Jake Chapman 🇺🇸🚀 ✨🇺🇸

Now that Andor has given us a glimpse inside the Empire’s bureaucracy and military industrial complex, I want a “Pentagon Wars” style movie about the development of the AT-ST and the corners that were cut which resulted in it becoming easy prey for a bunch of Ewoks! #StarWars

China 1, USA 0, Michigan -1, chooses poverty and higher taxes over jobs. China wins Michigan.

BREAKING: Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has reportedly threatened to drive oil prices near zero by pumping at full capacity unless Russia stops sending Iran weapons that end up with the Houthis.

Insane exchange. Newly elected Democrat Adam Hamawy refuses to call Iran an adversary. BROWN: Do you see Iran as the adversary? HAMAWY: "We pushed them into a fight" BROWN: But are they the adversary? HAMAWY: "We should be making friends" BROWN: They've been saying "death to America" for decades HAMAWY: "We've been saying 'death to Iran'" BROWN: They've killed a lot of Americans HAMAWY: "And we've killed a lot of them" BROWN: So you don't see Iran as an adversary? HAMAWY: "I see that we are pushing Iran into a fight"

People have no idea how sophisticated nation state activities are If you are a target of opportunity for China it’s not unheard of for them to dedicate O(1000) humans dedicated to compromising you This is what happened w their NYT hack in 2013, which was designed to send a message They will compromise your friend’s friend’s friend to compromise you And work down that chain until your friend invites you on a fun trip on a private plane to Mexico/Thailand/wherever (example) Where some night you have a very boozy dinner and then you show back up at the house and some girls are there You’re drunk and make a mistake and then you’re owned until you’re disposable Nation state kompromat for “target’s of choice” is a system designed to find any individual’s weakness (you’re bisexual; a gambler, an alcoholic, drug addict, have a debt, adulterous, etc) and then force them into a situation of maximum amplification of this weakness 99% of people can be compromised using nation state capabilities and tactics nytimes.com/2013/01/31/techn…

US has just announced a complete blockade of Iran stopping now land routes of export and through the Caspian Sea along with the ongoing naval blockade of Iranian ports. Iran is in real economic trouble…

“Almost all of my founder friends agree that the only reliable sources of funding for risky early ideas are rich people who angel invest as a hobby and accelerators like YC.” This is a reality of the growth of multistage platforms, which are structurally and empirically consensus oriented. Venture capital has reached a point that will be familiar to economists: 1) a mixed market 2) a bubble occurs 3) capital inflows expand 4) the bubble bursts 5) rapid consolidation 6) incumbents capture core markets 7) the periphery is vacated 8) the rise of specialists This is an accelerated version of “resource partitioning”, as described by Carroll & Swaminathan — with their original case study looking at the beer industry: Market consolidation up to the 1980s (a result of economies of scale, M&A, marketing costs) led to consumers growing bored of dominant “industrial beer”. Then came the craft beer revolution of specialist microbreweries, taking the peripheral market of unique beer styles for the beer enthusiast customer base. So, microbreweries grew from effectively 0% of retail dollars in 1980 to about 25% of retail dollars today. On top of this, industrial brewers now use microbreweries as external labs who experiment with concepts in the market which the industrial brewer could take to scale. So, in VC terms, we are in 1980 — with the early surge of small specialists being felt in programmes like @govclab, or funds like @briansin’s GPx. <$10M funds are around 1% of VC allocation today. I expect that to grow to >10% over the next few years as it becomes clearer that the discovery layer needs funding if the venture strategy is to maintain an edge. More: credistick.com/narrative-sha…

OH from a GP last night: “I have a company doing $15m revenue and I can’t raise capital. It is going to be a zero.” And: “ triple triple double double doesn’t get the Series A meeting anymore. I want 10-10-5.” Founders: the bar for follow on capital has never been higher. If you don’t have the outlier traction that others are delivering get to profitability as fast as you can. And compound some advantage

Everyone wants to weigh in with their Most Astute Take™ on the midterms. But no one wants to even factor in the glaringly obvious: the US has been under the most sustained information attack by foreign states in decades, if not generations. Foreign adversaries have learned to weaponize the very protections and safeguards – First Amendment, Section 230, privacy laws – that make discourse online possible. They use our shield as their weapon. These actors have learned that they don't need to "hack Facebook" — as the press claimed Russia did in 2016. (In fact, that had no measurable impact.) They found that they don't need to infiltrate voting systems. Instead, they have learned to focus on seeding poisonous narratives into virtually every open information system online. It's not only effective, but it's remarkably efficient. The influence happens in various ways: 1. Bot manipulation – Accounts/shows that see enormous engagement surges on particular issues are motivated to double down on the messaging that the bot swarms respond to. 2. Direct incentives – Money and influence. This comes in the form of corporate financing, advertising deals materially larger than their market value. (Did Hasan Piker go to China just for kicks?) 3. Information poisoning – Bringing fringe narratives into the mainstream by seeding them into open, trusted platforms (e.g. Wikipedia). 4. Discourse radicalization – Actors tied to foreign adversarial states pull the discourse further to the fringe. There is no accountability mechanism, so these actors are free to not just say, but endlessly repeat, the most extreme, toxic, and false claims. 5. Network building – As one example: the Singham Network can build, fund, and run ideological networks with alarming success rates. These are broad categories; they break down into thousands of smaller tactics. Further, they innovate. Foreign adversaries have an ability to test and experiment, since state budgets are virtually unlimited relative to the cost. Even more damagingly, there is almost no mainstream journalistic reporting on, or investigation into, malign influence by foreign actors in information spaces. Can we name a single public investigation into information operations by US adversaries like China in recent months? (It's as if, after a decade of "Russia, Russia, Russia," the press simply forgot this is a thing.) Even in the rare cases where we catch and expose these activities, there is almost never consequences: Example 1 - Recall the right-wing influencer taking $10m per year from the Russian government, whose posts seemed design to sowed division? Far from consequences, this individual was entirely let off the hook and even invited back into the country. Example 2 – Al Jazeera's digital network, AJ+, was ordered by DOJ to register as a foreign agent – and simply ignored the order. Were they shut down? Did their operation even slow down? Example 3 – Chinese operatives work in plain site on social platforms, disclosing their affiliations while dragging the discourse into the anti-American fringe. Example 4 – The CCP-linked Singham Network, which funds groups like Code Pink, was exposed in recent months and still functions seamlessly. Example 5 – Influencers and podcasters traveled to Cuba, apparently coordinating with the Cuban government, and are caught doing so. Have any one of them ceased or even decreased their activities? WHAT REALLY MATTERS This is the core imbalance: autocratic states running these operations have no – literally zero – checks on their capabilities: + They face no domestic journalistic investigation. + There is no Oversight Committee demanding answers. + There is no FOIA process to produce information. + There is no consequence in rare cases of exposure. Total freedom to maneuver on the information battlefield. We think, naively, that because these platforms are owned by US companies and regulated by American bodies that they are "ours." Nothing could be further from the truth.

I’m once again being offered a lot of money to promote anti-AI content

Top of the Democratic agenda on day 1 needs to be a pause on advanced AI development, regulation of this out of control industry, and a ban on artificial superintelligence.

BREAKING: Scientists discover what appear to be fossilized red blood cells inside the bones of a 115-million-year-old dinosaur.