Jeff Goldstein

In this Backyard, it’s “win or go home,” and this crew hasn’t left since the 90's. Where there’s a pitch, there’s a legend. #YouGotThis

say it with me now. experts are fake, smart generalists rule the world, everything is designed by people no smarter than you, and courage is in shorter supply than genius

Because we get asked a lot. The Technological Republic, in brief. 1. Silicon Valley owes a moral debt to the country that made its rise possible. The engineering elite of Silicon Valley has an affirmative obligation to participate in the defense of the nation. 2. We must rebel against the tyranny of the apps. Is the iPhone our greatest creative if not crowning achievement as a civilization? The object has changed our lives, but it may also now be limiting and constraining our sense of the possible. 3. Free email is not enough. The decadence of a culture or civilization, and indeed its ruling class, will be forgiven only if that culture is capable of delivering economic growth and security for the public. 4. The limits of soft power, of soaring rhetoric alone, have been exposed. The ability of free and democratic societies to prevail requires something more than moral appeal. It requires hard power, and hard power in this century will be built on software. 5. The question is not whether A.I. weapons will be built; it is who will build them and for what purpose. Our adversaries will not pause to indulge in theatrical debates about the merits of developing technologies with critical military and national security applications. They will proceed. 6. National service should be a universal duty. We should, as a society, seriously consider moving away from an all-volunteer force and only fight the next war if everyone shares in the risk and the cost. 7. If a U.S. Marine asks for a better rifle, we should build it; and the same goes for software. We should as a country be capable of continuing a debate about the appropriateness of military action abroad while remaining unflinching in our commitment to those we have asked to step into harm’s way. 8. Public servants need not be our priests. Any business that compensated its employees in the way that the federal government compensates public servants would struggle to survive. 9. We should show far more grace towards those who have subjected themselves to public life. The eradication of any space for forgiveness—a jettisoning of any tolerance for the complexities and contradictions of the human psyche—may leave us with a cast of characters at the helm we will grow to regret. 10. The psychologization of modern politics is leading us astray. Those who look to the political arena to nourish their soul and sense of self, who rely too heavily on their internal life finding expression in people they may never meet, will be left disappointed. 11. Our society has grown too eager to hasten, and is often gleeful at, the demise of its enemies. The vanquishing of an opponent is a moment to pause, not rejoice. 12. The atomic age is ending. One age of deterrence, the atomic age, is ending, and a new era of deterrence built on A.I. is set to begin. 13. No other country in the history of the world has advanced progressive values more than this one. The United States is far from perfect. But it is easy to forget how much more opportunity exists in this country for those who are not hereditary elites than in any other nation on the planet. 14. American power has made possible an extraordinarily long peace. Too many have forgotten or perhaps take for granted that nearly a century of some version of peace has prevailed in the world without a great power military conflict. At least three generations — billions of people and their children and now grandchildren — have never known a world war. 15. The postwar neutering of Germany and Japan must be undone. The defanging of Germany was an overcorrection for which Europe is now paying a heavy price. A similar and highly theatrical commitment to Japanese pacifism will, if maintained, also threaten to shift the balance of power in Asia. 16. We should applaud those who attempt to build where the market has failed to act. The culture almost snickers at Musk’s interest in grand narrative, as if billionaires ought to simply stay in their lane of enriching themselves . . . . Any curiosity or genuine interest in the value of what he has created is essentially dismissed, or perhaps lurks from beneath a thinly veiled scorn. 17. Silicon Valley must play a role in addressing violent crime. Many politicians across the United States have essentially shrugged when it comes to violent crime, abandoning any serious efforts to address the problem or take on any risk with their constituencies or donors in coming up with solutions and experiments in what should be a desperate bid to save lives. 18. The ruthless exposure of the private lives of public figures drives far too much talent away from government service. The public arena—and the shallow and petty assaults against those who dare to do something other than enrich themselves—has become so unforgiving that the republic is left with a significant roster of ineffectual, empty vessels whose ambition one would forgive if there were any genuine belief structure lurking within. 19. The caution in public life that we unwittingly encourage is corrosive. Those who say nothing wrong often say nothing much at all. 20. The pervasive intolerance of religious belief in certain circles must be resisted. The elite’s intolerance of religious belief is perhaps one of the most telling signs that its political project constitutes a less open intellectual movement than many within it would claim. 21. Some cultures have produced vital advances; others remain dysfunctional and regressive. All cultures are now equal. Criticism and value judgments are forbidden. Yet this new dogma glosses over the fact that certain cultures and indeed subcultures . . . have produced wonders. Others have proven middling, and worse, regressive and harmful. 22. We must resist the shallow temptation of a vacant and hollow pluralism. We, in America and more broadly the West, have for the past half century resisted defining national cultures in the name of inclusivity. But inclusion into what? Excerpts from the #1 New York Times Bestseller The Technological Republic: Hard Power, Soft Belief, and the Future of the West, by Alexander C. Karp & Nicholas W. Zamiska techrepublicbook.com

US fertility reached 1.57 last year, the lowest ever recorded, and the WSJ explanation is "uncertainty about finances, relationship stability, and the political climate" my great grandma had eleven children during the second world war, in a country being bombed, in a house with no running water, on rations. poor people have always had kids. the poorest people on earth right now still have kids and the financial excuse is a story we tell ourselves because it makes us feel good and the real one is unbearable the real mechanism is that we got rich enough to redefine children as an expense instead of the point. somewhere in the last fifty years the cultural goal inverted and a child stopped being what life is for and became a line item competing with the lifestyle. once you frame it that way the math never works, because the math isnt supposed to work. that's the point we are living in the richest moment in human history and we decided to use the surplus to buy ourselves out of the future. the most prosperous civilization that has ever existed is committing demographic suicide at the altar of personal optimization and comfort, and the official line is that we cant afford it the birthrate is a lagging indicator of a civilization that forgot why it was alive

NASA’s Super Guppy is making its way to Florida this morning. flightradar24.com/N941NA/3f1e9d5d

Hello, Moon. It’s great to be back. Here’s a taste of what the Artemis II astronauts photographed during their flight around the Moon. Check out more photos from the mission: nasa.gov/artemis-ii-mul…

THE ARTEMIS II ECLIPSE. April 6, 2026. Totality, beyond Earth. From lunar orbit, the Moon eclipses the Sun, revealing a view few in human history have ever witnessed. Photo: NASA

EARTHSET. April 6, 2026. Humanity, from the other side. First photo from the far side of the Moon. Captured from Orion as Earth dips beyond the lunar horizon. Photo: NASA

They did it. They made the perfect month.

In January 2015, Google and Fidelity wrote a combined $1 billion check for roughly 10% of SpaceX. The company was valued at $12 billion. Google’s portion: approximately $900 million for 7.4%. At the time, SpaceX had just successfully landed a Falcon 9 first stage for the first time. Starlink was a PowerPoint presentation. Revenue was a rounding error compared to today. Ten years later, SpaceX has become the most valuable private company on Earth. The valuation trajectory tells the story: 2015: $12 billion 2020: $36 billion 2021: $100 billion 2022: $127 billion 2023: $180 billion June 2024: $210 billion Late 2024: $350 billion 2026 IPO target: $1.5 trillion That $900 million investment from Google? At the $1.5 trillion IPO target, it would be worth approximately $111 billion. A 123x return. From one check. To put that in perspective: Adobe’s entire market cap is $144 billion. Google’s single 2015 investment in SpaceX would be worth more than 75% of one of the largest software companies on the planet. But here’s where it gets interesting. In Q1 2025, Alphabet reported $8 billion in unrealized gains from a “non-marketable equity security in a private company.” Bloomberg confirmed it was SpaceX. That $8 billion boost represented nearly 25% of Google’s entire net income for the quarter. One investment. One quarter. Almost a quarter of their earnings. And that was based on the $350 billion valuation from late 2024. If SpaceX hits the $1.5 trillion target, the paper gains from this single position could exceed $80 billion more. The financial return alone would justify calling this one of the greatest venture investments ever made. But the financial return is actually the boring part. Look at what SpaceX has become. Starlink went from zero subscribers in 2020 to 1 million in 2022 to 4.6 million by end of 2024 to 8 million by November 2025. They’re doubling annually. Revenue hit $7.7 billion in 2024, up from $1.4 billion in 2022. Projections for 2025: $11.8 billion. Starlink now represents 58% of SpaceX’s total revenue and the majority of its profits. SpaceX has reused a single Falcon 9 booster more than 20 times. They completed 134 Falcon-family launches in 2024. They’re on pace for 150+ in 2025. They now account for approximately 90% of the world’s payload mass delivered to orbit. Read that again. One company. Ninety percent of global payload mass. The reusability breakthrough is what made Starlink possible. You can’t launch 7,500+ satellites on expendable rockets. The math doesn’t work. But when you can reuse boosters 20 times and turn launches around in under 30 days, you can build an orbital internet constellation that would have been economically impossible for any other company on Earth. And then there’s the government money. SpaceX CEO Gwynne Shotwell said the company holds $22 billion in government contracts. Pentagon contracts alone total nearly $8 billion. The Space Force just awarded SpaceX $5.92 billion for satellite launches through 2029. The National Reconnaissance Office signed a classified $1.8 billion contract for Starshield, SpaceX’s militarized satellite network for intelligence and surveillance. The Pentagon plans to acquire more than 100 Starshield satellites for its future satcom architecture. SpaceX is now the dominant launch provider for the U.S. military, the U.S. intelligence community, and NASA. They have more government contracts than most defense contractors, but they’re valued like a tech company because they actually are one. Starlink isn’t just consumer internet anymore. It’s 75,000 vessels with maritime connectivity. 300 cruise ships. United, Air France, Hawaiian Airlines. Direct-to-cell service launching with T-Mobile. Military encrypted communications via Starshield. Ukraine’s battlefield connectivity runs on Starlink. This used to be a rocket company. Now it’s a telecom company that happens to own the rockets.

Holiday Inn used to have these hotels called “Holidomes” all over the USA A quirky, indoor mini resort type of situation Does anyone else remember them??

Immense planning and technical precision was required for this absolutely preposterous (but real) view: I captured my friend @BlackGryph0n transiting the sun during a skydive. This might be the first photo of it's kind in existence. See a video of this moment in the reply 👇

That's by far the coolest rope jumping I have ever seen

Imagine doing something so outrageous you make a sideline full of some of the best athletes on the planet react like this 😂

Starship rocket booster caught by tower

So very cool. ⁦@UCF_Football⁩ will wear these helmet decals Saturday vs. Sam Houston that were designed by pediatric patients at Arnold Palmer Hospital for Children (@APHospital) 🎨

Targeting Tuesday, August 27 for launch of Polaris Dawn, the first of the @PolarisProgram’s three human spaceflight missions designed to advance the future of spaceflight