Iain Martin

Bhutan has confirmed it has quietly been running a bitcoin mining operation after @SarahNEmerson and I began digging into its secret investments in cryptocurrency earlier this month. Here's what we have learned 🧵 forbes.com/sites/iainmart…

.@FT exclusive: Battersea Power Station’s former CEO alleges he was ousted in retaliation for blowing the whistle on financial misreporting. Scoop w/ ⁦@joshckoliver⁩ @owenwalker0 as.ft.com/r/26b5dc51-dc7…

"Fluidstack signed a memorandum of understanding with the French government to build an “AI supercomputer” and said it would position France as “a premier AI hub,” “This €10 billion agreement with Fluidstack embodies my ambition,” Macron said in a statement. The announcement is no longer on Fluidstack’s own website." bloomberg.com/news/articles/…

The White House, Oracle and Silver Lake won't answer questions about a $10 billion payment that was apparently required to secure the TikTok sale. It's unprecedented. And officially undisclosed. U.S. investors and biz leaders should want answers. axios.com/2026/03/18/tik…

There's one big unexpected winner from Nvidia's move to buy chip company Groq for $20 billion late last year. Uncle Sam. The deal’s structure means that the Treasury will likely pocket more than $6 billion in tax revenue. forbes.com/sites/phoebeli…

Three months after a blockbuster $20 billion deal, @nvidia announced its plans for @GroqInc's fast inference chip at #GTC2026. Here's how it came together and what's next. My latest for @Forbes, with @_IainMartin @richardjnieva and @annatonger: forbes.com/sites/phoebeli…

for more on the Magura drone used in the exercise forbes.com/sites/iainmart…

Ukrainian drones forces won five out of five encounters at a NATO naval war game in Portugal last year. (Original in German) faz.net/aktuell/politi…

Exit bans are a bad look and signal Beijing has few other options. “The scope of the Chinese government’s actions remains unclear but appears to include an effort to restrict Manus executives from departing China for Singapore, one of the people said.” nytimes.com/2026/03/17/tec…

Yesterday, @BBCNews reported on a job listing at Anthropic for a chemical weapons expert. If you read @UpstartsMediaCo, you heard all about this in January 👀 As a one-year-old media brand, I would have appreciated a link, but I'm validated that we're doing something right 🫡

Gamblers trying to win a bet on Polymarket are vowing to kill me if I don’t rewrite an Iran missile story This is my account: timesofisrael.com/gamblers-tryin…

Wild story about a group of really sick people gambling on missile strikes in Israel & threatening journalists who report in ways that affect their bets. timesofisrael.com/gamblers-tryin…

This really is shocking - stability and reliability of public records in doubt, personal data for large numbers of directors seemingly put at risk, and unknown impact on crucial and exacting KYC (Know Your Customer) regulations…

Optical-wire guided FPV, a technology developed in Russia and pioneered in the battlefield during the Kursk campaign of 2024. Remember how we were all told not to overlearn the lessons of Ukraine because the U.S. in any real will have instant air supremacy, precision weapons galore, and won’t have to worry about those little drone things?

One nightmare scenario, in particular for America’s Gulf partners now bearing the brunt of Iranian attacks, is that the U.S. and Israel would stop, then Iran would continue harassing strikes to cow these oil-rich monarchies into submission. The fear is that Tehran will try to pressure them to expel U.S. bases and sever their dependence on an America that failed to protect them. “There are many dangers. A wounded, angry Iran is not the best-case scenario for the Gulf states. While the U.S. has to a large degree castrated Iran in terms of its ability to attack Israel, this gives Iran only one other option: to attack the Gulf states and to weaponize the Strait of Hormuz,” said Dania Thafer, executive director of the Gulf International Forum think tank. “Militarily speaking, the U.S. is on the winning side. But politically speaking, the U.S. and Israel have really gotten nowhere when it comes to Iran.” @Dr_DaniaThafer wsj.com/world/middle-e…

After its banking partnership with Wells Fargo ended, Bilt began issuing new credit cards. But infuriated customers say their rent and mortgage payments aren’t going through. forbes.com/sites/aliciapa…

Two years after rejecting a $23 billion offer, Israel-based Wiz secured the largest acquisition in Google’s history and will deliver billion-dollar returns to its founders and investors forbes.com/sites/sofiachi…

@alexrkonrad @bonam @UpstartsMediaCo @sandbar This has become a surprisingly big category, and a lot of people are converging around a ring-shaped device forbes.com/sites/iainmart…

@bonam @UpstartsMediaCo @sandbar And if people are happy with a cheaper, faster to ship competitor, there will be a lot coming from China, too. Sandbar’s been out testing with users for a year now. Better to be first, or best?

I wrote about Sandbar, the NYC startup looking to ship an AI note-taking ring, Stream, this summer. Part of what I found interesting about it is the wider race to try different form functions: earbuds, necklace, pin, wristband, now ring. But part is also that Stream is meant to be fully single-player and non-invasive. You raise your finger to talk to the ring in a conspicuous, les s surveillance-y way; Stream only listens to your voice, when you're actively tapping it, instead of being always-on. Does that mean you won't get weird looks on the subway? I'm not sure -- and candidly not sure I'd use it every day. But the care that founder @minafahmi has put into the product's form and function makes me think they have a shot.

Legora is averaging a round of funding every 4 months, each one ~tripling their valuation

'Made in USA' and Department of Defense codes imprinted on weapons fragments used to make American Tomahawks and seen in photos by Iran near bombed Minab school. Latest story w/ @trbrtc & @johnismay nytimes.com/2026/03/09/wor…

how media meat gets made into hotdogs via the internet : wsj reports (correctly) on meta reorg memo last week aggregators aggregate wsj aggregators aggregate aggregators aggregated story circulates saying entirely new thing, trends on twitter meta comms swats down new thing