Rational Optimist Society

The ocean is the new Wild West. Trillions in resources are untapped. 99% of the world's data flows through UNGUARDED undersea cables. And new "flying boats" are set to move cargo at the speed of a plane for the cost of a ship. Meet the founders building the autonomous fleets and sea drones to tame this frontier. w/ @DisruptionHedge, @DavidZagaynov, & @willob ROP #38 #technology #drones #logistics

AI has vanquished the innovation famine. Now nuclear energy is making a return, self-driving cars are making our roads safer, and education is getting a boost it desperately needs. Read more about the burgeoning effects of AI on the world at the link below: rationaloptimistsociety.substack.com/p/everythings-…

As a follow-up to our last post on anti-drone defense, Dan Steinhart has written an update to our prior deep dive on anti-drone warfare. Check it out here: rationaloptimistsociety.substack.com/p/how-well-avo…

Introducing the new and improved @RationalOptSoc Energy Abundance Index Built to answer a simple question: How energy-rich is life for the average person in each country? #lcoe" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">paleofaire.github.io/energy-abundan…

Stephen McBride moved to Abu Dhabi a few months ago. Arguably poor timing notwithstanding, his latest piece covers how his family is safe and how countries today and in the future will protect themselves from missile and drone attacks. Read it here: rationaloptimistsociety.substack.com/p/special-upda…

In this week's ROS Diary, @dan_steinhart gives his own insights into schooling, his experiences with his children's learning, and solutions that may help solve the problems with our current education system. Read it here: rationaloptimistsociety.substack.com/p/superschools…

What is the cause for the general decline in education in America, why are schools in some of the poorest states such as Mississippi finding success while richer states are failing, and how might some innovators help save education?

If you read last week's Diary on AI's humungous impact on the world, you might be thinking "What now?". Stephen McBride's followup gives his insights into this question and how parents can help their kids thrive in the years ahead. rationaloptimistsociety.substack.com/p/what-im-tell…

Moltbook changes everything! @DisruptionHedge at @RationalOptSoc on how to reorganise your life in minutes...

Read about it here: rationaloptimistsociety.substack.com/p/rip-chatbot-…

We have entered the era of AI Agents. From building a website with Claude code to wrangling emails, AI's capabilities are rapidly improving. In his latest ROS Diary, Stephen McBride shares his experiences and knowledge on how he bettered his life with AI, and how you can too.

Picture a 19-year-old kid living in a camper van, parked in his parents’ driveway. He survives on frozen burritos. That was @PalmerLuckey. Night after night, he tinkered until he created the Oculus Rift, the first “good enough” VR headset. Facebook acquired his company for $2 billion. These days Palmer is building more important stuff at his company Anduril. Meet Ghost Shark. Roughly the size of a school bus, it’s an autonomous submarine that looks like a sleek spacecraft for the underwater abyss. It can loiter for weeks at immense depths, mapping minefields and hunting enemy subs. Ghost Shark is a “sexy” piece of hardware if ever I saw one. Anduril’s ocean strategy is like a Russian doll. It has layers of lethality. Imagine an autonomous ship launching an aerial drone to see over the horizon. That drone spots a target and signals a submarine lurking deep below. The sub then fires a torpedo that destroys the target. Anduril already has the drone, the sub and the torpedo. I bet it’ll build America’s first “Drone Carrier” to carry them all. Anduril’s real secret weapon is putting “brains on boats.” Its Lattice software allows a human operator to control it all from a laptop. More on the innovators protecting the oceans in my latest @RationalOptSoc diary, which you can read here: rationaloptimistsociety.substack.com/p/shady-stuff-…

One of the big bottlenecks in AI today is that chips are fast but feeding them data isn’t. More than 90% of an AI model’s response time is spent shuttling data back and forth through the copper wires linking chips together. Lightmatter @LightmatterCo rips out the old copper wires and replaces them with a fiber-optic superhighway. Its “trick” is moving data as light instead of electricity. Because moving light doesn't generate heat like moving electricity through copper wire, optical data can be packed closer together. Lightmatter built a silicon wafer that sits underneath the chips. It contains thousands of tiny pipes, which allow data to travel at the speed of light between chips. It shoots 16 different colors of light down the highway at the same time. Lightmatter breaks the bandwidth bottleneck and turns a warehouse of disconnected computers into one massive brain. This technology is inevitable. As AI models grow to Manhattan-scale power usage, copper wires will go the way of the dodo. The future is optical. I dig into more companies here: rationaloptimistsociety.substack.com/p/the-chip-reb… @RationalOptSoc

What happens underwater is a lot more vital than people think. Most undersea infrastructure is effectively defenseless. Our latest ROS Diary showcases five innovators who are looking to protect it. Read it at: rationaloptimistsociety.substack.com/p/shady-stuff-…

The chip rebellion is on In my latest for @RationalOptSoc... I dig into the 6 insurgents reinventing chips (I’m a self-confessed chip geek. They’re the closest thing we have to magic.) Read it here: substack.com/home/post/p-18…

While Nvidia currently rules the roost, there are a host of new startups trying to revolutionize chip technology. Read about some of the most ambitious ones in our latest weekly diary here: rationaloptimistsociety.substack.com/p/the-chip-reb…

The modern computer chip may be the closest thing we have to magic. The chip inside an iPhone alone packs over 19 billion microscopic transistors onto a square smaller than your fingernail.

When it comes to SMR startups, X-Energy is number 6 in my power rankings. @xenergynuclear Amazon $AMZN just anchored a massive $500 million funding round to deploy X-Energy’s SMRs for its AI data centers. X-Energy also inked a deal with the Pentagon and Air Force to deploy its rugged, container-sized reactors (XENITH), designed to keep military bases running when the grid goes down. It also signed a major agreement with Centrica in the UK to deploy a fleet of 12 SMRs at the Hartlepool site. NBA comparison: Giannis Antetokounmpo. A “two-way player” that can dominate both ends of the floor.

Introducing our SMR power rankings This week, I compare SMR startups to an NBA team or player We even have a real shot clock, ticking down to July 4, 2026. The White House and DOE set a goal to turn on three new reactors by America’s 250th birthday. ⬇️ rationaloptimistsociety.substack.com/p/introducing-…

“What’s in the box?” If you’re a Dune superfan like me, you know the scene Ask that question to Cuby @buildwithcuby cofounder Aleks Gampel @AGampel1 and he won’t respond “pain.” He’ll say “Everything you need to build a new home in just 30 days." Read: rationaloptimistsociety.substack.com/p/the-american…

Read my latest @RationalOptSoc Diary The American Dream needs a factory reset... And this is housing's "iPhone moment" Here: rationaloptimistsociety.substack.com/p/the-american…