughs?” might ultimately not matter to China’s leaders. Being “giant Korea” or “giant Taiwan” doesn’t sound like a particularly bad fate.
Still, I do wonder why China, with its vast talent pool, its avalanche of research funding, and its huge consumer markets, hasn’t produced more game-changing inventions and discoveries yet. I really doubt it’s a function of autocracy — the CCP would surely reward a Chinese researcher for inventing mRNA vaccines or the transformer model or Crispr. And Frank Wang wasn’t punished for inventing the modern quadcopter drone — in fact, he’s a billionaire, and seems to be escaping the negative attention that peers like Jack Ma have received.
One possibility is that China’s economic institutions reward fast-following and intense competition over breakthrough innovation. The lack of strong intellectual property protection might make it economically pointless to invent something really new — it’ll just get copied by someone else who takes all the money. That seems like it would encourage more incremental advances. In science, incentives for quantity of papers over quality might be the culprit. These incentives, along with various industrial policies, might produce intensive overcompetition, which I believe Chinese people call “neijuan”.
Whether China can tweak its system to produce more breakthrough discoveries and inventions is an open question. Whether it should even care about doing so, given the success of countries like Singapore, Taiwan, and Korea, is another open question. The country certainly does tons of innovation, and maybe the incremental kind is all you really need.
But if the scarcity of breakthroughs persists, I think there’s the possibility that, between that and China’s censorship of art and culture, 21st century great powers might simply turn out to be a bit more boring than their 20th century predecessors."
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/is-china-inventing-big-important
15. Fascinated with this city. Megacity of Chengdu in China.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UqmPUsnWg14
16. A Hopeful view. Lesson from history for Ukraine.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-QXz9wotrU
17. Super interesting company.
"Sequoia-backed Mach Industries, the defense tech founded by 21-year-old Ethan Thornton, landed a contract with the U.S. Army and has plans for its first factory, Thornton told TechCrunch.
The factory will be 115,000 square feet in Huntington Beach, California, where Mach’s headquarters is located, CEO Thornton said. While that sounds like an expensive zip code for a weapons factory, Southern California — in the shadow of SpaceX — has become a hotspot for America’s burgeoning defense tech industry.
Mach is also announcing it was selected by the Army Applications Laboratoryto develop a vertical takeoff precision cruise missile it calls “Strategic Strike.” This was a developmental contract that was awarded in the third quarter of 2024."
18. "For LPs, the implications are clear: backing specialists is a performance-driven necessity.
Generalist funds have been the go-to model for a long time, and it makes sense. The risk is spread across various industries, so if one area takes a hit, the whole portfolio doesn’t suffer. Diversification can help smooth out returns over time and give the flexibility to chase new opportunities—crypto yesterday, AI today, and ‘let’s see’ tomorrow. They can move where the action is, which can be an advantage in a fast-changing market.
In a world where technology is evolving at the fastest speed we have ever seen, the ‘jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none’ approach is becoming increasingly fragile.
Specialist firms have one big advantage: depth. When your thesis is laser-focused, you’re more likely to spot the real outliers early—before the noise kicks in and the price tags skyrocket. And if you’re right? The upside is exactly what LPs should be chasing—a 47% higher chance of landing in the top quartile. Of course, specialisation has its risks—if the sector struggles, so does the fund. But that’s the game. Instead of relying on generalists to cover everything, LPs should manage risk by spreading allocations across multiple specialists."
https://jamesheathvc.substack.com/p/why-specialists-will-win-the-next
19. "So Ukraine seems to have agreed to sign the minerals deal, and go along with Trump’s peacemaking plans, but they are not going to accept anything the Russia and the U.S. try and impose on them. Important there that if Ukraine is going to be pushed to de facto accept the loss of any territory to Russia, there is zero chance that this would be accepted without cast iron assurances that the territory remainng under control by Kyiv is secure. At the minimum I would think that will require a cast iron commitment that the U.S., West will continue to supply arms to Ukraine so it is able to defend itself.
NATO membership and bilateral security guarantees are nice (but unlikely) to haves but in the end the best assurance of Ukraine’s security is its own armed forces having the tools to defend the country. Russia, of course, will demand demilitarisation of Ukraine - specific limits in Ukraine’s military capability, not that Ukraine is a threat to Russia but obviously as Russia wants to invade Ukraine again in the future. I think there is zero chance that Ukraine will accept any deal where limits are imposed on its future military capability - unless that is others, like NATO, provide the direct security guarantee."
https://timothyash.substack.com/p/zelensky-bowed-but-but-beaten
20. The Danger Zone right now in Asia. Worth watching.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dfbv2eHEdbY
21. "Venture investors are moving away from things without AI, not realizing there will still be some great businesses that just never need AI. Or, there will be some businesses where one possible market differentiator will be to be the one non-AI player with a higher human touch.
Venture and PE groups are probably both undervaluing companies that sell tech to the government, in light of recent cuts (and perceived coming cuts). Government has to be modernized and stay competitive and I expect these startups and growth companies will do better than people expect - particularly those that have both government and commercial customer segments.
And finally, agent deployments, which will definitely happen long term, are probably a little too aggressive. At my venture fund, we have a thesis that in 2026 you will start to see a lot of AI deployments break because they were put in to replace a human workflow that was only partially understood. Investing in the companies that benefit when that happens will be profitable.
In general, this is an easy strategy to execute.
Pick an area that was a good investment area that people now think is suffering from changes (DOGE, AI, etc).
Think through the catalysts that will cause the problems of the aggressive change to be realized by the powers that be.
Invest against that."
https://investinginai.substack.com/p/the-chestertons-fence-ai-investing
22. "An interesting trend I’m seeing in AI startup business models is paying per outcome instead of per month or year, which is the traditional with SaaS companies. My guess is that it would be unappealing for incumbents—who are used to guaranteed per user revenue—to shift to a performance-based model. Mike agrees, saying that counter-positioning—taking advantage of an incumbent’s reluctance to adopt a new model that undermines their existing revenue streams—is a powerful way for startups to compete.
It’s also a tale as old as time. Back in the 1990s, when Microsoft decided to compete with a startup, it was effectively a death sentence; it just had to bundle the competing product into Windows. But Google countered this by monetizing through ads instead of per-seat licensing. Microsoft couldn’t undermine Google’s business model by bundling anything into its operating system. (In case you were wondering, the sea change in this case was the web.)"
https://every.to/podcast/how-ai-startups-can-win-with-better-strategy
23. “Different & Excellent “ equates to something that doesn’t exactly look like other VCs. Could be pinning their thesis on a category of technology or type of founder that isn’t yet understood by the investment community. Or contrarian in the number of companies and/or dollars invested per company compared to their peers. Maybe even a strong POV on what value they can add that isn’t typically available to early stage founders. These firms aren’t carbon copies of anything else out there. In fact, they probably aren’t generally replicable.
But they take advantage of their unique founding partners, very often the type of people who would reject — or not get hired by — ‘traditional VCs.’ Here we have to torture the models to really understand the quantitative sensitivities around expected performance. And how quickly the firm can process new information and adjust if portions of their hypothesis need tuning once in market. But we’re interested in taking this risk when the person and opportunity warrants it."
24. Good debate on USA-CCP relations in Trump 2.0. I fall in the Beckley camp not Rein camp (who has business interests in China so very biased) but I guess we will see.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fcM6e__1wm0&t=10s
25. Important to understand China, where most countries have the most critical trade relations in the world + Relations between US & China.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPggTcQQa8s
26. An alternative take on the recent geopolitical events. USA's master plan?
I do think George Friedman has been right more than wrong.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksfn_7H92tc
27. A good what's up in Techland.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GAJmfNHvWI0
28. Ryan has been a great observer of the Russian invasion of Ukraine since the beginning.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGnqfihVPH0
29. "Similar to Germany's gas dependency, US allies became heavily reliant on American leadership and security. Trump's recent words and actions has shattered their perception of American reliability. They are now questioning whether the US would genuinely defend them if push came to shove. Asking themselves: is the US working with Russia? With Tulsi Gabbard in her current position, can sensitive intelligence be safely shared without leaks?
Instead of increasing NATO contributions in cooperation with the US, allies now look to increase military spending to operate independently of the US. This small distinction is important, it means the US is losing influence, not gaining it. Before the new Trump administration, this outcome was not what anyone in the US intended."
https://www.globalhitman.com/p/the-ghost-of-charles-de-gaulle
30. Very insightful interview with one of the next gen of Sequoia Capital. Good discussion on Spacetech.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o93vbkkYm1I
31. "Despite these challenges, Rosander noted that Sweden has been proactively embracing drone technology, with law enforcement and the military rapidly developing and procuring unmanned aircraft systems.
The Swedish government has partnered with the defense industry to develop a drone-swarm technology platform at record speed — a clear sign that lessons from Ukraine are shaping future strategies.
For Nordic Air Defence, the goal remains clear: scalable, effective, and affordable counter-drone solutions for the modern battlefield."
https://nextgendefense.com/defense-disruptors-nordic-air-defence/
32. "If the U.S. is truly stepping back, Europe faces a new paradigm. The days of 2% of GDP as a NATO benchmark are obsolete. If left to defend itself, Europe will likely need to spend far beyond the 3% number being floated now, with ~ 5% being the base rate for a reasonable starting point to match Cold War-era defence efforts. The only question is whether political leaders and the industry will move fast enough to make up for lost decades before it’s too late."
https://substack.com/@joshuasamuel88/p-157372636
33. "Defence procurement isn’t just about buying the most advanced tech—it’s about logistics, training, and interoperability. Countries overwhelmingly prefer to stick with proven systems they already operate rather than introduce new “SKUs” of tanks, aircraft, or missile systems, which add complexity and cost.
This dynamic creates a powerful incumbency advantage for existing suppliers. Once a system is embedded into a military’s operations, switching isn’t just expensive—it’s operationally risky. Seperately, margins tend to be higher on mature products versus new systems that carry development and execution risk."
https://substack.com/@joshuasamuel88/p-158432828
34. "Crises typically concentrate minds in Europe - the EU only tends to function effectively when it has a bullet (this time literally) close to its head. And I think the biggest existential security crisis that Europe has faced, perhaps since the Berlin airlift, or before, finally forced Europe into action, and this week we have seen activity across a number of fronts, including the U.K. leading efforts to come up with a European/Ukrainian peace plan to end the war in Ukraine - to help alleviate the risk of a bad peace imposed by Russia and the USA.
We have also seen Europe finally pull its finger out and announce huge new financing programmes for arms production, to the tune of many hundreds of billions of euros. The obvious question is why Europe has done nothing for the past three years, over the duration of the war in Ukraine, when surely the threat from Russia was already crystallised and existential? Misreading Russia - even appeasement by some - in the run up to the full scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 was bad enough, but Europe sitting on its hands and doing nothing to assure its own security for the past three years is surely criminal.
But we are where we are, Europe is finally stepping into gear.
The problem for Europe though is that while the financing pillars of Europe’s rearmament are now in place, it will take time to build factories and build out actual defence capability in the field. This is time that Europe does not have - the threat from Russia is now, not in five years down the line, albeit in five years time the threat from Russia might be even more extreme.
The outlook is grim for Europe - which raises the question why Europe has not got the obvious for so long, sitting on its hands on issues like seizing immobilised Russian assets for Ukraine.
European inaction might well be the cause of its own downfall."
https://timothyash.substack.com/p/europe-faces-existential-risks
35. "Despite the conventional wisdom, people lose money in real estate. Homes are illiquid capital-intensive assets that come with “phantom” costs: Insurance premiums, maintenance bills, and property taxes — all of which are expected to rise due to climate change. Owning also limits diversification, as homes are close to workplaces, meaning a local economic downturn or a natural disaster could wipe out your equity at the same time you lose a job.
Historically, the S&P averages a 10% annual return, outpacing housing at 4% to 8%. Moreover, real estate brokers typically charge around a 6% commission — 60x the transaction cost you’d pay for a low-fee ETF that tracks the S&P. The advantage of homeownership is forced savings, as people don’t want to risk the hassle and shame of eviction. Another advantage: Owning can stabilize monthly housing costs relative to rents.
If economic security is the nutrition of a capitalist society, then maybe we need to stop thinking of housing as an investment, but a consumable (e.g., food, energy, education). The construction of millions of low-cost units for young people, coupled with tax-advantaged incentives to invest in the market would result in a better path to wealth. In addition, we need to remove housing from the growing list of sources of anxiety for young people. It’s housing, not an investment strategy or the arbiter of whether you’re worthy enough to mate, start a family, or earn status. Economic security and deep and meaningful relationships are the American Dream, not a mortgage payment. The call sign for the next administration should morph from “Drill Baby Drill” to “Build Baby Build.”
https://www.profgalloway.com/project-2028-housing/
36. "When it comes to AI, I believe that prioritizing adaptability over resistance will serve us better in the long run. We didn’t abandon writing after the printing press, and we won’t stop thinking because of AI. Our skills will settle around overseeing and evaluating, instead of raw creation. This shift will be uncomfortable—we’ll likely lose some depth in areas AI handles well—but the trade-offs enable new capabilities we are only just beginning to imagine. The only way to discover them is to lean into using the new technology."
https://every.to/learning-curve/how-knowledge-work-will-evolve-in-the-ai-era
Noble Obligations & Skin in the Game: The Harsh Reality of War in Medieval Times
I was thinking of how important history is and how damaging ideologies take hold in society. The first thing dictators and ideologues do is to go to the history books & rewrite it to remove context and justify their views. This happens everywhere and every country.
I happened to chance upon a fascinating and really eye-opening tweet thread by @rfhirst on warfare in the Dark ages/ Middle ages. How it’s been so cleaned up and glamorized by Hollywood. The reality is that it was ugly and brutal. Just follow this X thread: https://twitter.com/rfhirst/status/1762973688570520056
He examines the archaeology of the man of Kent, a 20-25 year old Anglo Saxon male who died due to combat. He died horrifically, with over 30 wounds across his body. Remember that back then, warriors fought with blades, swords and axes, and fought face to face and in mass numbers of men.
@rfhirst goes on to write:
“The reality of death in medieval combat ought to be widely known, not for sadism but as an antidote to certain modern attitudes which conceive of the Middle Ages as that time when Lord Knobhead grew fat on cheese and wine whilst the peasants broke their sorry backs for a carrot.
A cynical attitude which sees past warrior-aristocrats as undeserving of what luxuries they enjoyed is easy to hold when one's concept of their raison d'être is informed by the simplified & sterilized depictions of modern media; almost nonchalant, unskilled, open and accessible.
Plentiful food and fine clothes, lands and titles of honor were bought at the price of abandoning all hope for a long life, so few lived to see 30 winters, and having to time and again witness horrors which lay beyond our comprehension - horrors which no cynic today could endure.
In speaking so of the horrors of war it ought not be thought that this detracts from past heroism. If anything it bolsters it, magnifies it, and commands from the modern reader with true knowledge a solemn respect for each and every man who mustered on through the heat of battle.”
The first lesson I take from this, is that we are super lucky to be living in present times. The second important lesson is that most of the super successful did not cheat someone to get to where they are at (some do but I find this is a tiny minority who usually end up going to jail). They literally live and die by the metaphorical sword. It’s high risk and high gain. Yes, if the business they start ends up succeeding they do well. But they go through a lot to get the business up and running. If the business fails, they suffer the consequences.
We should be venerating successful entrepreneurs & bosses. We don’t actually know what they go through or hide employees from. And they usually do it right. They support families through the jobs they create and the value they provide to customers. Business owners carry the load and the stress of the business. They don’t get to have time off or have weekends off unlike employees.
The brain damaged anti-capitalist and socialist movement taking off in America is dangerous and risks ruining the prosperity that has made America so amazing. Remember how well socialism worked in the Soviet Union, Venezuela, Cuba or Argentina. We need to remember this. And we need to treat our entrepreneurs better. Not every founder, like the noblemen of old, is an oppressor. We miss many aspects and context of what they do for us. In fact, they may be doing the most honorable thing possible.
The Pure Cold Reality of the Fighting Arts: The Restorative Effects for Men
I’ve trained off and on in martial arts throughout my life. Okinawan Karate as a child and even got to brown belt. As an adult I trained in Muay Thai, Systema, Krav Maga and Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. And then life and business and family got busy.
So after almost 17 years and frankly a stressful few years after Covid and a wreck of a family life, I came to Thailand to train in Muay Thai with my business partner Fares. It’s good to have an escape from regular life and get the creative juices & body moving.
And it’s no hardship, we went to a nice resort with all the amenities, an on-site sports medicine/ treatment center, a nice spa and onsen, a massive gym, lots of classes in yoga, fitness and professional Muay Thai fighters.
Nothing better than to talk business and plan our year and initiatives after some fight training and sitting in an on-site Hot spring to recover from the day. Or even better to have a good Swedish massage to fix all the knots in your back from training.
Imagine yourself punching, kicking and kneeing for an hour or two straight. The punches that were strong and straight are now weak and off balance. You are out of breath and you take punches and kicks yourself. There was nothing more clarifying than getting a punch in the head. When you get hurt it means you messed up badly.
This was most men’s lives thousands of years ago. When other men would come and take what they wanted if you didn’t fight back. There is something clarifying and cleansing about martial arts. Whatever aches and pains and how exhausted you feel, it is an amazing feeling of accomplishment. You sleep so well. You wake up clear headed. Any and all anger I’ve felt has been burned out. I’m more calm and focused than I’ve ever been. Nothing like the feeling that you left everything in the ring. I think only athletes, MMA fighters and soldiers truly understand this.
And you just get tougher. As the Norwegian special forces motto goes: “Pain is weakness leaving the body.” If this is true, I must have been VERY weak indeed. :)
I wish I had done this martial arts retreat earlier. So for all those men out there dealing with massive problems in your life, I recommend taking up martial arts. Look at what it has done for Mark Zuckerberg in the last few years, the level of confidence he has gotten from MMA training. Silicon Valley nerds can learn something here. You have to be smart, rich AND fit. Only then can you be a true full human.
Even a week of intensive and intense training will change your perspective and life. Besides, there is a harder, harsher and tougher world coming. So this will help you get prepared for it now. As a passage in Bushido says: "The only solution for bad and violent people are good people that are more skilled in violence."
Idealism Versus Pragmatism: The Inner War of Silicon Valley
ROI versus just building something for the sake of building. Investing versus extracting. Doing stuff for money versus doing stuff for free.
The world we want to build versus what we can build with what we have.
What makes Silicon Valley work is the fine balance between the two. These are generalizations of course but east coast scenes tend to be a bit more extractive and transactional.
It feels like the frame of “what’s in it for me” is always present.
The west coast aka Silicon Valley tends to be more of the give before you get, but this can go too far. You end up spending a lot of time with people who take advantage of this and who end up sucking up your time, with little to no benefit to yourself.
We value building but then we also end up with a whole bunch of over-funded money bleeding startups (hello 2021 & the AI Bubble in 2023 to now) with no business model or ability to monetize at all. Chasing the ideal or the cool.
A big part of Silicon Valley ethos is being helpful (really helpful unlike when VCs say this). It’s about giving the benefit of the doubt. And helping others realize their dreams. This is what makes the place special.
But we could use a dose of hard edged capitalism sometimes as practiced on Wall Street. It’s a fine line to take but could be the difference in the tough business of building the future.
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads March 30th, 2025
“The harder the battle, the sweeter the victory.” – Les Brown
"What I do know is that his description of the Artificial Man is an apt metaphor for many “leaders” and figures in the public eye today. Such figures also flourish on social media, where being an anonymous provocateur and an attention-seeker has become a substitute for demonstrable accomplishment.
We may contrast the Artificial Man to the Man of Substance. The man of substance elevates not only himself and those around him with real achievements, he dignifies every job he undertakes.
The chasing of empty acclaim means nothing. Yet for the Artificial Man, appearance is everything; he surrounds himself with empty statements, elusive and shape-shifting accomplishments, and platitudinous mists."
https://qcurtius.com/2023/02/11/the-artificial-man-and-the-man-of-substance/
2. "The paper finds that, in areas where working-class men are doing better, marriage rates go up, cutting the marital class gap in half. Making men more “economically viable,” to use one of Scott’s favorite terms, turns out to be key to improving marital prospects.
There’s a corrosive downward spiral at work right now. As the economic prospects of men without a college degree decline, marriage rates fall. That leaves millions more men and women without a partner to share the responsibilities and benefits of family life. In other work by AIBM, we show that half of men without a college degree aged 30 to 50 now live in a household without children.
Without the positive pressures that come from being a father and husband, men are even less likely to really go for it on the work front. They are more likely to be unemployed. They become more vulnerable to addiction, more socially isolated. All of which makes them less attractive as potential spouses. Boys raised in single-mother households then struggle in school and in life, and they have difficulty finding a mate and forming a family, too. And so the cycle turns. The economic struggles of boys and men become entrenched across generations."
https://www.profgalloway.com/marrying-up-and-marrying-down/
3. "You can probably guess why it reminds me of consulting—the game of Civilization and the one that firms like McKinsey play in real life aren’t all that different. They, too, are tasked with efficient resource allocation. They, too, will sometimes have to sacrifice many people to achieve victory. The gaming software of choice was Excel, but there isn’t all that much difference between optimizing financial models and optimizing a civilization. I had one friend who, as a 24-year-old strategy consultant, built a spreadsheet that led to 3,000 people losing their jobs. Victory! (It still haunts him to this day.)
Perhaps the appeal comes from the fact that building startups can feel like a video game. A tweak of a button color here or an adjusted sales email headline there, and suddenly you win money in your bank account. The labor is still on a screen, still optimizing pixels, but rather than imaginary points, you get real dollars.
So video games, when viewed correctly, have transferable skills and attitudes that can help technologists win. However, I worry that in our embrace of these games, we have accidentally let something darker, meaner, and greedier into our tech culture’s subconsciousness.
Said simply: I worry that big tech CEOs view everyone other than themselves as NPCs (non-playable characters). I worry about this because they’ve, like, said it.
The perspective this term ultimately represents is that in their world, their perspectives—and most importantly, the victory in the games they play—are the only things that matter. Those who disagree or get in the way of that outcome are just NPCs, sacrificial cavalry units, factory workers fired in the name of efficiency. Each of us regular people are just units on the digital board."
https://every.to/napkin-math/playing-civilization-7-is-like-being-a-ruthless-corporate-consultant
4. "While tariffs and trade relations may change over time, an expanding global production network creates more robust channels of market access for Chinese companies, particularly as local jobs become attached to Chinese factories. One might see this as the third phase of China’s development of global supply chains more generally. The first phase was about securing access to resources.
The second phase—the Belt and Road Initiative—was about building the infrastructure for global production and shipping. And now the third phase is about securing access to markets.
While tariffs and market access are motivating Chinese firms to build new plants abroad, how they’re going about this is not driven by economic interests alone. Beijing is trying to shape the global expansion of Chinese manufacturers, including which countries they invest in and how. Beijing is encouraging Chinese companies to build plants in “friendly” countries while discouraging them from investing in others in a kind of “industrial diplomacy.”
Countries across the developed world and the Global South alike are eager for Chinese companies to build factories in their markets, with the promise of new jobs and new technology. Given its attractiveness, Chinese manufacturing investment can be used by Beijing as a geopolitical tool to reward certain countries and punish others."
https://www.high-capacity.com/p/china-is-trying-to-reshape-global
5. This was a fun podcast interview with my friend Alastair.
6. 2025 SaaS Vibe check. All spot on.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4CjJnhmPy3o
7. Title says it all: Financial Nihilism & Political Instability. Well worth watching.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6HESVcM4Ic&t=191s
8. "The old adage “your fund size is your strategy” has never been more true. Many funds who have grown tremendously in size find themselves forced to shift strategies — and their brands have not always caught up to their new reality. But a corollary adage also applies for founders: “their fund size is your fundraising strategy.”
In other words, founders should think very carefully about which investors they are targeting and why. Raise from a fund that is too small, and you may find they are unable to help you when the chips are down. Raise from a fund that is too large, and you may find they are not the true company-building partners you were hoping to work with."
https://medium.com/angularventures/five-emerging-vc-swimlanes-a6f39d9ae0e9
9. "The next time you hear an entrepreneur lament how hard it is to fill a role, remind him that 10 to 20% of his time should be spent on recruiting—both for roles open today and roles that will be open tomorrow."
https://davidcummings.org/2025/03/01/recruiting-on-non-recruiting-work-trips/
10. "Power might work if there were no consequences—if karma didn’t exist. But history tells us otherwise: No empire holds power forever.
Yes, the U.S. has power now, but it won’t always. I don’t know exactly how that shift will happen, but I know it will. How do I know? Because every other empire has arisen and has passed.
And when that time comes, the best insurance policy is having helped others when we had the chance."
https://wisdom2events.substack.com/p/power
11. A Cold ruthless look at present geopolitics. The Neo-Liberal world order is dead.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-knLXnai3Mk
12. Trying to understand the ever changing geopolitical world. Interregnum.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZQu9wwJ3vo
13. This is the right take in my view. Does Europe step up? I hope so but doubt it. Either way America is not reliable anymore.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXoreH_5coA
14. "So what was supposed to be another operation Danube turned into a long, bloody and a very destructive war.
And, as the war progressed, the definition of what counts for the victory in this war was changing.
Long, arduous, WWI style battles for the mining villages and towns of Donbass were all counted as the great wins. And they indeed were, under the new measuring scale (of what counts for success).
But the fact that the scale did change, was a massive, enormous defeat that hardly anyone could predict in January 2022.
Back then, consensus was that in case of Russian invasion, Ukraine could hold for weeks, or days. Or may be hours.
Hardly anyone predicted it would actually hold for years.
At this point, I don’t see any sign of victory for Russia."
https://kamilkazani.substack.com/p/three-years-of-war
15. Listening to the tinfoil hat perspective of geopolitics. Just trying to understand the nuttiness in the world right now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tO7bhSRGhoI
16. "But some founders are opting out of this nonsense and I do think we will see more of them do so.
It is easier than ever to bootstrap a company to sustainable operations. Some founders will do it. Others will notice. Maybe it will even become fashionable to do so.
At least one can hope."
https://avc.xyz/drinking-from-a-firehose
17. "The question, then, is how to ensure the longevity and continuity of a regime based on vibes and a cult of personality rather than shadowy men in grey suits. No matter how one looks at it, whether the policy is one of returning to the traditional NATO, Western alliance configuration, or the America Alone policy of MAGA, democracy stands in the way of achieving either.
America’s rivals do not know whether they’re going to get a sweet pipeline deal, tariff slap, a barrage of ATACMS, or a gay pride parade from the increasingly schizophrenic hegemon."
https://morgoth.substack.com/p/the-deep-state-a-necessary-evil
18. "Therefore, Europe faces a choice: either increase troop numbers significantly by more than 300,000 to make up for the fragmented nature of national militaries, or find ways to rapidly enhance military coordination. Failure to coordinate means much higher costs and individual efforts will likely be insufficient to deter the Russian military. Yet collective insurance means moral hazard and coordination problems need to be credibly solved."
https://www.bruegel.org/analysis/defending-europe-without-us-first-estimates-what-needed
19. "While fostering next-generation primes like Anduril and Palantir is an important step toward modernizing defense capabilities, it may not fully address the Pentagon's need for speed and adaptability in today's rapidly evolving threat landscape. A "Moneyball" strategy, focused on buying wins through smaller, specialized players—would complement this effort by delivering high-impact solutions without the overhead of creating new mega-contractors.
Findings from the NNCTA reinforce the need for tools to evaluate readiness systematically, align investments with mission-critical needs, and ensure scalability across sectors. By adopting smarter metrics and leveraging structured assessment platforms, defense agencies can redefine how they maintain technological superiority while fostering a diverse ecosystem of innovators.
Ultimately, achieving this vision will require overcoming entrenched bureaucratic challenges and adopting flexible acquisition models, something that the Department of Government Efficiency might address, but the payoff could be truly transformative: faster innovation cycles, reduced risks, and sustained global leadership in critical technologies."
https://advancehumanity.substack.com/p/the-new-defensetech-game-lessons
20. Best show on Silicon Valley right now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGmOYNWiV1A&t=139s
21. "A lot of software today is built on relatively little proprietary knowledge and personal experience. It is built by people with passing exposures to the problems they’re solving.8 It is built by founders who arrive at their ideas via an incubator and a pivot. It is built by Geoff.
That used to be ok, because our unique talent for technology more than made up for our naiveté elsewhere. Founders could build huge businesses by plowing technology into analog problems, and investors like YC could build huge funds by selecting for whiz kids over world-weary experts. And they could both succeed because technical leverage mattered more than domain-specific taste.
But I’m not sure that will work for much longer. Just as it’s becoming harder to out-write an LLM, it’s becoming harder to out-develop one too. And if experts can prompt their way to a product just as easily as those of us in Silicon Valley can, what winning talent are we left with?"
https://benn.substack.com/p/the-end-of-yc
22. "The fourth explanation is that President Trump and his Administration believe that the United States is one of three great powers caught up in a multilateral order characterized by increasingly hostile rivalries. Over the past few years, the other two “Great Powers” have formed an alliance against the United States. While critics want the Trump Administration to rely on Allies, Trump believes these allies are weak and politically unstable.
Under this interpretation, the Administration understands that the United States cannot withdraw from this rivalry or ignore the world, but it is also limited on what it can achieve, and limited by the resources available. They believe that while the United States has some important strengths, America is also burdened with significant millstones around her neck.
Unlike prior Administrations, it seems clear to me that President Trump views many of our allies as millstones that sap American power and encumber the United States with responsibilities that aren’t her own. I’ve written this before, but I will write it again, President Trump and his team believe that the United States can no longer afford the luxury of providing two “common goods” to the world:
#1 – Security
#2 – A Market of Last Resort
The United States started providing these “common goods” (and I use that term with its definition from political economy) following the Second World War and as the Soviet-American Cold War started. At the time, the United States represented nearly 50% of global GDP and we were the only major power not devastated by WWII. We had massive industrial capacity that we could direct towards helping our friends. Between 1947 and 1991, leaders in Washington sought to provide the security and economic stability to allow Western Europe and the East Asia periphery to rebuild themselves, while resisting Soviet domination. As Western Europe and East Asia recovered, we encouraged those countries to share the burden, but that was only modestly successful. The United States did this for its own self-interest, but Americans also paid significant costs for building and maintaining this system."
https://chinaarticles.substack.com/p/bizarre-great-power-triangle
23. "Building borders and defensive walls is taking the place of protecting other nations and spending trillions on endless overseas engagements. The Vances, Gabbards and Hegseths make the claim that many of these adventures are deadly, costly and pointless, the Ukrainian meatgrinder being a case in point. A more isolationist America, a multi-polar world with Beijing and Moscow as distant partners is the emerging foreign policy doctrine for which Trump is only the messenger. That is what is driving the change and that is what informed the clash in the Oval Office last Friday.
This is not to say that the world should be throwing Ukraine under the bus. On the contrary. The free world should be committed to see this through and ensure that Putin’s aggression is stopped in its tracks and Ukraine somehow ekes a win out of this bloody stalemate. But under the current circumstances it cannot and those that could help deliver such a result - the US and Europe together - are unable to deliver that right now. Avoiding a Third World War is, and here Trump did make a valid point, one of them.
So in the end, it will come down to a negotiated settlement and provide that what Zelenskyy has asked for: security guarantees. Once the dust settles over this meeting and the Europeans have put their heads together it may well be that an arrangement can be made to work that will solidify some sort of deal with Putin. It will shift more of the burden to London, Paris, Berlin and a number of other European capitals. That is what Trump wants and it is unfortunate for one of the bravest men of our time that he is one of the first world leaders to bear the brunt of the Trump foreign policy doctrine and a newly emerging geopolitical dynamic. He and the people of Ukraine deserve better."
https://pieterdorsman.substack.com/p/security-guarantees
24. Helpful list.
"When I say evil, I mean EVIL. I don’t mean people who are merely sharks (highly selfish and only care about themselves). Evil is much more than sharks – they are people who enjoy watching the world burn.
With these types, you want to identify them and stay away i.e. don’t have sex with them, don’t make them your business partner, don’t become their “close friend” or associated with them, etc. because anyone who comes close to them takes damage (today or tomorrow).
This is unlike sharks because with sharks you merely need to be extra careful in your dealings but otherwise it’s a non-issue. Sharks might even make good business partners and you want to have some of them on your side.
On the hand, you never want evil on your side because evil wants to destroy you the moment you don’t look eye to eye with them."
https://lifemathmoney.com/11-signs-of-evil/
25. "Given the scale of the existential threat Europe faces, this production capacity is far below what is necessary. For comparison, the Lockheed Martin currently produces around 700 JASSM-ER cruise missiles annually, with plans to expand output to over 1,000 per year. Meanwhile, Russia missile manufacturers are producing approximately 1,200 cruise missiles and 600 short- and medium-range ballistic missiles annually.
The likely Swedish acquisition of the Taurus KEPD 350 represents an important step for European security, potentially opening the door for additional Taurus orders by other states. It is unfortunate that Taurus production had to wait until 2025 to hopefully be restarted, but better late than never.
This being said, Europe still faces a major gap in production capacity, and unless large-scale procurement contracts or public investments materialize soon, European missile output will continue to lag behind operational requirements."
https://missilematters.substack.com/p/taurus-news-and-the-future-of-the
26. "But Trump’s treatment of Zelensky, and his tolerance of Putin’s invasion, also illustrate a deeper and more important shift. America’s foreign policy is now fundamentally extractive, focused on forcing weaker countries into making economic concessions. Trump’s insistence that Ukraine surrender mineral rights to the U.S. in exchange for aid was the traditional action of a Great Power extracting value from a client state — the same type of thing the USSR did to the Warsaw Pact nations during the Cold War.
For eight decades after World War 2, the U.S. defended the postwar geopolitical and economic order based on norms. That’s gone now. Under Trump, America acts like a gangster demanding protection money.
In any case, America’s abrupt turn from moral beacon and defender of the free world is unsurprising, given the fundamental immorality of the Trump administration. If you have the morality of a gangster, you will behave like a gangster."
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/america-is-ruled-by-gangsters-now
27. Southern Italy for the win.
"Southern Italy now has the best value proposition in Europe from a cost of living and lifestyle point of view. Real estate is incredibly cheap, to the point that the real cost is the cost of the renovations rather than the cost of the house itself.
The cost of living is extremely low. It is now much more affordable than Eastern Europe and even the Balkans, but without the economic dynamism. Yet the quality of food and produce is vastly superior. I even paid €1 for a beer one evening in a bar in Palermo during happy hour (happy hour lasted until 11pm)."
https://mailchi.mp/41edf0278ee8/probably-the-most-affordable-part-of-europe?e=123a1c25c4
28. "Then from a portfolio perspective, I like to align my investing across the capability spectrum. Think about an allocation like 60/30/10 - 60% AI that seems to have a proven match to a task and is going somewhere, 30% to stuff that shows promise but isn’t there yet, and 10% to speculative AI that could be game changing but, could also blow up entirely and never make it. The 10% is often the most overhyped stuff, and you need exposure to it but, it’s very unlikely it’s as close as the pundits would have us believe.
AI has some characteristics that make it uniquely difficult to predict its future. I expect we are still several major disruptive moments away from really settling in to a more stable AI future. I think following the self driving car market is a good gauge of progress, partly due to the technical learnings but also due to the fact that cars require a lot of safety and security and will lead the framework development for how we think about AI and safety in other domains."
https://investinginai.substack.com/p/conflicting-ai-opinions-and-fsd-as
29. This guy hates America but his view that the tech containment of China by the US has failed seems correct. Unfortunately.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6L3wUW_ckic
30. This is Gold. Listen to this. "War Mode"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0AB6pZpotg
31. A good case for Europe in the world. Also important to understand the landscape of sovereignty for the future.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxDmHvGZtPQ
32. The New American Industrial Association. #Reindustrialize America.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJHoSzM5UXw
33. How to thrive in the age of AI. Great conversation here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZE1AjTnsubI
34. Educational discussion on the future of war. USVs & Drones.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RuxTUtITvMA
35. "A new multilateral defence bank aimed at tackling growing security threats will offer private sector lenders risk guarantees and help standardise procurement rules in Europe, which its founder describes as a “disaster”.
Announced on Sunday, the new Defence, Security and Resilience Bank — the first multilateral development bank for defence, which seeks to secure £100bn in capital — aims to solve the defence financing gap in western countries.
It plans to issue AAA-rated bonds backed by shareholder nations to get “cheap capital” for defence procurement quickly into Nato countries, across the EU and into Indo-Pacific allied nations without increasing government debt."
https://www.thebanker.com/content/9e120840-4cbf-45cf-a10c-39d0090ae8f5
36. "There are many other forces one can cite, and we could further explore the broad network of global interests that have aligned to attack America's leadership position in the world. A long list of countries, from China to Israel to Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Qatar, and Iran, all have active roles in what's been unfolding, and everybody has their own preferred angle. Political division, extremism, organized crime, lack of education, and relentless information warfare have been constants, as well.
Also implicit across every angle explored here is the primacy of oil, gas, and other extractive industries. The end result is a laissez-faire approach to energy, mining, cryptocurrency, and the privatization of governance. With no effective government left to regulate industry, we can expect unbounded effects on climate and the environment, with Putin's Russia as a primary beneficiary.
One more caveat: it is a grave error to view Trump, Putin, Musk, or the others merely as grifters — or greedy, or motivated by profits, or only wanting to benefit from government contracts. Theirs is a bid to remake the world; they want power and the chance to impose their worldview onto everyone else.
Second, they don't think money (in the form of fiat currency) is real. Their goal is to replace fiat currency with an entirely new global financial order, and a supranational monarchy to match. For example, Musk wants to use Starlink at the FAA to capture the global aviation system, not score some measly government contract. It's time to think bigger. "
Family, Sacrifice and Drive: More Yellowstone Wisdom
I swear John Dutton sounds like an Asian immigrant parent. There is a monologue to his kids on the ride home after he becomes Governor. Speaking of the Dutton family ancestors.
“What an embarrassment to the sacrifice it took to give us a home. But I tell you what, sacrifice is exactly what we are going to do. It’s what you are going to do.
You are going to sacrifice your ambition. Sacrifice your fear and your weak self-loathing heart. You are going to kill all of that and get strong no matter how it scares you……”
This is most Asian immigrant kids' childhood messages and inner monologue. It’s why we do whatever it takes to get strong or we crumble.
That is life. To survive and hopefully thrive. Life is full of conflict and competition. Life is war. So adapt or die.
Crush Your Enemies Totally: More Yellowstone Wisdom
There are always things to learn from Yellowstone. During John Dutton’s swearing in ceremony for Governor, Dutton’s enemies are sitting in the audience. One of them is the Indian tribal chief Rainwater who is chided by his advisor.
“You had a chance to be rid of him. You did nothing and he grew stronger. It’s slave rules for you now and it’s all your fault.”
This is where we sit geopolitically in the world. No one fears us and no one respects us. Why should they, we messed up in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, the Red Sea and our half assed support for Ukraine.
Our lack of strategy, our lack of will to do what is needed: all half assed efforts there. We should have glassed all our enemies' lands. Gutted them with our monetary power and trade instead of shipping all our industry and jobs to our biggest enemy.
Compounded by internal tribal warfare between extreme stupid left and right wing morons in our government and media, fighting culture wars that distract us from the enemies literally at our borders. I truly hope I am wrong but America from 2004 till now will go down as the biggest self inflicted wound geopolitically in history. Modern day America’s version of emperor Nero fiddling while Rome burns down.
We are our own worst enemies if we don’t wake up. I for one am not counting on this. I will do everything I can to help further my country's interests via investing in the latest technologies and our best people. Building companies in Defensetech, deeptech and software in general. That and unabashedly, helping to suck in as much talent as possible from the rest of the world to the USA.
At a personal level, I will continue to build my fortress. My mental fortress, my physical fortress and my financial fortress to weather the storm that is coming. I strongly suggest you all do the same soon. Reality is that violence seems to be coming which sucks. But violence is also needed to defend what you believe in and what you love.
Deciphering Chaos: A Unipolar World to Multipolar World
To many people in America and around the world, the new Trump administration has been a literal shock to the system. One minute bringing amazingly talented people into the administration like Bissent, Rubio, Waltz, Keith Kellogg & many brilliant Wall Street and Silicon Valley individuals like Lutnick, Feinberg, Kupor and Krishnan. Even the talented but horrific Elon Musk. And then the next minute, there are the appointments of complete wackjobs like Kesh Patel, Tulsi Gabbard, Hegseth & RFK Jr. It’s so bizarre.
Then hitting out at firm allies like Denmark, Canada, and at least somewhat ally’s like Panama and Mexico. Albeit I understand the focus on Panama and Mexico, who are frankly in bed with the CCP. It’s been so nutty and everyone is trying to keep up and figure out what is going on.
BUT most shocking to many of us is the hatred and disrespect to Ukraine and President Zelensky particularly. Pushing for a blatantly one sided deal on minerals. Calling Zelensky a dictator, and the bizarre public dressing down of Zelensky at the White House on Feb 28th. The bullying. Both sides lost here. And as Quintus Curtius said: “It's Amateur Hour. You never air your disagreements in public. You never fight in public. Why? Because it makes both of you look like losers and pudwacks. This whole scene is cringe beyond belief.” I’ve spent most of March trying to make sense and process all of this.
This was a wake up call for everyone. Our enemies are laughing as our allies around the world begin to rightfully question American commitments. I keep writing that the world has changed. Yet so few people have taken action. 3 years into the Russian invasion of Ukraine, most of the European Union has not ramped up defense spending, built up their defense industrial base or militaries nor inflicted the harshest possible sanctions on Russia. Despite a larger population and wealthier economy, with the EU being 9 times larger than the Russian economy and 3X the population of Russia. European leaders (Canada too), full of half measures with a lot of virtue signaling, platitudes and talk, while leaning very heavily on America to lead and do the hard work.
Unfortunately for the world, America, the benign power is gone, or at least the pretense of one. Here is the transactional giant. A gangster of capitalism. One that doesn’t pretend about a “Rules based order”, honorable goals and a better world. Only a better world for America. America First, where everything is transactional.
Noah Smith describes this very well in his newsletter: "But Trump’s treatment of Zelensky, and his tolerance of Putin’s invasion, also illustrate a deeper and more important shift. America’s foreign policy is now fundamentally extractive, focused on forcing weaker countries into making economic concessions. Trump’s insistence that Ukraine surrender mineral rights to the U.S. in exchange for aid was the traditional action of a Great Power extracting value from a client state — the same type of thing the USSR did to the Warsaw Pact nations during the Cold War.
For eight decades after World War 2, the U.S. defended the postwar geopolitical and economic order based on norms. That’s gone now. Under Trump, America acts like a gangster demanding protection money. In any case, America’s abrupt turn from moral beacon and defender of the free world is unsurprising, given the fundamental immorality of the Trump administration. If you have the morality of a gangster, you will behave like a gangster."
I don’t like this at all but here we are. America, the unpredictable, as Morgoth writes beautifully: “America’s rivals do not know whether they’re going to get a sweet pipeline deal, tariff slap, a barrage of ATACMS, or a gay pride parade from the increasingly schizophrenic hegemon."
Living in a Kleptocratic America is also going to become even tougher and meaner.
This Tweet by @vylpill stuck with me: “American life is brutal because you have to be above average to be average. You have to be successful just to get by. Everywhere else you just have to be normal and you're set: you'll have a job, house, wife, etc. In America to get that you basically need to go ubermensch.”
Europe better wake up or they will get eaten. Small countries like Taiwan also better wake up and arm up. No one is coming to save you. So be prepared to save yourself, your family and your tribe. The Unipolar world is GONE. Globalization as we know it is over. Reality is painful and harsh.
If you have not internalized the lessons of Game of Thrones, now would be a good time to do so. The world is gonna be much tougher and meaner. Social darwinism rearing its ugly head again. Every country and every individual needs to get sharper, stronger and tougher. Realpolitik is here. In this new world order, the ends justify the means. So steel your heart for what is coming. Ruthlessness is a must if you want to make it through the rest of this decade. It is the time of the beast.
I will end this with an apt quote from the movie "Fury":"Ideals are peaceful, history is violent."
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads March 23rd, 2025
"In winter, I plot and plan. In spring, I move." – Henry Rollins
"Generally, Verkhovodov thinks the West has not yet fully grasped the level of development that is happening in Ukraine. In part, he says, this is because Ukraine’s society is geared towards the war effort, and with its resources stretched, it cannot spare the time and energy needed to promote its industry abroad. And defence is a conservative industry that is traditionally difficult to disrupt.
“You need face to face connections to build trust, to convey information. And you cannot really travel that easily to Ukraine,” he says."
https://globalventuring.com/corporate/ukraine-defence-tech-startups/
2. Hard to argue that Europe is the biggest loser in the last decade, especially as the world goes back to Great Power spheres of influence.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5viGGlPOTg
3. Never underestimate anyone, let alone your enemies or opponents.
"Except that in the real world beyond the little X app on your phone, simply calling someone “dumb” does not actually defeat them, any more than Rachel Maddow actually “destroys Trump” when she says mean things about him on MSNBC. Maybe saying that Elon has a 110 IQ makes you feel like you beat him in your little online fantasy world, but out there in the actual world, he is still ripping up your national institutions at breakneck speed.
People who think that denigrating Elon’s capabilities will somehow defeat him or make him go away are simply fools — not low IQ, but simply unwise people reacting suboptimally to an external challenge. Elon Musk is, in many important ways, the single most capable man in America, and we deny that fact at our peril."
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/only-fools-think-elon-is-incompetent
4. "Europe, in particular, has been shielded from major disruptions thanks to steady economic growth, technological strength, strong alliances, and the absence of immediate existential threats in its neighborhood.
All of that has now changed—unfortunately, for the worse. Economic growth has stagnated, Europe has lost its technological edge in key areas, its alliance with the United States is in disarray, and a very real existential threat has emerged in the form of a revisionist, imperialist Russia that may soon come to believe aggression and war are rewarded."
https://missilematters.substack.com/p/europes-new-security-environment
5. "Entrepreneurs in the growth stage would benefit from considering how they could double their revenue without adding new headcount. What positions would remain? Which ones would be outsourced? Which roles would need to be filled by more experienced hires? What would be the advantages and drawbacks? Entrepreneurs should evaluate the relationship between in-house employees and scale earlier than they might have in the past."
https://davidcummings.org/2025/02/22/double-revenue-with-no-additional-employees/
6. Lots of tinfoil hat geopolitics. Some of it actually makes sense.
But they are correct that we are in a new world order of great power politics now. The so-called "Rules Based" consensus driven world order is over.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JiCAZHQPihw
7. I follow Doomberg, who is a very clear headed observer/analysts of world economics, energy and geopolitics.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Li_hkOdvRpk
8. Tin Foil Geopolitics analysis. Lots of illuminating ideas.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e9yJ4Lzxkig
9. Alt-Geopolitics. Don't agree with some of this but it's good to understand other points of view as we try to get what is going on right now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n6V0trfmTzM
10. Hope this is enough of a deterrent for the CCP.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNody_rSZB8
11. Entering a multipolar world. Has been the case for the last half decade now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g66XSY6JNpw&t=1s
12. Hard to argue with any of this. Russia is laughing at America's stupidity.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eqdVmz8G6gQ
13. "Today marks three years since Russia’s illegal, unprovoked, and brutal invasion of Ukraine. The Ukrainian people have heroically fought the war with grit and determination, but they have also, against the odds, innovated on and off the battlefield.
In addition to establishing a defense tech initiative called BRAVE1, the country has also hosted tech conferences like IT Arena, even amid the problems caused by the war.
Ukraine is now the leader in AI-enabled drone technology and has become a magnet for Western companies and investors keen to support the country, and Europe. But is it enough? If the recent news is anything to go by, Europe is only now waking up to the fact that it will have to get closer than ever before to Ukraine if it is to maintain and defend its own security."
14. Germany the sick man of Europe. But more needed than ever. Waking up now though.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X06UteSWyo0
15. "Getting things right is only half of the puzzle. Another piece is doing so at the pace of defence innovation in war time. Berezhny argued that the arms race took on such a velocity that the lifetime of any solution is roughly three months. “This speed of adaptation is what still keeps us alive,” he concluded."
https://www.resiliencemedia.co/p/dispatches-from-brave1s-defence-tech
16. "The constraints on Western industrial capacity make it difficult to provide Ukraine with the hardware and ammunition necessary to generate the firepower advantage it would need to reclaim territory. While it is already a tall order for U.S. and European industrial bases to quickly close production gaps with Russia, this challenge may become insurmountable with Beijing allegedly providing lethal aid to Moscow.
China is the most productive economy in the world by manufacturing output, and if it were to serve as a wild card—furnishing Russia with combat equipment and ammunition—the West might not be able to catch up.
Much of the modern weaponry sent to Ukraine has fallen short of expectations, failing to make the “game changing” impact on the battlefield many had promised. Sending Ukraine more will do nothing to change the reality that there are no MIRACLES in modern warfare.
The ubiquity of loitering munitions, hunter-killer drones, and GPS jamming have diminished the effectiveness of military aid to Ukraine."
https://www.adamtownsend.me/ukraine-155mm-game-changer/
17. Alt-geopolitics assessment but much of this actually makes some sense when you step back.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLGtODVOgCA
18. Lots of insights and learnings on the situation on the frontlines of Ukraine. UGV & FPVs will become even more important in 2025.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7O5CeEfuPgY
19. This is an important question to answer. I still think there is a chance that Trump pivots back to support Ukraine. God I hope this is the case.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3__lYAu2mjQ
20. Latest overview on Geopolitics around the world. Net net: chaos and change. Interregnum.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-F3ufYQgNk
21. "In addition to hustle and one’s existing network, I’m always interested in whether or not a ‘needle magnet’ is being built alongside the other efforts to find startups. What’s my needle magnet definition? Some force that pulls exceptional startups to you, directly or via intermediaries, in a privileged and sustainable fashion."
22. "The problem though is that this deal still leaves the issue of specific security guarantees for Ukraine unaddressed and without those assurances any peace will not be sustainable, and neither will Ukraine’s future economic, social and political development. Actually this deal is not worth the paper it is written on without those very same assurances. No US entity will invest in Ukraine unless it feels that Ukraine is secure from future attack from Russia, which it will not be without these very same security guarantees."
https://timothyash.substack.com/p/ukraine-all-that-shines-is-not-gold
23. Cyrus Jannssen is a paid CCP shill but this interview with Stephen Roach is educational. China is rising whether we like it or not, and our engagement with them is still important.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwlrS0p9jL8
24. Great episode this week. NIA.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_7sOunKt9A&t=2328s
25. We need more people like Erik Prince in the world. Educational interview here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jx1Yoi3-mls
26. I like Joules Sullivan aka Sartorial Shooter. Lots of good stuff here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d2kMpybodek
27. I detest both of these people for their anti-America & anti-West stance but you learn from everyone. This is a good geopolitical take. Part 1.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQVt0MHed6k&t=56s
28. I detest both of these people for their anti-America & anti-West stance but you learn from everyone. This is a good geopolitical take & good understanding of what is happening in Europe and China. Part 2.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCGkIG3iHVQ
29. Always fun but nutty conspiracy theorist geopolitics. Listen with a good filter but some alternative takes on geopolitics.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORfzlz6avdg
30. "Independence is the best financial goal for most people. But independence is more than just financial – moral, cultural, and intellectual independence – is one of the highest levels you can reach in life. “There is only one success,” says poet Christopher Morley, “to be able to spend your life in your own way.”
Derek Sivers once put it a different way:
All misery comes from dependency. If you weren’t dependent on income, people, or technology, you would be truly free. The only way to be deeply happy is to break all dependencies.
That’s why independence – financially, intellectually, morally – is one of the highest goals you can achieve."
https://collabfund.com/blog/pure-independence/
31. Don't resist technology. Great wide-ranging conversation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zef9cdnu2zU
32. Good update on what's up in Silicon Valley.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79NvO_Fi4Go
33. "And there we have it. Europe is refusing to admit that it is in an abusive relationship with Trump. Its afraid, has normalized the abuse, is ashamed of its own weakness, and is constantly the subject of intimidation. The more European leaders run to Trump for any signs of affection, the more they seriously wait to start arming to defend themselves, the more the pass off Trumpite threats and forgive his cooperation with Putin, the more difficult it will be to leave.
Europe’s only way to look after itself and deal rationally with Trump is to admit that it is in this abusive relationship—and have the self-respect to move on."
https://phillipspobrien.substack.com/p/why-is-europe-staying-in-an-abusive
34. "These four principles—narrow ICP, counter-positioning, aligned GTM & product, & positive brand building—don’t just help startups capture market share; they redefine markets entirely."
https://tomtunguz.com/your-icp/
35. Always wanted to visit Medellin and Colombia in general. Live Like a King in Medellin.
My Content Map: A Tool for All Creators and Make No Mistake, Everyone will be a Creator
Investing in yourself is more than just about money. It’s about education and self development. Taking David Perell’s “write of Passage” was a game changer for me and kicked off this newsletter. I’ve continued to invest in my own education outside of the masses of books I buy and read.
I am taking classes from my buddy D aka “Art of Purpose” aka AoP on how to get good at Twitter. AoP is a former public school teacher turned Twitter master and millionaire online educator I met at my buddy Eric Siu’s Leveling Up Mastermind. It’s been an eye opener and raised my admittedly crap Twitter game. But the classes have also helped me understand social media and audiences better too.
One of the exercises we had to do was a content map. What are you deeply interested in and enjoy thinking and researching? It has to be personally interesting or else you will not work at it and be consistent.
That is why we see the rule of 5 in the creator world: most podcasters, bloggers, and newsletter writers quit after releasing only 3-5 pieces of content.
But it also needs to hang together in some narrative and overarching theme. This part was incredibly challenging for me as I am pretty much interested in far too many things.
History, the technology and media industry, company building, sales/marketing, personal finance, geopolitics, psychology, self development, creator economy, entrepreneurship, venture capital and startups. Way too many strands which don’t really tie together and explains the mess of my content and brand. It’s like that old Napoleon saying: “he who defends everything, defends nothing.”
That is why the Content Map was such a painful but helpful exercise.
Here is what it looks like:
Why does this matter? Everyone needs to be a creator in some form and build an audience. A very targeted niche audience. You are building a movement and community, a place to share your ideas and knowledge and to get feedback. Figuring out what you stand for and what your content map is will be the first step.