Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads April 20th, 2025
“Whether we know it or not, our lives are acts of imagination and the world is continually re-imagined through us.” — Michael Meade
Lessons for the Defense Industrial base from the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MqmUJ-eYVg
2. Alt-Geopolitics. I don't agree nor do I like these people. But you can learn from anyone. It helps to question popular narratives out there in media
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDQxzULLTgg
3. Justin Mares is crushing it by building businesses in the MAHA movement. Very interesting discussion.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=84DwJGdsuQ8
4. This was an instructive discussion on the art and science of venture capital. Yes, they are focused on B2B software but it's still very useful.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vdbMuq1SS8c
5. "I’m a believer in the ‘ software eats the world’ thesis, although I often change it to ‘software enables the world,’ which is not nearly as evocative but also not as consumptive. One byproduct of this movement, especially during the blitzscaling era, were new startups in areas such as finance, healthcare, housing, education, using venture capital to acquire customers at accelerated rates. And when these startups failed, the customers might find themselves confronting situations where a product they relied upon ceased to exist with very little notice.
For the investors it’s of course a disappointing outcome, but the failure is built into their model and they knew going in that ‘taking a zero’ was a potential ending — that’s why they’re ‘ accredited investors.’ For the human being who is your using your service, quite often they don’t have the same visibility or understanding of the risks — there’s no such hurdle to make sure someone is an ‘accredited consumer.’"
6. This guy Warwick Powell is in the school of "America Bad" which shows up in his perspective. Very clear he is pro-China. But it is good to understand our enemies' view.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wELAe9yTOL0
7. Anduril & Founder Fund's Trae Stephens. Valuable discussion on defense and good quests in life.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNMVl3hXvTQ
8. Shawn Puri is the man. What a fun and insight-dense conversation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMfvLnui-aU
9. When it comes to war, the military and geopolitics Erik Prince knows what he is talking about. This is an important presentation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WsKtfLRSo2c&t=272s
10. Important topic: the American military is behind and not set up well for the future of mass war.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0biBnbsAPE
11. Reindustrialization & the MidWest for the win.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07qpzLeVGKc
12. "Vice is also a malleable concept. What we consider as “vices” are purely socially constructed, meaning that they can morph and shift alongside changing social norms. Throughout history, activities once condemned as morally reprehensible — from gambling to alcohol consumption to certain forms of entertainment — have been reframed as acceptable, even celebrated. Meanwhile, behaviors that were once mundane, like smoking in offices or excessive social media use, can become widely frowned upon.
Lately, shifts in consumer sentiment, regulatory pressures, and advancements in technology — particularly artificial intelligence — are reshaping the vice economy. The age-old struggle of personal freedom versus societal acceptance is playing out in new ways, as younger generations redefine what constitutes indulgence and personal responsibility.
Specifically, the legalization of sports betting, once hailed as a major economic driver, is now facing backlash due to its financial and social consequences. Meanwhile, a cultural shift among younger generations has led to a decline in alcohol consumption, forcing the beverage industry to reconsider its strategies. Moreover, the continued deployment of AI is seeping through the vice economy, unlocking new opportunities while raising ethical concerns. Together, these trends indicate that the boundaries of vice are evolving, prompting stakeholders to adapt to an uncertain future."
https://medium.com/ipg-media-lab/the-shifting-norms-of-the-vice-economy-1baa5f544f23
13. Lots of good nuggets & learnings for B2B Sales leaders.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n32QNJWNrlE&t=2s
14. "Each of these magical winter refuges has its own particular flavor. The shy celebs go for the fortresslike log homes of Montana’s Yellowstone Club, which is in the midst of a major expansion. The Westchester moms point their upfit Mercedes-Benz Sprinter vans and Cybertrucks toward the Hermitage Club of Vermont, which was taken private by the mountain’s homeowners during the pandemic. And the LA and San Francisco tech crowd can have one of Powder Haven’s Rivian courtesy cars meet them at the Ogden FBO.
To join these clubs often costs millions of dollars in real estate, plus initiation fees, plus tens of thousands in annual dues—not to mention, sometimes, multigenerational personality vetting. In this way, skiing in America is becoming more like America’s most elite golf and racquet clubs, as well as the private social clubs proliferating across New York City, and less like skiing in Europe, where lift-ticket costs at public mountains remain so reasonable that they’re drawing cost-conscious American skiers.
But private ski resorts are a peephole into another strata entirely—one that’s not only flush but teeming. There are enough ultra-high-net-worth people in America to fill Aspen, Telluride, Deer Valley, and Jackson Hole, among a dozen tony mountain towns. Baby boomers are holding between $84 trillion and $146 trillion in assets, much of which will be inherited by millennials in what economists refer to as the Great Wealth Transfer. Add to that the spoils of the tech boom, American energy independence, the AI trade, crypto, and a fire hose of pandemic-era government spending, and you can start to see how millions of Americans may soon need a fancier place to ski."
https://www.gq.com/story/inside-the-new-private-mountain-clubs-where-billionaires-ski
15. "Canada and the European NATO nations, together or separately, face challenges in replacing or even replicating much of the sophisticated intelligence support the United States provides. While European countries are enhancing their defense efforts, they lack the comprehensive and massive intelligence infrastructure the U.S. possesses.
While NATO nations have all agreed to a substantial increase in defense spending, the development and integration of advanced intelligence systems within Europe are still in progress and will not compensate for the immediate loss of U.S. intelligence. This is one reason why alliances are so important: The combined force is always greater than the sum of the individual members.
The ramifications of Trump’s decision extend beyond the battlefield. Given Putin’s well-documented war crimes and Russia’s continued attacks on civilians, restricting Ukraine’s access to intelligence raises serious ethical concerns about American complicity. In limiting Ukraine’s access to intelligence, the United States risks not just strategic miscalculation but moral failure—becoming an enabler of the very war crimes it once sought to prevent."
16. This was so good and came at right time. So many things to learn here on building businesses, building wealth and a great life. Only things that matter will be personal brand or AI-based businesses.
Learned the 60/30/10 rule and real world numbers/formulas for marketing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ERpvvaEUZY
17. "The experience of an entrepreneur selling to the U.S. military is not unlike that of a video game player. The Defense Department and its acquisition system exist in their own universe, with its own language, characters, unforeseen obstacles and progressively complicated levels that players must surmount. (In fact, “The Pentagon” itself sounds like a game world.)
Entrepreneurs new to the universe may find themselves lost, confused, or facing setbacks as they navigate the Pentagon’s acquisition bureaucracy. They must contend with a daunting number of people, an unfamiliar social ranking system and a new language – from acronyms like SBIR, JCIDS, and OTA to military phrases like “force multiplier” and “situational awareness.” They must find their way through over 4,000 pages of acquisitions guidance, develop a network of allies who can help them get to the next level, the Technology Readiness Level to be exact, where higher levels unlock additional contracts and new customers."
https://stanfordh4d.substack.com/p/the-quest-for-defense
18. "The same is true when working with the DoD. Understanding the landscape and having knowledge of milestones to be completed and people to know is necessary to move forward in the defense sales process. As entrepreneurs advance, they will have epiphanies about the problem their products solves, the value it adds, and for whom that cannot be precomputed. Entrepreneurs will then be awarded contracts by learning and applying all of this knowledge to delivering value to multiple stakeholders in the bureaucracy.
Let’s start with the first task: learning the universe. The Pentagon is unlike any other market most entrepreneurs have encountered. Entering this labyrinth means working with seasoned bureaucrats with years of contracting experience, learning a bevy of new terms and timelines, and competing with other players, like prime defense contractors, who have more knowledge, resources, and connections than an entrepreneurial newcomer."
https://stanfordh4d.substack.com/p/selling-to-defense-the-quest-for
19. Always enlightening view on geopolitics with Peter Zeihan.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9e0IZv31820
20. "Our entire Pentagon acquisition system is not oriented to buy from, learn from, or deal with this new class of external vendors. We built a great system to work with existing prime contractors: The top 10 or 20 get about 80% of all the defense contracts. It’s not that [people in the primes] are dumb, it’s not that they’re bad, it’s just that they can’t hire the best and the brightest because startups are paying baseball star salaries to AI engineers and drone folks. And [the primes] business model is not designed to do iterative and incremental innovation. It’s designed for change orders, long lead times, and waterfall engineering.
We can benchmark our progress against our potential adversaries. Look at the speed that China puts destroyers on the water, the innovation in drones that happens literally on a weekly basis, or the battlefield in Ukraine. There is no prime that is keeping up with that quantity.
Private capital, however, is pretty good at that. We just haven’t built a DoD acquisition system at scale that allows us to leverage its speed and energy.
So far, the DoD has been a terrible customer. Its acquisition cycles don’t match the cash flow needs of startups. And who’s going to be an acquisition partner for these guys? Lockheed? They don’t pay 10x or 50x revenue. You might get bought for, like, revenue."
https://www.tectonicdefense.com/the-godfather-of-defense-innovation-a-qa-with-steve-blank/
21. "Despite these negative remarks, any observer of geopolitics knows that innovative defense technology is not an abstraction—it is an essential pillar of global stability. The modern international order, in which human rights and democratic governance can flourish, did not emerge by accident. It was won on the battlefield, secured by superior military capabilities, and is maintained through vigilant deterrence.
Critics of defense technology fail to engage with the realities of the world we live in. Europe, long complacent about its security, is now rearming at a pace unseen since the Cold War in response to Russian aggression. China’s military ambitions continue to grow, with an expanding nuclear arsenal and aggressive posturing over Taiwan. These are not problems that can be solved with wishful thinking or moral posturing. They require technological superiority to deter escalation."
https://stanfordreview-org.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/stanfordreview.org/in-defense-of-defense-tech
22. Alt-Geopolitics and Geonomics. I disagree with these perspectives, these a--holes are definitely pro-Russia and pro-China, hiding in the West.
But trying to understand the opposing view here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bPYoT24B2uc&t=2s
23. "One of the most elite Ukrainian units accepting foreign volunteers received “a massive spike” of applications, according to an international serviceman involved in recruiting. The source, who spoke anonymously due to his unit’s regulations, said that a few thousand applications came in after the Oval Office meeting, with “a significant amount of guys expressing outrage and shock over what has been happening with the shift in American policy.”
24. "After the Soviets found out about all this, they created a Doomsday Machine of their own. So, now we have two, each with vastly more than double the firepower. That’s what’s being revved up today – to back Ukraine. Or, is the goal something more mundane? Like ass-covering or generation of cash flows to hungry corporates? Ego? We must study this desire for a wargasm before the world is screwed.
To be clear, I am not saying President Putin is right or should be let off scot-free. Nor am I saying that the US Military Industrial Complex should either. But, diplomacy, as distasteful as it may be, can address these aggressions better than a nuclear conflict."
https://drpippa.substack.com/p/kumbh-mela-ominicide-and-wargasm
25. "The message is simple: If adversity is an opportunity for growth, how lucky are we to grow into something harder and badder today?
The next time you're facing something hard, welcome it. These moments forge us if we let them.
Work through the process.
Learn the lessons.
Reap the FULL BENEFIT."
https://jaymartin.substack.com/p/bring-me-goliath
26. "We already know our leaders can’t be trusted.
Not with the management of our tax revenue, not to do what’s best for the people, and sure as hell to not abuse their positions of power for personal gain.
We can’t trust them with the economic prosperity of our nations. Despite this, these same people will soon wield the powers of financial gods, allowing them to manipulate and abuse our monetary system at will.
Powers that will allow them to punish you if you step out of line.
These are powers that even Kublai Khan, in his position as overlord of one of the largest empires in history, couldn’t have begun to imagine.
I’ve been talking about CBDCs in one way or another since 2020—nearly five years now. And all that time, it’s been one of those things that’s always been at arms length, never close enough for us to get too worried about its impact on our lives.
Well, not anymore.
For Europeans, it’s here this year.
For everyone else? Likely, very soon.
It’s time to ensure all your assets, income, or earning ability isn’t tied to just a single nation. To have access to some payment options outside the fiat system, like gold, silver, or Bitcoin. And ideally, to have at least one additional residency permit or citizenship outside your country of nationality.
In other words, to have a solid backup plan."
https://anticitizen.com/p/obey-or-perish
27. This was a surprisingly fascinating & wide ranging conversation. Lots of interesting takes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvpw4_O25eU
28. How Shawn Ryan built his media empire. Very instructive.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MogxOvTa9Bg
29. One of the best conversations on the state of VC right now. Lots of zombie Unicorns right now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2wHzNOqRbDQ
30. Venture capital in the world of AI. Exciting times.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fEE5sfroDcw
31. Good view on the state of China and US relations right now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzncmG-Tgj8
32. Solid overview of what is happening in Ukraine right now & where US support is critical.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PtjDh4uI1jw
33. If anyone believes China's rise will be benign or good for America and the West, this interview should make it very clear this is not the case.
The CCP is looking to make a Chinese-run world order, they write and talk about this publicly. Read "The Long Game."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5VXqruTt5M
34. "This hypothetical Chagas scenario was presented to me by Jake Adler, the 20-year-old founder of Pilgrim, a company working to leverage nanotechnology, bioelectronics, autonomous sensors, and AI systems to usher in a new era of supersoldiers and anti-threat biosurveillance. The company recently raised a $3.25 million round led by Thiel Capital, Cantos, and Refactor to pursue this vision.
Pilgrim aims to navigate the minefield of government absurdity, leveraging its quirks and failures in order to rapidly deploy usable biotech that will act as a force multiplier on our troops and revamp systems that are meant to protect us against biological warfare. In other words? Pilgrim wants to make supersoldiers, produce futuristic dual-use medical technology, and catch the next pandemic before it even begins.
Jake, a previous recipient of the Thiel Fellowship, has been experimenting with biotech since his early teens. He originally founded a sleep-tech company called Neusleep, iterating on a sleep mask that was designed to “shock you to sleep,” out of his grandmother’s old folks home, raising $275k from various sources in the process. Starting a biotech company at a place where, by his recollection, there was a sign explicitly prohibiting the presence of adult diapers in the pool, is a wonderful brand of irony. He has since graduated to the resourceful oddities of purchasing “tummy tuck” skin for the ex vivo testing of rapid wound-repair solutions, sneaking into (and getting kicked out of) defense conferences, and (subsequently) pitching government officials on bioweapons protections from a makeshift booth of upside-down trash bins behind said conference center.
All of this to say, Pilgrim will do more than pay lip service to the archetypal “where there’s a will, there’s a way” methodology of getting things done as an undersized, roguelike startup."
https://www.piratewires.com/p/creating-supersoldiers-and-curbing-biothreats
35. These guys are in the "America Bad" camp but they are cold realists. This helps me think through the mainstream narratives.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7n9w5S9LZkY
36. The great VC AI debate. I'm in the Lessin school of AI, only folks who benefit are the big incumbents and super small startups. The middle will be sub-scale and not deliver VC returns.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YcObLyRM15U
37. Fascinating conversation on VC and state of the venture market. It's pretty Bubbly at the later stage (ie. beyond Series C).
Synchs with what I am seeing too.