The maverick financial fraternity that predicted the Internet boom, the Great Recession, and the incredible rise of Bitcoin has a bold, new prediction…
October 29, 2025 • John Robb
In the past, weapon systems took decades to build and changed slowly. Autonomy changes this. For example, new capabilities developed by field tests or simulation (testing scenarios in full physics simulators depicting actual environments) could be downloaded to existing weapon systems, making it possible to upgrade a weapon system significantly without any meaningful hardware changes. A process of improvement that used to take many years would shrink to weeks and, in time, days.
October 29, 2025 • Addison Wiggin
Markets heard what they wanted. NVIDIA’s stock surged premarket on news that Trump would discuss the company’s Blackwell AI chip with Xi, pushing it to an unprecedented $5 trillion valuation.
Meanwhile, China quietly bought its first cargoes of U.S. soybeans this season — a symbolic gesture that reminded traders that diplomacy still runs on trade.
“It’s not détente,” wrote Bloomberg’s Jennifer Welch this morning, “It is a dealmaking with a timer.” Wall Street is ambivalent on peace, but they do like profits.
In the background, China’s biotech sector continues its ethically murky sprint forward — this week, reports surfaced of Chinese scientists creating monkeys engineered to exhibit schizophrenia and autism.
October 29, 2025 • Addison Wiggin
A high concentration of capital in a few stocks at the top ranks high among the features we detailed in Anatomy of a Stock Market Bubble.
On days like yesterday, headlines urge investors to buy. However, they also underscore the fragility of this terrifying bull market: just a handful of names can make the difference between a big up day and a big down day.
October 28, 2025 • John Robb
America’s role in the world isn’t that of the world’s policeman (a temporary post-World War II role foisted upon the U.S. due to the Cold War) or as the destination of immigrants (for most of the 20th century, when we saw the most significant increases in individual incomes and quality of life, the U.S. didn’t accept many immigrants). Instead, the role the U.S. has played throughout its existence is as the world’s leader in the production, adoption, and socioeconomic integration of new technologies. We figured out how to do it successfully first, and the world followed.
