1/ My take on Trump in exchange with one of my smartest market friends.
Bizarrely I’m more sanguine.
Either it’s the greatest policy mistake and blunder of a rollout ever. OR it ends up with some grand bargain for those that want to ensure certainty and stability by doing long term deals or otherwise face massive undulating volatility in his flip-flopping, fickle whims.
I think overall across all domains (tech cos, universities, law firms, countries) they got very confident and then cocky ... I think it started with the Silicon Valley and Elon flip over… And then Zuck shifting his board and taking a knee… And he saw powerful person after powerful person pledging fealty out of fear. I think that further emboldened them the "we’re fucking here We are in total control. We have all the leverage. You do what we say or you're fucked" from big tech to Zelensky to law firms to Columbia + Harvard and then the rest of the world
And Whether it’s the market fighting back or law firms, fighting back or universities fighting back… He’s gotta double down and not show weakness or concede. He was wrong… It’s very tough game theory.
The other view… Is they try a few experiments mindful that it could create chaos… And going into midterms they stabilized with more predictability market so and they have total political control
2/ post election when all Trump bros were “golden age of America” with 80s topgun hulk hogan f-yeah amurica hype videos…
We bought deep out of the money puts
Because the consensus and stability were the consensus view and the scarce contrarian view was: insane volatility ahead
3/ those puts paid off (pa) and now nearly 100% consensus is lower growth or recession AND inflation….SO….
China’s playbook isn’t war in the open—it’s war in the seams.
They target the gaps between state & federal, public & private, markets & security.
America must 'armor up' 🧵...
2/ The CCP’s strategy?
Hollow out U.S. strength from within.
Critical infrastructure? Infiltrated.
Universities? Compromised.
State pension funds? Financing China’s military tech.
3/ While America focused on the War on Terror, China waged a war on us—a silent siege of intellectual property theft, capital capture, and digital espionage.
If you were fly on wall in Qatar's strategy meetings you’d hear their not so secret strategy
i) keep up economic relations w/Iran (esp w shared gas reserves)
ii) support Islamist groups (esp Muslim Brotherhood) + use the masses as pawns for political leverage..
2/
iii) assert distinct identity in MidEast geopolitics as a ‘mediator’
iv) religious mafia style––foment fervent believers (funding Al Jazeera propoganda + mosques/ Imams to rule over other country populations) grow geopolitical power depsite tiny size (and no real military)
3/ The ties to Iran + Turkey in particular who leverage terrorism, religious extremism are the greatest threat to Mideast regional peace
especially with moderate + modernizing + peace + prosperity seeking UAE + Saudi (on cusp on Israel normalzied relations) and Sunni…
2/ this technical paper from Apple published year ago not widely discussed was the breadcrumb clue and the inspiration I have shared with many friends since....
3/ The paper introduces 2 methods called “windowing” + “row-column bundling” which allow devices to run models up to 2x DRAM size by storing model parameters in flash + loading them into DRAM as needed.