Why did 🇮🇱Israel strike 🇮🇷Iran now, and not months or years ago or in the future?
A unique combination of a dozen factors converged to make the moment unique for 🇮🇱Israel: 🧵 1. No Hamas to its southwest 2. No Hezbollah to its north 3. No Assad threat to the northeast
4...
4. No more Syrian army to attack 🇮🇱Israel's planes: As the new forces of HTS took over Syria, Israel bombed all the existing Syrian military. No more fighter jets or surface-to-air missiles to threaten 🇮🇱Israel
5. Ability to fly over Syria to refuel
This is critical, because 🇮🇷Iran is ~600-1000 miles away from 🇮🇱Israel, so 1200-2000 miles round trip
The range of Israel’s stealth F35 is only about 1,350 mi
To operate inside 🇮🇷Iran, 🇮🇱Israel needed refueling over Syria
6. Full visibility atop Mt Hermon
After the fall of the Assad Regime, Israel took over some border ground with Syria, which includes Mt Hermon, the tallest peak in the region. With that, there are no more blind spots in Israel's visibility in the region
7. Russia is too weak to help, bogged down by war in Ukraine 8. Netanyahu has a window of opportunity: There are parliamentary elections in a bit over a year 9. Trump is in power too: Dems have been in the White House for 12 of the last 17 years, and are less aggressive re Iran
10. In April & October 2024, 🇮🇷Iran sent missiles & drones to 🇮🇱Israel, but failed to make serious damage. 🇮🇱Israel reacted by bombing several military facilities in 🇮🇷Iran, seriously degrading its air defense. That gave a window for 🇮🇱Israel to continue attacking now
11. 🇮🇷Iran has witnessed how all its weapons against 🇮🇱Israel have been defeated:
• All proxies neutralized
• All weapons, including drones & ballistic missiles, failed to make serious damage to 🇮🇱Israel
I respect @BillAckman a lot but I think he's wrong on @Uber. AFAIK his bear case on robotaxis: 1. Not great for bad weather 2. Too expensive to cover peak demand 3. Less utilization because of food delivery 4. They can't disintermediate Uber
1. Not great for bad weather
This is a @Waymo driving in rain—the worst they'll ever be! They already have ~10x fewer accidents than humans. Maybe in the short term humans are going to be better in some really bad weather, but those are short-term exceptions
2. Robotaxis will be too expensive to cover peak demand
This is ptrobably true for Waymo but not @Tesla's @robotaxi, for 2 reasons:
a. Cybercab costs will be the same order of magnitude as normal ICE cars
The Model 3 costs ~$40-$45k, but the Cybercab will have 60% fewer parts: steering wheel, pedals, steering column, backseats, backdoors, side-window mirrors, rear window... Let's assume this will bring the cost down to $30-$35k
Add to that the new manufacturing process that treats Tesla's Cybercabs not as cars, but as electronics. They will be able to produce a car every 5s. This will further reduce their price
Compare that to the price of a car for Uber, which today is between $25k-$60k
Never bet against the US:
Ppl think its biggest strength is its institutions, the dollar, entrepreneurship... But one of its biggest assets is its geography 🧵
1. Size
The US is the 4th largest country. It spans an entire continent, reaches two oceans, and is big enough to be a geographic heavyweight in the world
2. The Mississippi Basin
It's the 4th largest drainage basin in the world and occupies 40% of the contiguous 48 US states, touching 32 of the US’s 50 states. 11 US states directly take their name from it.
Climate caused the US Civil War, because: 1. Slavery was the main cause of the war 2. Different crops were the main cause of slavery 3. Climate caused different crops in the North vs South
This is terribly important to understand the US today and how to heal it
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1. Slavery was the main cause of the war: the Abolitionist North & the Slavery South were competing to expand westward to increase their political influence
But the North grew & expanded faster, to a point where it could force abolition on the South, which then seceded
In 1790, the Free & Slave states had the same population, and there were many more Slave States (8 vs 5), so Slave States controlled the Senate.
By the eve of the war in 1860, the North had 50% more population and 4 more states, giving them control of both the House & Senate
Moscow is one of the weirdest capitals:
• Biggest European city
• Extremely cold
• Little farmland
• To Russia's extreme west
• Not on a coast or main river
How did it create the biggest country on Earth?
It involves horse archers, human harvesting & tiny animals 🧵
The first shocking fact is that Russia is so far north it's at the edge of arable land. How can you create a capital with so little food? Why not in the middle of the most fertile area on Earth?
This far north is extremely cold
Moscow is the 3rd coldest capital in the world and by far the biggest: with 20M ppl, its metro population is 8x bigger than the 2nd biggest cold capital, Stockholm!
This map tells you how a seemingly innocent difference, like wheat vs rice eating, can have dramatic political, economic, and cultural ramifications:
🧵
The areas that harvest wheat vs rice are different. Why?
Because of climate
Rice needs heat and lots of water. Ideally, flooding the fields to also kill weeds. Rice dies with frost.
Wheat resists it well, prefers cooler temperatures, but dies when it's flooded
Did you know the West's trade deficits to China are not recent, but started 2000 years ago? This is the story of how silk, porcelain, tea, opium, and silver have determined the history of the world 🧵
The Romans already complained about deficits to China! Mainly because of silk
Back then the Chinese already preferred manufacturing and selling products than consuming foreign products. Chronicler Solinus ~200 AD: The Chinese "prefer only to sell their products, but do not like to buy our goods."