José Ancer
58.9K posts
@ancerj
Cringemaxxing hobbyist intellectual & consigliere to elite startups. Dad to 3 w/ Mrs. of 15+ yrs. Unapologetic statue pfp. @UTAustin (Philo/Econ)+ @Harvard_Law.
.@SecScottBessent: In the coming days, we may unsanction the Iranian oil that's on the water. It's about 140 million barrels, so depending how you count it, that's 10 days to 2 weeks of supply, that the Iranians had been pushing out, that would have all gone to China. In essence, we'd be using the Iranian barrels against the Iranians to keep the price down for the next 10 or 14 days, as we continue this campaign. So, we have lots of levers.
If a non-American asks you what America is like, show them this video
I'm going to make some obvious points. (1) Blowing up all the oil infrastructure in the Middle East is an insane idea, and may well result in a global economic crash and humanitarian crisis unrivaled in the lives of those now living. We're talking about the price of everything everywhere rising, from food to gas, at a moment when inflation was already high. All of that will be laid at the feet of the authors of this war. (2) The antebellum status quo of Feb 27, 2026 was just not that bad, but we're unlikely to return to it. Expect indefinite, long-term, ongoing disruptions to everything out of the Middle East. (3) Also assume tech financing crashes for the indefinite future. The genius plan to get the Gulf states caught in the crossfire has incinerated much of the funding for LPs, for datacenters, and for IPOs. Anyone in tech who supported this war may soon learn the meaning of "force majeure" as funding gets yanked. (4) Many capital allocators will instead be allocating much further down Maslow's hierarchy of needs, towards useful basic things like food and energy. (5) It's fortunate that all those progressives yelled about the "climate crisis." Yes, their reasoning about timelines was wrong, and much of the money was wasted in graft, but the result was right: we all need energy independence from the Middle East, pronto. It's also fortunate that Elon and China autistically took climate seriously. Now they're going to need to ship a billion solar panels, electric vehicles, batteries, nuclear power plants, and the like to get everyone off oil, immediately. (6) It's not just an oil and gas problem, of course. It's also a fertilizer problem, and a chemical precursor problem. Maybe some new sources will come online at the new prices, but it takes time to dial stuff up, particularly at this scale, so shortages are almost a certainty. That said, China has actually scaled up coal-to-chemicals[a,c] (C2C), and there's also something more sci-fi called Power-to-X[b] which turns arbitrary power + water + air into hydrocarbons. But all of that will need to get accelerated. I have a background in chemical engineering so may start funding things in this area. (7) Ultimately, this war is going to result in tremendous blame for anyone associated with it. It's a no-win scenario to blow up this much infrastructure for so many people. Simply not worth it for whatever objective they thought they were going to attain. But unless you're actually in a position to stop the madness, the pragmatic thing to do is: scramble to mitigate the fallout to yourself, your business, and your people. [a]: reuters.com/business/energ… [b]: alfalaval.com/industries/ene… [c]: reuters.com/sustainability…
Everyone is shitting on this guy as if his arguments weren't always bad and it wasn't the public (many of whom bought it, uncritically) that made him more than the crank he should have been.
EU is going to be deindustrialized so hard
Hegseth: “Our ungrateful allies in Europe should be saying one thing to President Trump: thank you.”
Hegseth: “Our ungrateful allies in Europe should be saying one thing to President Trump: thank you.”
Every single assessment about morality, progress and possible outcome of the Iran war I read is 100% correlated with whether the author likes or hates Trump. It's pretty annoying
When the “network state” needs to fight a war and you’re waiting for the remote work nomad instagrammer crypto bro low tax shelter chasers to sign up to serve.
