The Afterburn Podcast

Apologies for the TLDR, but when you step back, it is kind of wild what we’ve all lived through over the last five years. No wonder so many young people are anxious about the future—the ‘disturbance in the force’ feels stronger by the day. I don’t have any grand takeaways other than this--the world could use an immediate course correction in the direction of boring--or we may really need those Mars rockets sooner than expected. One thing is for sure--Israel is making a compelling case for Golden Dome. • A once-in-a-century pandemic shuts the world down. No matter how you view it in hindsight, both allies and adversaries were nearly unified in halting the global economy and banishing society to lockdowns and high-pressure mask & vaccination campaigns. • We tried to print our way out of the system shock, triggering the most euphoric markets since the dot-com bubble—pre-revenue IPOs reappeared for some reason and people forgot that good companies generally don’t SPAC. • The digital revolution kicked into overdrive—work-from-home, virtual education traumatized parents, Zoom cocktail parties, Peloton, DoorDash and MS Teams---probably the most painful development. • Civil unrest emerged alongside deepening social and political divides. • A disheartening end to the war in Afghanistan—trillions spent, thousands of lives lost and the Taliban is still running the show. • Market euphoria gave way to historic inflation. Interest rates shot up to cool things down. The tide went out, and the “shitcos” failed. Centralized crypto exchanges gambled customer deposits. Hedge funds weren’t hedged. VC-heavy banks like SVB collapsed, triggering a temporary panic in the regional banking system. The big banks… got even bigger. • For the first time since the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, a nuclear superpower launched a full-scale invasion of a neighboring country. The West isolates Russia, and we witness a new asymmetric dynamic in warfare--cheap drones, missile swarms, all playing out in real time on social media. • The metaverse and Web3 died quickly as the “Magnificent Seven” lead a market rebound on the promise of AI. • China closes gaps--and maybe pulls ahead--in some of the most strategically important technologies. They tolerate risk, aren’t afraid to steal good ideas and make them better--and operate with a culture that—for all its flaws—just goes out and does big things without dragging decades of baggage behind it. • Hamas launches a surprise attack on Israeli civilians, takes hostages and triggers a war that pulls in Iranian proxies like the Houthis--disrupting global shipping lanes and igniting a politically charged humanitarian crisis. • Political winds shift again. A former President—also the frontrunner—is shot in an assassination attempt, the first since Reagan. Thankfully, he survives and is now our 47th President. • The Pakistani and Indian Air Forces engage in the largest air-to-air exchange in decades. China’s latest fighters and missiles see combat success against contemporary French aircraft—signaling what many already knew--China’s military is approaching peer status. • Israel launches the most sophisticated and devastating air campaign since Desert Storm—targeting Iranian military and scientific leadership, degrading air defenses, missile systems and nuclear infrastructure..and the conflict may just be getting warmed up. All in just five years... Hopefully our defense and policy leaders are paying attention and making some course corrections. Congressional leadership is mostly well-intentioned, but often fights for expensive job programs--exactly the kind of thing an over-consolidated defense industry encourages--even as we stare down an unsustainable $36 trillion national debt. That’s how you end up holding a fleet of battleships during the advent of the aircraft carrier.... Only this time, the analogy breaks down--because as a nation have forgotten how to build ships. So instead, we will have $300 million fighter jets we can’t afford, arriving a decade too late, in quantities that may not even matter—disrupted by million-dollar, hypersonic, laser-equipped drones that our adversaries will likely produce at scale. Until, perhaps, the dark horse Skynet T-1000 shows up. This is the time--especially in such a politically charged environment--when we need to be finding more ways to come together instead of moving farther apart. A time to be rooting for America and our leadership, not betting on the next Polymarket catastrophe. Because if the next five years look anything like the last, military parades and trade imbalances will be the least of our problems.