Platformonomics TGIF is a weekly roll-up of links, comments on those links, and perhaps a little too much tugging on my favorite threads.
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This is the last newsletter of the year (I might still get a standalone post out). Enjoy the holidays and rest up in preparation for the 20th anniversary of this blog next year!
“Most disturbingly, he found a complete “lack of leadership” in Europe, with “people in authority” exhausted.” — Liaquat Ahamed, Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World
(that was a century ago, but history does tend to rhyme)
News
Meta Goes Nuclear
Bouncing back from the unfortunate bees episode, Meta issues an RFP for 1-4 GW of nuclear power.
Previous:
Cloud Power Up, Introducing the Platformonomics Cloud Reactor Tracker, Navigating Nuclear Obstacles: The Utilities, Navigating Nuclear Obstacles: The Bees, The Nuclear Call to Action, Nuclear: To SMR or Not to SMR?, Nuclear: To PPA or Not to PPA?, Starting to think my nuclear power cheerleading work is done…, Yay Google: Nuclear Edition!, It’s Time to Build: Energy Edition, An Even More Nuclear-Powered Cloud, The Nuclear Power Vibe Shift Continues, Not That Kind of Nuclear Cloud, Better Late Than Never, Power Crunch, Behold the Nuclear Cloud, Nuclear Powered Cloud Data Centers Are Happening, A Nuclear-Powered Cloud, When Nuclear-Powered Data Centers?
Intel “Retires” Gelsinger
It is very hard to be optimistic about Intel’s prospects (or American-owned leading node semiconductor manufacturing) if Gelsinger couldn’t get it done.
I am fascinated by the pathologies of corporate and institutional decline (and we have so many patients to study these days!).
Intel and Boeing are great examples of companies that have fallen off the technological frontier. You can blame non-technical leadership, financialization, and/or good-old-fashioned creative destruction. But one lesson is if you are on that hard-won technological frontier, keep the pedal to the metal. After all, only the paranoid survive.
AWS re:Invent Weirdness
Even weirder than their weird capitalization habits was the AWS CEO bringing his boss the Amazon CEO out in the re:Invent keynote to introduce some AI features.
Sadly no update on how many steps we are into the AI 10k…
Previous:
The Arc of the Generative AI Universe Bends Towards Cash: Anthropic Edition, Culture Clash Conjecture: Amazon and Anthropic, Amazon Even More Bullish on Finding a Compression Algorithm for Experience, 326 Features into a 10k Race, Existential Corner: How Many Steps into the 10K are We?, Team Primitives: What Sayest Thou?, Amazon Desperately Seeks Compression Algorithm for Experience, Most Greatest AI Company in Entire Universe Makes Major Strategy Pivot, SEC Embraces Platformonomics ClownWatch™, Warns Amazon and IBM, The AWS Generative AI Soap Opera, The Amazon AI Inferiority Complex
Not Available in Europe: A Bubbly Economy
Previous:
Not Available in Europe: Better Late Than Never Apple Edition, Not Available in Europe: Apple’s Math, Not Available in Europe: This Week’s Edition, Not Available in Europe: Coming Soon to a Continent Near You, Not Available in Europe: Don’t Say You Weren’t Warned (by Meta), Not Available in Europe: A Tipping Point?, Not Available in Europe: Stratechery Edition, Not Available in Europe: Apple Edition, Not Available in Europe: Meta Edition
Media Gatekeeper Nostalgia: Axios Edition
Axios CEO Jim VendeHei delivers something somewhere between a plucky defense of traditional media and a complete meltdown.
I’m no fan of his bugbear thin-skinned fractional President and CEO Elon Musk, but the media remains in excruciating denial about reality.
The best articulation of the new media environment comes from Martin Gurri in The Revolt of the Public and the Crisis of Authority in the New Millennium.
Gurri roughly summarized his thesis (on a podcast somewhere I can’t find) as a transition from a world where societal input consisted of yelling at your TV to the world of two-way Internet communications. Yelling at your TV was modestly therapeutic but no one else heard you. Not the target. Not the channel. Not other yellers. In the Internet world, the people you’re yelling at hear it. And the yellers hear and amplify one another (which has both positive and negative feedback effects).
Not surprisingly, the media. politicians and institutions prefer the old broadcast model where they were gatekeepers and sheltered from direct feedback. But that world is not coming back. Eventually politicians and institutions will adapt to this new world, and there is an even an emerging modus operandi that adapts to the new realities. It is less clear what the media will do, as they seem wedded to their mid 20th century glory years.
Previous:
A Post About The Washington Post, Media Self-Harm: Business as Usual, Media Self-Harm: Declining Time Magazine, Media Self Harm: Lobbying vs. Innovating, Yay Google: New Zealand Edition!, Wrapping Oneself in the Flag: Seattle Times Edition, Media Self-Harm: Time Magazine Edition, Living in a Glass House: Pet Bereavement Accommodations Edition, Living in a Glass House: It’s a Union Shop, Living in a Glass House: Inflation Numbers, Existential Corner: What is the New York Times? Living in a Glass House: The New York Times On Tech, Living in a Glass House: What is the New York Times?, Aspiring Technology Company Neither Interested in Technology Nor Understands Technology
The Stupidest Thing I’ve Seen This Week: Michael Saylor Edition
It is with great trepidation I initiate this feature, knowing we live in a world of monotonically increasing stupidity. I fear a lot of work.
Microsoft has proposal from shareholders (Proposal 5):
Shareholders request that the Board conduct an assessment to determine if diversifying the Company’s balance sheet by including Bitcoin is in the best long-term interests of shareholders.
Basically, they want Microsoft to become Microstrategy:
Microstrategy – which, like Microsoft, is a technology company, but unlike Microsoft holds Bitcoin on its balance sheet – has had its stock outperform Microsoft stock this year by 313%8 despite doing only a fraction of the business that Microsoft has. And they’re not alone.
The company recommends a vote against the proposal. After all, Microsoft has CAPEX to spend on.
The Stupidest Thing I’ve Seen This Week: Absolutely Incoherent Economics Edition
Not only is stupidity increasing monotonically, but also advancing on who knows how many parallel axes. We have a tie for stupidest thing the very first week.
If you have a theory Trump is somehow playing 11D chess with tariff threats, I very much want to hear how this nonsense fits into that strategy. Of all the global economic perils, a bunch of mercantilist nations with closed capital accounts creating a new reserve currency seems extraordinarily low on that list. Much, much lower than various forms of self-inflicted policy error (see this week’s epigrammatic book Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World for many fine examples of such errors). My questions remain:
- If tariffs are the solution, what is the problem?
- If the problem is the unprecedented Chinese imbalance between consumption and investment, what is the solution?