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.
Patisserie Coin De Rue: Tragedy & Triumph in the Pursuit of Perfection
I saw this lovely Japanese movie, a drama about a cute bakery in Tokyo, that specializes in affordable but top end patisseries.
This one falls into “Jiro Dreams of Sushi” but for cakes. I love Japan and I love cakes. I was originally pulled in by the beautiful shots of how pastries are being made. But the human drama was excellent.
The big lessons from the movie was that of persistence, obsession and keeping high standards in the pursuit of excellence. The hard work, the early mornings, all the mistakes to get to a high level.
That and the high personal price one pays for pursuing excellence. In the movie, one of the main characters loses his young daughter to a tragic accident, due to being late in picking her up because of his obsession at work. As a father, that scene was devastating to me personally. I still shudder when I think of it, it’s so heartbreaking.
But there were so many wonderful scenes of how a simple cake made with love could bring so much joy and happiness to people. How it can be a solace to someone.
As quoted in the movie, “when you are doing what you love, it shows.” I guess that is the ultimate lesson. If you can make or do something that brings joy to someone you should do it. And if you are lucky enough to be able to do this, then you have found your craft and place in this world.
The Legend and the Butterfly: Power Corrupts
In lieu of visiting Japan, I have been on a Japanese movie kick. I watched documentaries, comedies and was excited to watch a samurai drama tracing the rise of warlord Oda Nobunaga and his marriage to Lady Nohime. For anyone who knows Japanese history, Oda was considered one of the first unifiers of warring states of Japan in the mid-1500s.
We learn that his marriage to Lady No, who was a brilliant samurai noblewoman, was key to his rise to power. Giving him wise counsel and encouraging him when he was down. She helps channel his ambition. He embarks on his conquest to reunify Japan against the other warlords.
Yet Oda pays an incredible price. He fights many battles with lots of killing. He becomes ruthless in the accumulation of power, crushing everyone and everything in his way. “At this time, I have no heart. I haven’t been a decent man in a long time. I am not a man. I am King of the Sixth Heaven Demons.”
We see how this affects him, as the weight of it all drained the joy out of his previously carefree and joyful life. He ages tremendously, becoming demon-like and this is reflected in how scary his face becomes to everyone around him.
“Look at his face. Can you see how exhausted and miserable he is??”
He eventually realizes how much he has sacrificed on the altar of power.
“I killed an enemy that challenged me. I built a castle like no other at Azuichi. I achieved so much that even the Emperor admires me.
What for? What was it for?”
This is the question so many of us ponder or discover the hard way at the end. The quest for power, wealth and fame. Success. It’s so alluring and attractive to us when we are young. But what a price we pay. Such a heavy price.
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads March 16th, 2025
"April prepares her green traffic light, and the world thinks: Go." —Christopher Morley
Topical discussions on what is happening in Silicon Valley. The wise Naval is the guest.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AI5qI6ej-yM
2. Lots of great insights on where the world of technology & business is going. Useful for investors and workers to understand where the puck is moving to.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nt7ckZDTtis&t=1903s
3. "Round-two entrepreneurs are some of my favorite types of entrepreneurs to work with. After years of effort that didn’t result in success, they still want to pursue the entrepreneurial journey again. That resilience separates casual entrepreneurs from those who are truly committed.
Failure is normal and often the most common outcome. But just because you’ve been knocked down doesn’t mean you can’t get back up. Round-two entrepreneurs step back into the arena with a newfound perspective—and a little extra spring in their step."
https://davidcummings.org/2025/02/15/round-two-entrepreneurs/
4. "If these accusations get anywhere is anyone’s guess —if Argentina’s past is any indicator, my bet would be that this won’t having any implications for Milei’s presidency locally, just like with so many politicians before him—, but they will be an unnecessary additional distraction next to more crucial topics like Argentina’s economy and Milei’s political success in the October elections.
The more important damage is that to Milei’s image abroad, since most people outside of Argentina were probably not aware of his previous endorsement or simply forgot about it because the chainsaw was roaring with such great success. The fact that nobody on the Milei team thought about the potential consequences of his actions or simply didn’t care, is worrying to say the least.
His political team will have to think long and hard on how to avoid these things from happening in the future, and Milei would do well to focus solely on the matters at hand, which is the October elections and the Argentine economy."
https://www.bowtiedmara.io/p/libra-imbalanced-confidence
5. "To end on a positive note, there was one silver lining that I saw: Europe seems to be waking up - albeit very slowly. J.D. Vance’s speech, for all its flaws, may have served a purpose: It forced Europeans to confront an uncomfortable reality.
If the U.S. isn’t coming to the rescue, Europe has no choice but to take responsibility for itself.
The question is: Will there be enough time before the storm arrives?"
https://stationzero.substack.com/p/a-storm-is-coming-what-i-saw-at-the
6. "To be clear, I don’t quite agree with the idea that the elites have totally abandoned ‘shaping the world’ in exchange for merely maintaining the status quo—at least not directly and intentionally. Rather the process transitioned toward this emergently due to the elites’ inability to harness the unpredictable fluxes they had unleashed with their monetary and social engineering leviathans, particularly of the ‘Nixon shock’ era and Bretton Woods annulment.
The distinction is this Potemkin existence is essentially a de facto rather than de jure system. It’s a tail that wags the dog because the system’s main imposed characteristics are designed more to reactively stave off collapse, rather than proactively re-engineer society into an altruist’s vision of the future. Again, the distinction comes from the inherent urgency of the demands for this change: the elites have no way of stopping their system’s slow-mo demise, and instead resort to perception control to buy time."
https://darkfutura.substack.com/p/hypernormalization
7. "In contrast, the standout new dynamics - and reason for my MAGAnomics worries - is a significant drop in Japanese exports to the Global South. This is were head-to-head competition against Made-in-China has intensified, were Japan has been loosing ground, and is poised to loose further market share and profitability if Trump’s policies raise further the costs for China to do business in (or with) America.
China’s manufacturing capability and capacity have grown and evolved consistently. China is now a perfectly viable global competitor to Made-in-Japan. Famously, China surpassed Japan as the world’s number one car exporter; and the breadth of head-to-head competition against China is growing rapidly: first, it was textiles and toys; then the Shinkansen bullet train and electronics; last year, cars; and next up — machinery and capital goods: already China’s exports of industrial robots have more than doubled in the last five years while Japan’s are down 12%. A similar story in construction and mining machinery, up almost 3-fold for China, down over 10% for Japan (same five years).
Clear-speak: Trump’s America is frightening, yes it needs to scare the world to survive at home; but it thereby empowers global leaders. After decades of “Japan should play a greater part in the U.S.-Japan alliance” Trump’s America puts an end to diplomatic niceties and leaves Japan’s elite with no choice. They now will become more independent, more self-sufficient, more aggressive, assertive, and more focused on self-centered material results. The “free ride” is over — which fuels both the local corporate- and political metabolism."
https://japanoptimist.substack.com/p/maga-worries
8. "TDL;DR: The next generation of AI is imminent, and companies are working feverishly to be at the forefront of it.
The practical result of all this is that an individual will continue to become more capable than ever before. You can use AI to generate fully-coded apps, bring projects to life that once required entire teams, or even push forward on cutting-edge research. The question is which problems we aim all this energy at—and whose vision guides us."
https://every.to/context-window/just-add-vision
9. "But more importantly, I think that from Europe’s vantage point, it mostly doesn’t matter which interpretation of America’s recent words and actions is more accurate.
Whether America really wants to focus on deterring China in Asia, or whether it just wants to retreat from the global stage and focus on bullying Canada, Panama, and its own minorities, that doesn’t change the cold hard fact that America is retreating from its role as the guarantor of European security. And whether or not Trump’s people actually think Russia is a threat to Europe, that doesn’t change the fact that Russia is a threat to Europe. And whether Trump’s people truly care about free speech, that doesn’t change the fact that Europe’s people are angry about recent immigration waves, and if that anger isn’t accommodated through the democratic process, Europe’s stability could be in danger.
In other words, both the challenges that Europe faces, and the fact that the U.S. is not going to help with those challenges, are clear and obvious. Europe must either stand on its own against the threats that face it, or capitulate to those threats.
Fortunately, some of the Europeans may finally be realizing this.
Nor is it fanciful to think that Europe might unite to fight Russia. Even if the U.S. formally withdraws from NATO, or simply refuses to come to its allies’ aid, NATO command can serve as a unified military command for any and all European efforts against Russia. Crucially, NATO also includes Turkey and the UK, who aren’t in the EU, but both of which are rivals of Russia. In fact, without a Trump-led U.S. weighing the alliance down, it could be free to become the pan-European military force that the region needs.
The other danger is that each European country will look after its own narrow interests, throwing the other countries to the wolves. There’s a tendency of each country to view the nations to the east of it as buffer states — a defense-in-depth to hold off the Russians. This is a dangerous fantasy. The more Russia conquers, the more powerful it growth, since it basically enslaves each conquered group into its army to conquer the next group. When the USSR attacked Poland in 1919, it did so with many Ukrainian troops; when it menaced West Europe during the Cold War, it did so with Polish troops. And so on. Europe has to make a stand and put up a hard wall, instead of letting Russia continue to absorb and enslave its people bit by bit.
If the U.S. abandons Ukraine to Russia entirely, as now looks fairly likely, it might make sense for Europe to actively intervene in the war, helping the Ukrainians stop Russia from grabbing any more territory."
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/its-time-for-europe-to-stand-up
10. An incredible interview with Palmer Luckey of Oculus Drift and Anduril. I'm glad he is on our side.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bwSycrvcwAs&t=11319s
11. Sober and yet still optimistic view from the Munich Security Conference. Ukraine will be a military industrial giant.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHZT4uk9Cjk
12. "Taiwan has learnt the central tech lesson from the war in Ukraine: the next global conflicts will heavily feature cheap, small drones – and in large numbers.
So as an electronics and hardware component giant – especially relative to its size and diplomatic status – it is trying not only to develop a domestic industry, but also become an arsenal for the free world, building drones and devices for allied militaries worldwide.
The Taiwanese government estimates that the domestic drone industry will produce USD $150 million in drones this year, with goals to increase that eightfold by 2030. Thousands of drones have been ordered by the Ministry of National Defense to boost the domestic supply chain, and millions of dollars in funding have been dedicated to R&D.
And not all of the drones will be aerial. Given the island nation’s deep connections to the ocean, they are pushing to develop technologies in this realm as well.
Another marine science center, located on the southern tip of the Taiwanese main island, is currently being used for the testing of underwater drones."
13. "Imagine American factories no longer crippled by semiconductor shortages. Picture grocery store shelves stocked with affordable food, and fuel prices that don’t drain wallets. That’s the future a negotiated end to the Ukraine war can deliver — and it’s a future where America stands stronger.
The time for endless proxy wars is over. It’s time for a bold, pragmatic strategy that secures American supply chains, strengthens our economy, and restores our global dominance. Ending the war in Ukraine isn’t just good policy; it’s essential for America and the EU’s future."
14. For all SaaS leaders. Pipegen.
https://kellblog.com/2025/02/16/you-cant-eat-pipegen/
15. "Europe has become a third-rate power economically, politically, and militarily, and the price for this slowly building predicament is now due all at once.
I don't summarize the sad state of Europe out of spite or ill will or from a lack of standing. I don't want Europe to become American. But I want Europe to be strong, confident, and successful. Right now it's anything but."
https://world.hey.com/dhh/europe-s-impotent-rage-7edae302
16. "The same principles apply to basically all aspects of life: investing, health, relationships etc. You are playing a game of probabilities. Can’t complain about having bad dating options if you were hitting up E-thots every day and going to house parties with the 50 year old narco.
While you might be the exception to the rule, power lifting and playing football at age 40, the chances are slim that it works out long-term. The data is already out there to steer yourself to flexibility, lower overall weight to avoid injury and a clean diet.
You have to come up with a system for your investing and biz ventures. We could care less about price action for 1-2 years let alone 1-2 months. There are graveyards full of people who sold all their META stock at $40 or all their BTC at $2,000. *Our* strategy is to build stuff that can work for 5-10+ years. If for some reason you have a gift for options trading then honestly go for it, just know you’ll never convince us to go down that route. It isn’t a core competency and would probably cost too much time to learn."
https://bowtiedbull.io/p/general-life-themes-for-the-sentient
17. So many great lessons and ideas for making your life better.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0JfRPXYFQHE&t=949s
18. Snapshot of geopolitics from some ex-CIA officers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jxnug2u7VKg
19. "You can take the shot without being afraid to fail… because in the long run we’re all failures, since none of us are immortal. We are not gods.
Like a girl? Go talk to her.
Hate your boss? Start an online business.
Stressed too much about your work? Care less, build a side hustle.
Health problems? Exercise, eat clean, and do what you can to fix it.
Do what you can do to fix the problem instead of being sad and depressed about it.
If you fail, so what? Try again."
https://lifemathmoney.com/1-year-from-the-death-of-jon-anthony-from-masculine-development-takeaways/
20. It's all about political will here. Europe waking up.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JogpD0ZtI-E
21. "Imagine the US as a colossal investment management firm (America Capital Partners) operating in—and controlling access to—the world's most successful business ecosystem. This ecosystem is so dynamic that it constantly runs hot: American consumers and businesses, empowered by innovation and high productivity, generate demand that constantly exceeds domestic supply, creating persistent trade deficits.
These deficits aren't a bug but a feature: they reflect the ecosystem's dynamism and purchasing power, which in turn makes it so attractive to foreign investors. And it’s this very vibrancy that enables America Capital Partners to attract such a large volume of Assets Under Management (AUM).
The mechanics are elegant: when Americans buy more than they sell abroad, they export dollars. Those foreign sellers, enriched by American consumption, then face a crucial choice about what to do with these dollars. Given America's unmatched investment opportunities, sophisticated financial markets, and strong property rights, they typically choose to reinvest right back into the American ecosystem."
https://www.driftsignal.com/p/will-trump-and-musk-break-the-greatest
22. "Europe simply can't have it both ways. Be weak militarily, utterly dependent on an American security guarantee, and also expect a seat at the big-cat table. These positions are incompatible. You either get your peace dividend -- and the freedom to squander it on net-zero nonsense -- or you get to have a say in how the world around you is organized.
Which brings us back to Trump doing Europe a favor. For all his bluster and bullying, America is still a benign force in its relation to Europe. We're being punked by someone from our own alliance. That's a cheap way of learning the lesson that weakness, impotence, and peace-dividend thinking is a short-term strategy. Russia could teach Europe a far more costly lesson. So too China.
All that to say is that Europe must heed the rude awakening from our cowboy friends across the Atlantic. They may be crude, they may be curt, but by golly, they do have a point.
Get jacked, Europe, and you'll no longer get punked. Stay feeble, Europe, and the indignities won't stop with being snubbed in Saudi Arabia."
https://world.hey.com/dhh/europe-must-become-dangerous-again-13413d78
23. "So yes, Americans are buckling up for not so much a World War or an Empire, but rather a new world order where managed conflicts are the order of the day. It is, given that we are dealing with Trump, driven by fast transactions often with huge monetary incentives, but underneath all these pieces is a defensive strategy for an increasingly fractured and de-globalized world. And the latter came into being long before Trump. Let’s see how this wake up call is digested in capitals around the world."
https://pieterdorsman.substack.com/p/broad-strokes
24. Good teardown on Fake news by DJT re: Ukraine. All Facts here.
Or maybe there is a master plan here. God I hope so.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_etB3c3qOLI
25. An educational and sober conversation on war & the geopolitical scene with Erik Prince.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPMgzm_9K50&t=358s
26. "Firestorm Labs is 3D printing drones in spaces tighter than the average Washington, D.C., apartment.
Why it matters: Additive manufacturing is incredibly attractive at a time when capacity — so often held hostage by specialty parts, single producers and backorders — is king.
The bottom line: "We believe that decentralized manufacturing is how we're going to win," Magy said."
https://www.axios.com/2025/02/12/firestorm-3d-printing-drones-california
27. A more optimistic take on what's happening in Europe right now. The Post American era. Hope he is right.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=upBMCjRXBDM&t=192s
28. One of the keenest observers of Russia here and the effect of a lack of European security strategy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLDTHTIkhFg
29. "The key bottleneck is though now not finance but military equipment and supplies and unfortunately, despite three years of war, Europe has failed to put its military industrial complete into gear. Europe still remains heavily dependent on the U.S. for military supplies, a situation which will be slow to improve. But financing can perhaps help therein and again freeing immobilised Russian assets - the full $330 billion - could be used to fund the biggest ever European arms procurement deal from the USA. Europe should announce a huge $500 billion to $1 trillion arms procurement programme, significantly funded from immobilised Russian assets, and commit to buy much of the weaponary from the U.S.
Therein if Europe came to Trump with the largest arms procurement deal in history, say $50-100 billion a year for the next decade, securing in the process hundreds of thousands of US jobs, I doubt that even Trump could say no to that. Call it the Trump Defence of Democracy Programme, or whatever to glitter in his eye enough to get his agreement. The defence of Europe is now a needs must, we must do whatever we need to do."
https://timothyash.substack.com/p/the-answer-to-the-uk-and-ukraines
30. Demographics are destiny. Implications for Europe, Russia and China.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Nn5PnUobDA
31. Always a fun and critical conversation on the latest Silicon Valley news.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0iREcK5JzU
32. "Most Americans don’t like it when their leaders sell them out to their enemies.
If Trump starts cozying up to China as well as to Russia, as I predict he’ll do fairly soon, the American people will get even more negative about his regime — especially because economic factors are likely to become headwinds at the same time. Eventually, if disapproval gets very high, the Democrats will be able to rally the American public around something other than bland messaging about health care or the identity politics that failed them in previous years.
There’s another big problem with the Metternich-Lindbergh idea, which is that China also gets a vote. Russia is probably happy to take a breather and get the U.S. off its back, but China might not be satisfied with dominion over a third of the world. It’s unlikely to see an introverted, inscrutable, autocratic U.S. as a true ally. And China’s leaders will worry that another change of U.S. leadership could bring American power back to challenge it in Asia.
For this reason, if the U.S. appeases China, they’ll keep trying to weaken American power, even in the Western Hemisphere. They’ll step in as Canada’s patron and protector, as well as the countries of Latin America; the U.S. won’t be able to dominate South America as it did in Lindbergh’s time, and South America has plenty of resources that China would like to monopolize for itself. Shorn of the assistance of Japan, South Korea, and India, the U.S. would not be very capable of resisting Chinese encroachment in its own back yard."
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/america-is-being-sold-out-by-its
33. "Why are the Europeans and the West as a whole so worried? One is security, especially for eastern European countries. If Russia takes over Ukraine, there’s a fear that they will move on to conquering other countries. Two is ideology. In the Cold War, the U.S. fought all over the globe, including Korea and Vietnam, to stop the spread of communism.
After decades of fighting and intense competition, the Soviet Union collapsed and Democracy won. This war is also seen as a battle of ideologies, democratic countries teamed together to help Ukraine win against a larger autocratic regime. Countries all over Africa have fallen to autocrats over the past few years. Will democracy win this one, or is it the era of autocracy?
https://www.globalhitman.com/p/swimming-in-strange-water
34. Fun episode today on All in Podcast. Lots of interesting stuff happening in tech.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OxP55dZjqZs
35. Trying to make sense of the confusing geopolitics of recent weeks. George Friedman opines. An Un-Anchored world.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-okIcAADYE&t=86s
36. "According to data from Dealroom.co, the share of European defence tech investments has risen to 1.7% of venture capital funding in 2024 from just 0.4% in 2022, reaching nearly $1 billion.
Much of the money flows to western Europe but the number of funding rounds has tripled in central and eastern Europe since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, Dealroom.co data showed."
Hard Reality of Life: There Will Always Be Problems
Not sure why I thought this. But I always thought there would be a point in my life that things got easier. That there would not be any major problems. Boy was I wrong. I think many of us have these thoughts growing up and it is shocking, yet comforting at the same time.
There was this great passage written by Sam Harris I found on Twitter (Thank you Brett Berson) that I found reassuring. And I hope you will find it helpful.
"Were you really expecting to have no more problems at some point in your life? You're just going to wake up one morning and none of this would be happening? There would be nothing on your to-do list. Do you actually want nothing on your to-do list? Life is mostly about solving problems, and you can solve these."
So my problem, more than anything else, was that I was treating problems themselves as anomalies. I was tacitly assuming that I should be able to get rid of all my problems and avoid any new ones. Even though this sounds ridiculous, that was implicit to me thinking and to my emotional life, to the way I was meeting each new problem.
But of course, I can never get to a place where problems stop appearing, and neither can you. Life is an unending series of complications, so it doesn't make any sense to be surprised by the arrival of the next one. The magnitude of the problem might surprise you, but the fact that new complications in your life are arising hour by hour is absolutely to be expected.
Very soon, some machine that you are relying on to do work or to keep you comfortable is going to break. This is guaranteed to happen. You're also going to catch a cold in the not-too-distant future, and your plane will be late, or your luggage will get lost. At some point, you'll injure your knee and need to see a doctor for it. It can't be any other way. Really, it can't be any other way.
And the expectation that it can or should be some other way is a great source of unnecessary suffering. Suffering that actually makes it harder to solve the problems we should be faced with. Ironically, this is a problem that you can solve, and you can do that by expecting more problems to arise every day of your life. It's like you're playing a video game. Did you expect that there would be some incredibly boring level of this video game without problems? This is the game we call existence. Problems continually arise, so enjoy them.”
(Source: https://twitter.com/brettberson/status/1757887022650536264/photo/1)
So welcome problems that come your way. Embrace them. Believe you can handle them. It means you are alive and part of the human race. And hopefully living well.
Sliding Down Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs: The Coming Years of Civil Rage
For anyone who does not know Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, according to Simply Psychology:
“There are five levels in Maslow’s pyramid. From the bottom of the hierarchy upwards, the needs are: physiological (food and clothing), safety (job security), love and belonging needs (friendship), esteem, and self-actualization.
Maslow asserted that so long as basic needs necessary for survival were met (e.g., food, water, shelter), higher-level needs (e.g., social needs) would begin to motivate behavior.” (Source: https://www.simplypsychology.org/maslow.html)
We spend our lives trying to move up this pyramid. But what goes up must come down. That is the cycle. The West is clearly declining in the biggest “self-own” in history as stupid monetary and social policies are implemented and we continue to make badly thought out geopolitical moves in the wake of growing peer powers in China & Russia that hate us, and powers like Indian and Turkey who have their own interests and alignments.
At a macro level, it’s hard not to notice the startling decline of the West in every major city I go to in Europe, Canada and the USA. Crappy infrastructure especially the airports, a sense of gloom in the populace outside of places like New York and Silicon Valley (and these places have their own issues).
In most Western European capital cities I can’t help but see a lot of poor and somewhat aggressive young migrants from Africa and the Middle East who clearly have not assimilated at all. I’m in general pro immigration but what I am seeing in Europe and USA show there is too much of a good thing. No point bringing people in if you can’t support or afford them. It only leads to disappointment, then disillusionment and then anger from both residents and immigrants.
This is a signal of the cluelessness and self-destructive policies implemented by our incompetent politicians. Or worse, politicians who know these policies do not actually affect them as they are insulated in their secure estates and gated communities unlike the rest of the populace.
Growing inequality everywhere as the costs of living go up for most people, while the wealthy stack more assets. Extremistan is here. For those not numbed by alcohol, drugs, video games and Netflix, many people will notice they are sliding down the socio-economic ladder. Life will get tougher for most people. They will literally be sliding down Maslow’s Hierarchy into survival mode for food, water and shelter. Safety will definitely be gone as crime skyrockets from desperate people.
And there will be massive amounts of rage by the populace against the elites and institutions. This will only be counteracted by violent police and military suppression in some countries.
This is my forecast. I hope it does not happen but I’m seeing signs of this direction everywhere in the West. The natives are literally restless. It’s hard to read this. It was hard to write this.
So what is the point besides scaring you? Well it should be scary. And you should mentally prepared for this. It fits much of what I write and exhort people to do. So consider this a regular reminder of the basics.
Get healthy and physically fit. Learn to fight.
Get financially fit. Make WiFi money and have skills that are useful like online marketing, project management or knowing how to invest.
Have assets that are light and are considered hard like gold, BTC & ETH. Couple thousand dollars in USD wouldn’t hurt. Have assets in many different places, countries and jurisdictions like Singapore, Dubai or Switzerland.
If you live in the city, make sure you know your neighbors well and it’s good to have firearms that you know how to use. Couple thousand in ammo rounds are good. Make friends with military, local law enforcement, fire and safety people.
Probably not a bad idea to have a farm and some farmland that you can access
It is also helpful to have other citizenships in relatively stable, resource filled and secure places like New Zealand or Chile or Portugal.
Having a plan B and prepping can’t hurt. A wise person should always consider the possible scenarios and prepare for them. Don’t trust our elites or the authorities to get us out of the mess they put us in. Look at how they handled Covid as an example.
You have no control of what’s happening but you can control how you react to them. And most importantly you can control yourself. Take ownership of your future.
Luxury Beliefs Are a Signal of the Peak
It’s hard for me to see otherwise smart but naive people follow stupid ideas. DEI, Wokeism, socialism and insane environmental/ ESG ideas and also try to inflict them in the world and others with zeal.
Examples of stupidity abound. The idiot environmentalists stopping traffic or vandalizing famous museum artworks. The protests for the “oppressed people” of the week. Defund the police or most insidious spread of pro-socialist/ almost communist views when there have been so many examples that this is just the road to societal hell as we have seen in the Soviet Union, Zimbabwe, Cuba, Argentina multiple times and most recently Venezuela.
Pacifism is another example of a luxury belief. In the bad old days like hundreds if not thousands of years ago, we had to do what we had to do to survive. Life was widely dangerous and unstable. If you did not fight or kill you would die and your genes would not get passed on.
How fortunate are we that this is not the case anymore and that there is some level of prosperity and stability in our world that we can afford more diversity of thought and ideas. That we have plenty for now that we can afford to help others.
There are studies that show that when people or organisms grow in an area of scarcity, these individuals just become tougher. When resources & stuff is scarce it literally is “I win, you lose and starve”. It requires ruthlessness and drive to survive in these environments.
If you grow in an area of plenty, you tend not to be as sharp. Access to plenty eventually leads to softness, ease and lethargy. Our modern world of abundance and comfort has wrecked humans. We are maladapted. Look at the high level of obesity and mental illness in our societies today. All signs of unfitness and brokenness.
This reminds me of when well intentioned & pampered Western kids join NGOs and go to third world hell holes. They quickly find their comfortable views upended by the harsh realities on the ground. They are usually disabused of their ideals very quickly. Sometimes violently.
Sadly this is where the Western world is going. People who have been hidden from the reality and harshness of the world now face this new world disorder for the first time. A unipolar world to a multipolar world. This was inevitable but has been sped up due to complacency and weakness of the West in mind, body and spirit.
Radigan Carter writes on this:
“Most in the west don’t understand fanaticism because their entire life is devoted to avoiding pain. From Fed preventing losses in their investments, to wanting a pill to solve an illness instead of enduring the discipline at exercising, to not missing a meal, to being able to go without air conditioning or hot water.
People who spend their entire life avoiding normal everyday volatility will never understand the expense and dedication required to win against those who live long volatility as a lifestyle. And that is what fanaticism is at its heart, it is taking upfront pain for a potential reward in the future. It is the very definition of long vol.
Which is why most in the modern west don’t understand it. They can’t even stand a 20% drop in their vanguard account.
So since we aren’t really going to commit to the level required to win, no point in doing it at all I think. But I may as well be speaking a foreign language talking about this to some. They want to watch military montages to AC/DC and feel good while not taking any personal pain, so ok.”
Within our societies, things are only going to become more competitive, rougher and tougher.
This is going to be a shocking wake up call for many people. It will be a Darwinian test of survival for many people and countries over the next decade. Similar to what happened to the Roman Republic with luxury and comfort leading to incredible rot and weakness as well as viciousness. So better be prepared for this now.
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads March 9th, 2025
“I don't believe people are looking for the meaning of life as much as they are looking for the experience of being alive”--Joseph Campbell
A strong case against Xi Jingping's China. We have to establish growth, deterrence and stability.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wQYf2PspkI&t=2167s
2. "The reason for this explosion is simple: the cost of starting a software company has plummeted. What once required $1–2M of funding to hire a small team can now be achieved by two founders (or even a solo founder) with little more than a laptop or two and a $20/month subscription to ChatGPT Pro.
With these tools, founders can build, test, and iterate at unprecedented speeds. The product build-iterate-test-repeat cycle is insanely short. If each iteration is a “shot on goal,” the $1–2M of the past bought you a few shots within a 12–18 month runway. Today, that $20/month can buy you a shot every few hours.
This dramatic drop in costs, coupled with exponentially faster iteration speeds, has led to a flood of startups entering the market in each category. Competition has never been fiercer. This relentless pace also means faster failures, and the startup graveyard is now overflowing."
https://allensthoughts.com/2025/01/09/ai-has-democratized-everything/
3. Always a good discussion on Silicon Valley with BG2.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8chNXhA8o8
4. Learning from the best. Hedge funder who learned at the feet of two of the top guys around.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCMMbBz4uRk
5. "Military support to Ukraine - actually there appears to be a commitment herein from the US to continue to supply military kit to Ukraine. I think this is far more credible/realistic in ensuring Ukraine’s defence. If Ukraine is assured supply of the full range of conventional military kit to defend itself I think it can assure its own security - the evidence is the fact that Ukrainians have held back a far better armed foe, Russia, now for close to three years.
I would call this the State of Israel assurance - giving Ukraine the same access to military tech as what Israel currently gets from the US. Russia will obvioualy aim to set limits on Ukraine’s military capability as Putin will want the option of invading again in the future. This will be a key battle in negotiations, and could ultimately determine whether Ukraine has security, and it is sustainable long term.
I would think if the talks are going to stall/fail it will be around the issue of territorial give ups, European troop deployments and also around what military capability Ukraine is assured of - Russia will look to limit the arms supplies to Ukraine as part of any deal, but without NATO membership or other security guarantees Ukraine will see limitations on its future military capability as a make or break issue for talks."
https://timothyash.substack.com/p/ukraine-the-peace-plan
6. Conversation on how the US or any country can stay ahead technologically.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dS8Ue2B1wm4&t=5s
7. The Future of AI from two of the top investors around.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJ3pNPFwAeM
8. "Bicycles, sanitation, airplanes, vaccines, and Crispr are just a few technologies that have changed the world, but their benefits were dispersed across society rather than being hoarded by a few shareholders. I increasingly believe AI will join this roster — it presents dynamics similar to most stakeholder vs. shareholder innovations:
Government-backed or university-developed (the internet, GPS, vaccines);
Open-source or public domain (Linux, Python, Wikipedia, USB); and
Too foundational to be monopolized (bicycles, sanitation, airplanes).
In sum, the winners here will be stakeholders, not shareholders. Scan your emotions after reading the last sentence. Did you reflexively grab your shareholder pearls and feel this was, maybe, a bad thing? It isn’t.
America becomes more like itself every day, and our obsession with, and idolatry of, the dollar has put the public good in the back seat. Billions of stakeholders benefiting from AI, vs. one business becoming worth more than every stock market on Earth except Japan and the US, and one man being worth more than Boeing feels less sexy … less American. (Hint: NVDA & Jensen Huang.)"
https://www.profgalloway.com/a-new-ai-world/
9. Always learning from this guy. Lots of insights on where tech is going.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wG97nnGmaKk&t=1155s
10. Lots of good discussion here on what's up in Silicon Valley news. Softbank & AI Super Bowl: short everything!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9idY0ind-H8&t=907s
11. Great power war? At least a Cold War for sure. "The Eurasian Century" is worth reading.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ws8X2rbdlXs
12. "The Pitchbook numbers are accurate, but the conclusions are not.
I think the opposite will happen. Counter-intuitively, I think the number of VCs will continue to grow.
More VCs will be needed because the VC model now applies to all industries. AI will make all companies digital technology companies between 2024-2040 and hopefully accelerate their growth. Thus the surface area where VC investment applies will expand: defense, healthcare, energy, climate, space, techbio, education, government, etc. More VCs will be needed to cover all that surface area."
https://www.nfx.com/post/venture-capital-3
13. "The next time you talk to an entrepreneur, listen to his voice. Pay attention to the excitement around the idea. After the conversation, do a mental analysis of his level of passion. Some of the most successful entrepreneurs I know are also the most passionate about their mission."
https://davidcummings.org/2025/02/08/the-entrepreneurs-passion/
14. "The rouble is depreciating again, too, nearing the lows it experienced after a brief crash at the outset of the war; this means Russians won’t be able to afford as many imported goods.
The economic troubles aren’t at a crisis point yet, but they are probably causing strains in Russian society — birth rates are falling, crime is up, and elites are getting restless. It has now been three years since Russia invaded Ukraine; historically speaking, maintaining a high-intensity war effort for more than three or four years is pretty difficult. World War 1 lasted only four years, and the Korean War lasted three.
Nor does Ukraine look like it’s about to be overrun and conquered in the next year. Despite the constant drumbeat of headlines about Russian advances, on a map the amount of territory seized — about 1600 square miles in 2024 — looks pretty minor. As for the prospect that Ukraine’s military will collapse, that looks unlikely too — the country has far less manpower than Russia does, but it has enough to keep defending tenaciously and making Russia pay for every square mile of territory for a while yet.
Meanwhile, Ukraine’s economy is growing, and domestic arms production is soaring. The country has built a bunch of hardened underground factories, and now claims to be able to produce 4 million drones per year. Even if Trump does decide to draw down U.S. aid to Ukraine, that will probably not cause Ukraine to collapse. The Ukrainians are not flimsy U.S. puppets; they’re dead set on defending their country against the invader by any means necessary, and they’re very good at making stuff.
So while the Russians isn’t ready to make a peace deal yet, if Trump puts increased economic and military pressure on them, there’s a decent chance they could be persuaded to accept the offer.
The next question is: What happens then?
My bet is that Ukraine’s leaders have already thought along these lines. I predict that they’re probably ready to take the plunge and sign a deal of the type Trump is proposing, even though doing so could spell the end of their political careers. And because Putin almost certainly understands this historical parallel, he’s reluctant to make that deal — he knows it means that most of Ukraine will semi-permanently escape Russia’s orbit, fulfilling the dreams that Ukrainian nationalists have cherished for over 150 years. But if it’s a choice between that and a catastrophe in Russia, I think he might take the deal anyway.
In other words, given Ukraine’s inherent military weaknesses — a lack of manpower, and a small population compared to Russia’s — Trump’s deal is probably the best they can get. So if Trump really wants to follow through on his campaign promise and end the war, his primary task is to convince Russia, by hook or by crook, that his deal is the best they can get."
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/whats-going-to-happen-to-ukraine
15. I don't like MacGregor who is a Russia shill but many of the things he talks about is correct. USA is donor-run oligarchy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wn8KxL6sMyI
16. "In the early dawn hours, as the sun rose in the first week of December 2024, a symphony of drones began to sound.
But this was no ordinary drone wave.
In fact, this one was the first attack of its kind: a successful, all-drone assault on Russian positions. The assault, deserving of a place in the history books, took place near Lyptsi, in the Kharkiv region of northeastern Ukraine.
It was a test – initially expected to fail – of whether multiple units could orchestrate a mission with dozens of FPV, recon, turret-mounted, and kamikaze drones all working in tandem on the ground and in the air."
https://newsletter.counteroffensive.pro/p/the-first-ever-all-drone-assault-by-ukraine
17. I try to listen to different opinions. Detest MacGregor & his Russian propaganda & isolationism, Pascal Lottaz is a naive European. But there is much here to consider.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ixu6MB3T_qE
18. Erik Prince is an American treasure. Letter of Marques & Private Military Companies coming back for sure.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIeNObrmUc8
19. This was a fun interview on investing and thinking about careers & philanthropy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0v_DWE-Sio4
20. This is an Alt-geopolitics conversation. Very non-mainstream views, his observations on the power of London City financial centre are interesting, something there.
Disagree with his perspective of the Russian invasion of Ukraine & his anti-Israel views which are incredibly bizarre. Krainer is kooky.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bL8daFrsVZg
21. Great profile on the long historical megacity of Chengdu.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6DR5Hh4AHM
22. Dr Pippa's writing has been very insightful. This panel talk was interesting.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mowxwJOpgoA
23. "This is where the second theory comes in: if Trump was actually threatening tariffs to negotiate, he got outplayed by both Sheinbaum and Trudeau. Why? These seem like token gestures. There’s nothing in any of these “deals” that he couldn’t have gotten with a simple phone call. This is also a very inefficient use of force. This would be the equivalent of holding a grenade in your hand, walking up to your neighbor, and saying, “Give me a pen or I’ll blow both of us up.” Your neighbor would give you a confused look and say they would have given you the pen anyway. You didn’t need the grenade.
Round one goes to Mexico and Trudeau because for the threat level they didn’t give up much, Xi Jinping didn’t say a word, and Trump did not increase tariffs on Canada as promised after they retaliated."
https://www.globalhitman.com/p/the-trump-tariff-wars-round-1
24. Very illuminating and nuanced discussion on China under Xi. Well worth listening to.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gDqOqeKARM
25. "You can optimize for many things. Money. Freedom. Fame. Sleeping well at night. Great relationships. Learning the secrets of the universe.
But here’s one of those secrets. You can only optimize for one thing at a time. So I’ve chosen to optimize for energy, because as long as I have energy, I can achieve all the other things at my own pace.
How do I optimize for energy? I get more sleep, I work out regularly, I eat well, and I spend some time having fun every day.
What do you optimize for?"
https://newsletter.sanjaysays.co/p/feeling-tired-and-run-down
26. "There are important similarities between the choices faced by ancient and modern leaders. Trump and Xi both have choices, just as Hadrian and Chosroes did. Neither may choose to step back from potential conflict, particularly from their positions on Taiwan, but the choice to do so exists. It would be helpful if the policy community could move past preoccupation with the “Thucydides Trap” and realize that a range of options exists for peaceful coexistence between the U.S. and China. Hadrian had a vast array of competing interests as Trump and Xi will. He chose the peace and stability of the Roman Empire over the previous path of conquest and expansion. He faced pushback, particularly from the Roman elites, yet held to the course that avoided war.
His descendants eventually chose otherwise, reflecting the inevitability of change in international arrangements. Yet this does not change he chose not to act based on the supposition that shifts in the balance of power made another Parthian war inevitable. He had choices, and chose peace. U.S. and Chinese leadership can and hopefully will choose to do the same."
27. "One lens through which to view companies is to ask "what companies are an index of their underlying market"?
Index companies often take a cut of every transaction in their space, or are a piece of infrastructure everyone in the market needs. For example, it is a hard to launch something into space in the West without using SpaceX. These companies may be ways to participate in the market broadly without having to worry about how wins in it."
https://blog.eladgil.com/p/index-companies
28. Identify where the world is going and get in front of it. Lots of investing wisdom here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbVSGu7CiYE
29. This is a hard discussion on the massive changes in the geopolitical world.
American power is declining. This is the harsh truth because we have alienated many countries in the world and our massive debt makes us weaker.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eb86povWn00
30. "The small-car driver takes risks because he has no other choice (or so he thinks). The large-car driver takes risks selectively, because he can afford to.
This is the fundamental difference between an investor with limited capital and one with substantial wealth. When you have little, you’re forced to play an aggressive game, often at the cost of risk management. When you have more, you can afford patience, discipline, and strategy.
Of course, not everyone starts in the large car. Many successful investors began in the small one, taking risks to build their wealth. But the best understood that once they reached a certain level, their game had to change. They switched from chasing returns to preserving capital, from high-risk bets to calculated investments."
https://buildingthingsthatlast.substack.com/p/a-tale-of-two-drivers
31. "There are many opportunities – but also so many unanswered questions and challenges to overcome.
Even if rebuilding the Ukrainian economy began soon, it will likely be 10% below its pre-war level in 2027. This provides an idea for how long a process is needed before the country can get back to some kind of normal, economically and financially.
Besides, there are many voices who don't quite believe yet that a deal will be struck, or that a deal can be executed successfully.
Still, it all boils down to this: with a potentially new political set-up and plenty of financial support from the West, we could see Ukraine develop in a previously unseen fashion. It might be a 10-20-year investment theme, and it's worth spending a bit of time to dig deeper into the opportunities that sound like a fit for your particular investment needs."
32. "Not all of this is Trump’s fault, obviously. Some of Biden’s policies created underlying inflationary pressures that Trump now needs to do the hard work of cleaning up. The enormous national debt, which is now incurring skyrocketing interest costs, is only partly from Trump’s first term — most of it was built up during previous administrations. And like some of his Republican predecessors, Trump happens to be coming into office at the peak of the macroeconomic cycle.
So the deck is a bit stacked against him. But so far, Trump’s proposed policies — big tax cuts, tariffs, and yelling at the Fed to cut interest rates — look exactly what America doesn’t need in order to keep inflation down and growth high.
So Trump is in danger of piling self-inflicted wounds on top of existing bad luck. As a result, the Trump economy could end up as a severe disappointment. Already, warning signs are flashing.
So a lot of stuff Trump is doing — tax cuts, pressuring the Fed to lower interest rates, and threatening tariffs — is inflationary. Realistically, there’s no way that DOGE, or congressional spending cuts, are going to offset all that. Americans may be starting to realize this; some measures of consumer sentiment are beginning to fall again."
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/trumps-economy-is-already-in-trouble
33. "So while everyone appears to be focusing on Putin and Zelensky, the game that is being played out here is more about America’s redefined role in the newly emerging world disorder. Trump wants Europe to step up its military efforts and it is a push to get NATO members to spend 5% of their GDP (where today the average struggles to even get to 2%) on defence.
This is the shining object in the room and the Europeans were given a clear message by way of Pete Hegseth. Europe is now more than ever on its own and will have to start footing the bill for the defence of not only Ukraine but itself, a point NATO Secretary-General, Mark Rutte, has been making for quite a while now.
There is a very long way to go in getting any Ukraine-Russia settlement across the line and in meantime the war continues. And a ceasefire and deal across the current frontlines secured by European troops is hardly a win for Putin give his original objectives."
https://pieterdorsman.substack.com/p/europe-alone
34. "However, there's a saying in Japanese: "the clever hawk hides its talons." Ishiba is cannily continuing his predecessor's pop cultural pushes; Japanese press revealed his gifts to the President, which included a golden golf driver and a gilt samurai helm. What might seem a traditional sort of gift is actually another pop cultural appeal; Shogun swept the Oscars, and Otani peacocked in a similar helmet on the baseball diamond.
The Japanese government has announced a plan to make cultural exchanges, in the form of tourism and cultural exports, a pillar of its economy going forward. And the New Cool Japan strategy proposes doubling the production capacity of Japanese content-production industries. This is key, and when you look at Japan not as a manufacturing powerhouse but a pop-cultural superpower, you see that the relationship between Ishiba and Trump echoes that of Japan and the world.
Japan, once a feared enemy, is now seen as a friend by pretty much everyone outside of its immediate neighbors of China and Korea. And even their citizens love Japanese anime, manga, and games. Perhaps no other nation has ever so successfully transformed from a public enemy into a factory of dreams.
As I’ve written about before, Japan’s pop-cultural products have grown even more ubiquitous and influential than its manufactured goods were in the postwar era, and one secret to their success is how Japan stays out of the headlines economically, politically, and militarily. Preserving this status quo is what Japan stands to gain from playing a dove rather than a hawk, a pussycat instead of a tiger. And it’s nothing new.
We are now witnessing Chinpokomon diplomacy firsthand. Protocol means little to the current American administration; history and treaties even less. Everything is up for grabs, for the right price. But maintaining the US-Japan security alliance is key for Japan, for the island nation is surrounded by powerful rivals. Japan has only a small self-defense force, and nowhere near the population needed to scale it up to the size it could withstand a prolonged conflict with a neighbor."
https://blog.pureinventionbook.com/p/chinpokomon-diplomacy
35. Lots of interesting discussion on what's up in Silicon Valley.
The War Within: Choosing the Future Over the Past
I sometimes wonder if there is too much of a good thing. Too much food. Too much money. Too much therapy even though I’ve been a big beneficiary personally of therapy.
It’s good to understand yourself, your internal and deep seated driving issues. Stuff lurking subconsciously that impair your emotions and actions in day to day life or in relationships. Suppressing them only makes these emotions and issues surface more violently later. Stuff like my anger management issues. Apparently this is common among many men. Anger management issues were the apparent cause of Jolie leaving Brad Pitt and Heidi Klum leaving superstar musician Seal.
Like most people, I know when I mess up. I feel it deeply. And accept the responsibility and try to make it right. But somewhere along the lines in therapy and western culture there is this movement to continually live in it. Something Freudian in that we have to keep soaking in this trauma. I get that. That’s why so many of us get stuck in the past with regret. You think: If only I did this, or if I said this, or did something else, everything would be better. But that’s futile and a trap.
I wonder if there is a point like Freud's contemporary psychologist Adler says, that the past traumas stop mattering and that you just need to move on. You have to let it go.
You are a different person now compared to 5 years ago. Hopefully a better one. Learn from the past. Treasure the nostalgia of the good times back then.
Enjoy the present and act. The only thing that matters is what you do now. Taking action in the present to make a better future for yourself, your family and society.
Built for War: Surviving Tough Times
It’s ugly right now, in fact still very ugly in Silicon Valley. It’s always been hard in startup land, at least the reality of it in my 25 years here. But somewhere along the lines in 2019-2021, investors and founders kind of forgot this or just chose to ignore this reality. Reality bites back hard though. I keep this in mind when I read, and came across this description of Louis XVI who was the King toppled during the French Revolution in Jay Winik’s “The Great Upheaval”.
“In times of war, rebellion, or crisis, leaders must sometimes be cruel or cold; he was neither. In times of war, rebellion, or crisis; leaders must sometimes be able to hate; he was not much of a hater either. In times of war, rebellion, or crisis, to some extent or another, most leaders must be fanatics: stubborn, steel-willed, driven, secretive yet able to inspire, fastidious, and zealous.
They must be prepared to act alone, without encouragement, relying on their own inner resolve. And they must be indifferent to approval, reputation, and even love, cherishing only their own personal sense of honor or vision, which they allow no one else to judge.”
The quote seems incredibly apt. It’s psychologically wartime and it requires another level of intensity, endurance and work ethic. You have to be decisive in executing your vision regardless of the noise.
Being an entrepreneur, especially one going down the venture capital funding route is the hardest and longest path to the top of the mountain. Its high risk, but also high gain to its extreme, with tremendous failure rates. It is also a path to immense wealth if you do it right and with a little bit of grit, luck and timing too.
It’s incredibly hard to get to product market fit. But then it’s another kind of hard to scale your company once you start to grow like crazy. You have heard of the rule 3X, when everything breaks when you triple in size and revenue, and this sometimes happens several years in a row. Its levels on top of levels on top of levels of difficulty. Thus it requires a certain type of founder.
So new startup founders out there, please make sure you understand the expectations and what going down the venture scale path entails. It’s not everyone and that’s okay. So many kinds of businesses out there to build, just make sure it’s the right one for you.
The Joy and Pain of Fatherhood: Your Legacy (And A Personal Journey)
I fly a lot, of course. And walking through airports and sitting on the plane I enjoy seeing young families traveling. Especially ones with little babies or toddlers. They are so cute. And it’s wonderful seeing how happy yet tired these new parents are. The smallest smile and giggle just grabs your heart.
It takes me back to my own experience. I did not think I would enjoy being a dad as much as I have. In my twenties I was one of those stupid guys who thought kids were a burden and a drag on life. How stupid and foolish this view is. Being a parent is one of the most fundamental experiences of being a human. It’s one of the few legacies you have. I pity anyone who misses this experience. Sorry, pet kids don’t count.
Having Amber has been the best thing that ever happened to me and my family. I was over the moon when I became a dad. It was the happiest day of my life. Watching her grow over these last 15 years has been an immense privilege. I continue to be in awe.
She is so smart and even wise. She encapsulates all the best parts of her parents, my wife’s looks, athletic ability, common sense and kindness, coupled with my strong health, ambition, drive and work ethic. I’m already so proud of her. When I see her happy, that’s more than enough for me.
Yet I admit it’s been a tough last few years since the pandemic. The trauma and dislocation from the lockdowns, being separated for almost a year due to Taiwan shutting down their borders and my inability to manage my anger has caused irreparable damage to our relationship. Running an international investment business that requires a lot of travel has not helped. I haven’t really talked with her in over a year, let alone had a meal or walk or shop together.
It doesn’t help that she is a typical American teen, who frankly are just feral compared to Taiwanese, European and Canadian teens. Something about the crazy competitiveness here in America. It’s just a rough situation overall.
But she is everything to me. Children are literally your blood legacy to the world. And you hope you can leave your kids with some good habits, good lessons and good experiences. That is why I used to try to take her on trips around Asia, America and Canada. My fondest memories are of these trips together, when the family was happy. There are so many more amazing places, foods and experiences I want to share with her and show her.
I wish I was a better dad and parent. All the things I could have done differently. All the bad decisions. The harsh words. So many regrets here.
But all you can do as a parent is your best. You owe them that. Heck, you owe yourself that. So I continue to work on myself and improve. This way I can take better care of her and support her in the way she needs. Just being patient and showing you will be there no matter what. And hopefully they let you back in their life when they are ready. I look forward to seeing her smile when that day comes so we can make up for all the lost time between us.
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads March 2nd, 2025
“Wisdom Comes with Winters”--Oscar Wilde
Understanding the government debt cycle and the global macro and micro implications. This is an important discussion.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_rvVTuGRNE
2. "And now, at the tender age of 21, Xs has already secured $17.5 million in committed capital for his first solo fund from backers like Marc Andreessen, Chris Dixon, Kevin Hartz, Josh Wolfe, and Lux Capital, and anchored by fund of funds Nomads.
In the immediate term, Xs is taking an aggressive approach with his fund, aiming to write checks to 15 companies that would make up 80% of the fund’s capital. Through those positions, he’s aiming to secure 1% of a $10 billion company. He’s looking for founders that he says are “out of distribution,” which he defines as people that have endured extreme hardship, who are very neurodivergent, or people who take an “activist approach” to existential problems.
In the longer term, Xs has considerably more ambitious plans than just venture investing. He wants to grow out a number of business lines, including venture index funds, providing venture credit, and rolling up companies with a buy-and-build model."
https://techcrunch.com/2024/12/13/how-21-year-old-koko-xs-became-the-new-rising-star-solo-vc/
3. I so love Japan. Been to Kobe, Kanazawa, Fukuoka & Beppu. Will put other places on the list.
https://www.afar.com/magazine/beautiful-places-to-visit-in-japan-besides-tokyo
4. "The lessons learned are numerous, but can be summarized in two statements:
For many investors who want to have great returns over the long run, the U.S. is the only market you should invest in.
For experienced investors who understand market cycles and want outsized returns, international investing must be part of your strategy."
https://codyshirk.com/least-expensive-markets-in-the-world-2025/
5. "I doubt we go back to the heady pre-WWII days when gold made up 80-90% of reserves - money was not fiat then - but you can see the trend is very much up. It has been for 10 years now. The percentage has doubled in that time. I see no reason why it can't double again in the next ten years. 40 % of reserves held in gold seems like a reasonable number, a conservative number.
Nations are, says Nieuwenhuijs, "obviously preparing for a multipolar world in which the dollar's role as a reserve asset will be gently reduced."
You can look at all this and describe the process as natural and sensible asset allocation: diversification away from other government currencies, especially the US dollar.
Or you can proclaim that other nations are preparing to abandon the dollar and for a new gold standard. It's probably about 80% former and 20% latter. That may well change - but we are not there yet.
While nations might not be so much abandoning the dollar as they are simply increasing their gold holdings, they, are, however, reducing their holdings of US Treasuries. De-dollarisation and diversification."
https://www.theflyingfrisby.com/p/preparing-for-a-new-economic-era
6. "As we navigate this perilous moment, we should cultivate knowledge about influences of the past, while also being open to the electrifying and often terrifying realities of the present. For as the old cliché goes, history often rhymes but seldom repeats."
https://america2.news/americas-future-in-four-maps/
7. "“Global natives” isn’t yet a mainstream term, but it describes something millions of people are already living. Rather than being defined by where they come from, global natives are shaped by how they view the world and how they move through it. We're a diaspora born not of displacement, but of connection; an emerging group of people untethered from geography, finding home in the overlapping threads of cultures, ideas, and technology.
We belong everywhere and nowhere at once, weaving connections across the world while living on the internet and working across borders. We gather offline in coworking spaces, coliving hubs, and pop-up villages, shaping a world not constrained by the systems of the past, but alive with the possibilities of the present."
https://globalnatives.substack.com/p/what-is-a-global-native-anyway
8. "Indeed, we seem to be veering in the same direction as some conflict and post-conflict societies, where the economy almost always transitions away from long-term to short-term profits. The teacher of English becomes a taxi-driver or a fixer for foreign journalists, the legitimate businessman a smuggler. Notoriously, in Afghanistan farmers moved from cultivating wheat to cultivating poppy, because it was quick to grow and promised big profits, when you could not be sure whether your village would be there, or even if you would be alive, in a year’s time.
It’s not too great a stretch of the imagination to suggest that we are seeing a minor key version of that in the West today. Why, after all, invest in training and education for a job that soon may not exist, in an industry that may simply fold up? Why choose expensive medical training when everything may soon be done by machines? For that matter, why bother to become an expert musician when music will soon be produced completely by machines, and there won’t even be a need for conductors?
As I’ve suggested, the West is increasingly consuming itself, its past and its culture, as much as it is recycling everything that can be sold for a quick profit. But why is this, when it was not so even a few generations ago? If we can answer that question we will also, perhaps, begin to appreciate why it is so hard for modern western culture to understand the mentality of those who think beyond the next five minutes.
Closing factories and reducing R and D spending makes short-term economic sense to those who take the decisions, and among those who don’t take the decisions there is no coherent economic theory to explain why it’s a bad idea, since that requires understanding of the long term, and of the principle of the collective interest. But looting the assets of a company for which you won’t be working in five years’ time is in fact entirely rational behaviour if you accept certain prior assumptions.
As a consequence, western decision-makers and pundits find themselves completely unable to understand what has been going on in, say China, for the last generation, and, where they deign to notice it, they imagine that the negative consequences for the West can be avoided by short-term gimmicks such as sanctions and tariffs. Even when they talk about “rebuilding” this or that capability, usually through tricks such as tax reliefs, it is clear they have no real idea what they are talking about."
https://aurelien2022.substack.com/p/the-long-run
9. Geopolitics from the view of a commodities tycoon. It's gonna be a rough next decade.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yOB899-_y8c&t=1s
10. "Ultimately, it benefits the entrepreneur to zoom in and focus on the use case that both fits their vision and has the potential to build the foundation of a business that matches their ambition. Entrepreneurs would do well to start unbelievably narrow, nail it, and then expand. Starting small is the way to go big."
https://davidcummings.org/2025/02/01/incredibly-narrow-to-start/
11. "Living and working abroad gave me another crucial insight: how difficult it is to build a great business in France. Through my travels and international work, I saw how different regulatory environments, market structures, and competitive dynamics influenced business success. In the U.S. and Asia, scaling up and securing capital often seemed easier. In contrast, successful French companies had to operate in a more challenging environment—making the ones that thrived even more impressive.
This reinforced my belief that great French companies often have something extra: stronger fundamentals, a more disciplined approach, and leadership that knows how to navigate complexity."
https://buildingthingsthatlast.substack.com/p/how-my-journey-shaped-my-investment
12. "What happens when a boomer small business owner wants to retire, but their kids don’t want to take it over? This is as much of a pain point for the aforementioned wealth managers, as it is to my mother, who runs her own medical practice.
For many Plan A is to shut down. So is Plan B.
We believe that over the next ten years, millions of businesses across the world will grapple with generational transfer and the silver tsunami in the coming decade."
https://99tech.alexlazarow.com/p/how-technology-will-power-generational
13. "Mountains were poor, infertile. They would constantly generate a large population surplus they could not really feed. And that population surplus had to find a way to live off the lowlanders somehow. Highlanders would travel down to sell their labor as the agricultural workers, as the builders of Gothic cathedrals, or as the mercenaries of the lowland kings. Highland countries were the mercenary countries."
https://kamilkazani.substack.com/p/on-the-origins-of-napoleon-bonaparte
14. "Just like any act of allocation; you're allocating a finite resource. And your time is a finite resource. So, as a venture investor, you have a finite amount of time and attention that you have to allocate to finding, picking, winning, or supporting. And you can say "I'm just going to be a good Finder," but if that's your approach you better (1) be at a firm with good pickers, winners, and supporters, and (2) be at a firm that is willing to let you just be a good Finder.
You likely can't be the best in the world at Finding, Picking, Winning, AND Supporting. But you won't survive if you're not at least passable at some of them, and you won't succeed in the long-run if you're not exceptional in at least 2-3 of them. That's the Funder's Dilemma."
https://investing101.substack.com/p/the-four-pillars-of-venture-investing
15. One of the best and most detailed teardown of the Deepseek saga. And implications for all the big players and AI in general.
https://www.readtrung.com/p/deepseek-links-and-memes-so-many
16. "It’s also a big part of how we interact with AI systems. The way we think, talk, and use AI today is modeled on our understanding of humans. That’s natural, and even useful, in the initial stages of adopting a new technology—but you could say we’re living in the “horseless carriage” era of AI. What comes next, the enduring applications of AI, will look different. Let’s call them “AI-native.” These capabilities can only emerge when we stop trying to replicate human intelligence, and start exploring what makes AI unique."
https://every.to/learning-curve/the-problem-with-human-like-ai
17. "If you’re serious about giving this whole freedom-of-choice lifestyle a crack, here are the 6 steps I recommend.
1. Leverage the experts. If you can’t be bothered diving deeply into investment theses yourself, subscribe to those who do it for you and learn from their insights. For me, that’s Trader Ferg. I’m also pretty content with junior mining (South America focus) and Ferg’s style of investments, even though it’s a tough market at the moment (for both of those).
2. Learn to sell options. It’s a solid plan and a skill every investor should have in their toolkit.
3. Post on social media. Take it for what it is—it’s not everything, but it does open doors.
4. Choose your base wisely. Pick a low-cost, high-quality-of-life country with attractive women (if you’re a single bloke).
5. Be selective with your network. Don’t waste time with the wrong people or those obsessed with radical ideologies.
6. Start the residency process early. It takes time, so the sooner you get the ball rolling, the better.
Here’s one thing I can’t shake: once you’ve got everything set up, the taxes you’d fork out back home could actually cover your entire cost of living in South America. That’s the real way to get ahead financially!"
https://geologotrader.substack.com/p/a-guide-to-freedom-of-choice-in-south
18. "Historically, I’ve been negative on foundation models as a business because I think when you spend $1B to train a model that is only defensible for a couple of months, that’s not a good use of capital. But I am changing my tune because of Deepseek and other innovations like test time compute. When you can train high performing models in niche areas for much lower prices, it opens up a whole new world of business opportunities.
As the cost gets down to under $1M, expect to see an explosion in foundation models for various niches.
As an investor, you should be prepared to both invest in those foundation models, and the applications that can be built on top of them. The first areas to look are areas with lots of data but lagging in compute skills and infrastructure, but where humans can benefit a lot from access to an expert model. I’m diving into law, tax, healthcare, and insurance initially."
https://investinginai.substack.com/p/why-deepseek-will-drive-innovation
19. "So you might say Japan lost the first AI arms race because it wasn’t making arms at all. Japanese researchers were far more interested in “AI for social good” than they were in building weapons. Japan’s lack of a military-industrial complex (or at least one on any scale comparable to that of America or China) isn’t the only reason Japan failed to make a mark on post-ChatGPT AI (yet), but it’s a big factor.
None of this is to say Japan is out of the race for good. But hurdles remain. The country possesses a decided lack of “compute” compared to America and China. Supercomputers are needed to compile generative AI large language models. America and China have more than 150 each, many in the hands of private companies like Meta, Microsoft, and OpenAI. Japan has far fewer, and they’re mainly in the hands of governmental or academic institutions."
https://blog.pureinventionbook.com/p/why-didnt-japan-invent-generative
20. Timely global macro view.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hqA77hn1Gx8
21. "Today, I am the personification of imperfections…and I’m ok with that. I was speaking with one of my founders who was largely unaware of some of the things from my past and we opened up with each other about some of our imperfections. Reflecting upon that conversation, it’s clear that it’s our imperfections that make us who we are today. The mistakes we made and the subsequent challenges that each of us had to overcome from those, enabled us to arrive at the point we are at today. We got knocked down, but we got back up…and we keep getting up.
As I think about those that I interact with, that’s all that matters. It doesn’t matter if you are perfect (no one really is)…all that matters is that you keep getting up. The best founders always get back up."
https://newsletter.equal.vc/p/unperfect
22. "I keep on reminding myself, like Ethan Mollick says, AI is the worst it will ever be today."
https://www.sarahtavel.com/p/james-raybould-on-being-ai-forward
23. "So, by pressing relentlessly for tariffs and using the breathing room for companies created by them, McKinley rebuilt the American social contract and much for the better.
Before him, increasingly violent disagreements between labor and capital were spiraling out of control, even leading to gunfights between strikers and enforcers. His sane approach to rapprochement, however, meant that both when he was governor and when he was president, America entered a new period of prosperity in which unimaginably large fortunes were created as the country generally prospered. Meanwhile, the sort of out-of-control labor-capital battles that characterized the pre-McKinley period died down."
https://www.theamericantribune.news/p/mckinleys-tariffs-saved-america-trumps
24. "But for Canada the hard part will not be just the economic mess and uncertainty that it is now faced with. Yes, it will have to craft a strong economic response but it will also have to learn to not complain and finger point, but get to work and develop a long-term plan. It will mean a major overhaul of its economy. This will consist of first and foremost to unleash its natural resources for oil to gas to minerals. With the world’s third largest oil reserves, Canada for instance has the potential to be one of the wealthiest petro-states in the world.
At the same time it will have to finally take a stab at its archaic inner-provincial trade barriers, regulation and cut taxes across the board. Here in British Columbia mining has become next to impossible because of endless consultation processes. Canada has the natural resources, infrastructure and above all the brainpower to become an economic leader, but only if the political will is there. Yes there are environmental aspects and there will be a transition to greener economies over time, but it may take just a bit longer and in parallel Canadas has a very smart tech sector that can and will facilitate this uneasy journey. It will take time and effort though, but if Canada can unleash its real potential Americans will over time be begging to be part of it, again.
How it will all play out right now is hard to say and even smart economic minds have a hard time figuring out exactly the cost on both sides of the Canadian-US border as the relationship is so intricate. It may be part of the Trump mode to sow chaos in order to negotiate a few favourable items and then proclaim a win."
https://pieterdorsman.substack.com/p/trumps-tariffs
25. "There’s truth to the narrative that AI is the new platform & companies that embrace it are rewarded with lower costs of capital."
https://tomtunguz.com/private_valuations_2025/
26. "Tariffs are a powerful tool. They can incentivize desired behaviors and punish undesired behaviors. The mainstream narrative is full of misinformation and fear-mongering. It is always important to read source material, so you can think for yourself.
It was reported this morning that almost half of Canadian companies surveyed“plan to shift more investments and operations to the U.S. to mitigate potential tariffs and maintain market access.” As I have tried to point out in this letter, America’s tariffs will create a black hole that will suck investment dollars and business operations into the United States. If a business does not want to pay the tariffs, they can come build their products in America. If a consumer does not want to pay higher prices for tariffed goods, they can buy American made products.
Tariffs work and the United States is about to go on a big winning streak."
https://pomp.substack.com/p/welcome-to-the-tariff-era-the-truth
27. "Strategic interdiction focuses on targeting an adversary state’s war-industrial infrastructure, key domestic defense industries, supply chains, strategic transportation nodes, and related assets. Its primary objective is to disrupt the adversary’s military capabilities during deployment and pre-deployment stages, thereby reducing the aggregate war materials available to their forces.
The core logic behind such a campaign is simple: every piece of equipment and war-relevant material that never reaches the frontline is something that does not need to be destroyed there, saving critical manpower and equipment on the Ukrainian side.
To be clear, Ukraine has been pursuing a strategic interdiction campaign for approximately two years now, already achieving important results, such as reducing Russia’s oil refining capacity by an estimated 17 percent by July 2024. However, until now, Ukraine has lacked the ammunition necessary to conduct this type of strategic campaign at a larger scale. Given Ukraine’s drastic ramp-up in domestic missile and drone production and its ambitious goals, the attacks witnessed this week are an encouraging sign that Ukraine’s strategic interdiction campaign may spell more and more trouble for Russia in the months ahead."
https://missilematters.substack.com/p/ukraines-stratedic-interdiction-campaign
28. "This does not mean that missile defense is unnecessary or always a poor investment. The United States absolutely needs stronger missile defense capabilities for both theater deployment and homeland defense. However, pouring resources into strategic missile defense to counter large-scale nuclear attacks is a losing game that diverts funding from other, more pressing priorities.
For instance, in an Asia-Pacific contingency, the U.S. needs a robust missile defense system to counter Chinese cruise and ballistic missiles targeting forward-deployed bases and allies, including short-, medium-, and intermediate-range ballistic missiles. Effectively fulfilling this role requires greater investment in missile defense systems specifically optimized for this mission, including NASAMS, Patriot, Aegis, and THAAD."
https://missilematters.substack.com/p/trumps-missile-defense-plans-not
29. A masterclass on building a business for anyone and everyone. Seriously very helpful. So many insights here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFkR34AMPw8
30. A highly entertaining and insightful conversation on startups and the VC industry at the moment.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Qq4p-Ce5bs&t=3419s
31. Anyone who has been paying attention should not be surprised. The CCP is ramping up their military and we need to treat them seriously.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDcWLm_ltIk&t=1s
32. Harsh wake up call to the realities of Geopolitics for Europe. Important discussion here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3pwGRoUbUPg
33. There are so many great insights on work and life from one of the smartest guys on the internet. Seth Godin.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhc1sM2NnQY
34. "Global military advantage will depend on the ability to produce military products on a large scale at a competitive price—specifically, drones. The U.S. is not currently capable of this.
Ukraine is the only country in the Western world with a defense-industrial base that can rival China in both capacity and cost structure. Historically, Ukraine has always been a center for military development and component production, MITS Capital notes."
35. Always a good wrap up and discussion on the latest business news. These guys are smart.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6CqyWeFHwM
36. The altruistic Pax Americana is over. Don't like it but here we are. A new world order and way of doing things.
"President Trump is leveraging the might of the American economy to obtain maximum leverage in trade negotiations, and it’s breaking all kinds of ideological paradigms. The president is utilizing raw geopolitical power and taking his patented approach of using publicity as a weapon. As commander in chief, he has preferred to negotiate deals in public (a move interpreted as having high integrity, which has helped shore up his base of support) or strategically deploy details to the media to create pressure or to make the deal look more favorable or urgent.
The president has continued to deploy his “The Art of the Deal” framework in negotiations over Greenland, Panama, Ukraine, and now, even Gaza, aiming to maximize his position for what he believes is the best possible outcome for the United States. He is throwing the corporate media and his political opponents in a constant state of madness, as they are seemingly unable or unwilling to explain and understand his negotiating style and strategy."
https://www.dossier.today/p/the-art-of-the-deal-trump-defies
The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones: An Historical Inspiration
I was a child of the 80s and 90s and anyone growing up fell in love with the character of Indiana Jones. But outside of the movies there was an incredible tv series done by Steven Spielberg in 1992 which chronicles his adventures during his childhood and young adulthood.
This is a great description:
"The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones" takes a young version of the popular character on a journey through the early 20th century where he learns about some of the most important historical events of the era.
Young Indy meets historical figures, including Ernest Hemingway, Ho Chi Minh, Eliot Ness, Louis Armstrong, Pablo Picasso and Winston Churchill. Traveling from the game reserves of Kenya to the bohemian streets of Paris and the Great Wall of China, these are the adventures that shape Indy's future as one of cinema's greatest heroes.”
Traveling the world to some of the most exotic places in the world, even fighting in World War 1 as a soldier and spy, he meets famous historical figures that we all know about, he learns lessons in life and love. One of Indie’s quotes from “The Raiders of the Lost Ark”: “It’s not the years, honey. It’s the mileage.” We begin to understand how he becomes the character and adventurer we all know and enjoy in the movies. Indie says: “I’m not sure why, but I’ve always wanted to see what was out there over the next hill. I like exploring.”
It was an amazing snapshot of history at that time and really gave a glimpse of what the world looked like outside of my dull lower middle class Canadian suburban life. It opened my eyes to how big the world really is. And it really made history come alive to me.
Between my trip to Japan and England the show awakened in me a tremendous eagerness to travel and explore the world. Reading about the financial investing greats like Jim Rogers provided me the roadmap to do this in the late 90s. A unique time of globalization in our world.
If you have not seen the show it’s on Disney+ and it’s worth watching. There are universal life lessons in there and may awaken your sense of adventure as well. Or at least start to understand the grand sweep of history and the 20th century ended up the way it did.
Don’t Go to Davos: There is an Expiration Date for Everything
For those of us active on social media, it’s been incredible seeing the flurry of pictures and such all over social media bragging about being at Davos. Flexing. Yet it’s funny that it turns into a counter indicator. You think you are showing how connected and cool and awesome you are. All I see are a bunch of clueless & out of touch “mids”. This was very clear in 2025 with the empty rooms there. Davos used to be relevant prior to 2020 but so much has changed since then.
The WEF Davos event has gone the way of The Summit Series, SXSW, TED and Forbes 30 under 30 for tech people. Some would even argue Burning Man is one of these events that is past due. Super relevant and cool a long time ago. Now out of touch and soon to be buried in the past, taken over and inhabited by only the laggards and grifters. Or maybe just mainstream and thus not COOL or leading edge anymore.
Everything has a season. Everything has an expiration date. Countries. Companies. Even people. I saw a very relevant tweet from Dare Obasanjo:
“Startups tend to have 3 generations of employees
1. The 1st batch: A random mix of talented and mediocre people.
2. The pioneers: The nights and weekends crew who believe in the mission.
3. The settlers: The 9 to 5 crew who are attracted by the success the pioneers created.”
At the 3rd stage things start to go down fast. I saw this in Yahoo! The people who joined from 2009 onwards were pretty crap. You could argue Google started to go downhill 9 years ago and we are seeing the bloat really impact the business in 2020. Even formerly dominant VC funds prior to 2020 are now sucking wind badly.
What was a positive indicator before can quickly turn into a highly negative signal. The point of this is not to just bag on Davos and other Silicon Valley events and phenomena. The point I am making is that things change so quickly now, consumer behavior, cycles turn fast.
Jumping on trends is dangerous especially when it is at peak cool. The secret is doing something or joining something when it is not cool or known. Easier said than done. But the alpha is in doing something uncool which will become cool.