Barkan Saeed

AI was supposed to give us more free time. Instead it just raised expectations. Now you're expected to do the work of 3 people because "you have AI tools."

The race for AI-ready workers is underway. 1 in 10 job postings in advanced economies now requires at least one new skill. Countries that prepare their workforces will be better placed to compete in the AI economy. More in F&D magazine. imf.org/en/publication…

"Do not learn to code" is the worst career advice of the decade. People are telling college students to skip Computer Science because AI will just automate it all. Andrew Ng just killed this myth at Stanford with a brilliant analogy. When he tried to generate images with Midjourney, he typed: "make pretty pictures of robots" and got garbage. His collaborator, however, understood Art History. He knew the exact vocabulary of lighting, genre, and palette. He spoke the "language of art," and generated masterpieces. Andrew Ng is seeing the exact same thing happen in software engineering right now. AI didn't replace the need to understand Computer Science. It made Computer Science the required vocabulary to control the AI. If you don't understand how computers actually work, you are just typing "make a pretty app" into Cursor and shipping fragile, unscalable logic. Here is Andrew Ng's exact hiring hierarchy today: Level 1: 10 years of experience, but codes by hand (He won't hire them). Level 2: Fresh college grad, but highly fluent in AI-assisted coding (He hires them over the 10-year veteran). Level 3 (God Tier): Deeply understands CS fundamentals AND uses AI-assisted coding. When humanity went from punch cards to keyboards, coding got easier, and more people coded. We are at that exact inflection point again. AI doesn't replace fundamentals. It multiplies them.

@YusufMoeed Agreed

I don’t use social media to pontificate but this needs to be said. If no off-ramp is found within the next week, history will write of this Middle East conflict as WWIII. Very soon, it will resemble a global conflict in terms of the number of countries involved, the intensity of violence, and the spread of its absolutely catastrophic consequences. Those who can must prevent this from happening.

All of Bangladesh’s fertiliser plants are fully shut — in a country of more than 170 million people to feed.

overheard a new insult: you have a short context window 💀

The head of Europe’s central bank just said financial markets don’t understand what they’re in for. This is Christine Lagarde saying the damage is already done. Most people have absolutely no idea. Here is what she actually said. Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz. That chokepoint carries 20% of the world’s oil and gas. Markets shrugged. Investors assumed it would blow over. Lagarde told The Economist that technical experts are not talking about months for recovery. They are talking about years. Helium travels through the Strait of Hormuz. Helium is not a balloon gas. It is the invisible ingredient inside every advanced microchip on earth. Qatar supplies 35% of the world’s commercial helium. Qatar’s facilities have gone dark. Spot prices have surged past $450 per thousand cubic feet. Most chip fabricators carry less than three months of inventory. The world is building AI data centers at record speed. The raw material that makes the chips possible is now scarce. Meanwhile Brent crude has hit $99. Earlier spikes passed $120. US gasoline is up 30%. Iraq cut 1.5 million barrels a day. Saudi Arabia paused its largest refinery. Europe is heading into this with gas storage at 30% capacity. And the ECB is not cutting rates to soften the blow. It is considering hiking them to fight inflation. Slow economy. Rising prices. Tighter money. All at once. Gandalv / @Microinteracti1

Happy Thursday.

Software companies fear AI agents could disrupt their entire industry: A record 27 US public software firms identified AI agents as a competitive risk in their filings in Q1 2026. The number has more than doubled since Q2 2025. By comparison, in Q4 2024, just 2 firms flagged this risk in their filings. Anthropic and OpenAI are releasing AI superagents which can use enterprise software the way humans do, but in a fraction of the time and without supervision. AI agents could replicate existing software or reduce subscription revenue, as companies that need fewer employees also need fewer software licenses. Investors are already pricing in the risk, with the Software ETF, $IGV, down -21% year-to-date. AI is reshaping the software industry.

The man who manages $11 trillion just said two words that should terrify every person on the planet. "Global recession." Larry Fink, CEO of BlackRock, the largest asset manager in human history sat down with the BBC and laid out the scenarios. Fink told the BBC there are only two possible outcomes for the global economy right now. His exact words: "There's not going to be an outcome that's somewhere in the middle." Outcome one is that Iran gets reintegrated into the global community, sanctions ease and Iranian oil and Venezuelan oil flood back into markets. Then the oil drops below $40 a barrel, the world gets relief. Outcome two is that Iran remains a threat, the Strait of Hormuz stays disrupted and the standoff stretches on for years. Oil stays above $100 and pushes toward $150. The result? A "stark and steep global recession." Why does $150 oil collapse the world economy? Because oil is embedded in everything. Food production, shipping, manufacturing, heating., fertilizer, chemicals and plastics. When oil spikes, prices spike across every single category of human life. Central banks raise rates to fight inflation, businesses freeze investment and consumers stop spending. Also, jobs disappear, GDP craters and the cycle feeds itself. There is no bailout for this and no rate cut fixes an energy shock. Fink also made a point that high oil prices are a "very regressive tax." The wealthy absorb higher energy costs while the poor cannot. This hits grocery bills, rent, and transportation everything the bottom half of the global population depends on to survive. The market is still pricing in hope, a resolution, a deal, a ceasefire. Fink is pricing in reality, two extremes, and the clock is running. Pay attention to this one.

the generation that refused to accept cookies. is now giving AI access to their desktops, files, and bank accounts.

🚢 Strait of Hormuz Vessel Traffic (Daily Transits) 🟢 Feb 26 → 132 vessels 🟢 Feb 27 → 128 vessels 🟡 Feb 28 → 98 vessels 🟠 Mar 01 → 18 vessels 🟠 Mar 02 → 7 vessels 🔴 Mar 03 → 2 vessels 🔴 Mar 04 → 2 vessels 🔴 Mar 05 → 1 vessel 🔴 Mar 06 → 0 vessels 🔴 Mar 07 → 1 vessel 🔴 Mar 08 → 2 vessels 🔴 Mar 09 → 1 vessel 🔴 Mar 10 → 2 vessels 🔴 Mar 11 → 1 vessel 🔴 Mar 12 → 0 vessels 🔴 Mar 13 → 3 vessels 🔴 Mar 14 → 1 vessel 🔴 Mar 15 → 0 vessels 🔴 Mar 16 → 1 vessel 🔴 Mar 17 → 2 vessels 🔴 Mar 18 → 1 vessel 🔴 Mar 19 → 0 vessels 🔴 Mar 20 → 1 vessel 🔴 Mar 21 → 2 vessels 🔴 Mar 22 → 3 vessels 🔴 Mar 23 → 5 vessels 🔴 Mar 24 → 6 vessels Source: Windward Maritime Intelligence, Lloyd’s List, PIB India, regional briefings

Jevons paradox is happening in real time. Companies, especially outside of tech, are realizing that they can now afford to take on software projects that they wouldn’t have been able to tackle before because now AI lets them do so. We’re going to start to use software for all new things in the economy because it’s incrementally cheaper to produce. Marketing teams at big companies will have engineers helping to automate workflows. Engineers in life sciences and healthcare will automate research. Small businesses will hire engineers for the first to build better digital experiences. And as long as AI agents still require a human who understands what to prompt, how to review when an agent goes off the rails, how it guide back, how to maintain the system that was built, how to fix the ongoing bugs, and more, we will still have humans managing these agents. This is why all the advice you get of not going into engineering is wrong. The world is going to increasingly be made up of software, and the people that understand it best will be in a strong economic position. This will happen in other roles as well where output goes up and demand increases.

BREAKING: Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr has declared a state of national energy emergency in the country.

This Figma MCP update is honestly insane. You can now use Claude Code to design directly in Figma with FULL context of your design system. Claude knows your components, spacing, colors. Everything. This is going to 10x how fast we ship UI.

Tonight, Baku's iconic Heydar Aliyev Center and Olympic Stadium shine beautifully in the colors of the Pakistan flag. Together, our brotherly countries celebrate Pakistan Day! Thank you Azerbaijan 🇵🇰🤝🇦🇿

Pakistan acting like a middle power and a net security provider in the region. Well done.

best coding models right now sync work, shorter iterations, 1-5 agents in parallel: - plan: composer 2 - work: composer 2 when you're in control, you simply only need composer 2. async work, longer iterations, deep work: - work: gpt 5.4 for async, you still want maximum intelligence as speed is less important with a model that can run for a really really long time ui & taste - opus 4.6 is still really strong here - composer 2 is a fast follow, but not as strong (yet) this space moves fast, so it will probably change soon!

BREAKING: President Trump says the US and Iran “have had very good and productive conversations regarding a complete and total resolution” of the Iran War. Trump has ordered the Department of War to postpone “any and all strikes” against Iranian power plants.

Price increases since the start of the Iran war... European Natural Gas: +85% Heating Oil: +80% Brent Crude Oil: +54% Urea: +48% WTI Crude Oil: +46% Gasoline: +44% Diesel: +42% Sulfur: +25% Coal: +24% Fertilizer: +23% Palm Oil: +13% US Natural Gas: +8% Iron Ore: +7% Rice: +7%