Matt

@LostFundamental @GauchoGregMoore But how much did Apollo program cost? I bet the spacex “achievement per $ resource” ratio is incredible

@GauchoGregMoore Yes many positives. At the end of the day we are 12 years into the program and it’s still not working 100%. Will V3 be the final test vehicle or will we sit here in 12 month waiting for V4? Apollo took 8 years from start to man on the moon with much less starting knowledge.

Starship Test Flight 12 showed $SPCX is still a long way from reusability. Booster engine and burnback failure and ship engine failure. Picture is Starship pre splashdown. Will require significant maintenance. Booster 300 miles off target. 45tn payload vs 100tn target. 1/3

@MartinSkold2 What I mean by this is I don’t see that crew just lying down, right? Face, pride, etc - would you want to be subjugated?

@MartinSkold2 That’s not a cultural problem for them?

This was always the price.

@MartinSkold2 Bad trade bc risk to the third island chain? I feel like the moves we’ve made with Japan and the close relationship w/ both JP and SK preclude that outcome.

@IamsMatthew The plan may well be to trade Iran for Taiwan. If so, it’s a bad trade, and we’re losing both anyway.

@MartinSkold2 I hear that—maybe it's foolish, but I refuse to give up hope that there's a larger plan and our leaders have things well in hand.

@IamsMatthew I think they’re going for a bloodless “settlement,” yes - sort of a sea power version of Hong Kong where the other side just has to accept inevitability. But I think we gave up too easily - and we certainly didn’t help ourselves with this Iran debacle.

@TMTLongShort That’s a long time to prepare with Mythos

If Xi is going to make an anti-Decoupling move it’s mostly likely to be in September or October. Something that heavily impacts markets or the American consumer in an attempt to ensure Trump loses the midterms.

@MartinSkold2 Idk, if it is NYT I am immediately skeptical. They’ve ruined their credibility with anybody that has a desire for the truth

Now it can be told. 🙄

@vtchakarova Basically, a “George Castanza” move

Use Charlie Munger’s via negativa and apply it to Germany like I did long ago. You’ll be truly shocked. Now you’ll understand why I coined that Germany is the Jim Cramer index of geoeconomics - if you want to be on the safe side, just see what Germany does and do the opposite.

@TMTLongShort I) J) K) absolutely critical points.

How I frame the current Iran op: A) this is about China - it’s cheaper to demonstrate to Xi that the day after a TW invasion his economy will be choked off from energy vs losing American lives protecting the island B) there was Gulf state buy in - specifically Saudi and UAE. This included providing capital to backstop USD assets which are trumps Achilles heel C) the objective is to have control of Hormuz at the end of this - specifically veto power that doesn’t just require a parked carrier which in a conflict China can lob a thousand missiles at. You need land-based American controlled assets there permanently. Either actual Americans or proxies via Israeli or Saudi forces. D) this is not going to be Iraq or Afghanistan - there is a wide spectrum between full regime change and nation building vs small contingents of special forces taking modest strategic points on the strait and carpet bombing everything close enough to put those troops at risk E) regime change isn’t a certainty but higher likelihood than consensus - I’d put it now at 50/50. Again this assumes no boots on ground in Tehran. “Experts” saying this is impossible lack imagination and understanding of how technology has shifted over the last two decades. F) this is also political theatre - both for the American people who lost the appetite for forever wars and who need to fully internalize that Europeans are worthless as allies in their current form as well as the Europeans themselves who need to be reminded how much pain a hostile America can inflict on them if they decide China is their preferred option G) Russia-Ukraine is closely connected to all of this. On one hand Trump can accel Russian production degradation by feeding UKR intelligence on Russian refinery capacity deeper inland while at the same time can completely pull back from supporting Ukraine as part of the aforementioned political theatre… “this is not our fight” - this is why Trump didn’t ask Ukraine for help on drones. It’s a card that can be played in multiple directions. H) analysts are not wrong when they freak out about global energy prices risk. Analysts are wrong to tie that back to midterms and American voters. Trump will use executive powers to manipulate prices at the pump if necessary. I) liquidity is decreasing globally just as it’s about to increase domestically. The U.S. via swap lines and control over institutions like the IMF is the liquidity provider of last resort. Kind of like when your insurance provider starts setting Forrest fires in your neighborhood and then immediately jacks up the premiums you have to pay to protect your house. J) remove the words “fair” and “moral” from your vocabulary. We are firmly in a world of realpolitik and Americas don’t give a flying fuck if the rest of the world burns. Hegemony or bust. K) there is a dual benefit of this war being an advertisement of US military prowess and a weakening of the veneer that China has closed the gap with the US systems. This impacts how countries will act in the coming days and which sphere they opt in to. L) trumps tolerance for dead American soldiers is higher than you think. Trumps tolerance for lower stocks is higher than you think. Doesn’t mean he won’t take steps to mitigate both. You don’t fight for hegemony without being certain you can handle punches to the face. M) terror attacks on the US will be the final step for Iran before regime change. It’s higher prob than consensus thinks but it’s also not a certainty because Americans are bloodthirsty when the homeland is touched and it’s a door you can’t walk back out of. European & UAE terror attacks likely come first. N) this operation has gone better than any reasonable analyst would have predicted. Panicans are starting from the premise that every person in Washington is retarded and Trump walked into a trap with the assumption that not a single barrel of oil would be lost or soldier scratched. Retardation 🫡

Tom Izzo is asked by @outkick’s @RealDanZak about media ripping him for being too tough on players and Charles Barkley’s defense of him, gives phenomenal answer on accountability. Watch this:

@LukeGromen @TMTLongShort Could be that a closed SoH is actually valuable strategic leverage

@TMTLongShort The hegemon is on day 13 of not being able to open SoH

A world where the hyper-power is willing to snatch dictators in their PJs and bomb belligerents into the stone ages is one where said hyper-power can manipulate oil prices at will. Free markets exist at the mercy of said hyper-power. Thanks for coming to my TED talk.

@TMTLongShort Never let a good crisis go to waste -W. Churchill (I think?) … the unsaid part: also applicable to crises which are manufactured and those that you inherent from decades of lack of political will and inept leadership

The road to salvation is through a string of manufactured crises 😉

@TheMichaelEvery @RenaudAdorno @TMTLongShort who coulda knode?! 😂

The U.S. is correctly seen as acting vs Iran in large part to be able to squeeze China via energy if Beijing coerces it via rare earths, etc. The sheer irony if China now has to work with the U.S. vs Iran, its ally, in order to keep energy markets orderly!

@TMTLongShort Same type of thing they said to the Wright bros

Worth a read. Don’t agree. But good thoughts. Assuming AI *needs* to look like the human brain architecturally seems like a stretch. That AI needs to have human capabilities to make it economically valuable seems like a stretch. That highly intelligent beings observing the inputs and outputs of a system with sufficient compute couldn’t infer a proximate architecture that is sufficient seems like a stretch. That the human brain is optimal to begin with as opposed to a “good enough” relic of evolution seems like a stretch. But hey what do I know.

👑👑👑

A prized voice writing a daily AI newsletter that reached 10s of thousands here on X (@alexwg) has been locked out of his account & (despite internal escalation) is still silencio after almost a week. Anyone @X able to assist, @nikitabier? Else, subst*ck will benefit…. Danke

@abcampbell @thebrouss Starlink roam as a first step, but idk how that even functions if terrestrial internet is fubar

@27khv @TMTLongShort

Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska warns that if the US secures control over Venezuela’s oil fields, after already moving into Guyana, it could end up overseeing more than half of the world’s reserves. In his view, Washington would then be able to hold oil prices near $50 a barrel, putting serious pressure on Russia’s state-capitalist economic model.

@ryan_hanigan @abcampbell @chamath @grok Gonna need an ISDA

@abcampbell @chamath @grok @grok how do I buy a cds against these municipalities.

I think this is the most asymmetric upside bet in the market now. Position yourself smartly and you can make 10-1000x with relative ease. How? Even if politicians try to bury the fraud, the bond market can’t ignore it. Their math will show that even if the fraud is only 10% of total state and municipal budgets, it’s already way too much and should go to paying back debt holders. Right now spreads don’t reflect this and are too tight - ie look at California Credit Default Swaps - it doesn’t reflect any fraud, budget shortfalls or the billionaire exodus. There is little chance these spreads don’t move as the bond market comes back to work and processes the events of the last few days. Now, if instead of 10% fraud, they believe that fraud is 20-30% of all tax dollars, the cost of borrowing will escalate sharply until federal, state and local governments are forced to act. This is when the CDS trade becomes the most asymmetric profit opportunity of our lifetime. Buy the CDS -> wait for politicians to try and bury it -> ie in California -> see the bond market increase borrowing costs -> see the CDS blow out -> asymmetric bet pays off. The takeaway here is that the bond market lives in an alternative and adjacent universe from the politicians and media. The latter group can try to bury an issue but when the former group is asked to fund it, a reckoning happens and the former group always wins.