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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My Writing
Follow the CAPEX: Q3 2026 Scorecard
A chart that got left on the editing room floor:
Congratulations to my friends at Meta! Super exciting work!
The Federal Reserve. But With Agents
We continue our exploration of organizational-level AI, economic policymaking with AI, and politically-mediated governance.
Our agents came to the same conclusion, but faster and with far fewer pastries consumed. Gemini even dissented.
Previous:
Hoping for Change: Monetary Policy Edition, Forget Summers and Yellen: Let a Bot Run the Federal Reserve, Nominating a Bot to the Federal Reserve Doesn’t Seem So Crazy Now Does It?, Let a Bot Run the Federal Reserve: 2021 Edition, Bringing the Federal Reserve into the Agentic Era, Federal Reserve Issues Federal Agentic Market Committee Statement,
News
Never Take a Dependency on Elon Musk: Still a Matter of Life and Death
You can debate Fractional CEO and Ketamine Influencer Elon Musk’s opinions about the war in Ukraine (he wants to reward Russia for invading another country because “people are dying”). You can debate whether Elon has a role bringing the war to a conclusion (he doesn’t, but hopefully will get the opportunity to explain his actions to a congressional committee in the near term. Make the Logan Act Great Again!).
But you have only yourself to blame if you take a dependency on Elon.
As for the Congressional Select Committee on Elon’s Affairs, one suggestion is to call it Dissection Of the Graft of Elon (DOGE). But we still have time to finalize the name. Get your submissions in.
Previous:
Never Take a Dependency on Elon Musk, Never Take a Dependency on Elon Musk: Just a Matter of Life and Death, Space (Twitter IPO Index) Jam, Jammed, Space Twitter: A Boon for Direct Indexing?, Never Take a Dependency on Elon Musk: Space Twitter S-1 Edition, The Price-to-Elon Ratio, Follow the CAPEX: Space Twitter, Never Take a Dependency on Elon Musk, I was beaten to dubbing it Space Twitter, The great Matt Levine on Space Twitter, Useful Idiots, Fellow Travelers and Unregistered Foreign Agents: Elon Musk Part II, Elon/Twitter
Never Take a Dependency on the Chinese Communist Party
In the event you have not been paying attention, make a note.
Andy Jassy:
We have both closed models and models like Anthropic and OpenAI’s models. We have open models with Kimi and GLM and others. I think the Western world is very hungry for additional open models that are Western open models, and so I believe that will happen over time as well.
Previous:
Press Releases We’d Like to See: Daryl Morey, Trey Parker and Matt Stone Awarded the 2020 Nobel Peace Prize, Useful Idiots, Fellow Travelers and Unregistered Foreign Agents: Oracle, Oracle Part II, Apple Part II, Angelist, Elon Musk Part II, The Donald, Jeff Yass, Microsoft Bing, DC Lobbyists Part III, Hollywood, DC Lobbyists Part II, NBA, Warner Bros. Discovery, Germany, DC Lobbyists, Elon/Twitter, The Hugo Awards, Harvard University, Wall Street, Apple
Related:
Real Madrid apologise to Chinese people after Mbappe’s Mao ‘dictator’ comment (Mao being a dictator is a weird issue to take offense over)
Cloud Growth Rates – Q3 2026
TPU system sales now show up in the GCP revenue line, so that is some of the GCP spike. Unclear how much.
I find Andy Jassy’s argument here persuasive and very bullish for the hyperclouds:
We see a strong linkage between AI spend and growth in our revenue for core services. As customers invest in AI, we see a corresponding increase in core consumption, and we expect that relationship to strengthen as more AI workloads move into production and drive additional demand for compute, storage, and networking.
AI apps do not live by GPUs alone.
Samsung: Sued into Oblivion?
The level of surveillance uncovered by reverse engineering a modern Samsung TV is absolutely bonkers. Their survival may hinge on whether they had a Meta-esque TOU in place.
Your TV should just be a dumb piece of glass.
Related:
Cybersecurity bounty hunter says Samsung TVs use AI to record audio and screenshots for ads — ‘Finally found a company that truly listens to its customers,’ says hacker, LG TV shown scanning LAN for third-party phones and other devices, Monitor Makers Start Pummeling Owners With Annoying Ads, ‘Smart’ Spyware
Political Scumbaggery: Washington Edition
Government weaponizing regulatory control to an unprecedented degree to help their party? Just another day in Washington DC you think? Well, the other Washington plays that game too.
The political denizens of Washington State’s capital Olympia (motto: Government by government employees, for government employees. Who are these “people” you mention?) are worried about losing their control of their supine State Supreme Court (motto: Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength. Property is not yours).
The ostensibly non-partisan court is filled with cronies of the governor appointed to the job (mostly without any bench experience) who find themselves this year running against candidates committed to judicial independence with some actual judicial experience.
One of their preferred candidates, Ian Birk, has been described by the local newsletter Seattle Times as “sleazy” and “clearly unethical”, and his tactics denounced by dozens of sitting judges, even by aforementioned supreme court cronies.
What to do? Maybe the governor’s recently-appointed cronies on the ostensibly non-partisan Public Disclosure Commission can help? Perhaps suspend the rule preventing outside groups from dumping money into an election in the last three weeks? Maybe make the change twelve days before the election?
Which brings us to the ostensibly non-partisan Beware the Attack on Our Courts PAC, funded by public sector unions and the trial lawyers who make bank suing the state for incompetence. Clearly they’re worried about their toadies’ polling, Birk in particular.
I don’t know whether to be more impressed by their dirty tricks and misleading content (MAGA conspiracy! Ian Birk is a man of unrivaled integrity, trust us!) or their speed. The PDC suspended the rule barring such expenditures on a Friday, and they had hundreds of thousands of mailers landing in mailboxes on Tuesday. It is almost like they knew the rule would be suspended…
Vote accordingly.
Previous:
A Warning to Seattle: Don’t Become the Next Cleveland, Governor’s new economic council snubs startups, forgets AI, Don’t Be Cleveland: Gabe Newell Says Bye Bob, Don’t Be Cleveland: Rich Barton Says Bye Bob, Don’t Be Cleveland: Janicki Industries Says “Bye Bob”, Don’t be Cleveland: Seattle Mayor Says Bye, Don’t be Cleveland: Snap Says “Bye Bob”, Don’t be Cleveland: Howard Schultz Says “Bye Bob”, Don’t be Cleveland: Starbucks Says “Bye Bob”, Don’t be Cleveland: Meta, Oracle, and Others Say “Bye Bob” (Ferguson)
Related:
Last-minute change to campaign spending rules has election-watchers worried, Campaign cash floodgates open after state regulators lift dollar caps, Voters beware: Candidate for state Supreme Court heads to the gutter, Watch out: State Supreme Court candidate hits new lows, We have crazy times upon us, Bare-knuckle politics and sleight of hand tactics to influence voters by an unaccountable Independent Expenditure
Quick(er) Hits
Waymo: “We’ve now driven more than 300 million fully autonomous miles. Waymo now operates in 15 major U.S. cities and just recently opened up service to the public in San Antonio, San Diego, and Tampa, with planned expansions into Canada, Germany, Singapore, and Spain.”
Are security exploits more likely to happen at PE-owned software companies for some systemic reason (e.g. they slash engineering investment, especially those really expensive security people) or are they just unlucky? Ivanti patches two more CVEs amid highly unusual Connect Secure exploitation