I hope you are doing well.

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I, Pencil by Milton Friedman — an oldie but a goodie on the complexity of supply chains. If the Strait of Hormuz stays closed, we will all learn hard lessons.

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Watch:

Patrick Bet-David is joined by Richard Werner and Luke Gromen to break down oil, the state of the USD, and inflation.

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The US reported that three commercial ships were attacked by Iran’s IRGC in the last 24 hours. The Strait of Hormuz is effectively closed. Plan your week accordingly.

Thanks for being a part of this.

Casey Donaldson

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Hope you are having a great week so far.

Since the petrodollar system began in 1974, the deal has been that the US buys oil from Gulf states and the Gulf states use that money to invest back in US financial markets. Gulf States have made money in American markets while also receiving security guarantees.

As we have seen in the Iran conflict, the security guarantees from the US are all talk. Talk is cheap when the missiles start flying…literally. From condos in Dubai to LNG plants in Qatar, if you are friends with the Americans, you are a target.

The systems American are use to over the past 40 years will not be the same. Fiat money has all ended the same in the past, and that is as a failed system with a gold backed system replacing it. The question is, will we that in the near future?

Time will tell. Thanks for being a part of this.

Casey Donaldson

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We took last weekend off for Easter, but it’s good to be back.

Here are The Rover’s highlights from last week:

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Learn more about The Rover — your personal finance newsletter decoding global economic shifts and tech frontiers. Empowering savvy inventors to navigate chaos in an inflationary world. Preventing one bad decision will be worth years of subscriptions.

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The Rover University:

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What’s Going on in Private Credit? — Howard Marks

Listen:

Every parent should listen to Joe Liemandt on the future of education.

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The Real War Isn’t in Iran — It’s in the US Treasury Market with Luke Gromen & Lyn Alden

Last Energy Crisis, This Sector Went Up 20x — Trader Ferg

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With the US-Iran failing to make a deal, the investing week starts tonight. Get ready for another wild week.

I am glad you’re here.

Casey Donaldson

Santa Fe, NM

New Mexico, the Land of Enchantment…or Atomic Spy Capital.

Contrary to my prior belief, New Mexico and its capital, Santa Fe, are beautiful. Stunning sunsets, art galleries, and famous green chiles. Ancient cultures of Catholics and Pueblo Native Americans lived side by side for centuries. You can buy a $7,000 leather jacket at Lucchese in downtown Santa Fe if you’re feeling froggy, but spy capital? Yes.

I knew little about Santa Fe before visiting, but the history just bled out of the 500-year-old chapels, adobe storefronts, and downtown streets where some of the most infamous Soviet operations in American history went down.

Nuclear fission came to New Mexico for one reason: there isn’t anything here. When you’re dealing with deadly radiation and the most violent explosions the world has ever seen, you need space. The extreme isolation and sparse population that kept the rest of the world away were exactly what drew the brightest scientific minds on the planet.

From the late 1930s until 1946, Santa Fe and its larger partner Albuquerque were the sites of some of the most intense spy activity in world history. No one knew about it for years — except the foreign agents involved.

Author and retired CIA operative E.B. Held calls Santa Fe a “sacred city” for Russian operatives. Soviet agents were so cocky that they reportedly had their pictures taken in front of the iconic Cathedral Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi. In broad daylight. On the main plaza.

When you think of nuclear espionage, the mind naturally drifts to WWII. But it didn’t stop there. Perhaps the greatest defector in US history, a dismissed CIA operative named Edward Lee Howard, escaped from Santa Fe in 1985 in a bold scheme to flee to the Soviet Union. Our parents were in high school when espionage was still being conducted on these streets. It wasn’t that long ago.

Most people don’t even know what goes on in New Mexico. That is exactly how the intelligence agencies prefer it.

Winston Churchill once said of the Soviet Union, “It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.” New Mexico was where that enigma quietly did its most devastating work on American soil.

You can still visit these locations today, the same streets where the Soviets laid the groundwork to compete in the arms race and change the course of the Cold War.

The building Soviet agent Josef Grigulevich used to plan the assassination of Leon Trotsky still stands on Santa Fe’s central plaza. It’s a Häagen-Dazs ice cream shop. Nobody knows.

The spy meeting house in Albuquerque is now a bed-and-breakfast. 209 High Street, where David Greenglass handed over bomb secrets, is currently the Spy House B&B. You can sleep there tonight.

The biggest act of treason in US history happened on a bridge in Santa Fe. On June 2, 1945, Klaus Fuchs handed Harry Gold a packet containing bomb sketches, trigger details, the upcoming Trinity test location, and America’s intention to use the bomb on Japan. In a single meeting. The Soviets knew more about the Manhattan Project than Harry Truman did. The father of the Soviet bomb, Igor Kurchatov, later described the intelligence flowing out of New Mexico as “of tremendous, inestimable importance” to the Soviet state.

And then there’s Oppenheimer. His codename in Soviet intelligence files was “Chester.” The CIA investigated and concluded there was, in the words of the report itself, “room for an honest difference of opinion.” That isn’t a clearance. That’s a polite way of saying they never fully ruled it out. The man who built the bomb may have been feeding its secrets to the enemy the entire time.

New Mexico. The Land of Enchantment. Where you can walk the same streets where the Cold War was decided before Americans knew it had started.

Source

The most interesting things I read this month:

The Iran “Excursion”

President Trump has called what the average person would call a war an excursion, a short military exercise with an end in sight. What it’s actually been is anything but that. We have heard every day that this will all be over soon. I regret to inform you that the President of the United States hasn’t picked up too many history books.

When you kick a hornet’s nest, you don’t get to decide when the hornets stop coming after you.

On February 28, 2026, the US and Israel launched Operation Epic Fury — a joint strike campaign targeting Iran's leadership, nuclear program, and military infrastructure. The operation included a decapitation strike that assassinated Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei during Ramadan. Killing the Supreme Leader during Ramadan is the equivalent of assassinating the Pope on Easter. Notably, just three days before the strikes, Iranian Foreign Minister Araghchi said a historic agreement to avert conflict was within reach. The attack came during active negotiations. Israel knew time was slipping away to eliminate the Ayatollah, but Trump couldn't resist being in charge of the situation, so the US jumped in alongside them.

Iran retaliated with hundreds of drones and ballistic missiles targeting US military bases across Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE. If you are an ally of America, you are a target in Iran's eyes. Approximately 2,000 vessels and 20,000 seafarers are now stranded in the Strait of Hormuz. More than 1,750 people have been killed in Iran. Thirteen US service members have been killed. At least 1,094 people in Lebanon have been killed in Israeli strikes since March 2. More civilians have died on both sides than soldiers.

The head of the International Energy Agency called this the greatest global energy security challenge in history. Brent crude surged roughly 30% in under three weeks. Energy infrastructure is being attacked daily.

Iran rejected Trump’s 15-point ceasefire proposal and issued five conditions of its own, including war reparations and Iranian sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz. Iran’s military mocked the Trump administration publicly, asking whether the level of internal conflicts had reached the point where America was negotiating with itself. Trump is learning that making a deal in New York real estate is considerably simpler than resolving a war on the global stage.

This is your friendly reminder that during the Iran-Iraq war of 1980, Iran fought on for six years after Iraq proposed the first peace plan.

It blows my mind that no one in the US government apparently considered Iran closing the Strait of Hormuz as a consequence of this war. The Atlantic and CNN both reported that Trump and his associates never war-gamed that scenario. 20-25% of the global oil supply travels through a single strait. As we wrote in last week’s piece, One in the Hand:

In the name of cheapness efficiency, we concentrated 25% of the world’s oil through one chokepoint. That’s not a supply chain. That’s a single point of failure.

Iran hasn't stopped at closing the Strait. It has made all energy infrastructure a target. If you purchase American weapons, you are a target. Iranian attacks have severely damaged over 40 energy assets across nine countries crippling key infrastructure in Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the Gulf, including 17% of Qatar's LNG capacity. These strikes have forced facility closures, disrupted maritime traffic, and sent global energy prices soaring. More than 40 Middle East energy assets ‘severely damaged,’ IEA chief says —CNBC

The 2008 Financial Crisis was caused by financial engineering and excessive debt; it nearly brought down the system, but it was recoverable. Iran's attacks are on physical world assets. You can't restructure a destroyed LNG terminal. It takes 3-5 years to build one from scratch. Each train is custom-made, several stories tall, and requires heavy-haul equipment just to put in place. It’s the largest LNG field in the world, and Qatar has 115,000 people who work there, and livelihoods depend on those facilities.

Australia Fuel Crunch Expands to Hundreds of Gas Stations —Bloomberg

Fuel shortages are already spreading. Australia reported 600 gas stations running out of fuel in a single week.

If I were Japan or South Korea right now, I would not feel confident in my alliance with the United States. Both countries are heavily reliant on Middle East oil. It won’t be long before their leaders have to explain to voters why holding trillions in US Treasuries is an intelligent idea while their citizens sit in fuel lines for hours.

The Strait of Hormuz and Middle East energy will never look the same as they did before February 28th, 2026.

Since the birth of the petrodollar system in 1973, energy markets and financial markets have been inseparable. Gulf countries sell oil, recycle the proceeds into US financial markets and weapons, and the system hums along. It’s worked out beautifully for America — cheap oil and record stock markets. The rest of the world had a different experience, as covered in last month's issue — Regulators, Mount Up! To make a long story short, a Middle East alliance can not happen due to taking over global oil prices, so Israel and the US continue to kneecap countries and cause division.

Financial markets have been violently volatile, surging on days Trump announces peace progress and crashing when Iran proves he was lying. Iran Hasn’t Requested Pause on Energy-Site Strikes —WSJ The Wall Street Journal exposed one such lie when the White House claimed Iran had requested a pause on energy site strikes. Iran had made no such request.

Iran doesn’t need to beat the US military; Iran just needs to beat the US Treasury market, and Iran is winning. Here is the number that matters: every time the 10-year Treasury hits 4.4%, Trump announces a ceasefire or a breakthrough in peace talks. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the administration's economic success should be measured by the 10-year Treasury yield. We are at an all-time high since Liberation Day. The bond market didn't just create fear, it created the famous term TACO. Trump Always Chickens Out. The same dynamic that forced Trump to retreat on tariffs is now driving the war policy. It goes to show that high debt levels tie your hands.

The 30-year Treasury is approaching 5%. At that level, the interest expense on America's debt becomes a fiscal death spiral. It is scientifically proven that we will go bankrupt print money if the 30-year Treasury is over 5%.

The only exit is the printer. Printing money into the largest energy crisis of our lifetimes, with inflation already climbing at the fastest rate most Americans have ever seen, is a recipe for numbers that would make the 1970s look mild. Inflation has brought down nations far more powerful than we like to admit. The US is the best in the world at blowing things up; everyone knows that. But missiles and aircraft carriers cannot save the Treasury market.

Energy and financials are just the beginning. This is where shit gets real. One third of the world's fertilizers, helium for microchips, and the petrochemicals that make your Lulu leggings all pass through the Strait of Hormuz.

Helium shortage has already started impacting tech supply chains —Reuters A helium shortage is already impacting tech supply chains.

The global population of 8.3 billion people is fed thanks to humanity's extraordinary ability to produce food with fertilizers and genetically modified seeds. Remove one-third of that fertilizer supply, and you are not talking about higher grocery bills. You are talking about places that import food, having nothing to import.

It's already starting. Midwest farmers are saying plainly, if you didn't secure your fertilizer last year, you aren't getting any this year. What we call in the business a no-bid market. No amount of money fixes a shortage that doesn't exist. We are entering a period where the things that matter most — energy, food, raw materials cannot be purchased at any price.

The ceasefire of a few days ago is the most fragile ceasefire in our lifetimes. The entire planet is walking on egg shells. The Strait is still not open, and until then everything above applies. It is not a coincidence we won’t hear anything until after the market close on Friday, as the US has not slowed down in shipping personal and equipment for a ground invasion to the Middle East.

More to come on the supply chain crisis next.

What to watch: Energy prices. I am studying some coal names, as they will be needed to supplement all the LNG that has come offline. A new decade of energy is among us.

A 12-Order Cascading Analysis of a Zero-Flow Strait of Hormuz Closure

Systemic Risk: A 12-Order Cascading Analysis of a Zero-Flow Strait of Hormuz Closure — Craig Tindale

Overall, investor consensus right now includes the level of denial I have not seen in my investing career. The market crashed at the beginning of a virus that 99.9% of people survived Covid was dramatic, but apparently the greatest energy shock the world has ever seen is no big deal. That disconnect should concern anyone paying attention.

The gap between paper markets and physical reality is widening in ways that cannot be ignored. WTI crude seems reluctant to hold above $100 a barrel while physical Omani barrels are trading at $160. Paper silver contracts sit around $70, while you cannot find physical silver online for less than $80. What you are witnessing is the financial market manipulating the price of a share of oil on a screen in America versus the price of a real barrel of oil in the Middle East. Those two things are no longer the same.

The markets and media are pushing a narrative that things are not yet out of hand. I want to point out two facts that cut through that narrative:

1. The world’s most powerful military (according to Trump and Rubio) has not been able to open the Strait of Hormuz.

2. If the Strait remains closed for another two weeks, it becomes a near certainty that US stock and bond markets will get hit by the combined effect of the Financial Crisis and Covid. Simultaneously.

Earlier this month, Craig Tindale published an analysis of the cascading collapse of global supply chains that will occur if the Strait remains closed. It is long. It is a must-read:

The modern world order, having organized itself around efficiency, cost minimization, and logistical precision, has created a machinery of dependence so extreme that the interruption of one narrow corridor can propagate outward into a general crisis of civilization.

What appears at first as a maritime blockade is in fact the exposure of the entire global system as a hierarchy of brittle interdependencies.

Here is the chain as Tindale lays it out: oil and LNG fail as inputs into electricity, fertilizer, shipping, chemicals, mining, manufacturing, and state finance. From there, fuel inflation becomes fertilizer inflation. Fertilizer inflation becomes food inflation. Food inflation becomes urban instability, sovereign subsidy exhaustion, and hunger. In this sequence, food shortages are not a secondary humanitarian issue. They are among the central political outcomes because modern populations do not experience systemic breakdown through grand strategy. They experience it through unaffordable bread, intermittent power, empty pharmacies, and the collapse of public order.

The physical cascade goes deeper than food. The loss of sour crude becomes a sulfur and sulfuric acid crisis. That becomes a crisis for copper and cobalt. That becomes a transformer and grid crisis. That becomes a semiconductor crisis. That becomes a crisis for computing and data centers.

The myth that digital civilization floats above heavy industry is, in this scenario, extinguished. Compute is shown to rest on copper, transformers, stable voltage, LNG, and ships.

In this framework, hyperinflation is not cyclical. It is being used as a tool in war. When energy-importing nations are forced to acquire dollarized fuel at any price, when currencies weaken, and fertilizer costs reprice an entire harvest cycle, inflation enters every household budget and every government ledger simultaneously. Firms cannot quote. Governments cannot subsidize. Populations can no longer calculate the future. Credit markets seize. Foreign exchange reserves are draining. The boundary between economic crisis and political crisis disappears.

The closure of Hormuz, under this analysis, is the event through which the modern world recognizes that its supply chains were never only economic structures, but the hidden constitution of social peace itself.

If we get to April 15th and the Strait is still closed, the world will begin to spiral. The collapse of the following supply chains has already begun:

• Fertilizer

• Helium and Electronics/AI

• Pharmaceuticals

• Plastics

• Oil/LNG

It is 2026, and the threat of starvation for food-importing nations is real. Some of the largest food importers outside China are Japan, the EU, and South Korea. That list reads almost identically to the list of the largest holders of US Treasuries. Those countries own 40% of US bonds.

You know what countries with hungry citizens don't do? Buy US stocks and bonds. In reality, America's closest allies will be selling Treasuries and liquidating US assets to raise cash to buy food at prices none of us have ever seen.

In such a world, hunger, hyperinflation, sovereign failure, technological stagnation, and geopolitical militarization are not separate crises. They are the normal operating features of a civilization that has discovered, too late, that its efficiency was built on concentrated fragility.

What to watch: US Treasuries. As nations raise cash, Treasury rates rise. The West dies in the bond market, so we will either default on our debt or print the money to make up the difference. We will never default on the debt so the big print will be forced resulting in extreme levels of inflation.

There is nothing wrong with playing defense. Stack cash. Get your watchlist dialed in. Get ready to pounce on the buying opportunity that follows. Cash is a position.

Banking, payments services disrupted after Amazon UAE data centers hit in drone strikes

Banking, payments services disrupted after Amazon UAE data centers hit in drone strikes —CNBC

What the mainstream media isn’t reporting is that the US hasn’t had more assets destroyed in a war since WWII, and we are only a little over a month in.

Iran understood the American weapons position better than most Americans did. Iran deliberately wasted its older, inaccurate, and smaller missiles early, knowing that US and Israeli interceptor stockpiles are fixed, and that replacing them requires an ass-kissing conversation with China. As the war has progressed, Iran has launched fewer missiles with greater strength and greater accuracy. They are not running out. They are just getting warmed up.

CNBC reported that Amazon had two data centers hit in the Middle East in the early weeks of the conflict.

The constraining factor on building data centers is simple: you need an electrical grid capable of powering them. The US has added barely any terawatts to its grid over the last 25 years. You cannot build out AI without massive increases in energy. China has built and added an entire US grid's worth of energy capacity in the last ten years alone. So if you are Amazon, Apple, Meta, Nvidia, or Google, where are you building your data centers? New or after being hit by Iran?

The Middle East. The only American ally with a grid capable of supporting them. 175 existing data centers with 98 more scheduled by 2029. All within range of Iranian missiles.

The Magnificent Seven stocks have driven roughly a third of the entire S&P 500's market capitalization. Up from 12.5% in 2016. One third of the American stock market is now at the mercy of data centers sitting inside a war zone.

Think about what that means. The stock market is the economy. The stock market is the primary driver of tax revenues. The retirement accounts of 100 million Americans. All within striking distance of Iranian missiles.

The consensus view repeated endlessly by mainstream media is that the Iran conflict is fundamentally about China. Maybe. But has anyone in that conversation accounted for what happens when the Mag 7 starts losing data centers and has nowhere to build new ones?

Shifting construction back to the US is not an option. There is a three-year backlog for new data center electrical connections in America. We failed to address our grid problem for a generation in the name of climate change. The world has now been divided into two groups: countries that took action on climate and countries that did not. The countries that did not (Russia, China, and Iran) now have the rest of the world begging them for raw materials and energy.

Without rapid data center construction and improvements, the US will lose the AI race to China. When the US loses the AI race to China, it will have to ask China’s permission before entering any new conflict after Iran.

What to watch: I would no longer have a majority of my wealth in the S&P 500. I have taken steps to de-risk. A market crash of this magnitude would force the Fed to inject liquidity.

Bowl In Your Own Oil

Those who began this operation should be left to work out their own oil problems — to boil in their own oil, so to speak.” — Pres. Eisenhower, 1956 — Luke Gromen

“Those who began this operation should be left to work out their own oil problems — to boil in their own oil, so to speak.” — President Eisenhower, 1956

That quote was made famous when the last global reserve asset fell. I covered the Suez Crisis in depth last month in the There Can Be Only Two section — but it wasn’t even a war so much as a small conflict. Eisenhower had been the Allied Commander in charge of all of Europe in WWII and had just finished fighting a decade earlier. Unlike today, America leaders were sick of war.

So when Britain, France, and Israel invaded Egypt simultaneously in October 1956 and left Eisenhower holding the bag, his response was cold and surgical. He imposed crippling economic sanctions that effectively cut Europe off from imported energy and forced all three allies to withdraw. He didn’t feel comfortable doing it. Britain and France were American allies, after all. But he felt he had no choice. How could the US support Britain and France, he asked, if in doing so it lost the whole Arab world?

Eisenhower’s gamble ultimately failed, Egypt aligned with the Soviet Union anyway and used the same dangle and delay strategy on Washington that Iran is using on Trump today. But the template Ike created was real: sometimes the only way to recalibrate a relationship that has become strategically costly is to let it burn.

Vance reportedly knocked PM in difficult phone call for overselling chances of Iran regime change — Israel Times 3/27/26 “Before the war, Bibi really sold it to the president as being easy, as regime change being a lot likelier than it was.

A month into this war, the Western mainstream media has begun admitting on multiple fronts that Israel convinced Trump to enter this conflict — and is now looking for someone to blame as the war deteriorates. The Israeli Times reported on March 27th that Vice President Vance had a difficult phone call with Netanyahu, who reportedly sold the president on the idea that regime change was far more likely than it actually was.

Whether you agree with Trump's policies or not, the man has had outstanding political instincts for a decade. You don't engineer the greatest political comeback in American history without them. This war has felt out of character. Luke Gromen pointed to a thread by @JanitorTito_ on X that offers the first logically coherent explanation for Trump's actions that I have seen since the bombs started falling. I am building on Gromen's framework here because it's the only alternative that makes sense.

Janitor Tito’s argument begins with a structural problem. The US and Israel have a dependency that is too deeply embedded to unwind through conventional policy. The lobby is too entrenched, the Overton window too narrow, and direct confrontation politically impossible. So how do you recalibrate a relationship that cannot be openly discussed?

His answer: You accelerate it. You support knowingly destructive plans explicitly and publicly, on Israel’s behalf. You name the beneficiary openly. You make the costs undeniable and visible to the American public. You break the window from the outside because it cannot be opened from the inside.

This long arc strategic thinking does not originate with Trump, Rubio, or Vance. They are the visible surface. It originates in the permanent fixtures — intelligence, foreign policy institutions, and the private strategic circles that produce the people who rotate in and out of power. The origin point is 1973. The Yom Kippur War and the oil embargo made the structural tension between unconditional support for Israel and American energy and regional interests impossible to ignore at the strategic level. That is when serious long-term thinking about this problem began inside the CIA and the State Department. It was never committed to paper as formal policy. It was transmitted through conversation, institutional culture, and the informal networks connecting intelligence, finance, and foreign policy elites across administrations.

The Overton window was intact then. But the thinking was already decades old.

What is new is not the thinking but the political moment. For the first time, a coalition has emerged that is simultaneously nationalist enough to prioritize American interests over the relationship and populist enough to be somewhat insulated from the traditional costs of doing so. The thinking has finally found a vehicle willing to operationalize it.

Here is the dollar connection that ties everything together, and this is where Janitor Tito’s analysis hits hardest. The dollar’s reserve status rests on three pillars: military dominance, energy markets priced in dollars, and the perception of the US as a stable, rational actor. The Israeli relationship has been quietly corrosive to at least two of those pillars for decades. It generates regional instability, complicating Gulf relationships. It produces foreign policy that looks irrational to external observers. And it has accelerated adversaries' motivation to build dollar alternatives. The single greatest threat to dollar reserve status is the BRICS coalition, and its political cohesion is substantially driven by the perception of US foreign policy as captured by a specific interest rather than driven by rational national interest of the US. Countries that might otherwise be indecisive about dedollarization have been pushed toward it by the optics of American Middle East policy.

Reserve currency status is the foundational source of American power, far more important than any bilateral relationship. If the Israeli relationship has become a structural threat to that status, it becomes unnecessary regardless of every other consideration. A country that controls the global reserve currency can recover from almost anything. A country that loses it cannot. That is the entire strategy in one sentence.

Like a moth drawn to a flame, the only way to stop the moth is to let it reach the flame. Trump may be closing in on simultaneously discrediting the neocons who want America in permanent war, redefining the toxic dependency on Israel, degrading Iran’s nuclear capability, and rebuilding American energy dominance from scratch. If he pulls it off, it would be the biggest presidential win since WWII.

But Janitor Tito is honest about the risks. This is a controlled demolition attempted in a nuclear adjacent environment with multiple actors. The architects are betting that chaos produces a better equilibrium than managed decline. That bet does not always pay off. The danger is the transitional period — oil above $100, perceived US destabilization, and China capitalizing on the chaos to accelerate dedollarization before the strategy reaches resolution.

If this conclusion is even remotely correct, there will be no TACO. The neocons and Netanyahu are going to suffer a painful and public defeat. Trump has the Western media exactly where he wants them — broadcasting that this was Israel’s idea, that Trump was duped, that the war was Netanyahu’s war. Whether entirely true or not, half the country believes what MSNBC reports, and the other half believes Fox News. Either way, the narrative is being shaped.

High risk. Potentially the highest reward any American president has attempted in 80 years. The question, as Janitor Tito puts it, is whether we can ride it to a controlled outcome.

What to watch: There is a significant risk to this plan, and it could go very badly. Reduce risk, raise cash, and stockpile essential goods. We have begun doing this in our own home as food production systems come under sustained attack. This is not paranoia. This is preparation.

When Humanoid Robots Come to a Small-Town Factory

When Humanoid Robots Come to a Small-Town Factory —WSJ

A robot is doing a job in Cheraw, North Carolina that a person did a year ago. For $10 an hour. Soon $2. That’s not the future. It’s not a movie. That is happening right now.

Stepping gingerly across the metal floor, it holds its four-fingered hands at chest level until it reaches its objective: a 25-pound basket of bearing components fresh from a stamping press. The worker uncurls its claw-like fingers, daintily grips the basket by its edges and walks it over to a conveyor that will send it through an industrial washing machine. About a minute after it grabbed the first basket off a pallet, it returns to grab another. So it goes for eight hours a day, basket after basket, pallet after pallet.

A year ago, a person did this job.

The robot is called Digit, built by Agility Robotics and currently being tested by Schaeffler, a global manufacturer that makes parts for cars and airplanes. There are only 200 humanoid robots in the workforce today. McKinsey estimates 5 million by 2040. That number is laughable, and not in the way McKinsey intends. China already has 2 million industrial robots running right now, so you’re telling me that will double in 15 years and not 5 or less? I don’t think so. McKinsey will be lucky to still have clients by 2030 at this pace. Who needs consultants when the robots and AI are smarter than the consultants?

Cheraw employs about 750 people. Like many small towns across America, it has faced decades of economic disruption from poor trade policy. The locals blame NAFTA. The textile industry left. Factories closed. The timber industry struggled. Now the robots are arriving, not as a recovery, but as the future.

As this article came out, two more headlines caught my attention:

OpenAI’s Former Research Chief Aims to Automate Manufacturing With AI — WSJ

Jeff Bezos in Talks to Raise $100 Billion for AI Manufacturing Fund —WSJ Jeff Bezos is in early talks to raise $100 billion for a new fund that would buy up manufacturing companies and seek to use AI technology to accelerate their path to automation. The fund, described in investor documents as a “manufacturing transformation vehicle,” is aiming to buy companies in major industrial sectors such as chipmaking, defense and aerospace.

Bezos is raising $100 billion to automate manufacturing. OpenAI’s former research chief is targeting factories. The smartest capital in America is finally paying attention. The problem is that China didn’t wait for American capital to pay attention.

China has entire factories running 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, in the dark. No breaks. No PTO. No health insurance. No humans. While America was debating trade policy on Twitter and consulting firms were building PowerPoint decks about the future of work, China was building the future.

Iranian missiles hitting Middle East data centers aren’t just an energy story or a financial story. They are a manufacturing story. No data centers means no AI progress. No AI progress means China wins the automation race by default, while America is still trying to find a plug-in.

The road to AI and robotic manufacturing will be a roller coaster. But the things I know are:

1. We are currently losing to China in robotic manufacturing and AI.

2. If missiles keep hitting AI data centers for too long, we will lose the AI race entirely.

3. If neither of those is addressed sooner rather than later, China will manufacture everything for our military moving forward.

What to watch: AI is accelerating much faster than anyone is talking about. What China makes for us doesn’t seem like a big deal until it’s the airbag censor in a vehicle or a safety switch in a fighter jet. These items are small in size, but will shut down the whole production line.

Lifestyle

The Real New Year

Since birth, we have been told that New Year’s Eve is on December 31st. You get all dressed up, still riding the Christmas high, and count down to the ball dropping. You get your resolution dialed in and your midnight kiss lined up.

I am here to tell you there is a better day to celebrate new beginnings.

March 20th was the Spring Equinox —the real first day of the new year. It is the first day when daylight and darkness are equal, the inflection point where the balance tips toward light. Every ancient civilization knew this. We forgot it somewhere between the Hallmark calendar and the ball drop.

So if you abandoned your January resolution somewhere around February 3rd, you are not behind. You are right on time.

It has always been hard for me to get excited about a fresh start when there is snow on the ground, darkness by 5 pm, and the seasonal depression is sitting on your chest like a weighted blanket. It is much easier to commit when the days are getting longer, the weather is turning, and the world outside your window starts looking alive again.

Everything in life moves in cycles. Nature doesn’t start its new cycle in the dead of winter. It starts now, when the cold dark gives way to warmth and new life. There is no reason your cycle should be any different.

The resolution you gave up on is still waiting for you. Pick it back up.

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The ceasefire in Iran is cute. But let’s be honest about what just happened.

Trump is not tough enough to do what would actually be required to defeat Iran. And frankly, the world couldn’t endure that level of pain even if he were. We all know Trump deeply cares about the stock market and his ego. A baseless victory will be declared, chest pounding will occur, and America will walk away. The timeline is unclear. The outcome is not.

No matter what Americans are told, the rest of the world watched this war play out in real time. They saw the Strait of Hormuz closed for weeks. They saw energy infrastructure across nine countries destroyed. They saw Iranian missiles get more accurate as the war progressed, while America announced a new peace deal every time the 10-year Treasury hit 4.4%.

The world doesn’t grade on Truth Social posts. We lost.

And the consequences don’t disappear with a ceasefire. Energy infrastructure that took decades to build will take years to rebuild. Supply chains that snapped don’t reattach overnight. Allies that watched America stumble don’t forget what they saw. The ceasefire ends the shooting. It doesn’t undo the damage.

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(Public, No Paywall) The Hormuz Crisis: An Alternative View

March 22, 2026…

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a month ago · 185 likes · Anas Alhajji

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Decade of the battery

In 2015, Benedict Evans wrote a very influential piece called “The smartphone is the new sun”. By the middle of the 2010s, it was pretty clear that that decade would be defined in many ways by the mobile computing platform that Steve Jobs unveiled in 2007. For regular people, smartphones became the locus of their lives — an ever-present tether constantl…

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4 years ago · 134 likes · 54 comments · Noah Smith

Watch: The Next Phase of the New World Order

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I hope you are having a great week!

A barrel of oil sitting in a tanker off the Strait of Hormuz is worth more right now than the dollars promised to buy it. The world is about to learn that lesson the hard way. We are witnessing events where the world won’t be the same after.

In the name of cheapness efficiency we concentrated 25% of the world's oil through one chokepoint and 60% of copper refining in one country. That's not a supply chain. That's a single point of failure, from gas prices to the AI buildout.

Commodities are cheaper relative to stocks than at almost any point in modern history. It’s been a buying opportunity, but also a warning. We are witnessing the repricing of commodities when the trade routes that make cheap commodities possible stop working.

The Iran war isn't creating the systemic problem, it's revealing it. This is just the match hitting the gasoline. If someone handed Trump a playbook for crushing the dollar as a reserve asset, he's following it perfectly.

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Lincoln County, New Mexico

Regulators
We regulate any stealin' of his property
We're damn good too
But you can't be any geek off the street
You gotta be handy with the steel, if you know what I mean
Earn your keep
Regulators, mount up!

Those lyrics came from a movie based on a real story about the oldest game in American history. Someone had the money, someone wanted in, and somebody had to die for it.

Young Guns, starring Emilio Estevez, Charlie Sheen, and Kiefer Sutherland, was a band of outcasts hired by distinguished gentleman and county store owner John Tunstall to tend to his cattle in Lincoln County in the 1870s.

L.G. Murphy & Co. held a monopoly in the market, operating a store and brewery at Fort Stanton while leveraging military connections to secure contracts to supply beef and vegetables to the fort and the local reservation. Military contracts were the equivalent of moving kilos back then, the money was that good

The House — Murphy and Dolan acquired the cattle used to fill these contracts through shady means. Foreclosing on settlers who bought land on credit, leveraging the Santa Fe Ring — a corrupt network of politicians, attorneys, and land speculators who ran New Mexico Territory like a private business from the late 1860s all the way to 1912. Organized crime with a sheriff’s badge.

It’s hard to watch other people make money when you know you could do the same thing yourself. Pure capitalism. Tunstall and Chisum did the math. The problem wasn’t the idea, the problem was the competition were thugs. Gangsters don’t like it when someone invades their territory. Doesn’t matter if it’s a street corner in Chicago or Lincoln County, New Mexico, in 1878.

The breaking of that monopoly led to the Lincoln County War of 1878–1881. This is where Billy the Kid and the Regulators came in, making sure the Tunstall and Chisum side wasn’t getting cattle stolen.

President Rutherford B. Hayes called Lincoln’s Main Street the most dangerous street in America.

At the peak of the war, Billy the Kid shot two deputy sheriffs. The Regulators were trapped in Alexander McSween’s home for five days while it burned around them. McSween was killed while fleeing and lay dead in the yard. Billy the Kid escaped.

Frontier capitalism. The opportunity was real, but it could cost you everything.

Billy the Kid was 21 years old. Died a fugitive. But Tunstall and Chisum broke the monopoly. The outsiders won even after they lost.

That’s the American frontier in one story.

Today, the Lincoln County buildings still stand north of Capitan, New Mexico. The old courthouse and general store are still there today as a remembrance of one of the deadliest periods in New Mexico history.

The most interesting things I read this month:

The biggest headline of the month was the joint force attack on Iran by the US and Israel. I will tie in these article to that attack when applicable, but I will cover it more next month. There is still a lot more to play out if you ask me.

Xi Jinping calls for China renminbi to attain global reserved status

China reveals its plan to challenge the US dollar for dominance. -CNN

Trump is hand-delivering China the one thing it has spent 15 years trying to manufacture: a reason for the world to stop trusting the dollar.

China has been settling trade outside the dollar since 2009. Right after the Great Financial Crisis. You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to see why. When the world’s reserve currency nearly takes down the global economy, the countries holding it start running numbers. And that math has always pointed in the same direction.

For anyone who has followed Chinese economic development over the last 20 years, this moment has been at the back of our minds. China wasn’t just building factories. It was building an argument.

The flagship ideology journal of China’s Communist Party just published remarks from President Xi Jinping outlining plans to turn the renminbi into a global reserve currency — the role the US dollar currently plays as the go-to currency for the vast majority of foreign transactions.

Being the global reserve currency sounds like winning. And it is, until it isn’t.

Strong demand for dollars gives the US outsized influence — the ability to borrow cheaply overseas and impose sanctions on rival nations.

But here’s what comes with that privilege. You have to print money to bail out debt crises across the globe that aren’t yours. You have to defend the petrodollar with your military. You watch your middle class hollowed out and your industrial base dismantled because a strong reserve currency makes your exports expensive and your labor uncompetitive.

The United States replaced Great Britain after WWII. London was in ruins. The UK was fragile and in conflict with Egypt. All it took was the failure of the pound to hold the $2.80 level, and America stepped in and inherited all the benefits and every single burden that came with them (more on this in a minute).

China has watched this movie from start to finish. Which is exactly why their answer to the reserve currency trap is gold.

China has been importing record amounts of gold. Reported and unreported. Nobody in the West knows exactly how much they actually hold. And that’s the point.

If the renminbi is fully backed by gold, China doesn’t inherit the fiat currency problem. No endless printing. No defending energy markets with aircraft carriers. No slow erosion of your manufacturing base to keep the reserve currency machine running.

A gold-backed renminbi sidesteps the very trap that has quietly gutted American economic power over 50 years. China doesn’t want to be the next America. They want to be something the world has never seen, a reserve currency that doesn’t cost your country.

Here’s the honest reality. The renminbi currently sits at roughly 20% of global exchange. The US dollar sits at 57%. That gap doesn’t close on dreams alone.

“To get people to use the renminbi, you’ve kind of got to carve out a niche, and it’s been really difficult,” said Dinny McMahon of Trivium China. “Now the way the Party thinks about it is — we’re in a really unique moment, because people are becoming disillusioned with the dollar.”

Disillusionment is not the same as trust. To dethrone a reserve currency, the world doesn’t just need a reason to leave, it needs somewhere credible to go.

Which is why China’s long game isn’t a frontal assault on the dollar. It’s a slow build of alternative infrastructure. And nowhere is that clearer than in how they’ve handled sanctions.

From our September 2025 newsletter:

“Sanctions were imposed on Russia’s VTB Bank in February 2022, and it was removed from SWIFT. Without access, VTB should have been cut off from global finance. However, the bank found at least one workaround: it advertised that account holders could transfer up to 1 million rubles daily into accounts on Alipay, China’s giant payment platform — with funds available within one business day. Russian customers move rubles from VTB to Alipay, and once inside Alipay, those funds can flow anywhere internationally — effectively neutralizing a major Western sanction.”

China didn’t build this workaround by accident. They studied every sanction the US has ever imposed and engineered exits around each one. The dollar’s ultimate power is exclusion. Cut someone off from the system, and they’re helpless. China is systematically making that power obsolete.

And you can only weaponize the dollar so many times before the world stops building on top of it.

What to watch: Gold. Gold will continue to do well as the world shifts away from the dollar and closer to a neutral reserve asset. I remain with gold and Bitcoin as my two largest positions.

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China urges banks to curb US Treasuries exposure

China urges banks to curb US Treasuries exposure, Bloomberg reports — Reuters

The end of the global monetary structure doesn't arrive loudly. It shows up in quiet headlines until the moment passes where there is no returning. This is one of those headlines.

Chinese regulators have advised financial institutions to curb holdings of U.S. Treasuries due to concern over concentration risk and market volatility. Officials urged banks to limit purchases of U.S. government bonds and instructed those with high exposure to pare down positions, though the advisory does not apply to state holdings, Bloomberg reported.

China isn’t just stopping Treasury purchases. They’re telling their banks to reduce what they already hold. That’s a different move entirely.

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Hope you’re doing great.

As recently as 2020, BYD was barely on the radar for global car sales. From not even hitting one million units sold to becoming the Plant Earth champion in five years is unheard of.

While the US was focused on pumping out finished F-150s primarily made in Mexico, China was focused on laying the groundwork to manufacture anything.

There is a clear distinction in the thought process. One truck vs the raw materials and labor force to build entire SKU lines for any industry.

This is how BYD, China’s premier electric vehicle maker, went from selling fewer than 1 million cars in 2021 to almost 5 million, beating the American legend Ford in five years.

The reviews say BYD’s are even nicer than Tesla’s at half the price. There is a reason Donald Trump won’t allow them to be sold here.

The main theme is, today it’s vehicles, but what is next? Chips, AI, robots?

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To kick off 2026, gold has officially overtaken U.S. Treasuries as the largest foreign reserve asset held by central banks.

This is a historical shift in asset management by global reserve banks, driven by uncertainty created by U.S. administrations over the last 20 years.

Since the early 2000s, global reserve managers have watched periods of financial stress, geopolitical conflict, rising U.S. debt levels, and increasing political polarization, all of which have increased the need for diversification.

Inconsistent U.S. policy has led the globe to drift away from relying on America.

Over the last several decades, administrations of both parties have shifted sharply between globalization and protectionism, intervention and restraint, and tight and loose monetary policy. For foreign governments tasked with maintaining long‑term economic stability, this volatility has made diversification required.

Central banks have increased gold holdings by $4 trillion, surpassing U.S. Treasuries.

Gold accumulation accelerated after the 2008 financial crisis, again during the 2010–2012 European debt crisis, and once more during the global uncertainty created by the COVID‑19 pandemic. Several emerging‑market central banks, including those in China, Russia, Turkey, India, and various Middle Eastern nations have been steadily reducing their Treasury exposure for more than a decade

Events that have diminished trust in just the last 25 years:

9/11: Did Osama bin Laden fly planes into the Twin Towers, or was there an agenda to get troops in the Middle East for oil?

2008 Great Financial Crisis: Fraud and relaxed lending standards almost brought down the whole system.

COVID‑19: We shut down the economy and pushed vaccines that were not fully studied over a virus that killed 0.001% of people.

Would you trust a country that printed its own currency to defend these mistakes?

The dollar is still the primary currency to settle global trade transactions, but replacing Treasury reserves with gold is step one to dethroning the dollar.

Historically, gold has been the ultimate neutral reserve asset. Not tied to any nation, political system, or debt cycle, which is why countries concerned about geopolitical fragmentation have returned to it.

And replacing the dollar in global trade is in the works, as China came out last week with Xi Jinping calling for the Chinese yuan to be a global reserve asset.

The US dollar hegemony faces a real threat.

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What began in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, in 1860 producing iron rails for the Lehigh Valley Railroad grew during a period when the United States was rapidly industrializing and expanding its rail network. The company quickly moved into steel production in the late 1800s, a time marked by the rise of giants like Carnegie Steel and the emergence of the U.S. as the world’s leading steel producer. By WWII, Bethlehem Steel was a pillar of the wartime industrial mobilization, eventually building a ship per day along with tanks and artillery as part of the massive national effort that made the U.S. the most badass military force in the world.

After the war in the 1950s–60s, it was a top U.S. firm famed for its wide‑flange beams used in the Empire State Building and eventually the Golden Gate Bridge, as America entered a postwar construction boom and large‑scale public works and skyscrapers reshaped the national landscape. At its height, Bethlehem Steel was the second‑largest steelmaker in the country and a symbol of U.S. industrial strength.

Starting in the 1970s–2000, intense foreign competition from Japan and later South Korea and China combined with Chinese steel dumping and the company’s failure to modernize its plants during a global shift toward mini‑mills and more efficient production, laid this behemoth down. The failure of this giant, along with 24 other steelmakers between 1998–2001, forced a massive consolidation of the U.S. steel industry as globalization reshaped manufacturing and free‑trade agreements opened markets to lower‑cost producers abroad.

The loss of steel manufacturing was the beginning of the broader “China shock” in the U.S., as industries across the country experienced factory closures, offshoring, and import surges that transformed entire regions—particularly in the Midwest and Northeast. Today, we are faced with the question: do we print the money to reshore, or purchase all of our military equipment from China, as the long‑term consequences of deindustrialization continue to shape national policy and economic strategy?

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Humans and mammoths did coexist. We know this now thanks to this National Park.

20,000+ years ago, human families walked in the soft mud of Lake Otero in southern New Mexico, surrounded by giant sloths, mammoths, and camels. What a time to be alive.

White Sands National Park in New Mexico is a mesmerizing, 275-square-mile desert wonder featuring the world’s largest gypsum dune field. These rare, brilliant white, powdery sands resemble snow, staying cool to the touch even in high heat. The surreal, shifting landscape offers a stark, serene environment for sledding, hiking, and photography.

This place is breathtaking.

The New Mexico desert is not exactly known for its beautiful scenery. Sagebrush and the lack of life span between mountain ranges as far as the eye can see.

It’s hard to imagine what it was like to travel across this country before the combustion engine, but to stumble upon a nearly 300-acre area of pure white sand in the middle of the desert would leave me speechless.

Where am I? How did this white sand even get here? Does it ever end?

It looks like a giant shipment from Pablo Escobar crashed in the middle of nowhere.

White Sands, located in New Mexico’s Tularosa Basin, was established as a National Monument on January 18, 1933, by President Herbert Hoover to protect the world’s largest gypsum dune field. Following years of local efforts to preserve the area, it was officially redesignated as the 62nd National Park on December 20, 2019, through the National Defense Authorization Act.

Historical Details

• Early Protection Efforts: Efforts to protect the dunes began around 1918, spearheaded by Alamogordo newspaper reporter Tom Charles, who recognized the area’s immense value for tourism.

• National Monument (1933): The area was designated a national monument to protect its unique geological, scientific, and natural values.

• Military Proximity: In 1942, during World War II, the area became surrounded by a 1.2 million-acre gunnery range, with missile testing commencing in 1945.

• Redesignation to National Park (2019): Due to its significance, it was upgraded to a national park on December 20, 2019, to boost the local economy and better protect its diverse resources.

• Geological Significance: The sand is composed of gypsum, formed from a shallow sea 250 million years ago, creating a unique, ever-shifting ecosystem.

• Cultural History: The park preserves evidence of human history dating back 10,000 years, including ancient fossilized footprints.

The White Sands has blown up with interest lately due to the show Ancient Apocalypses on Netflix.

The White Sands National Park appeared in the episode because footprints found in 2006 were finally dated and announced to the public in 2021.

These footprints were 21,000-23,000 years old, breaking records for the oldest human footprints found in North America.

Going to the park today, you are only able to access a small portion of it. Partly because of ongoing geological studies, and partly because it is a live missile-testing range with unexploded missiles buried in the ground.

There are a few hikes you can go on. The shortest is about a mile, and the longest is roughly five miles.

You’re goddamn right I went on the five-mile hike, doing part of it barefoot, getting in touch with our early ancestors. Here is as far back in the park as you can go.

You should take the time to go to the National Parks, especially if you are close to one. White Sands National Park is 3.5 hours from Albuquerque, NM.

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“Gov’t to provide temporary tax benefits to investors investing back home”

Gov’t to provide temporary tax benefits to investors investing back home —Korea Herald

This is the biggest story of the month.

South Korea announced it will offer a tax break to its citizens who sell stocks abroad and bring capital home.

There is one place South Korean foreign investment goes…the red, white, and blue.

The government will introduce a temporary tax incentive for retail investors who sell overseas stocks this year and reinvest the proceeds in domestic assets, the finance ministry said Tuesday.

Under the new scheme, investors who sell overseas equities and convert the proceeds into Korean won for investment in domestic assets for at least one year will be eligible for an income deduction on capital gains from overseas stock sales, according to the Ministry of Economy and Finance.

Capital gains on overseas stock sales are currently taxed at 20 percent.

The deduction will be set at 100 percent for sales made in the first quarter of 2026, followed by 80 percent for sales in the second quarter and 50 percent for sales in the second half of the year.

The move is part of a previously announced package of tax incentives and foreign-exchange measures aimed at addressing continued net capital outflows by domestic investors, which authorities say have largely contributed to the depreciation of the Korean won against the US dollar.

The underlying theme here not discussed: a US ally is telling its citizens to withdraw capital from the US and bring it home due to a looming currency crisis.

With the deduction timetable set at 100% of capital you bring home to South Korea in the first quarter of 2026, followed by 80%, and then 50% later in the year.

South Korea is saying it needs the capital within its borders NOW to defend against an impending currency crisis. If capital flows home too late, none of it will matter.

AGAIN, a key US ally who promised a $350 billion investment in the US in the trade agreement with President Trump after Liberation Day is telling its citizens WE NEED YOUR CAPITAL HERE TO PROTECT OUR CURRENCY.

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I hope you had a great weekend, and were able to stay safe and warm.

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I hope you had a great weekend.

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Chase Taylor runs Pinecone Macro Research. You don’t want to miss listening to the way his brain processes the macro environment.

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