Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads July 28th, 2024
"Deep summer is when laziness finds respectability." –Sam Keen
Insightful conversation, a warning but also an ultimately optimistic take on the future driven by technological innovations.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccOQ_lxOz_4
2. "The role of Cambodia in China’s power-play within the Indo-Pacific cannot be understated. The autocratic Manet regime is a critical ally for China. The Chinese Foreign Minister was the first foreign official to congratulate, and then meet with, him following his inauguration as Prime Minister in 2023.
And there is an increasing crossover in the tactics—and adoption of certain technologies, such as mass surveillance tools including CCTV, facial recognition software, and internet “firewall” technologies—that are being used to monitor and suppress regime critics, trade unionists, and activists. Independent news outlets have been shuttered, and female journalists, in particular, have become targets of harassment and many forced into exile.
For those in Washington, who are increasingly concerned by the rise of China and the looming threats to Western democracy not just in Southeast Asia but around the world, a reset is required with countries like Cambodia. The current all carrot, no stick approach risks further democratic decline in Cambodia and the growth of Chinese influence."
https://time.com/6990154/china-cambodia-ream-naval-base-2/
3. If you love talking about the art and science of business and achievement, this is one of the best conversations around. Net net: "Believe you can win in whatever you choose to do"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P39dOoLeoSg&t=65s
4. "I think and feel we’re near the bottom which will come in early 2025 once we get through some political issues and there is some clarify on how this country and the world will be run. So based on that I’m starting to see more investors advise their early pre/seed founders who are raising bridges to prep for a Q1 2025 push. Meaning build and strategize now, give it everything you’ve got in Q4 2024 and raise in a hopefully more favorable environment then (can't really get much worse). Get ready to play offense again!"
https://startupstechvc.beehiiv.com/p/a16z-accounted-for-80-of-all-lp-funding-in-q1
5. One of the best shows talking about cultural and creative businesses on the edge of the internet.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6rGAFC4O7k
6. "In short, megalomania has gone mainstream in the Valley. As a result technology is evolving rapidly into a turbocharged form of Foucaultian dominance—a 24/7 Panopticon with a trillion dollar budget."
https://www.honest-broker.com/p/how-did-silicon-valley-turn-into
7. "So this Fourth of July, I thought I’d go through the various threats to the Republic, and assess how dangerous each one is. Broadly speaking, my view is that the greatest danger from internal turmoil, civil war, and authoritarianism has passed, despite the probable election of Trump this fall. The economy is likely to be OK, but the national debt is a huge and looming problem that could hurt us a lot if it’s mismanaged. Various chronic issues will continue to hurt the country going forward, despite modest progress.
If this were the entire list of threats, I would conclude that America will muddle through, and that would be the end of that. But unfortunately it’s not. While most of the threats from within are less dire than commonly believed, external threats to the United States are grave and getting graver by the day. The U.S. faces an axis of enemies that is larger, more productive, and more technologically advanced than any we have ever faced before, and which is ideologically bent on the degradation of U.S. wealth, stability, and autonomy. Failure to respond vigorously to this New Axis could easily result in catastrophe — either from a U.S. loss in Cold War 2, or from a World War 3 that we fail to deter.
And this danger makes America’s domestic troubles much more severe than they would otherwise be, because our internal squabbling could weaken us and prevent us from dealing with the real threats out there.
As I argue, there’s a good chance that America would lose this war. The U.S.’ manufacturing sector, and especially its defense-industrial base, has atrophied while China’s now dominates the world. Any war that went longer than a couple of weeks — which most wars do — would heavily favor the country that can produce more ships, missiles, drones, and ammunition. That country is China.
Some people — especially folks I hang out with in the tech industry — try to comfort themselves by believing that the U.S. would never go to war over Taiwan. They are sticking their heads in the sand."
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/assessing-the-threats-to-the-republic
8. This is a must watch: if you want to know what’s happening in SaaS sector re: Fundraising & what VCs are looking for.
Incredible insight and tracks with what I am seeing in my portfolio.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=daakrQavsU4&t=1024s
9. This is a scary but important discussion on geopolitics. What a mess and all due to our own weakness & complacency. America is the new Soviet Union.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YifbCUG3gvI
10. "In the meantime, the parallels are a little worrying. Tokyo may not meme a governor into office this time around, but the kids aren’t all right. As I said, that old saying hyakki yagyo is written with characters meaning “night parade of a hundred yokai.”
We’re only seeing a few dozen tricksters and trolls in this election. But if young people continue to believe they have no place in the political system, I suspect we’ll see a lot more in the years to come. Eventually, one might actually even win. And we’ve all seen how that turned out for America."
https://blog.pureinventionbook.com/p/trolling-tokyo
11. "A huge amount of economic value is going to be created by AI. Company builders focused on delivering value to end users will be rewarded handsomely. We are living through what has the potential to be a generation-defining technology wave. Companies like Nvidia deserve enormous credit for the role they’ve played in enabling this transition, and are likely to play a critical role in the ecosystem for a long time to come.
Speculative frenzies are part of technology, and so they are not something to be afraid of. Those who remain level-headed through this moment have the chance to build extremely important companies. But we need to make sure not to believe in the delusion that has now spread from Silicon Valley to the rest of the country, and indeed the world. That delusion says that we’re all going to get rich quick, because AGI is coming tomorrow, and we all need to stockpile the only valuable resource, which is GPUs.
In reality, the road ahead is going to be a long one. It will have ups and downs. But almost certainly it will be worthwhile."
https://www.sequoiacap.com/article/ais-600b-question/
12. Perfect message for the 4th of July for all Americans.
"Therefore, it falls to us (you and me) to fight back, not with violence or harsh language, but with our actions.
Work hard.
Love.
Be compassionate and understanding.
Listen in earnest.
Give with the expectation of reciprocation.
Be present.
Get involved in your community."
https://ryanhanley.com/how-to-keep-america-is-the-greatest-country-on-earth/
13. Insightful conversation. Lessons from past waves of technology.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mqNaOuRdkA
14. This is a great listen. A good analysis of investing in private and public markets. & AI commoditization.
https://www.joincolossus.com/episodes/84488038/proposal-ai-commoditization-and-capital-dynamics
15. I always learn stuff from Tim Ferriss, this was an incredible discussion on how to make your life better.
https://www.joincolossus.com/episodes/11271167/ferriss-curating-curiosities
16. "The Manchurian model of forced industrialisation under single-party rule found post-war expression in China, North Korea, and South Korea during the Park Chung-hee years, directly influenced by people who had participated in the colony’s institutions. The Japanese technocratic planners who worked in Manchukuo likewise returned to serve in the highest levels of government and economic and planning bodies in Japan after the war.
They led Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party, which governed uninterrupted from 1955 to the 1990s. The most prominent among these was Kishi Nobusuke, who was once Manchukuo’s economic tsar and among the most ruthlessly anti-Chinese and imperialist of its political leaders. His postwar position as America’s man in Tokyo allowed him to become prime minister from 1957-60 and retain prominence as an elder statesman until the 1980s.
Kenkoku University—the highest academic institution in Manchukuo from 1938 until 1945—was the educational center of the pan-Asianist experiment. Its students came from all over Asia under Japanese rule to learn how to modernize Asia. After the war, they maintained contact with each other while they assumed important roles in East Asia’s postwar order—some of their careers lasting until the 1990s.
The legacy of Kenkoku lived on in their political achievements. Across East Asia, alumni implemented their goals of national liberation and state-led industrialization in the region’s postwar states, and on all sides of the Cold War divide. By inculcating the region’s rising elites, Manchukuo’s rulers secured an unlikely legacy. While the Japanese empire met its end, its tradition of technocratic state-building endured as East Asia’s new leaders drew on their Japanese training to build its successor regimes."
https://letter.palladiummag.com/p/the-school-that-built-asia
17. "Investors are desperate to find the ChatGPT for robotics.
The thinking goes that if all-in-one foundation models are going to be dominated by the likes of OpenAI and Anthropic, venture capitalists need to find niche foundation model companies that can really differentiate themselves.
And there’s no area more than robotics artificial intelligence that’s got investors excited, particularly when it means investors can bet on robotics companies without taking on any of the actual risky hardware development. Investors get the innovation of robots without all the capital intensive work of building actual machines.
Of course some of these companies are building robotic arms, and even humanoid robots themselves."
https://www.newcomer.co/p/why-investors-cant-get-enough-of
18. “If you want to choose one investor, you want to choose Trae, if you want to be a defense tech company," said Gecko Robotics founder Jake Loosararian, who told me Stephens played a big role in helping his company compete for department of defense contracts.
Stephens has climbed to what is effectively the number two spot at Founders Fund, one of Silicon Valley’s most elite venture capital firms, by doing exactly what Founders Fund partners dream of doing — bucking the conventional wisdom and defying political pieties. Stephens co-founded the iconic defense tech company — Anduril — with Palmer Luckey, a pariah co-founder back when rank-and-file Google employees terrified their bosses by resisting working on America’s own defense.
Stephens really did see the rise of defense tech before most everyone else in Silicon Valley — of course he had the benefit of learning from his now boss Thiel, who co-founded Palantir, the progenitor of modern day Silicon Valley defense tech.
Andreessen Horowitz is the marketing juggernaut that can make their name synonymous with American Dynamism, but Founders Fund laid the groundwork for the defense tech back before it was cool."
https://www.newcomer.co/p/the-investor-who-called-defense-techs
19. "If unchallenged, these information warfare campaigns present a fundamental threat to the United States. These three regimes want to sideline American power as they target three of our most vital and vulnerable partners: Taiwan, Ukraine, and Israel.
Of course, the problems and divisions in the United States cannot be blamed on America’s adversaries. Unfortunately, Americans are quite adept at creating their own problems. But it would be dangerous to not recognize that Beijing, Moscow, and Tehran seek to exacerbate and magnify existing social-political fault lines to help pave the way for their wider ambitions.
The final group targeted for information warfare is populations and governments in countries that are not necessarily allied with the United States, where the three regimes seek to obtain valuable strategic resources or concessions. Their focus is on parts of Asia as well as Africa and Latin America.
If the United States and its allies cede ground in these strategic countries due to a failure to counter adversary information warfare, the results will be serious. U.S. diplomatic, economic, and military interests will suffer, while Beijing, Moscow, and Tehran cultivate corrupt leaders who prey on the local population, destroy the environment, and slowly but surely undermine the U.S.-led world order."
https://www.fdd.org/analysis/2024/06/28/cognitive-combat/
20. "From this analytical standpoint, the structure of power is no longer a pyramid but a web with multiple spiders forging networks of varying strength. Today we live in a truly multipolar, multicivilizational and multiregional system in which no power can dominate over others — while all can freely associate with others according to their own interests.
This structural entropy is embodied in what I call the geopolitical marketplace, a distributed landscape far more complex than the conventional wisdom of a bipolar U.S.-China “new Cold War.” Many countries in the world are post-colonial nations innately suspicious of overtures that would render them subservient pawns of either the U.S. or China. This is why the notion of alliances is a hollow one for much of the world. Alliances are more like multi-alignments in which swing states, regional anchors and almost every other country actively play all sides in pursuit of their own best deal. This is not about deference to hierarchy but active positionalism: each country, large or small, places itself at the center of its own calculations.
This is a far cry from the rigid Westphalian order of sovereign states — which, due to centuries of colonialism, was always more fiction than reality. Instead, the emerging world order can best be describedas a global version of the pre-Westphalian Middle Ages. Europe at the time was a multi-layered milieu of competing authorities from the Holy Roman Empire and its papal states to autonomous city-states such as Venice and the Northern European Hanseatic League.
But Europe was also a sideshow. This was an age when China and India’s dynasties were ascendent, the Arab Caliphates pulsed with energy and the Silk Roads tied together what historians call the “Afro-Eurasian” system centered on the Indian Ocean rim. Then as now, Afro-Eurasian geography represents the central mass of the global system and the dynamics among its participants — Chinese state-owned enterprises; Indian merchants; Gulf Arab holding companies; Singaporean commodities traders; African pirates; sovereign wealth funds and private equity firms from the East and West; and navies from America, Europe and Asian powers — provide a bottom-up lens into how authority is contested and constructed."
https://www.noemamag.com/the-coming-entropy-of-our-world-order
21. This is a worthwhile interview for all those hustling out there.
It helps you think about what you are hustling for & how to create the life you want (ie. how to use money to build your perfect life & figuring out your number).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPJYBnmxNMI
22. "As a young geologist who refused to go down the Australian dream of taking on heavy debt to buy a house and Toyota Land Cruiser, I got hooked on the uranium fundamental story at the time:
--Powerhouse China is choking their cities with fossil fuels and will require a clean baseload energy source.
--Simple supply-demand fundamentals are easily mapped out per reactor - either the uranium price goes up or the lights go out on 10% of the world's power (20% in the US) - Rick Rule and Mike Alkin.
--ESG backflipping and adopting uranium as a green source of energy.
--ASX-listed stocks with assets priced so low that it was as if they were drilling aircore drill holes for gold next to guerrillas in West Africa, all while having no debt.
All this was pre-SPUT launch, Japan restarts, and the world just waking the f-ck up*"
https://geologotrader.substack.com/p/argentina-for-uranium
23. "My view on inflections aligns with Andy Grove’s but from another angle. Grove saw strategic inflections as significant threats that could overturn a company’s core business. Companies blind to these shifts or too slow to change risked their existence.
I see inflections through the lens of opportunity for the attacker — the startup.
Inflections are a startup’s secret weapon. Startups have nothing to defend. They want to upend the status quo. Inflections are the underlying force that pattern-breaking startups can exploit to change the future.
For the same reasons incumbents should be paranoid about inflections, pattern-breaking startups should vigilantly exploit inflections to change the future."
https://medium.com/@m2jr/how-inflections-let-startups-change-the-rules-a8cca5f9b948
24. Bullish case for America. We are really positioned for the future despite the political mess.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ktBjYtjs1E
25. Best convo in Silicon Valley. This weeks "More or Less"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOruH-5ebV4
26. "The most extraordinary techno-capital acceleration has been set in motion. As AI revenue grows rapidly, many trillions of dollars will go into GPU, datacenter, and power buildout before the end of the decade. The industrial mobilization, including growing US electricity production by 10s of percent, will be intense."
https://situational-awareness.ai/racing-to-the-trillion-dollar-cluster/
27. "Ukraine and Russia will already be planning their 2024 winter operations and contemplating their offensive operations for 2025. There are a range of known variables that will impact on this strategic thinking and planning. Additionally, in a rapidly evolving technological and geopolitical environment, strategic surprises may influence the trajectory of the war.
Russia will continue to implement its strategy of subjecting Ukraine and its people to a death by a thousand cuts. And Ukraine, as it has throughout this war, will continue to adapt and seek new ways to not only destroy as much of the Russian military as possible but to also develop new strategic methods to convince Putin that his Ukrainian gamble will never pay off."
https://www.lowyinstitute.org/the-interpreter/four-key-influences-evolution-ukraine-war-2025
28. "I look at my total net worth and investments every quarter to see if anything has changed drastically.
While I would like to say or endorse a software that aggregates or combines all of my investments together, I actually built my own Google Sheet that lays everything out.
Reviewing and updating my numbers is a cathartic quarterly exercise and helps me focus ways I could optimize, diversify, consider, and act on other opportunities.
I’m always trying to think bigger picture – on money, opportunities, my network, and businesses.
When it comes to working for yourself or working for companies, I avoid small-minded people and mentalities.
I generally try to help people ask themselves whether what they’re doing is the best or most valuable way to spend their time."
https://shindy.substack.com/p/rituals-how-to-manage-money
29. "The vertical SaaS ecosystem in Europe started a long time ago with companies such as Relex (2005) and Fenergo (2009). Two decades later, we believe we are still at the inception of value capture. On the one hand, some verticals lag behind when it comes to digital penetration relative to their GDP contribution.
New technologies like sensors, AI, or robotics should accelerate that digitization. On the other hand, vertical SaaS are becoming increasingly multi-faceted. By integrating financial services, building a marketplace, and/or adding AI, we believe that some of them will be able to capture even more value moving forward."
https://medium.com/point-nine-news/the-state-of-vertical-saas-in-europe-21900b8aefc5
30. “There’s definitely worry about that,” he admits, speaking about what the release may do to his public profile. More eyeballs. More attention. More whispers at the grocery store. “I’m trying to view the fame aspect as a challenge and navigate through it in a way that I’ll find happiness,” he says. “I really don’t think my line of profession is a recipe for happiness or contentment. Not a lot of us are happy. And the more the fame is increased, the more turbulent and scary life becomes.”
Skarsgård tries to keep those worries out of his mind when he’s picking jobs. He’s adamant that he is building his career not with some grand vision but rather role by role. Yet when you look at his filmography, it is undeniable that the stories he is drawn to are often twisted—occasionally, as he says, even “pure evil.”
“He doesn’t want to be a Hollywood heartthrob,” says Sanders. “And that’s the legacy of a long career to me—if you’re not involved in the Hollywood machine and you’re creating roles that you are emotionally connected to. It’s like buying art. You just buy what you want to see on your walls and not what you think is going to make you money. And he’s just got a weird taste in art.”
David Leitch, who directed Skarsgård in Atomic Blonde, feels he still has much more to show. “He’s an actor that I believe can do anything,” the filmmaker says. “It’ll just be a matter of time before he does something that reflects his comedic chops.”
https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/movies/a60878863/bill-skarsgard-interview-2024/
31. I certainly appreciate this as a frequent flyer.
https://www.linkedin.com/news/story/united-oversharing-on-delays-6823650/
32. "Looking outward too, the stubborn strength of the US economy and the US dollar have sent other world economies scrambling. Some are already throwing the towel by cutting interest rates, while others like Japan or China have seen their currencies declining in value.
Investors would be unwise to venture outside the “quality” trade when strong currents are pushing it upstream, both across equities and fixed income. However, the accumulation of wins for this isolated portion of the market is drying out liquidity, and create desperation elsewhere. At some point it would backfire.
Pyrrus comes from Greek Pyrrhos, derived from Pyr (fire) and -ros (pertaining to). Here it looks like the victory of some is burning the ground for the rest of us."
https://benjaminrobinot.substack.com/p/pyrrhic-victories
33. Good discussion on portfolio management and how to think about downstream capital as a VC.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnLRzX1L1AE
34. "Throughout the 2010s, many people — including myself — treated it as a truism that manufacturing industries have faster productivity growth than service industries. Historically that was true, and the reason wasn’t hard to grasp — machines improve faster than human beings do, so industries that depended on better machines naturally tended to advance faster than labor-intensive service industries.
But this particular piece of conventional wisdom stopped being true over a decade ago. In 2011, manufacturing productivity in the U.S. hit a ceiling, and has actually declined in the years since
Anyway, the question of why American manufacturing productivity has stagnated is a very important open question. More than just a few percentage points of economic growth hang in the balance here — defense and defense-related manufacturing will be one of the keys to victory in Cold War 2, and the U.S. has a lot of catching-up to do in that regard. So we had better get started chasing down some of these hypotheses — and any other plausible ones we can think of."
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/why-has-us-manufacturing-productivity
35. This is one of the most important trends that we need to be focusing on in America & the West. Re-industrialization.
https://x.com/MikeSlagh/status/1809362222382035017
36. Taipei is an amazing city and well worth visiting. Highly recommend it.
https://www.hemispheresmag.com/asia/taiwan/taipei/three-perfect-days-taipei/
37. One of my absolute favorite places in the whole wide world: Tokyo.
https://www.hemispheresmag.com/asia/japan/tokyo/three-perfect-days-tokyo/