He really needs to take a step back from politics and focus on his core competencies.

Starship is an important program, and it’s been really sad to see it fail while Elon makes a fool of himself.

It would take Poland too long to create a competitive defense industry from scratch.

Long term though they should be trying to nurture one so it will be more affordable.

Innovators flock to the US because there is cash here to fund their ventures.

That cash comes from the trading system.

It’s not complicated.

It is absurd to look at a trade deficit which is showing hundreds of billions of dollars per year being funneled into U.S. assets and chalk that up to innovation.

The innovation is happening because there is massive amounts of capital being funneled into markets to fund it, not the other way around

This is wrongheaded on many levels.

Human prosperity has increased because of US free trade and security policies.

That we have so many billionaires is less a result of innovation, and more just a natural consequence of the dollarized trading system funneling massive wealth into the US.

Sometimes ideas are like a battering ram in a medieval siege.

Smashing it into a rock wall can often seem endlessly futile, until one day the wall suddenly crumbles and you win.

Just because people don’t seem to care doesn’t mean what you are doing isn’t important.

Looking forward to this

Do it. You have to work for a few years to get the full bonus, but it’s a good job and you can leak stuff to the press

Russia has been engaged in a decade+ of grey zone warfare against the west.

The recent intensification demonstrated the nature of their capabilities, and intent to use them against the west.

The problem for them is we can just do more of it than they can, and they are overcommitted in Ukraine.

That is before we even consider expanding grey zone warfare which is also very likely to favor the west.

The west has a lot more resources than Russia.

They need to marshal those resources and broaden the scope of engagement in ways that limit escalatory risks but overmatch the Russian response.

If the west continues to ramp up defense industrial production and support Ukraine fully, those trends will continue to shift in the Ukrainian direction, and at some point the Russian advance will likely come to a halt.

The notion that Russia is winning leans heavily on a definition of winning that favors Russia (sq km gained).

It ignores the increasing strain on Russias military, increasing damage to the Russian economy (not least from the increase in long range strikes), and many other trends that favor Ukraine.

Ukraine continues to battle Russia effectively.

People tend to focus on the (very) slow Russian advance, when the real focus should be on the relative combat efficiency and resource management of both sides.

Russia is taking enormous losses to make strategically inconsequential gains.

I mean, it’s not like they are Elon Musk, who has actually important stuff he manages, and who has occasionally done impressive things.

They are replacement level billionaires, who lead replacement level companies.

The Ellisons seem so confident they will pay no price for aligning so completely with Trump.

Likely their toleration for risk is very high, but it also seems clear their process for assessing risk is deeply flawed.

The 2024 election ensured a lot of this sort of thing would happen.

We need to defeat Trump, then begin a long process to fix what he has broken.