New digital, godlike weapons influenced the Trump administration to strike Iran, but they appear little help in improving the judgment required to win the war.

The US & Israel's data ingestion capabilities gave leaders a false sense of confidence by providing asymmetric information that emboldened decision-making. But despite our digital advantage, Iran succeeded by equalizing the contest into its own analog advantages— now we all pay the price.

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Grand Technologies observes how technology affects our daily lives. Even the most removed from the war in America today will face the consequences of the ongoing conflict between the US, Israel, and Iran. The average price of gas in America now exceeds $4/gallon, the highest it’s been since 2020. Buyers of diesel, jet fuel, chemicals, and fertilizer all face inflated prices. From heating and electricity to flights, we are in for an expensive summer. Thousands of US troops are headed to Iran; the US death toll stands at 13 with 365 injured.1

Silicon Valley reinvented warfare— the conduct. In the digital domain, Iran cannot compete with the West’s overwhelming capabilities in cyberwarfare: jamming communications, hacking the entire networks of a city’s CCTV cameras, and relying on frontier models to coordinate the ensuing operations. New advances in data ingestion allowed for 2,000 targets to be struck in 4 days.

Source: The proliferation of AI-enabled military technology in the Middle East, Noor Hammad, IISS,

Programs that synthesize intelligence like Project Maven compress operational planning. Leveraging billions of collected data points, a smaller team of a dozen analysts rely on frontier models to orchestrate human reporting, digital communications, satellite imagery, and open-source streams to make kinetic decisions faster than larger teams can. The missions that took weeks in Iraq now take days against Iran.

Silicon Valley changed warfare, but not the fact that we’re at war: we’ve resorted to violence with Iran to achieve some policy objective. The same tools that reinvented warfare had sped up judgment and led to an unclear strategy, the policy plan necessary in every war (regardless of what warfare looks like).

AI doesn't just compress planning time, it also forces analysis into an act of signing off. When we prompt a chatbot to plan our commute or cook us dinner, the stakes of outsourcing that thinking is low. But when the technology powers a kill chain, judgment is paramount— necessary to improve by the process of weighing facts, arguing the merits to an action, and owning the conclusion.

To “win” a war requires defining a win. The tools prove attractive for warfare… but are they effective if winning is unclear? First it was to support protesters revolting? Then openly support a regime? Or destroying Iran’s nuclear program? and its ballistic missiles?2

As the goal-posts continue to shift, critics argue we’re headed towards a strategic defeat, but the White House boasts we’re winning. The tools of warfare evolve, but war’s domains remain relatively constant: physical, digital, and economic.

We learn from history that we learn nothing from history - George Bernard Shaw

Despite the growing influence of technology firms in geopolitics—such as the case of big tech “Building the digital front line” in Ukraine— leaders still set the strategy of foreign policy and which tools to win with. If we don’t know what victory looks like, no tool will get us there.

A new dynamite has entered the world. Large Language Models (LLMs) improve how we access and wield knowledge, but, like dynamite, it doesn’t improve knowing when to use it.

Grand Technologies discusses how sweeping tech impacts our daily lives. Today observes technology threatening learning. LLMs are a landmark upgrade to knowledge infrastructure: the systems which store information to educate us.

“From gold rushes to guerrilla wars, dynamite’s dual legacy is one of construction and destruction.” - Christopher Klein

For nearly a thousand years, the world relied on imprecise black powder until dynamite arrived. Introduced in the 1860s, dynamite-driven engineering quickly became indispensable for civil engineering, mining, but also weaponry.

Famous engineering projects, like the Hoover Dam, would not be possible without dynamite’s ability to blast through larger amounts of rock more accurately. Henry Petroski, a professor of civil engineering and history at Duke University tells Popular Mechanics that “its introduction coincided with a lot of the railroads being pushed through uncharted territory, and they needed to get through large mountains,” and argues that “it was much more efficient than going up and down, and the dynamite was essential in blasting tunnels.”1

Not only an instrument for engineering and mining, dynamite improved high explosives at war. Only three years after entering production, dynamite was used by fighters in the 1870 Franco-Prussian War and then anarchists wielded dynamite to destroy public monuments during the subsequent Paris Commune of 1871. Its stability and portability made it easier for attackers to breach defenses.

A New Dynamite to Knowledge

Dynamite built and destroyed physical things; LLMs stand to do the same with how we think. For generations, grasping new knowledge got easier. Over thousands of years, technological leaps upgraded knowledge infrastructure that improved our access to information: language improved, the printing press spread, libraries grew, and digital networks and databases went online.

Each advancement reduced the friction to manage information. Reducing that time managing the information naturally trades off working in that information: lines of text, code, and pixel. Spending less time in the information risks losing our grasp over concepts.

The Dual Legacy of LLMs begins

The innovations of dynamite and LLMs are both amoral, not inherently “good or bad”. How the use of this power and technology is judged determines that. So, a dual legacy originates soon after.

dynamis translates to power in Greek (δύναμις),

tekhnē (τέχνη) translates to “art, skill, craft in work; method, system, an art, a system or method of making or doing.”

Neither word carries moral charge.

Today, LLMs revolutionize knowledge infrastructure, marking the most dramatic reduction in the friction to learning— but also present the greatest risk to intellectual development.

Over the last two decades, the growing popularity of “data-driven insights” —first from AI/ML algorithms but especially since the advent of LLMs— marks an inflection point in knowledge infrastructure. Humans have been abstracted so far from consuming and producing content that these steps are collapsed into one single “check”.

The analyst once read, synthesized, and reasoned. Now the analyst prompts an LLM to read, synthesize, and reason— then check what it’s done.

Ceding that control bears risk.

In the good, dynamite revolutionized civil engineering. LLMs stand to engineer together disparate knowledge that humans cannot. For example, a tech entrepreneur reduced the cancer in his dog by 75% by sequencing its DNA for $3k and navigated the research pipeline on a $20/month ChatGPT subscription.2

I’m convinced a solo founder will come along and make a billion-dollar unicorn. Their creation will definitely command an army of agents, but it will not inherently create some good.

In the bad, many pacifists historicize Alfred Nobel as “the Merchant of Death” with how widely dynamite was used in war. Can LLMs kill cognition? The same tools that teach and destroy learning in schools, jobs, and in life.

Abstracting knowledge management risks losing control over our own ability to access information ourselves. When we outsource how we access thought, we risk losing access to those thoughts themselves.

When the Library of Alexandria burnt down, its value as a central repository was lost. What happens if LLMs vanish?

We offer no explanation as to why these architectures seem to work; we attribute their success, as all else, to divine benevolence. “GLU Variants Improve Transformer” -- Noam Shazeer

We once wrote papers, pushed code, and drove ourselves; now we can “one-shot” that same work by immediately producing deep research, hacking together a working demo, or asking for a Waymo to take us straight to the airport.

Automate only the skills you’re willing to lose. - Gurwinder

So I drafted this in an email exchange to force me to research, think, and write slower. I can defend the lack of citations this time around. Weird grammar, awkward syntax, and janky flow will soon be be features of artisanal research, not bugs. Intentionally creating a space away from algorithms prevents encroaching upon my own thinking.

That luxury of slowness —to think and process the world at a pace that matches our own cognition— is unaffordable in competitive environments like work and warfare. We will naturally use every tool that enhances our thinking, to maximize our gain and minimize our losses.

In work, the massive leaps in knowledge management stand to benefit the individuals who wield LLMs correctly: playing secretary, automating routines, or testing insights. In warfare, Project Maven is an innovation to the knowledge management of intelligence.3 It allowed the Western forces to start the War in Iran by striking over 900 targets in less than 24 hours.

Learning will look a whole lot different in a decade. But what about leadership?

A computer can never be held accountable, therefore a computer must never make a management decision. Thus, it’s important for those who wield its immense power to know what they use it for. - 1979 Internal IBM training Manual

Applying LLMs to our daily lives—removing us from the loop of our decisions—holds up a mirror to our own morality. Most of it is innocuous; some of it is for the good of others; and some of it for the acts of evil. The tool itself is at its core amoral, but it all boils down to how humans use it.

Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them.” ― Frank Herbert, Dune

Today’s cognitive capabilities are unmatched thanks to advances in knowledge management. Our brains cannot keep up. The world requires more restraint from its leaders than ever. A new modern Marcus Aurelius needs to emerge as Trump exposed how powerful4 a unitary American presidency can be.

“Yeah,” Trump grunted inelegantly. “There is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.” He continued, “I don’t need international law.”5

That’s what it can feel like for 1 in 10 people in the world with a uterus who might have “endometriosis”: a common, painful chronic disease that causes inflammation, infertility, and severe menstrual pain… and they might not even know they have it.

Roughly 190 million worldwide struggle with the once-overlooked disease.1

Dr. Christine Metz, a professor at Northwell Health and the Donald and Barbara School of Medicine, is on a mission to change that.

Source: Northwell Health

I spoke with her for Grand Technologies where I look at how technology impacts our daily lives. Her work stands to improve the lives of millions, but that impact did not happen overnight. It takes a patient and curious mindset to pioneer research in a field, a journey that can take decades before blooming results to innovate new technology.

“That pain is normal.”

As endometriosis lesions grow, they causes inflammation, which can lead to adhesions, scarring, internal bleeding, bowel or urinary dysfunction, constipation, painful intercourse, and infertility. The physical pain can be severe, which can lead to psychological distress. It’s a combination that, in many ways, can have a debilitating effect on an individual’s life. - Endometriosis Foundation of America.2

Source: wildpixel/Getty Images

The disease’s debilitating pain goes unnoticed, requires a surgery to diagnose, and lacks effective treatment.

It started with the hiccups: in the eighth grade, for a month straight, Cate Gogolak found herself hiccuping with alarming frequency. Next came acid reflux, bowel issues, and frequent urination. During her freshman year of high school, she experienced a weird pulling sensation, as if someone were reaching into her abdomen and trying to drag her uterus out of her body. The feeling seemed to get worse during her period. Her mother took her to see a range of specialists, but the tests all came back negative. - New Yorker3

The pain that marks endometriosis usually begins early, even before puberty for some, which makes diagnosis difficult.

Dr. Metz notes that, “About 70% of patients with moderate to severe endometriosis claim their symptoms started when they were teens. It usually starts early and it progresses.”

That pain is normalized in part because doctors face a high hurdle to diagnose endometriosis. They may pursue other diagnoses that match some symptoms or prescribe antidepressants as frontline medication (New Yorker).

Also at play is broader stigmatization of women’s health that undermines correctly diagnosing endometriosis— and developing approaches to treat it. The “yuck factor” has made open conversations harder. Sex education in some states, like Florida, has been severely restricted. Entire districts cancel classes rather than risk violating new state guidelines.4

Normalization of pain and dismissal of pain are all too common. Dr. Metz says it’s made worse by age - “the younger you are, dismissal seems too frequent and more serious.”

“Knowing will require surgery.”

Let’s say a doctor doesn’t dismiss your symptoms and seeks to confirm endometriosis… Dr. Metz notes the diagnostic journey might start with “imaging methods, ultrasound or MRI, they require the lesions to be quite large to be detected. So, it is unlikely the patient will be diagnosed in their teens, for example, when their debilitating symptoms begin.

But the definitive gold standard is a “laparoscopy”, an invasive surgery that begins with small incisions in the abdomen, followed by inserting a small camera; if surgeons find lesions, they remove them so a pathologist can confirm the presence of what Dr. Metz calls “uterine-like” cells, i.e., endometriosis.

After surgery, relief is far from guaranteed. Up to 80% will experience pain again within two years because some endometriosis tissue was either not visible or could not be removed, according to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.5

After diagnosis and the initial relief of surgery, ongoing treatment involves hormone-based medications like birth control with varying outcomes. Dr. Metz talks about how understudied the treatment options are, “[hormones are] a common treatment for many conditions affecting women. Hormone treatments are not a common treatment for men’s conditions. Some physicians I’ve spoken to believe that hormones may make some people with endometriosis experience worse symptoms.”

The journey for anyone facing endometriosis is brutal. The pain is normalized or dismissed. Diagnosis is costly and delayed. Treatment has been understudied and often ineffective. Outcomes vary.

The ROSE begins to bloom

The innovative technology we rely on often emerges out of researchers tinkering and toiling in labs for decades.

This research venture did not come out of a pitch deck in Silicon Valley, it came from two scientists at a Long Island research institute bucking the trend. Dr. Metz’s contributions have not happened overnight, “I had been working on endometriosis for many years prior to that, since the late 1990s, with a collaborator in Quebec who was very interested in the inflammatory aspects of endometriosis.

It wasn’t until 2012 that an innovative diagnostic approach arose thanks to research elsewhere describing differences in the cells lining the uterus in patients with endometriosis compared to healthy people.

A year later, Peter Gregersen, MD, and Christine Metz, PhD earned a grant through the Endometriosis Foundation of America to start collecting biological specimens to study endometriosis. This launched the “ROSE” study. Research OutSmarts Endometriosis to enroll teens and women who are healthy, are diagnosed with endometriosis, or exhibit symptoms, but are not yet diagnosed, to donate their menstrual blood, containing shed uterine tissue, for research.

When the team started, there were serious doubts about whether collecting menstrual blood would provide useful information, like stool and urine. Dr. Metz notes the resistance from physicians, “I attended the first menstruation meeting at the NIH before the pandemic. Several people laughed. We had kind of a cold reception from some. When we asked gynecologists to help recruit from their patient populations, many told us that they did not feel comfortable asking their patients to provide menstrual blood for a study.”6 Instead, doctors would say, “I know endometriosis when I see it.”

Since 2013, the stigma to provide menstrual blood has slowly started to erode thanks to social media, press, and word of mouth. Dr. Metz recounts, “there was some social media growth. And we had a couple of participants in our study who shared their journeys on social media. There was also a New York Times article that featured endometriosis and the ROSE study. And we experienced a flood of participants willing to share their menstrual blood.”

The ROSE Study has grown to more than 3,700 participants. Today, Dr. Metz says the study has taken off, “It’s no longer a challenge for us to recruit participants, either through social media or word of mouth.” And thanks to advances in technology, researchers can obtain more insights out of every drop of blood donated.

The Breakthrough: A New Diagnostic Flow

Instead of an invasive surgery, the ROSE team samples the uterus performing, in a sense, its own natural biopsy— menses, the beginning of the menstrual cycle.

For years, the ROSE team processed menstrual blood by separating out the liquid portion to analyze the free cells. Then a gap-year medical student working in the lab kept asking a question no one had thought to ask. Dr. Metz recalled her thinking at the time, “What’s in this “meat” portion that we throw away?”

They went back and looked. There were clear, large pieces of intact tissue — not dead cells, not trash, but living endometrial tissue. Dr. Metz recalls the buzz in the lab, “The endometrium has to shed and regrow every single month. So, of course, the menstrual blood is full of live intact uterine tissues. And we had been throwing them away.” That changed the study’s trajectory.

The team could now feed the mRNA data from those cells alongside patient profile information into machine learning algorithms. “There are very few reports that characterized menstrual blood in a meaningful way.” This is changing that to provide a “risk score” to predict the presence of endometriosis without surgery.

The innovation boils down to a score the physician can discuss with the patient to decide ‘next steps’, derived from something the uterus produces every month.

Collecting the data requires what Dr. Metz describes as a “novel menstrual collection device”. Current tampons and pads kill cells on arrival. Instead, an at-home menstrual collection that is sent to a central lab for diagnostic analyses is in the works for eventual FDA review and approval.

Today

Today, ROSE is 3,700 strong. “Everything can be done at home, which is great because we’re able to recruit menstruators from North America. We are interested in identifying young people who are suffering so they can get early treatment and perhaps more preventative care in the future.” And the research opens up new paths, “We are applying this technology to menstrual effluent collected from endometriosis patients, as well as menstrual effluent collected from patients with infertility. There are multiple other uterine health conditions we could study.

Hurdles remain with where the work needs to go. The “yuck factor” of period blood stigmatizing testing prevents diagnosing potential patients in pain and doctors feeling comfortable doing so. Earning FDA approval for at-home collected menstrual blood to be used for diagnostic purposes is a challenge, says Dr. Metz, “COVID sparked the development of ‘at-home’ biospecimen collections for downstream diagnostics and testing. ”Scaling the research to provide a diagnostic approach that reaches more people in pain requires starting a company. Dr. Metz also notes the challenges in keeping up funding to expand the study to analyze more samples, “as academics, it’s difficult to get funding required to do this at scale and to address all the regulatory issues.”

Lots of work remains for Dr. Metz and the ROSE team to improve diagnosing and treating endometriosis. Her enthusiasm for the work is well-timed; funding for women's health startups is accelerating. Since 2020, femtech startups have raised over $5 billion in venture capital with $1.2 billion in 2024 alone, a 20% increase from the prior year, according to PitchBook data.7 More capital brings in more partners from the private sector to make the ROSE team’s job easier to free patients and physicians stuck in an analysis paralysis.

For Dr. Metz, the journey of ROSE has been long and is beginning to bloom into new technology. To learn more and get involved in the study, visit the ROSE website online.

I argued AI cannot replace the core skills of good character and trust building for investors. “Thinking Beyond the Multiple” was the theme for that day, but I left lacking tangible examples of what thematic investments can genuinely be made. After all, this newsletter, Grand Technology, investigates ways technology impacts our daily lives… Money matters.

Growing up, I built gaming PCs; eBay connected me with buyers and sellers. I’m allergic to cats; Pacagen’s cat-food mix and spray erases my symptoms. I stopped talk therapy because the conversations lacked tangible goals and slowly grew pointless; Two Chairs sets a timeline to stack wins over a specific number of sessions.

Every one of these companies influenced my life and had major backing from one firm— Maveron.1

“A business that makes nothing but money is a poor kind of business.” - Henry Ford2

So how does Maveron for twenty years manage to “think beyond a multiple” when technology markets can reward innovations that hurt us? After all, the doomscroll is the cigarette of our century.

Maveron views generating returns and positive impact to consumers as not opposed. The firm claims its first value is “profit + purpose” that support “future-focused” founders who patiently reshape antiquated industries across real estate, energy, fintech, education, food, and health care.345

Maveron— different in the Macro

Their positioning bucks the recent trend of “megadeals” in venture capital. Maveron’s funds and checks stay relatively smaller. 50% of the 2025 deal value was invested in just 0.05% of the completed deals.6 “The SoftBank Effect” is a swell of larger funds writing bigger checks.7 That’s been subject to criticism where well-intentioned founders into building bad products too fast.8

Source: PitchBook-NVCA Venture Monitor Q4 2025 Report

Maveron’s team believes in a “Psychological Contract” that commits its team and companies to three pillars of humility, discipline, and culture.9 This comes in public decisions across raising and investing.

• The firm turned down over $70M from its $180M VII fund.10

• At the cost of faster growth, Two Chairs believes it’s building a force of higher-quality therapists in part by staffing them as W2 employees rather than contracting them as 1099s.11

• The firm prioritizes investing in culture, like Sage, who in 2024 hadn’t lost a single customer.12

• Maveron earned its B-corp certification in 2021 when there were fewer than ten investment firms nationwide that had it.13

In a time when venture funds are swelling to stuff more money into founders, Maveron is practicing prudence to build durable, lasting, and trustworthy brands.

Non-Normal People

The firm’s name “Maveron” embodies the familiar values in venture capital of rugged individualists and entrepreneurs. As Mayor of San Antonio, he notoriously left his cattle unbranded throughout his ranch lands.14 “Mavericks” soon became a term for other independent animals and later inspiration for the firm’s name, a portmanteau of “maverick” + “vision”.15

Maveron’s commitment to being different starts with who sits at every table. The firm looks for “non-normal people” that prioritize the people in its firm and its partners. Building trust requires a diverse investing team to invest in diverse companies.16

“Relationships over transactions”. - Maveron17

The venture capital industry notoriously lacks diversity: Black investors make up 4% of venture capitalists, 16% of all venture partners are women, and only 35% of venture firms have any female partners.18 Maveron swims against that tide with the claim it “has always included female partners with check-writing capability”.19

The best founders realize that building a company is a process that takes a long time. It’s not about yesterday, it’s what you do today and tomorrow. - Dan Levitan20

Performance: Prudence pays off

That temperance has allowed Maveron to weather market cycles in consumer technology through two decades.21 Co-Founders Dan Levitan and Howard Schultz’s22 firm made its first investment in eBay in 1998 when creating a consumer marketplace was novel.23 eBay and the firm successfully rode out the Dotcom Bubble that crushed other online marketplaces like Pets.com, eToys.com, and Webvan.24

Since raising its first dedicated fund in 2004, the firm has accomplished many successful exits such as Trupanion (Lead Series A 200825, IPO 201426), Zulily (seed and series A27, IPO 2013,28 now acquired 202429), AllBirds (lead Series A 201630, IPO 202131).

Two decades of patience have proven consumer venture can be resilient — but not without bruises. Consumer brands must navigate the “Facebook and Google Tax” that undermines the ability for brands to grow.32 These platforms provide easy marketability but also cut into profits. In turn, Maveron advises its companies sell every way it can and pursue omnichannel distribution. Still, Maveron-backed AllBirds announced that it’s closing its brick-and-mortar stores as it pivots to online direct-to-consumer as the brand struggles.33

Where Maveron is investing

Despite headlines and rhetoric by pundits on social media platforms, consumer venture is not dead. - Maveron34

Maveron views the state of the consumer industry shifting in an “Age of Personalization”. Built on big data and advances in AI interpreting it, consumers are now expecting tailored customization in every product.35 The firm has invested in four domains personalizing, examples including:36

• Personalizing Health and Wellness— IVF diagnostics: ALifeHealth37 and “Investigative” Pet Regenerative Meds: Gallant38;

• Personalizing Knowledge— online learning: Engageli39 and understanding personal finances: Domain Money40

• Personalizing Labor— a high-skilled tech talent job board: Free Agency41 and empowering senior living caregivers: Sage42

• Personalizing Power— e.g. lowering hospital bills: Goodbill43 and making second home co-ownership easier: Pacaso44

What Maveron wants to invest in

Maveron is looking to write checks for startups and founders in this Age of Personalization. Consumers buy from trustworthy brands that engage with them more deeply. Consumer businesses want stronger systems for leaner operators.

An entirely new generation of consumers that grew up with algorithms is coming to market — Gen Alpha, today’s teens and preteens — with $100 billion in spending power that’s only growing.45 Where millennials were receptive to careful creation, and Gen Z sought out authenticity and irony, Gen Alpha participates with brands by remixing ads and evangelizing everything. This is leading companies to operate where these consumers are. For example, Nike teamed up with Roblox to create a virtual world, “Nikeland”.46

What’s more, Maveron believes artificial intelligence can build more community, rather than detract from it. Go opposite of the uncanny valley. Brands can aid human connection—and not just replace it— by improving real human life like matching better relationships and easing the logistics of raising a family.47

Operating systems will respond more quickly to demand signals and speed up product innovation cycles.4849 In the coming decade, brands that launch new products the fastest-to-the-shelf will win the distribution game of capturing mindshare.50 That’s already happening.

Last Friday, Maveron announced it led a $3.2 million seed round in JampackAI that automates the purchase order lifecycle from ingestion to freight booking to invoicing. The announcement reports, “What once took operators six-plus hours per order can now take under 60 seconds. Jampack is transforming brands’ reality, saving customers 20+ hours per week, cutting freight costs 30%, and reducing inventory errors 92%.”^{59 62}

JampackAI’s impact is a sign of the times. Lean operations can become a moat, opening up the opportunity for a new wave of “Houses of Brands” to arise. Gone are the behemoth P&G and Unilever of old built on scale; in are nimble newcomers like ZyG, Gruns, and Paragon— new Houses with leaner AI-enabled foundational systems.51

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The profile today examines how ethics can write a winning playbook.

Thank you for reading— always more to follow,

Max

This post was written originally for the firm a while ago. It has been since edited and republished. I enjoy the process of technology and economics research. Follow what gives you energy.

No AI was used in sourcing facts. The bibliography is a relic of doing things. You can find a PDF of my hand-written notes here.

My brain is exhausted from reading “AI” everywhere across global, local, and useless news. I’m trying to make this newsletter useful: Grand Technologies assesses how technology transforms our daily lives. AI is reshaping work and our life. Apple makes deeply influential technology, but Siri, one of the first widely available virtual assistants, feels completely missing from this most recent wave… why?

Apple first failed to compete with its direct rivals in AI products. Now it’s pivoted and spun their failures into a conscious act of strategic patience. They scripted a demo—“What time does mom’s flight land?”—then that very function was nowhere near functional upon release.1 The feature that summarized headlines and texts was accused of spreading misinformation.23

Source: MacRumors

Meanwhile, AI tools from its familiar rivals have dominated the market and captivated the hearts of millions. In turn, Apple preserved its Siri architecture, jammed ChatGPT in it to tough out hard questions, and rolled out a disappointing set of features called “Apple Intelligence” throughout its interface.

Apple believes the heavy investments by its competitors won’t build a meaningful moat that will pull consumers away from its walled garden ecosystem. Yummm… those beautiful blue texts. Apple is waiting for its competitors to improve the underlying technology. So far, their strategic patience appears to be paying off. Competitors spend enormous sums to compete in a market where the products are becoming interchangeable.

In the past two months, early products are emerging with enough accuracy to reason, plan, and act on our behalf. This suggests we are shifting eras in AI’s evolution. Every agent will compete on how well their systems seamlessly integrate into our lives when acting on behalf of us. That’s Grand Technology on the horizon, bound to stick around. For Apple, the question ahead is when they enter with their own upgrade to Siri. The fact that early adopters use agents now suggests that Apple will follow later in 2026.4

Be the best, not first.

“We’ve rarely been first.. There was a PC before the Mac; there was a smartphone before the iPhone; there were many tablets before the iPad; there was an MP3 player before iPod.” - Tim Cook

Remember the Blackberry, Palm, and Nokia? Those smartphones dominated the industry before the iPhone launched. My grandfather and aunt both used the Palm Pilot; it was early and janky. Then the iPhone came along and within a year, all my neighborhood friends had one: teachers, lawyers, truckers, doctors, foremen— its adoption was far more widespread in everyone’s professional and personal lives.

Source: iPhone Keynote 2007

When the iPhone released, Nokia sounded the alarms.

The left is the real deck from the Nokia executives after the iPhone launched. The right is how the room felt.

Source: Nokia Design Archive

When Apple arrived with the iPhone, Nokia failed to keep up.

This is not the first time Apple has been “late” to refining technology into excellent experiences: tablets, MP3 players, or wireless earbuds. Siri sucks as an assistant because the technology that automates cognition is still being refined.

Today’s Toolbelt Behavior in the Generative Era

Since the release of ChatGPT, we’ve been in the Generative era where users prompt and create digital content to draft emails, research reports, make to-do lists, or create fake banter in your group chat.5 6

Think of the arrival of this Industrial Revolution in stages: Perception was in the past, Generative is today, Agentic is being adopted, and Physical is taking shape.

In today’s Generative era, consumers don’t care what model powers their use of ChatGPT, Gemini, or whatever tool they may use to prompt and create.

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According to Maveron’s Consumer 2026 Report released last week, “56% of consumers are switching among AI tools” and exhibiting “toolbelt behavior” across various places in their work and personal life.7

A creative director told me, “I think it’s great to switch between AI tools with different capabilities. Chat can help refine responses and storylines put into image or video generation. They’re usually good enough because I edit it afterwards.”

Today’s power users aren’t married to any model. Levi Carlisle, co-founder of OpSprocket, a bespoke AI solutions consulting firm, uses several models in his personal and professional life. He says, “I regularly use Opus 4.6 and GPT-4o Mini, and now Gemini 1.5 and 2.5 in unison across the same workflow. They’re optimized for different parts of the stack. Most businesses don’t need frontier reasoning on every task.” And when it comes to capabilities, he notes that “for summarization, extraction, classification, and drafting, there often isn’t a meaningful performance delta.”

Apple is waiting to deliver the best experience in its ecosystem in the coming Agentic era. Users like Levi are already there, automating reasoning, planning and action for himself and clients outside the Apple stack— but as his domain expertise testifies, Siri needs to seamlessly do the same for 2.5 billion Apple devices. That’s a lot of product R&D, not infrastructure.

Today’s Rotten Business of Competing in AI Infrastructure

These products are amazing, but that’s the thing— they all are. When products are indistinguishable, that undifferentiated demand is bad for business trying to keep a margin.

Prices for Generative products are racing to the bottom. As Fortune reports, Anthropic recently cut prices by 67%, Google by 70-80%, and OpenAI continues to cut pricing as well.8 9 ChatGPT holds the lion share of users today from being the first, but they have to continue cutting costs to keep their lead as others do the same.

Improving the accuracy of models requires massive spending. In this Generative era, winning product market share depends on how much infrastructure a tech company can scale up its compute to improve the underlying technology known as “foundational models”. For example, the product layer is Gemini, Google improves its accuracy by spending billions on the infrastructure, data centers and the power, to train new versions and host older ones.

Apple Intelligence and Siri are abysmal because Apple isn’t spending billions in the infrastructure required to compete with its peers: Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, and Meta.

Future spending is not letting up. According to their first quarter earnings calls, these top four plan to spend more than $650 billion of AI-focused capital expenditure this coming year;10 Apple plans to spend $14 billion, even as Apple pursues a $1 billion licensing agreements for Google Gemini to marginally improve the accuracy of its tools.1112

“If we end up misspending a couple of hundred billion dollars, I think that that is going to be very unfortunate, obviously… But what I’d say is I actually think the risk is higher on the other side.” - Mark Zuckerberg13

Zuck sounds like a lunatic because he’s stuck in a digital arena. The big spenders are competing in a digital market of products where the switching costs for consumers are low. Apple’s competitors lack the hardware lock-in that let the engineers and executives in Cupertino bide their time.

Today’s infrastructure boom that could burst tomorrow

Winning customers in the Generative era demands massive infrastructure spend. That’s driving real returns through the economy— only exceeded by the hype that investors are pricing those tech stocks at.

The sheer size of this spending asks a simple question: What is hype? What is reality? Apple’s thesis might be validated. Why spend billions to develop a product whose prices fall only to spend more on the next upgrade? Will all these data centers be needed? How fast will these products rip through the economy?

Investors are jumpy as the shift to the Agentic era begins. Products are emerging that suggest less data centers will be needed— and Agentic products will rip through the economy. On Sunday, a Substack Newsletter Citrini Research released a brutal scenario on how white collar industries could change; on Monday, the S&P fell 1%, losing roughly $550-600 billion in market cap.1415

Hey Siri, time to wake up!

In the Generative era, the models aren’t driving meaningful quality differences in the products. Most users are still warming up to a superintelligence helping them overcome email anxiety (just send the dam thing). ChatGPT and Gemini are both good enough for that job, but what about when the underlying models could read all our emails, triage your inbox, respond automatically, and put dinners on your calendar?

Apple’s is betting that the models are commodities; those don’t matter but the data does. For an assistant to reason, decide, and act, it has to know what’s going on in your life. Data will personalize these Agentic products, presenting an opportunity for real user loyalty— regardless of how marginally better the underlying foundational model could be.

I spoke with an analyst in cloud computing who summarized the difference of having data in the coming wave, “I like Claude, but ChatGPT knows so much context about my life that it’s becoming increasingly harder to use other products that could make decisions. It knows all about my relationships, my work, you know, my personal background. I’m comfortable giving it that data. We’re thinking about that with millions of people. It becomes harder for users to leave any one AI company.”

(Source: Settings > iCloud)

Like all the data barons, Apple sits on its own treasure trove of user information (including yours truly!) Apple will leverage its user data for intimate product experiences across its entire suite of hardware and services. The question is about timing. The longer it waits “to be the best”, the higher the switching costs are for consumers.

2026 is time for Siri to upgrade. The company sits on an estimated $130 billion in cash.16 If the market crashes from an infrastructure overbuild or Agents wipe out white collar work, Apple could buy, at a discount, any number of the over-built data centers or startups that were scrambling to catch the winds of the Generative era.

That’s Apple’s thesis— let’s watch 2026 and see if it works.

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Source: Me. Sludge-brain era.1

Addicting algorithms kill focus, self-confidence, and any sense of direction. They’ve left me rudderless, cast away from my personality, people, and places. Losing that power helps drives this newsletter today, Grand Technologies, which observes how transformative technology shapes our daily lives.

Generalized AI Anxiety Disorder (GAAD)

GAAD: The pervasive dread that AI will make our entire existence obsolete. Rational in recognizing real change; irrational in paralysis.

This article is the first in a series into Generalized AI Anxiety Disorder (GAAD). Put on your techno-armchair-psychology hat. In this moment, we are innovating cognition at scale. Trillions are being spent to develop products that reshape how our minds think in, learn from, and interact with the world.

Source: Al Jazeera2

These massive amounts of money fan embers of worry: what is hype? what is reality? Let’s take a biblical approach. Seeing what AI does to investors helps us understand what they will be comfortable with funding. How will the work life of a tech investor change?

This article offers several transferrable answers: the technical, rote skills lose value and will reshape firm cultures from the bottom-up. And the competitive edge on knowing more in the market appears all but gone. To be at the top, building trust with CEOs and management teams, cultivating relationships, and forming networks matter more than ever. The basis of competition is changing— and it makes the lessons learned in the classroom for an MBA worth more.

Source: Tuck Business School3

Most of the answers today originate from professional conversations. Last Friday, I attended a Private Equity and Venture Capital (PE/VC) conference at Dartmouth’s Business School.

At the conference, AI anxiety seeped into every panel and conversation — professors scrambling to update their curriculums, fund owners calming stressed endowment chiefs, directors struggling to sell businesses amid the messy macro environment, analysts justifying their existence against agents, and MBA students catastrophizing about their job prospects.

Source: Funding Blueprint, 20264

AI will change the fabric of deal flow and will influence firm culture. The funnel is getting faster; money can reach the best founders and their companies quicker because the technical and rote work— like researching markets, testing ideas about them, personalizing outreach to hundreds of companies, and modeling out their fundamentals—is accelerating.

The less humans are involved in these new processes, the more the roles change. What do funds look for in their new hires? If new tools can draft market research and outreach instantly, how does that change the cadence of weekly meetings throughout a firm? What happens to culture? That’s often defined by founders and their empirical observations. Mined from the earth, leaders look at what existing processes work in their companies and codify them into values.

Data has grown more accessible and now AI models flatten the knowledge gap even among the best investors. Investors have long known that “money is green everywhere”, but now open knowledge stands to be commoditized too.

Source: McKinsey & Company5

What remains different is that closed knowledge, built from years of internal indices from firms own data, was a premium to develop subject matter expertise. But, large datasets with the best models have undermined the confidential intelligence that underpinned the old guard’s wisdom. Godly sums are being spent by top firms to build out their own AI tools from their private histories, but development lags, and adoption is even slower.

Nothing diminishes anxiety faster than taking action. - Walter Anderson6

It behooves anyone with Generalized AI Anxiety Disorder to take action. Stay apprised of updates changing their industry— adopt, don’t stick your head in the sand.

For investors, AI tools will A) accelerate deal flow and reshape culture from the bottom-up and B) demand they leverage their closed datasets with leading models. But the oldest competitive edge is now more important than ever. It’s what fake brains cannot replace: a good human being in the flesh.

“Trust, people, and relationships matter more than ever”

Those were the lyrics on repeat for 10 hours. When trying to win a deal, lots of the levers relied on are becoming commoditized: the money offered is the same everywhere; AI is pushing their data the same direction.

So now, to build a competitive pipeline and create successful partnerships for great exits, there’s this elusive concept of building “trust”. CEOs and their management teams must trust the words of advice from investors. They’re not actually running the business after all.

It takes about 20 hours to go from an acquaintance to a friend, and they become a close friend after 200 hours. You have to put in the time.

Funds are placing a higher value on the EQ, emotional intelligence, as AI commoditizes other technical skills built on knowledge. AI tools do really well in modeling out a business’s finances to increase its bottom-line; AI tools struggle aiding investors with the emotional skills to improve trust in a CEO and its management team in getting to a deal and supporting the business for a happy exit.

Source: Freepix7

Seriously, can you imagine this? Yes, the beginning of the funnel is getting automated, but I lose my mind getting automated responses to emails and texts; I could never imagine talking about the future of my startup on some roadshow in front of a bunch of androids. Immediate firing squad.

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In the stage of getting to a deal, the best investors try plenty of ways to signal trust that they will care once a handshake happens. They’ll go out “into the field” in their Patagonia vest or whatever is fashionable in their target industry. They’ll buy every product, tour their factories, take their vitamins— whatever it takes because word gets around.

Identifying companies has gotten easier, but standing out to court the best businesses takes years of relationship building: knowing the lingo and everyday news, treating other ongoing partnerships right, and being a thought leader on emerging trends for guidance. This kinda sounds like dating.

Once the deal is struck, trust becomes a key component to ensure an investment performs. As a general partner noted, “…don’t say you’re going to improve them, that’s lame and rude. It’s support — I am a Sherpa at base camp for you while you go higher.”

Managing directors take careful time coaching analysts what to reveal about the plans for a company from entry-level teams all the way up to the c-suite, CEO, and boards. Corporate code switching. Imagine the fallout if some clever employee at a portfolio company could get a Private Equity’s chatbot to reveal its intended goal is to “reduce headcount” of their specific team.

How about that MBA?

Even after the hype passes, artificial intelligence will introduce new tools that innovate workflows and create new cultures. A panelist caught himself ruminating out loud to dozens of MBAs: “now i’m asking myself, does our own headcount growth slow because of AI? We’re reviewing how many people we hire.” So much for EQ. The anxious silence that followed spoke volumes… do these students think they’re cattle in a classroom— being herded into unemployment?

Source: Joe Dator, New Yorker8

Are MBAs wasting their time in a classroom right now? Are they headed into a managerial slaughterhouse? No, these jobs will still need to exist and MBAs teach the fleshy skills of earning trust, building relationships, and forming networks.

The value of an elite MBA is relatively higher right now because the current wave of AI is replacing the skills practiced daily in the workforce. The degree’s familiar tradeoffs do still apply.

Agents that build models, slide decks, and code faster threaten the productive sovereignty of students. They’ll need to upskill to wield it. But how different is that from the history major learning to build a spreadsheet without their mouse? Indeed, whoever “built” the conference website didn’t bother testing it on mobile. So I plagiarized rehosted it the morning of the conference. To get the little things done, these students need to understand responsible agentic engineering: architecting secure systems, knowing what inputs to choose, and understanding whether the output “feels” right— which they’ve spent time in the trenches grasping before agents made it obsolete.

As the ground shifts under our feet, these students sit in classrooms teaching them the skills that automated brains cannot recreate— how to build trust, form relationships, be a better person, and hopefully think beyond a multiple.

For more reading

• Why this newsletter matters

• Bitcoin: When Better Technology Isn’t Enough

• What the SpaceX acquisition teaches us

A few disclaimers. Much of the source material comes out of Chatham House Rules: names stay in the room; the ideas don’t have to. I know my subscriber base has lived more than me here so I urge you to reach out where I’m wrong. My early career has exposed me to various jobs and clients in this world: studies, venture, growth equity, wealth management, startups, think tanks, the intelligence community, and hedge funds among them. In this moment of history, one of life’s greatest joys is anyone can learn from anywhere and anyone. I enjoyed meeting everyone and hope to stay in touch with all of you. Cheers.

Speaking of email, maybe you’ve heard of “Inbox Zero”: keeping the inbox entirely empty by deleting, responding, or flagging any inbound message. You’ll never miss anything, make faster decisions, and set better work-life boundaries.

But have you heard of—I don’t even know what to call this—Message Zero? Imagine this. It’s my friend’s phone. Watch them open their Messages App… and it’s completely blank?

No no, they are not hiding 3 families. I asked around. They are genuine and kind-hearted— but also a strict digital minimalist, someone deeply protective of their time and cognizant of how their phone kills time.12

Powerful technology has engrained itself more than ever into our daily lives.

The world’s largest companies weren’t always making technology, but now they are tech companies driving digital innovation. Warping politics and entire economies to their will, the trillions of dollars affect billions of people to raise millions of questions: Does social media help relationships? Do online marketplaces make for healthier buying habits? How online can or should we be? Can learning about everything mean we should?

This newsletter will assess the grand technologies influencing our daily lives.

While the horizon of strategy is bounded by the war, grand strategy looks beyond the war to the subsequent peace. - Liddell Heart3

What are grand technologies? For now, it’s the tech that arrives and stays in our lives to shape them for decades afterwards.

I’m concerned with the technology that sets into our lives once the waves of capital and marketing have washed over. The internet survived the Dotcom bubble; all that infrastructure spent on the fiber is now finally seeing use to support demand for AI computing… but it took decades.4

Who commands grand technologies? Powerful companies led by executives strategizing on long visions able to shape geopolitics and command entire economies. They form the spine behind war efforts and entire industries.5 Where they trade and build factories directly influences how we assess the state of U.S.-China competition.678 At Davos, world leaders angered executives when they arrived late.9

Source: MrBille, 2009

2026 looks like a wrestling match between large technology firms planning to spend a filthy amount. The WSJ’s dropped a pregame report last week: “Meta, Amazon, Microsoft, and Alphabet plan to spend $670 billion to build out AI infrastructure this year alone”.

Source: WSJ, "AI Spending: Tech Companies Compared" (Feb 7, 2026) — $670B figure

Like the railroads and the Louisiana Purchase, these spending decisions impact politics, the economy, and the products in society. Downstream, they shape us: the politics of our own relationships, what we can afford, and what information steers our thoughts. I will write about it, but it’s hard to grasp why it matters when I’m hungry and need to make myself some dinner. Our world starts with life in front of us first. We can think universally but must eat act locally.10

Why does it matter now?

New consumer technology spreads faster than ever before. Few people want to avoid it all by living alone in a cabin; most are being forced to adopt or adapt to new technologies impacting their daily lives.11

Source: Derek Thompson, The Atlantic, April 2012

After 2005, each digital invention—mobile computing, social media, cloud computing, and now with GenAI— all found took quicker to markets than the inventions above. ChatGPT reached 100 million active users in two months. That’s probably the fastest-adopted consumer product in all of human history.12

This newsletter will assess what to care about for the sake of our health and wealth— or honestly not, as is the case with Bitcoin.13 Modern employers see a failure to use LLMs as unacceptable. Staying out of social media is difficult. You’re probably among the 3.56 BILLION daily people using a product made by Meta, staffed with teams of PhD psychologists casino-ing your thoughts.1415161718 Amazon, Microsoft, and Google Cloud power over half of all cloud computing.19 Google DeepMind’s spin-off Isomorphic Labs solves protein folding and is now preparing to support clinical trials to create new drugs. 20

Hyped Future, Chaotic Present, Real History

Recreating cognition at scale is the latest innovation emerging from these powerful companies. A few thousand number of researchers are developing tools for billions of people that automate mundane tasks, personalize digital experiences, and change how to think.2122 Lots of hype surrounds what’s supposedly coming. Anthropic’s CEO Dario Amodei warns it’s “a whole country of geniuses housed in a data center” with the brainpower of 50 million Nobel laureates.23

What could the future look like?

• Could we all get our own personal executive assistant? Concierge-ing everything for everyone.

• Will cars finally drive themselves? Renting out your unused car and ridesharing everywhere threatens the core value of car ownership for millions.

• Could you be the first person to create a billion-dollar company alone? That sounds miserable, but it’s possible.

  ---

  In the moment, It’s obvious people will be doing a lot more with a lot less.

  

Source: Financial Times, Adam Tooze Chartbook, Feb 12

But, how does this affect our daily lives? I believe we should be using it. But, even amidst productivity gains, the technology is far from perfect. Becoming “AI-enabled” could mean you have your own chatbot on your website. It *might* work. It might even give your customers steep discounts!

Source: /r/LegalAdviceUK, Feb 6 2026

Lots of work to improve AI remains. This February, the 2026 International Annual AI Safety Report24 pulled together over 100 AI experts across fields to say what everyone experiences:

1. Alignment problems plague agents. That’s what happens when the spirit of my intentions and instructions fail to correctly boss the AI around. Imagine telling some stupid BurgetBot to “hold the onions” on your Cheeseburger and they literally just sit there holding a bag of onions. Meanwhile, that poor burger burns on the grill. Thanks. (Most people are worry less about burgers and more how systems managing national security could pose an existential threat to humanity here).25

   

   Source: Helen Toner, Taking Jaggedness Seriously

2. Abilities also “jag”26 along the frontier: they can do wild hard tasks but still struggle with easier tasks in other domains.

3. Systems still fabricate data, produce flawed code, and give misleading advice. We’ve all been there. It told me this article was finished three days ago.

   ---

History can ground the hype today even further. Plenty of promising inventions lose their steam before widespread adoption. The running joke is that nuclear fusion has been 30 years away since the 1950s. Other innovations that have improved our lives have backslid. The WHO is warning antibiotics might be losing their effectiveness.27 Today, self-driving cars struggle with “edge cases”: learning how to handle the wild lotteries of moose playing chicken on a mountain road. Some say AGI is already here, others say it’s decades away, and many are still asking for a common definition. Today’s reality does not look like the science fiction we fantasize about… yet?

Why are you doing this?

I love learning and creating for others. Restarting this newsletter right now makes the most sense to continue that path.

that he is most powerful who has power over himself.

— Seneca, Epistles, Moral Letters to Lucillus, Letter 90, Line 34

But through writing? Writing is thinking.28 It helps me process the world. Drafting, researching, writing, and publishing is a cycle that forces deep and honest judgment to the thoughts we examine.29 Every time I publish, I reassess and look for progress in every stage. That internal growth is one I hope to spread with others: family, friends, academics, writers, investors, and inventors.

Balancing authenticity with audience expectations is gonna be a battle for this Bessy. Tone should support the quality of the analysis, but if no one enjoys reading the work, what value do I provide others with my writing?

Let apes and children praise your art,
If their admiration’s to your taste,
But you’ll never speak from heart to heart,
Unless it rises up from your heart’s space.
- Faust, from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Part I 

My writing walks the playful tightrope of tone. Anything online must maintain professionalism that doesn’t throw off the analysis—or chances of a career— into a freefall. Lean too far into caution and I hit context collapse: where holding the tension of multiple audiences mellows out voice and lobotomizes the opportunity for incisive insights.30 But lean too far the other way— job? Max, don’t turn into some online pariah that prevents other opportunities. I own a suit that this rude Italian butcher once told me fits well. So I have to believe I can at least look the part. For him. Smart people figure things out; and it’s probably stupid to rely on writing to do so.

Source: Shri Guru Gita, verse 125. From Nectar of Chanting, published by SYDA Foundation (South Fallsburg, NY: SYDA Foundation, 1983)

Thank you for reading!

I look forward to narrating wider historical trends, recapping events, and profiling founders. Please reach out for topic suggestions, partnering on a piece, or opportunities in this space. I can’t wait to grow my portfolio.

Bitcoin is struggling— again.

Coindesk: Feb 9, 6pm ET1

Last week was Bitcoin’s largest weekly decline in more than three years. Wipeout. Losing $15,000 in value over 24 hours and sliding 16% in just one week, Bitcoin bottomed to $63,000 last Thursday.2 Half its value is gone from an all-time high of $126,273 just last October.3 Unlike previous winters—precipitated by some bankruptcy or scandal that panics a selloff—Bitcoin has slumped for four months straight into this week.

Struggling, suffering, crashing, sliding, and slumping— what’s going on?

My newsletter looks at how technology influences our life. Reviewing the recent Bitcoin chaos asks a question: what does this alternative currency promise versus what does it actually deliver? Bitcoin introduced innovative technology, but the currency it created fails to deliver the social value. The experiment isn’t over, but Bitcoin’s volatility and poor adoption suggests this noble idea of revolutionizing money has been stuck in financialized ruin.

The Promise of Bitcoin

Technology needs to improve our life. Bitcoin introduced technology that promises a better alternative to dollars: the world’s second language everywhere for commerce.4 In October 2008, Bitcoin’s founder Satoshi Nakamoto sent a nine-page academic paper without peer review in simple prose to a cryptography mailing list. The paper introduced a payment system for buyers and sellers to transact without a trusted third party.5 Electronic cash had existed beforehand, but the critical breakthrough introduces the underlying technology, a distributed ledger called a “blockchain”.6 It verifies each other’s transactions and incentivizes them by issuing a finite supply of coins.7

Bitcoin captures the imagination by promising better currency: reviving the benefits of the old gold standard to create an even better, new Bitcoin Standard.8 The distributed ledger removes the power for a central governing body, like a bank, to control the money supply.9 This prevents poor governance that could overheat economies with inflation and prevents censored capital controls (China bans crypto) as Bitcoin flows through the internet.10

Is Bitcoin Digital Gold? Not Right Now

So is it a better gold? Not right now, that’s for sure. The dollar has been suffering lately. The dollar’s exchange rate has hit a four-year low (measured against other currencies), pushing investor money away from U.S.-denominated assets.11

Source: Washington Post12

The dollar is sliding. Gold is one asset that’s seen its value increase through the roof, up almost 80% over the past year to pass an all-time high of $5,000 an ounce. Investors are “selling America” to insulate themselves from how Trump’s chaotic governing style impacts the US economy: incursion into Venezuela, repetitive threats to tariff ally economies, his pressure on the Fed to lower interest rates, and also the ongoing threat of a government shutdown.13141516

Source: Reuters, Jan 2617

“Debased” from the dollar, Bitcoin should be also be rising alongside previous medals if it were a safe store of value, immune to fiat uncertainties— but its price is falling.1819

So what explains the crash?

Sources: Bloomberg20 WSJ21 NPR22, Deutsche Bank23 Yahoo Finance24 Parker White25

Bulls versus Bears debate: is there fundamental value?

With every crash comes another debate between bulls and bears. On one hand, advocates spin Satoshi’s technical innovations to make the argument for Bitcoin having fundamental value, intrinsic worth that’s untethered to market pricing from the crash. On the other hand, skeptics say it’s just the latest instance of Bitcoin proving the technical innovations failed to live up to its social promise—the real value of the technology— and therefore proof that Bitcoin lacks fundamentals.

The bulls argue Bitcoin has fundamental value. They say Satoshi’s paper and the creation of exchanges mean Bitcoin delivered upon its technical promises; it’s only a matter of time before real people start using it. Look at Michael Saylor, Cathie Wood, Anthony Scaramucci, and Eric Trump doing the rounds in the media. They say regulatory tailwinds are here from a “bitcoin president”.26 Selloffs get rid of speculators and irresponsible investors.27 And volatility is just indicative of an early financial product gaining its footing.2829 Bulls call these crashes price floors to climb from.3031 Stay long and “Hold on for Dear Life”— “HODL” as the typo goes.32

Satoshi delivered the technology; so can Bitcoin change commerce…?

Source: Caleb & Brown33

The bears say Bitcoin has no fundamental value. Cool technology aside, it fails socially. It’s vibes all the way down.3435 A litany of columns are out pointing to this crash as the latest case to cry out: it’s not a currency! Too volatile to store value. Not used enough (legally) to be a medium of exchange.36

Paul Krugman points out there’s growing ways to speculate on it, undermining its stabler use-cases; less than 2% of Americans used any type of crypto for payment or money transfers in 2024.3738 Michael Burry wrote last week that the 200 companies in the Fortune 500 that adopted it can rotate away from it like any other U.S. asset; transaction times are longer and cost more than leaders like Mastercard and Visa.3940 Jemima Kelley emphasizes that despite having a “bitcoin president” set up a “strategic bitcoin reserve”, pardon crypto convicts, allow investing with 401(k) pensions, the Trump administration and family’s sprawling crypto empire hasn’t stopped these crashes.4142

Both camps make arguments that have rhymed for the past 17 years. They’ll fling different statistics at each other to argue who is using it, how often, and what for. Currency for exchange? Commodity for holding? Or just a casino chip to bet with? (Stablecoins deserve a separate post…)

The financial incentives of Bitcoin attracts speculation, derivatives, and get-rich-quick thinking; that has all overpowered the better incentives that would make using it stable for real transactions to help real people.

Bitcoin delivered on Satoshi’s technical promises—the distributed ledger works, the blockchain has never been hacked, users are still mining—but that doesn’t matter when it’s failed after distribution. Bitcoin fails to live up to its social promise to the world: replacing gold as a safe store of value and fiat currencies for trustier trade.

The technology delivered, but the promise hasn’t.

A rocket company announced it’s acquiring an AI company that had acquired a social media company.^⁠1

The acquisition recharts how SpaceX will get to its mission to make humanity multiplanetary^⁠2 by spinning up a new program to put “orbital data centers” in space. Most immediately, the merger has made many wonder whether SpaceX has lost course. Does the tech even make sense? What financial alchemy is this? Is any of this legal? How much geopolitical power does this company have now? But is anyone asking how much of it actually affects our daily lives?

Today I review why the company claims it merged, summarize the analysis from experts… and ask does any of this impact us today? No. But, like SpaceX, how far wayward from our course do we go in staying committed to fulfilling our own mission?

Has SpaceX lost its way?3 Well, Elon Musk’s letter^⁠4 announcing the acquisition has sparked analysts across technology, finance, law, and geopolitics to make sense of the merger. What sounds like fantasy, insider sources are pumping the acquisition into major outlets reporting it values SpaceX at $1T and xAI at $125B.5 This dethrones OpenAI and makes SpaceX the most valuable “startup” in the world. So we have to take it seriously…

The announcement claims that for SpaceX, launching AI satellites will speed up Starship improvements, the ship critical to making humanity multiplanetary.^⁠6 For xAI, creating “orbital data centers” escapes the terrestrial constraints of real estate, cooling, and energy.7

Technologists are scratching their heads, debating just how feasible orbital data centers are. Skeptics point out how they require gargantuan radiators, would increase orbital congestion, and would be difficult to repair.8

No one seems to know, but we all grew up watching the same Star Trek and reading Dune— so here’s to hoping there’s something here.

Zooming out, some see clarity in collapsing the two companies as the latest play in vertical integration to own every layer of its stack from manufacturing to distribution.9 Space is the transport layer. The sun is the fuel source. The frontier AI lab acts as the brains. And a social media platform is ready for digital distribution.

This opens up the promise of new products. Right now, Starlink satellite internet and space launch contracts drive revenue.10 Future promises are now being made of a new Starlink phone, a direct-to-device internet service, and a space-tracking service.^⁠11

Is all this the latest form of short-term vaporware to pump a stock^⁠?12 That’s an easy accusation. Or is it a masterclass in long-term thinking “where t reaches infinity^⁠”?13 Only if it works out. Could this latest move of heroic capitalism—heralded as an act of humanity by harnessing true solar power—save us from mass extinction?^⁠14 A lot of assumptions in there. Let’s keep moving.

Let’s talk money. Financiers seem to be driven by wanting some daily injection of anxiety from news. Well, they’re in luck because there’s even more uncertainty now about how the planned IPO—set to a record-breaking $50 billion later this year—will shake out.

Current SpaceX investors are wary of what the acquisition means because their shares are at risk of being diluted.1516 Future IPO investors now see a once-clean story more complicated. This was a space company with nearly-a-monopoly on the satellite launch market and new LEO space internet. Now the public offering will have to pitch an unprofitable A.I. lab and controversial social media site.^⁠17 Booyah? xAI shareholders (also once X holders) are likely the most satisfied; their stock is converted into SpaceX shares and the IPO is likely to boost their value.^⁠18

Investors with money tied up in the NASDAQ and other large indices are anxious. SpaceX is requesting expedited inclusion in major stock indices like the NASDAQ—typically a process taking months to years—arguing this would prevent early sell-offs.^⁠19

Can’t forget about the law. Anti-trust watchers are seeing SpaceX amassing monopolistic market power in various extraterrestrial markets.20^⁠ With the acquisition, SpaceX applied to the Federal Communications Commission to launch one million “orbital data centers” to power its AI ambitions.^⁠21 This is the leader in the market right now, going from 9,600^⁠ Starlink satellites to a million.22 Everyone else is playing catch-up already. Expect more investigations.

In geopolitics, SpaceX is among large tech companies that have real power to shape global affairs—rivaling powerful countries. Fancy words to describe them, like “company-states” to reference the days of the Dutch East India Company,23 are being revived alongside new slick ones like technopolarity: powerful tech companies possess outsized sovereignty in the digital world and influence traditional physical paradigms.24

SpaceX’s executives can say they have real power thanks to Starlink: fast satellite internet whose terminals can deploy easily in edge, harsh environments. AI-enabled space computing only compounds that influence future.

Internet access, independent of government infrastructure, changes the fog of war. After Russia invaded, a plea from the Ukrainian deputy foreign minister on X prompted Musk to provide Starlink terminals for free— which proved to be critical satellite connectivity during the onset of the Russian invasion in February of 2022.^⁠25 Later in September 2022, Musk secretly ordered his engineers not to turn on Starlink near the Crimean coast to help prevent a sneak attack on a Russian fleet.26 Elon Musk’s logic was: help defend, don’t help attack. And most recently, Iranian protesters used roughly 50,000 smuggled Starlink terminals to get around a government that digitally silenced a country of 90 million people.^⁠27

Reading all of this captures the imagination and keeps us informed, but will this news change your daily life? What we eat for breakfast, who we spend time with, or what brings us joy… How long do we have to wait until these changes start affecting us?28 They will, but I’m not sure this week’s news affects us today.

Any useful AI-native, space-connected devices lies years away. Harnessing the power of the sun, making Moon factories, and getting to Mars lies even further beyond. The forthcoming largest IPO in history will disrupt everyone’s savings in the market, but so will hundreds of other macro events that captivate investors on Wall Street. Private corporate leaders are shaping global affairs alongside democratically-elected world leaders and autocrats…

Can we influence any of this? If not, why do we let it trouble us? It’s fun to think universally, but I have to remind myself to act locally.

The SpaceX acquisition can be a helpful lesson for maintaining commitment to our life’s own missions. We are also a Starship with dreams propelling us to faraway destinations. Along the way, we will face detours—new relationships, cities, jobs—that all present opportunities to grow and obstacles to overcome. SpaceX has turned to space computing to ultimately help get humans off Earth…

Can you maintain the mission, and noble in that pursuit, even if you rechart course along the way?

The ship on which Theseus sailed with the youths and returned in safety, the thirty-oared galley, was preserved by the Athenians down to the time of Demetrius Phalereus. They took away the old timbers from time to time, and put new and sound ones in their places, so that the vessel became a standing illustration for the philosophers in the mooted question of growth, some declaring that it remained the same, others that it was not the same vessel.^⁠29