jacob l. shapiro

New pod with @drorpoleg is up and it's one of my favorite episodes of the year -- signal in the noisy broader dialogue about AI jacob-shapiro.captivate.fm/episode/warp-s…

BREAKING: Houthis of Yemen claim they attacked two tankers carrying Saudi oil in the Red Sea. Separately, @UK_MTO just reported a tanker (potentially one of the two mentioned above) was hit by projectiles and is fighting a fire near the mouth of the Bab el Mandeb strait.

Bloomberg: Russia is no longer willing to return some occupied territories to Ukraine as part of any deal to end the war and plans to retain them as buffer zones, according to people close to the Kremlin. Putin remains committed to taking full control of Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region by force and will now retain areas of Sumy and Kharkiv regions near the border with Russia as buffer zones, three people said, asking not to be identified discussing sensitive issues. bloomberg.com/news/articles/…

The rapid succession of high-level contact between China and N. Korea, including two meetings between Xi and Kim, represents the most intense diplomacy between the countries since 2018 and 2019 ahead of Kim’s talks with Donald Trump. @Sino_NK sinonk.com/2026/07/20/dip…

Compared to the Quad, the trilateral is much more focused because it actually talks about a common adversary, North Korea. Japan-U.S.-ROK Foreign Ministers’ Meeting mofa.go.jp/a_o/na2/pageit…

At least 4 (there are more) ships, including 3 Chinese VLCCs have aborted transit via the Bab al Mandeb after the Houthis implemented a blockade on Saudi ports. Interesting here that Chinese affiliation clearly does not provide immunity to those ships which meet the Houthi criteria.

In April, the Writers’ Association Publishing House in Vietnam published a book about the life of Ho Chi Minh. It was praised in several state-run newspapers. The author and publishers have now been charged with with carrying out anti-state propaganda... hrw.org/news/2026/07/2…

Even if Hormuz opens, we don't think Europe can reach target gas storage level before winter Equinor CFO

Giving Saudi Arabia uranium enrichment technology is a terrible idea on many counts. But it’s especially idiotic to do it *in the middle of a war over Iran’s nuclear program.*

Fedorov's dismissal and his feud with Commander-in-Chief Syrskyi is not a unique incident. It's the latest result of Ukraine's disbalanced civil-military relations that persisted for years before the full-scale invasion. A recent academic paper by Renz & Whitmore proves this 1/12

Brazil has almost overtaken the US to become the largest agricultural exporter in the world

imperial daylight robbery ft.com/content/0e562e…

@BillBrewsterTBB Part 1 dropping hopefully in next day or two, editing took a little longer than hoped !

@JacobShap did I miss the Zeihan interview or has that not been released yet? 🙏🏻

Trump finally pulls the "Section 338" tariff trigger, on Canada! Quick reactions, with more analysis later: 1. The tariffs are under Section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930, better known as the Smoot-Hawley tariff Act (of Ferris Bueller's Day Off fame). Section 338 hasn't been used since the 1930s or 1940s, and may never before have been used to impose tariffs. 2. On initial take, this looks like a substantial action, with a 50% headline tariff rate on many products. Unlike many other US tariffs on Canada, these tariffs apply *even to goods that meet USMCA rules of origin.* Many of Trump's other tariffs exclude USCMA-qualifying goods, and as a result a large share of Canadian exports to the U.S. have entered duty free. Goods covered include various foodstuffs and beverages; various wood products; paper; textiles; machinery; and other products. And hockey sticks. Tariffs will be effective starting August 19. 3. That said, some of the most important categories of U.S. imports from Canada are exempt from the new tariffs, including energy, potash, and products subject to 232 tariffs. AI's quick estimate for me is that maybe $40 billion of US imports are covered, which would be about 10% of total imports. (Take the AI estimate for what it is worth). 4. Section 338 purportedly allows the President to impose an additional tariff of up to 50% when he finds that a country has discriminated against U.S. products relative to third countries, e.g., Canada provides better terms to some foreign country than it provides to the U.S. 5. Trump is imposing the tariffs across three distinct actions under Section 338: one allegedly over Canadian discrimination against U.S. autos; one allegedly over Canadian discrimination against U.S. alcoholic beverages; and one allegedly over Canadian discrimination against U.S. dairy. 6. This represents the first use of Section 338 since the 1930s or 1940s, and the statute may not in fact have actually been used to impose tariffs before. In 1935 for example the President made a finding of discrimination under 338 but did not impose tariffs. Covington did an interesting piece on Section 338 a decade ago, which I'll link to in a reply. 7. Assuming the tariffs do in fact come into force (e.g., there is not a negotiated resolution with Canada), this will make for interesting legal challenges. There are a variety of arguments that could be made about whether 338 might require an ITC investigation prior to a Presidential finding; about whether it has been implicitly repealed by later statutes; and about what its discrimination requirements actually mean. Yet another new one for the courts....

That’s a stretch 4.1mbpd of outages is not "more than half"; it would imply that 75% of Russia's realistic 5.5mbpd refining capacity is offline. Outages of 3mbpd, leaving runs at 2.5mbpd, this week looks more realistic, according to our assessment; so 0.4mbpd lower than our est of 2.9mbpd last week. Whatever it is, the July freight volume of will be an interesting back test. Anyway, the situation is highly dynamic, with refinery outages and restarts constantly shifting the picture.

Most exercise and aging studies can't answer a basic question: is muscle deterioration from aging itself, or just from decades of moving less? A new Nature Aging study solved this by recruiting older adults who moved as much as people in their twenties. The researchers from Amsterdam UMC and Maastricht University recruited four distinct groups: young adults in their twenties, older adults whose daily step counts and high-intensity activity matched the young group, older adults who had trained consistently for years (three structured hour-long sessions per week for over a year), and older adults with early physical impairment. They took muscle biopsies before and after a one-hour cycling session, then measured over 24,000 gene transcripts, 135 metabolites, and 1,383 lipid species. By matching activity levels between young and older groups, any molecular differences couldn't be blamed on the older adults simply moving less. This isolated aging from inactivity for the first time at this molecular depth. Key findings: • The defining molecular signature of muscle aging is an energy crisis. Comparing young adults to activity-matched older adults, 1,106 genes were downregulated with age. These genes build the mitochondrial machinery that produces cellular energy: ATP synthase, cytochrome c oxidase, and NADH dehydrogenase subunits. Mitochondria are the power plants of cells, converting nutrients into ATP, the energy currency cells use to function. When these genes decline, cells lose their ability to generate energy efficiently. • NAD+ levels declined and triglycerides accumulated inside aging muscle. NAD+ is a molecule required for energy production and cellular repair. Lower NAD+ means less capacity to convert fuel into usable energy. Triglycerides are stored fats, their accumulation inside muscle indicates unburned fuel piling up as the tissue loses its ability to process it. • More than half the molecular signature of muscle aging was absent in trained older adults. Specifically, 57.1% of age-related gene downregulation and 55.9% of upregulation were missing in the trained group. Their muscle resembled young adults far more than their chronological age would predict. • The changes training preserved were specifically the energy metabolism ones. Genes like NDUFS1 and COX5A, which were depleted in normally active and impaired older adults, sat at youthful levels in the trained group across all five mitochondrial respiratory complexes. The single most prominent feature of muscle aging turned out to be the single most preventable. • Being generally active was not enough. Structured training was the difference. The normally active older adults walked as much as young adults, and their energy metabolism genes declined anyway. What preserved the youthful molecular profile was structured, sustained training. Filling a step counter and being genuinely trained are not equivalent at the molecular level. • Roughly half of muscle aging persisted regardless of training. Changes in genes controlling synaptic transmission (how nerves communicate with muscle) and WNT signaling (a pathway regulating tissue maintenance and stem cell function) appeared in all older adults, trained or not. This unavoidable half is where drugs will have to work. • The fittest muscle mounted the largest inflammatory response to exercise. All groups activated stress and immune genes after exercise, including IL6, IL1B, and TNF. But the magnitude scaled with fitness. Trained older adults most closely resembled young adults in their response, followed by normally active, with impaired older adults showing the most blunted response. The stress response to exercise appears to be the mechanism of adaptation, not damage to be minimized. This raises a concern about anti-inflammatory longevity strategies. If the inflammatory stress response is how exercise produces its benefits, chronically suppressing inflammation may blunt the adaptation that exercise depends on. It doesn't mean inflammation is beneficial in general, but the timing and context matter. A separate discovery: the proteasome appears to regulate NAD+. The proteasome is the cellular machinery that breaks down damaged proteins. When researchers inhibited it, NAD+ levels rose in both muscle and liver cells to a degree comparable to NAD+ precursor supplements. This opens a new route to understanding NAD+ decline that operates through protein turnover rather than just supplying more raw material. The study draws a clear line between what lifestyle can address and what will require therapeutics. The energy metabolism decline, mitochondrial deterioration, and NAD+ depletion that define muscle aging are largely preventable through structured training. The synaptic and signaling changes that persist in all older adults represent the unavoidable half where drugs will need to work. The decisions made about structured training in midlife determine which molecular trajectory muscle follows in later decades. Half of muscle aging is optional. The other half isn't. Knowing which changes belong to each category is knowing where behavior ends and biology takes over.

The Trump administration is considering an executive order, and other means, to ban Chinese open-source models within in the United States. Kimi K3 has reignited this debate. Reporting this morning by Axios. Commerce is also considering adding Chinese AI labs to the Entity List.

China graduated ~ 44× as many materials science bachelors as the US in 2024, to put data to it. It's the most drastic asymmetry of any major engineering field. Though it's neither country's top field. (China graduates ~7-10x as many undergrad engineers per year overall)

The numbers are in, and by virtually every metric, @MLS was the sixth-best league at this World Cup – even if you remove Messi's appearances and minutes. Huge, measurable progress. Not bad! tacticsfreezone.ghost.io/the-final-numb…

I know that this looks super nerdy, but it may be the most important geopolitical development of 2026. Not #1, but it is top-5. finance.yahoo.com/economy/policy…