Playing Catch-Up with Stalin, Mao, and Chairman Xi

March 27, 2024

It has been a long time coming, but we’re finally there. Ninety-eight years after Stalin’s first Five-Year Plan and a mere 71 years after Mao’s first Five-Year Plan, the United States of America finally has its own Five-Year Plan. According to the White House’s just issued National Strategy on Microelectronic Research, “over the next five […]

Live by the Fed, Die by the Fed

March 20, 2024

Attracting much merited attention is a recent paper from former U.S. Treasury Secretary and President of Harvard Larry Summers and several colleagues arguing consumers are right to be unhappy with the economy, even though unemployment is low and official inflation is back down to circa 3%. Nope, say Summers and colleagues, consumers are right because […]

Private Vices in Public Places

March 13, 2024

“For all that is secret will be revealed, and everything that is hidden will be brought to light.” — Luke 8:17 The fight over whether big internet platforms such as Facebook (NASDAQ: META) and X may censor content posted by users is alleged to be an argument over First Amendment freedom of speech and the […]

Was the Flushing of Agent 13 a Reichenbach Fall?

March 6, 2024

Remember Agent 13? He was Maxwell Smart’s unfortunate colleague assigned to do surveillance from the most awkward and uncomfortable places. Over two seasons, these included a U.S. mailbox, a barber shop towel warmer, a locker at Dulles International Airport, a trash bin, a laundromat washing machine, an ice machine, and a plant pot. When Max […]

Revisiting the Nvidia Cult; the Nvidia Conundrum

February 28, 2024

Editor’s Note: The rise of Nvidia is continuing as its market capitalization recently soared past $2 trillion. We are re-sharing our June 30 column from last year, since it highlights Nvidia’s meteoric growth and deals with the same questions that have resurfaced in the past week about how high the company’s share price can go. […]

Against the Dying of the Light

February 21, 2024

Cacophonous are the voices decrying the implosion of “the U.S. Innovation Ecosystem,” as the Harvard Business Review puts it. Do not hope, the voices warn, to see in our future anything like the miraculous progress of the last two centuries, or even the last 50 years. It’s done. Tighten your belts. Supporting the doomsters are […]

Will National Security be the Death of Us?

February 14, 2024

In his first State of the Union address, John Quincy Adams laid down the fundamental principle of strategy for a commercial republic: “let us not be unmindful that liberty is power; that the nation blessed with the largest portion of liberty must in proportion to its numbers be the most powerful nation upon earth…” This […]

Ukraine Losing as U.S. Military Tech Lags… the Russians!

February 7, 2024

Ukraine is losing the war for many reasons including the all-too-familiar cycle of Russian military ventures: corrupt, politicized, and incompetent. The Russians start out failing pathetically, hold on in the interim by massive blood sacrifices of untrained troops, and finally, battle-hardened and led by officers competent enough to have survived, use their massive advantages in […]

Don’t Worry America, Israel is Behind You

January 31, 2024

More than a decade ago on trip to Israel, Richard V bought a tee shirt inscribed with the slogan above. The street vendor, handing him the tee with a slightly shy (for an Israeli!) and ironic smile said, “I know, it’s other way around, right?” Maybe not. As things stand today, no nation is more […]

The Topological ‘Traitors’ Who Will Save America’s Chips

January 24, 2024

The sagas of knowledge and power continue to deform the topology of the world. In 2012, George authored a book entitled Knowledge & Power, expounding the “Information Theory of Economics.” Consummated in my new book, “Life After Capitalism” (2023), it espoused the unpopular view that knowledge has no nations, and ultimately dominates the preferences of […]

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