Strategic Insights
Business strategy and consulting perspectives
Open-Source Intel Is Growing Up in Real Time
Open-source verification is becoming a public workflow as OSINT methods move from niche tradecraft into institutional and civilian habit.
The $600 MacBook Neo is Apple's quiet AI labor play
Apple’s $599 MacBook Neo is not just a budget laptop. It is a cheaper endpoint for AI-era work and a quiet threat to the low-end PC market.
The App on Your Phone That Watches Everything
Government-mandated software on personal devices is the most efficient surveillance mechanism ever designed. Russia deployed it. The trend is spreading. The ACLU is sounding the alarm.
The Tariff Tax Nobody Voted For
Trump's tariffs are the largest tax increase since 1993 at 13.5 percent. The cost per household: $1,300 in 2026. The word 'tariff' does the political work of hiding a consumption tax.
The Last Advantage You Can't Automate
AI can generate anything. It can't tell you what's worth generating. Taste — trained pattern recognition — is the last competitive advantage. And it can't be automated.
Your Company's AI Strategy Is a Lie
HBR found AI doesn't reduce work — it intensifies it. Most corporate AI deployments are theater. The gap between the pitch deck and production floor is the real story.
Disney's AI Copyright Playbook: Cease-and-Desist for China, Billion-Dollar Deal for OpenAI
Same infringement, opposite responses. Disney's selective IP enforcement reveals that copyright in the AI era is a business strategy, not a legal principle.
$2.5 Trillion and Counting: The AI Infrastructure Boom Has No Off Switch
AI spending hits $2.5 trillion in 2026. Data center vacancy: 1 percent for the second straight year. Ninety-two percent of capacity under construction is already pre-leased. The buildout has no off switch because the demand has no ceiling.
The Middle Is Collapsing
Fiverr cut management layers and called it AI-first. Amazon restructured thousands of roles citing automation. The pattern is clear: AI is eliminating the people whose job was to coordinate other people. The middle of every organization is dissolving, and nobody has a plan for what comes next.
The Vanishing Junior
In 2026, entry-level programming tasks are handled by AI agents. Cursor, Claude Code, and Copilot write the boilerplate, the tests, and the glue code. The work that junior developers used to cut their teeth on is disappearing. This creates a pipeline problem nobody is talking about seriously.
The Scaling Lie: What Dario Amodei Won't Say Out Loud
Dario Amodei told Dwarkesh Patel we're near the end of the exponential. Big Tech is spending $650 billion on AI infrastructure this year. One of these positions is wrong.