This Week I’m Tracking: 12 developments across the sectors shaping our future

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#1: PlasmaLeap Technologies

Description: PlasmaLeap Technologies uses modular plasma reactors to produce fertilizer.

Why Is This Company Interesting? PlasmaLeap Technologies recently raised $21M in venture capital funding. PlasmaLeap is a deep-tech startup developing zero-emission chemical manufacturing systems. Using zero-carbon, non-thermal plasma reactors powered by renewable electricity, PlasmaLeap converts air, water, and electricity into green nitric acid and nitrates. They decarbonize fertilizer and primary chemical production without fossil-fuel feedstocks.

#2: AgriPass

Description: AgriPass is a developer of robotic weed control systems.

Why Is This Company Interesting? AgriPass recently raised $7.5M in venture capital funding. AgriPass is an agricultural technology company developing non-chemical, AI-driven weed management solutions. Utilizing computer vision and real-time sensing, its platform identifies and precisely removes weeds from each plant, reducing soil disturbance and eliminating dependence on synthetic herbicides.

#3: Bindbridge

Description: Bindbridge is a crop-protection developer.

Why Is This Company Interesting? Bindbridge recently raised $3.8M in venture capital funding. Bindbridge utilizes AI to discover protein degraders and molecular glues for crop protection. Bindbridge is developing the next generation of crop health products that degrade specific disease-causing organisms or target pests without harming beneficial organisms or crops.

#4: ReNew Green Energy Solutions

Description: ReNew Green Energy Solutions is an operator of renewable energy systems.

Why Is This Company Interesting? ReNew Green Energy Solutions recently raised $95M in venture capital funding. ReNew Green Energy Solutions designs, builds, and operates utility-scale renewable energy infrastructure. Their solutions span solar, wind, hybrid power, green hydrogen, and other energy storage, with the goal of providing clean power solutions for many enterprises and municipalities.

#5: Aurora Hydrogen

Description: Aurora Hydrogen uses methane pyrolysis to produce hydrogen.

Why Is This Company Interesting? Aurora Hydrogen recently raised $3M in venture capital funding. Aurora Hydrogen is a climate-tech startup pioneering methane pyrolysis to generate low-cost “turquoise” hydrogen. By splitting natural gas into hydrogen gas and solid carbon without water or oxygen, Aurora produces clean hydrogen with zero direct carbon dioxide emissions and significantly lower electricity requirements than water electrolysis.

Electrek: US Solar Can Now Power 50M Homes

The United States has now installed enough capacity to generate clean electricity to power 50 million homes, around a third of all US households. This represents 45% YoY growth and continues the exponential trend solar has seen over the last decade in the US and across the globe.

Electrek: Do Wind and Solar Farms Tank Home Values?

One of the most potent arguments against a new wind or solar farm is that it will drag down nearby home values. A new study found that they did not have an impact. The study period was from 2004 to 2024 and was limited to Indiana. It compared home prices before and after large wind and solar projects came online. The study found no statistically significant negative effect on residential sale prices near wind or solar farms.

The New York Times: Warming Played ‘ Very Strong’ Role in Himalayan Floods

CO2 emissions have significantly warmed the snow-capped Himalayan region. This is likely a direct cause of the Nepal and Tibet rock collapse, which caused devastating floods. Rising temperatures destabilized the ice and permafrost that underlay the mountain slopes. Nepal currently estimates it will cost $5B to recover and rebuild.

Wired: Astronomers Have Completed the Largest Map of Space

This intricate, 5.6 trillion-pixel map covers approximately 75% of the sky and includes over 4 billion objects. The Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument has spent 5 years mapping the cosmos to build this understanding. The result has been the largest 3D map of the universe ever created.

The Wall Street Journal: NASA Explores New Missions With Boeing’s Troubled Starliner Spacecraft

Boeing and NASA are currently in talks to use the Starliner vehicle for an upcoming batch of missions. This is a turnaround for the ship that posed risks to crew members on recent flights to the ISS. The scope could include 10 more missions over the next few years.

Yahoo: Creating and Implementing an IP Strategy

Organizations can analyze their marketplace using Porter’s Five Forces methodology and understand how to implement an IP strategy to strengthen those segments. Every form of IP, including patents, trademarks, design protection, trade secrets, and brand protection efforts, can be critical to establishing and maintaining business value.

Axios: This Obscure Philosophy has Become Trump’s New AI Bogeyman

The philosophy of effective altruism promotes using evidence and reason to do the most good for humanity and has helped shape the AI safety movement. At what point should we slow AI development to prioritize a safer buildout? If some go slower, what is preventing others from still going fast?

Reddit: A Guide to Spotting Boundary Violations

This person explains their journey identifying and creating boundaries in their life, as shown above. This isn’t to say it’s a perfect or all-encompassing guide, but it seems directionally correct for many people’s journeys.

That’s a wrap on this week’s roundup.

Drew Jackson

Founder & Writer

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Credit CNBC

Hostage negotiators face some of the most stressful, complicated situations on the planet - what happens when they use their skills in everyday life scenarios instead?

Reading Time: 10 minutes for full analysis + key takeaways highlighted throughout

Key Question: What can a hostage negotiator teach us about everyday life?

My Take: Hostage negotiators are experts in reading people, scenarios, and motivations. They predict people like a chess game, looking 2, 3, 4, or more moves ahead to see what actions and reactions will lead to, in search of the best outcomes. These principles also apply to everyday life—it’s much easier when lives aren’t always on the line.

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Hostage negotiators are specialized law enforcement or military professionals trained to resolve high-stakes crisis situations through communication. Operating in life-or-death scenarios, such as active hostage takings, barricaded suspects, and suicide interventions, their primary objective is to de-escalate and reach a peaceful resolution without resorting to force.

Their core value lies in their ability to manipulate psychological dynamics under intense stress. Using techniques like active listening, tactical empathy, and emotional labeling, negotiators build rapport with perpetrators. This allows them to slow time, defuse extreme emotional states, and move volatile individuals from irrational rage to decision-making.

Hostage negotiators serve as vital assets during an operation. They gather critical intelligence regarding a suspect’s motives, mental state, weapons, and exact location within a facility. This real-time information helps command structures assess risk accurately and guides tactical teams should direct intervention become unavoidable.

Ultimately, effective negotiation saves lives, protecting hostages, bystanders, law enforcement officers, and perpetrators alike.

By substituting discussion for physical force, negotiators provide a reliable alternative to violent entry, reducing liability and preserving human life in the most unpredictable environments.

Chris Voss - Hostage Negotiator

Chris Voss is a former FBI hostage negotiator, CEO of The Black Swan Group, and the co-author of the book Never Split the Difference.

From 1986 to 2000, Chriss was a member of the New York City Joint Terrorism Task Force. During his time on this unit and after, he spent 24 years working in the FBI Crisis Negotiation Unit, helping with more than 150 international hostage cases.

After retiring from the FBI, he founded The Black Swan Group, a consultancy and trainer for businesses and individuals on negotiation skills. He also serves as a professor at Georgetown University.

Chris is a regular commentator on CNBC, CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News as well as through his social media feeds—which are the basis for this article today.

Chris consistently teaches negotiation skills and how to mindfully position yourself to ensure an optimal outcome.

Here are some of his top lessons.

Lesson #1: How to Get Someone to Talk to You On the Phone

Synopsis: When someone calls you and says, “Do you have a few minutes to talk?” often you think about how long they really mean, what they want to talk about, and what else you have going on in your life. Instead, ask, “Is now a bad time to talk? To this question, there are only two answers: the first being “no, it isn’t,” or, if they say yes, you know it’s a person who can’t talk, and you’ve already solved your issue.

Lesson #2: How to Gain The Upper Hand in a Negotiation

Synopsis: To gain the upper hand in a negotiation, you need to give the other party the illusion of control. Start by asking “what” and “how” questions, which help the other side feel in charge of the conversation. For instance, questioning how it would work pushes them to think of alternative solutions. Guiding them to brainstorm until they arrive at your preferred solution lets you provide the confirmation while they think it was their own idea.

Lesson #3: The Technique of Mirroring

Synopsis: Mirroring is a technique in which you repeat the exact words someone said, guiding them back to that moment and prompting them to expand on that thought using different phrasing. Asking “What do you mean by that?’ causes them to repeat themselves in the exact same way. By mirroring instead, the speaker triggers the listener’s brain to recognize the need to rephrase and explain their point in new words.

Lesson #4: #1 Question to Ask During Job Interviews

Synopsis: Chris’s favorite question to ask in job interviews is “How can I be guaranteed to be involved in projects that are critical to the strategic future of this organization?’’ The goal is to shift their perspective of you by showing you’re thinking about the company’s broader vision. You’re telling them that you want to add value to everybody’s life here, that you want to be with people that are at the highest levels of performance in your company and move everyone forward.

Lesson #5: How to Get on Anyone’s Good Side

Synopsis: During a customer service call, he could tell the other person had had a long day, so he said to her, “You know what? I really appreciate how generous you’ve been with your time.” This changed her attitude—he could tell she felt appreciated and seen. In return, she helped accomplish what he was looking to do. “Most people, if you’re nice to them, can help you if you give them a chance. If you’re just nice to people, it’s amazing what they’ll do for you.”

Lesson #6: How to Talk to Underperforming Employees

Synopsis: When people aren’t performing to a certain standard, we often respond with, “Why didn’t you do that? Do you know you failed in the agreement?” with the goal of accusing them of not performing. Instead, say, “Seems like you have a good reason for not performing.” You want to get people back on track, not push them further away.

Lesson #7: How to Deliver Bad News

Synopsis: In the doctor’s office, they’ll often say, “This is going to hurt,” so then when they hit you with the needle, you appreciate that you were warned and you were braced and prepared for the pain. If, instead, the doctor suddenly stabbed you, you’d be mad. This principle sticks for delivering bad news. If you have bad news to deliver, you should say, “You’re going to react negatively to this. You’re not going to like it. This is going to sound harsh.” This approach primes them for the bad news and makes it come across less harsh.

Lesson #8: Advice on Thinking About Price

Synopsis: Whoever names the price first loses, as it anchors the conversation. People get so price-focused—with deals, price doesn’t make them; it’s often a main deal-breaker. Similarly, your salary doesn’t make your career; your salary gives you the ability to pay your bills while you try to make your career. If you’re underpaid, you can’t pay your bills and thus won’t be able to do your best work. Bringing it back to price, price is really just a sweet spot for both sides where they can go through with the deal.

Lesson #9: The Best Way to Say “No”

Synopsis: His go-to approach to saying “no” without being confrontationally blunt is to ask the open-ended question, “How am I supposed to do that?” This helps reframe the conversation when the opposing party resists completely and tells you to figure it out. Effective negotiation strategy centers on maximizing every term without provoking anger or pushing them away. The secret is maintaining a calm, deferential posture so you can hold your ground without escalating tension.

Lesson #10: The Most Dangerous Negotiations

Synopsis: The most dangerous type of negotiation is one you do not realize you are participating in. Whether you know it or not, you're probably in about 7 negotiations every day. To understand whether you are or not, look for these key triggers:

• A conversation involves a person thinking the words “I want”

• Enter an interaction hoping to receive a “yes” response

Lesson #11: How Casinos Brainwash You

Synopsis: Casinos rely on precise probabilities to make money, ensuring players win often enough to keep playing. Through large volumes, they make up their small margins over time, which can cascade into large aggregate winnings. Rare wins are accompanied by flashing lights, ringing bells, and loud sirens to create a grand celebration, disguising the fact that players fail more often. Most people struggle to recognize the value of steady trust because big, dramatic wins are so heavily celebrated and seductive that people forget how rarely they happen.

Lesson #12: Never Compromise In An Argument

Synopsis: In contrast to popular methodologies, compromise is guaranteed to leave both parties unhappy and should be avoided. Instead of compromising, negotiators invest time in uncovering the other party’s deeper motivations. Chris uses a unique example of a couple choosing between an artificial and a fake Christmas tree. One preferred artificial trees (for practical and long-term financial reasons), and the other preferred a live natural tree. By digging deeper, they learned that the scent of the real tree brought back childhood memories of family closeness that the one wanted their children to experience. Thus, it was an easy choice to choose the live tree, and no one had to compromise.

Lesson #13: Why Your Kids Don’t Talk To You

Synopsis: Children often give brief, uninformative answers when asked about their day. They do this because they often feel parents move on to follow-up questions without genuinely processing or acknowledging their first response. Additionally, when children share a negative experience, parents often question the child’s perspective or offer unsolicited advice rather than validating their feelings. As a result, parents often prioritize judgment and lectures over active listening, which causes children to shut down and avoid sharing details about their lives.

Lesson #14: An Easy Trick to Close More Deals

Synopsis: The fear of loss is the most powerful motivator in human decision-making when trying to get a buyer to make an offer. If buyers feel cornered or pressured, they will push back or act against their own best interest out of spite. Before introducing loss, address and validate the buyer’s perspective by acknowledging their belief that there is plenty of inventory or that the asset is not unique. Only after acknowledging their point of view should you frame the risk of loss.

Lesson #15: An Easy Trick to Get What You Want

Synopsis: In a conversation, take a few moments to restate and summarize the other person’s perspective before presenting your own point of view. This helps you practice active listening. People appreciate feeling genuinely understood. Demonstrating understanding often prompts the other party to voluntarily agree with your ideas, making agreement effortless.

Lessons Learned from a Hostage Negotiator

Chris’s perspectives span everyday life circumstances like phone calls, negotiations, job interviews, sales conversations, casinos, holidays, conversations with your kids, and many more.

Mindful communication underlies each of these scenarios. The way we communicate shapes how others respond. For instance, if you communicate politely, you’re more likely to receive a pleasant response back, and vice versa.

In our everyday interactions, how mindful are we of our communication styles, body language, and word choice?

If you’ve ever found yourself in the scenarios described above, you likely didn’t communicate the way Chris recommends. To be explicit, I’m not arguing his way is the “perfect” way by any means, but I do think it is interesting to see how he approaches the scenario compared to how we would.

Every interaction is a negotiation, and every action is a conversation. Being mindful of what we discuss, how we discuss it, and where we discuss it can be the difference between life and death (in Chris’s case) or between optimal and suboptimal outcomes in ours.

That’s a wrap on this deep dive.

Drew Jackson

Founder & Writer

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• This Saturday: Weekly roundup of breaking developments across energy, space, venture capital, economics, intellectual property, and philosophy

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This Week I’m Tracking: 12 developments across the sectors shaping our future

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#1: Digantara

Description: Digantara is a space surveillance company.

Why Is This Company Interesting? Digantara recently raised $50M in venture capital funding. Digantara is a space-tech company focused on space situational awareness and orbital intelligence. The company deploys space-based surveillance sensors and analytical software to track satellite traffic, map space debris, and provide collision avoidance and orbital data.

#2: Brinc

Description: Brinc builds drones for emergency response agencies.

Why Is This Company Interesting? Brinc recently raised $125M in venture capital funding. Brinc aims to provide end-to-end public safety drone programs, bundling hardware, software, and services. Over 900 public safety agencies across all 50 states have deployed their solutions. These products are fully compliant and manufactured in the USA.

#3: Astranis

Description: Astranis is a commercial satellite company.

Why Is This Company Interesting? Astranis recently raised $300M in venture capital funding. Astranis is a space startup building microGEO communications satellites. Unlike traditional larger geostationary satellites, Astranis builds small, low-cost satellites dedicated to single geographic regions or customers to deliver high-speed, low-cost broadband internet access to underserved areas.

#4: Focused Energy

Description: Focused Energy is developing laser-based fusion systems.

Why Is This Company Interesting? Focused Energy recently raised $240M in venture capital funding. Focused Energy is a fusion startup that uses high-energy, short-pulse lasers combined with fast ignition target designs. Focused Energy aims to achieve scalable, commercial laser-driven nuclear fusion to supply clean, limitless baseload energy to the grid.

#5: Endurance Energy

Description: Endurance Energy is a startup that pursues undersea geothermal energy.

Why Is This Company Interesting? Endurance Energy recently raised $25M+ in venture capital funding. Endurance Energy is a clean-tech startup building modular, subsea geothermal power plants. Endurance operates near oceanic thermal resources, harnessing offshore geothermal heat to generate continuous, zero-carbon baseload energy without land-use or surface infrastructure constraints.

The New York Times: The Absurd, Unending Quest to Floodproof the New York City Subway

More than 120 years ago, workers built the first portions of the transit system by hand in shallow trenches. This meant that rain never really had to travel deep to cause chaos. Even as construction technology advanced, these problems persisted. As climate change worsens, this problem will only expand over time, with no real solution in sight.

The New York Times: In An Age of Perpetual Climate Disaster Rebuilding is the Wrong Goal

Disaster intervals are collapsing, with the time between one issue and the next shrinking rapidly. One consistently becomes the next, and recovery fails to keep pace. Drought is followed by rainfall, wildfires lead to mudslides, earthquakes are followed by hurricanes, and many more. Nobody really knows what recovery looks like, so what should we do?

The Wall Street Journal: Space Entities Dodge Traffic as Satellites Debris Crowd LEO

There is more man-made material in space than ever before. As the number of satellites in low Earth orbit increases, the chance of collisions that could damage or destroy spacecraft increases. There are over 34k satellites and pieces of debris in low Earth orbit. One major concern is that a major crash or series of crashes could set off a chain reaction, leaving parts of low Earth orbit unusable.

The New York Times: Why Labor’s Share of Wealth is Shrinking

Workers are earning a smaller and smaller share of the economy’s income. It’s now around 53% of income, down from around 65% following WWII. The reasons? Some blame industry consolidation, corporate greed, corporate profits as a share of GDP, and more. Others argue that it’s the influx of AI and other new technologies driving a reduced labor share.

Inside Trade: Governments Must Balance IP Policies for AI

Governments must balance intellectual property protections with support for AI and other emerging technologies. You can protect IP while promoting innovation and AI development, but it’s a complicated balance. Countries need better ways to do this and to be proactive.

Big Think: How to Make Difficult Decisions

Life is about asking difficult questions and accepting that there are no immediate, easy answers. We can gather information, learn from others, and research to the ends of the earth, but often the best answer eludes us. They don’t fit our standard decision-making frameworks. If external reasons run out, we can use internal reasoning to round out the process.

Reddit: What are the strongest philosophical arguments for and against the existence of god?

This is more of a tip-of-the-iceberg guide rather than a truly interesting thought. I stumbled across this post while browsing the internet the other day and thought this list of resources was interesting and could help anyone deep in this question.

For God’s Existence

• The Modal Ontological Argument, formulated by Alvin Plantinga

• The Kalam Cosmological Argument, formulated by William Lane Craig

• The Fine-Tuning Argument, formulated by Robin Collins

• The Design Argument, the best version is by Swinburne in his book cited below

• The Moral Argument, which is a family of arguments that aim to show that objective morality requires God’s existence

• The Inductive Argument, combining many of the arguments for God, by Richard Swinburne. You can read his book The Existence of God, where he formulates and defends the (total) inductive weight of many arguments for God

Against God’s Existence

• The Logical Problem of Evil, formulated by J. L. Mackie

• The Evidential Problem of Evil, formulated by William Rowe

• The Problem of Divine Evil by David Lewis

• The Argument from Divine Hiddenness has several formulations

• Oppy’s Best Argument, which purports to show that atheism is a better theory than theism over a wide range of phenomena

That’s a wrap on this week’s roundup.

Drew Jackson

Founder & Writer

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This Week I’m Tracking: 13 developments across the sectors shaping our future

Reading Time: 5 minutes of curated insights

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#1: Alva Industries

Description: Alva Industries is a producer of ultra-compact electric motors.

Why Is This Company Interesting? Alva Industries recently raised $16M in venture capital funding. Alva Industries is a deep-tech company that manufactures high-performance electric motors. Using its patented FiberPrinting process, Alva crafts lightweight, coreless electric motors for applications across robotics, autonomous systems, defense, and aerospace.

#2: Sizable Energy

Description: Sizable Energy is a pumped hydro electricity startup.

Why Is This Company Interesting? Sizable Energy recently raised $25M in venture capital funding. Sizable Energy is a clean energy startup developing gigawatt-scale, long-duration energy storage systems using subsea pumped hydro technology. By using floating and deep-ocean reservoirs to pump saltwater brine, the platform bypasses traditional land-use constraints and offers resilient grid storage.

#3: Millow

Description: Millow is a producer of alternative meats.

Why Is This Company Interesting? Millow recently raised $2M in venture capital funding. Millow is growing mycelium on oats to produce a low-water, low-emissions meat alternative. It plans to use these funds to expand its capacity and build out its commercial team to launch its minimally processed, two-ingredient mycelium meat in the European foodservice market.

#4: BioScout

Description: BioScout is a developer of sensors that alert farmers to fungal pathogens.

Why Is This Company Interesting? BioScout recently raised $6.75M in venture capital funding. BioScout is an agtech startup providing real-time, automated detection of airborne crop diseases. BioScout combines field-deployed air sensors, robotic microscopy, and computer vision to track airborne fungal spores, giving farmers early warnings and reducing unnecessary chemical spraying.

#5: Chargepoly

Description: Chargepoly is a startup focused on electrifying heavy-duty and commercial vehicle fleets.

Why Is This Company Interesting? Chargepoly recently raised $23M in venture capital funding. Chargepoly is a tech company specializing in ultra-fast, high-power EV charging infrastructure for commercial fleets, electric buses, and heavy-duty trucks. Its intelligent power-dispatching hardware and software balance power distribution to optimize charging costs and efficiency.

NBC News: Why Nuclear Energy is Making a Global Comeback

The United States leads the world in nuclear energy production, representing around 30% of global electricity generation. Globally, governments are turning to nuclear energy as a stable power source amid geopolitical uncertainty, rising electricity demand, and accelerating climate change. Nuclear power stalled after major accidents, but demand has surged recently.

ABC News: Army to Spend $2B to Build Nuclear Microreactors at 5 Bases as US Seeks to Ramp up Nuclear Power

The U.S. Army announced this week that it plans to add nuclear microreactors at 5 military bases as a reliable energy source independent of the commercial electric grid. The Trump administration has provided billions in loans for large nuclear reactors to meet current demand. The Army expects to build and operate more than 20 nuclear microreactors.

The New York Times: Why States Are Cutting Back on Their Climate Goals

After the Trump administration pulled out of the Paris climate agreement, many states passed their own laws to curtail carbon emissions. Most states that set climate goals are not on track to meet them. States that are behind either need to accelerate or abandon them. Unfortunately, some states are beginning to cut back or abandon those goals instead.

The New York Times: Is Your City Prepared for Climate Disaster?

When it comes to the effects of climate change, what matters isn’t just risk, but a place’s ability to withstand it. AlphaGeo, an AI company that analyzes and predicts location risk, ranked the resilience of 72 of the world’s largest cities. A good score was driven by two factors: low physical exposure to a checklist of climate risks and a high adaptation to those risks.

The New York Times: The Roman Telescope Promises a New Era of Cosmic Exploration

In the 1990s, NASA launched its first fleet of observatories, beginning with the Hubble Space Telescope. Now, NASA plans to launch the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, which promises to chart a view of the universe so wide and so deep it would take over half a million TVs to display just one image in full. The gaze is a thousand times faster and at least a hundred times wider than Hubble’s.

Pitchbook: AI Can Help Spot Bad Lettuce. That Doesn’t Make it a Good Business

Despite several outbreaks of foodborne diseases, founders and venture capitalists say that building businesses around detecting outbreaks is chasing a fad. Venture capital often chases flash-in-the-pan businesses. In food safety, investors understand the business is driven by regulatory rather than epidemiological factors, a key distinction that determines where capital flows.

The Guardian: If You’re Just Interested in Answers, You’re Missing Out

Philosophers argue that asking a question can change your mood, and having a questioning mindset can change your life. When you live focused on answers, you crave certainty, which often isn’t present in the world and naturally limits you. Questioning fosters exploration and curiosity and should be our mindset in approaching most, but not all, situations in the world.

Reddit: Corruption of the Soul is the Price for Understanding the World.

When we come into this world, each of us is a naive, basic, unknowing entity, completely oblivious to the world that is around us. Yet, over time, as we keep learning and gaining more experiences and interactions with the world around us, we slowly begin to know, and that innocence fades.

Often, we gain knowledge of the world and see that it is not the sunshine-and-rainbows place we once thought it to be. Unfortunately, corruption of the soul is the price we must pay to understand the world.

If corruption of the soul is the price to pay to understand the world, then faith is the healer of the soul, since there is no true understanding of the world. You cannot prove or, for that matter, disprove the presence of a higher calling for your life—belief is what gives you peace of mind and what teaches you that you don’t need to understand everything in order to appreciate it.

In a way. Innocence and delusion are their own forms of self-preservation, because understanding too much can corrupt your soul and your peace.

I think this is a very unique perspective on modern life and the situations we find ourselves in. What does it cost to learn more about the world, to truly understand it? It may cost everything we have.

That’s a wrap on this week’s roundup.

Drew Jackson

Founder & Writer

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• Next Deep Dive: Lessons Learned from a Hostage Negotiator - September 16th, 2026

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© 2026 Brainwaves. All rights reserved.

Credit Vox

In 2024, I wrote an article analyzing when humans will next be on the Moon. Now it’s time for an updated perspective in 2026.

Reading Time: 12 minutes for full analysis + key takeaways highlighted throughout

Key Question: When will humans next be on the Moon?

My Take: Given current funding cycles, milestones achieved, and projected timelines, I would guess that a Moon landing will be achieved this decade. The arguably more complicated question to answer is who will do it first? China and the United States both have significantly built out programs in pursuit of this goal. Private entities have made significant milestones over the last decade to where they’re now in the conversations, potentially possessing the technology required to make a run at this ambitious goal.

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Let’s dive in.

It’s been over 50 years since Apollo 17 (1972). This was the last time humans touched lunar soil.

In the ~70 years since the Wright Brothers made their historic airplane flight in 1903, humans have managed to get to the Moon multiple times.

Yet, despite all of the technological progress that has been made over the last 50 years, humans haven’t been back to the Moon.

If you haven’t been following all of the news, you’d probably be surprised that there are more countries and companies working towards the Moon right now than at any point in history.

Why?

A few reasons jump out as the main rationales for why humans haven’t been to the Moon yet.

Firstly, and arguably one of the most important points, once the United States made it to the Moon, it ended the global chase to be first. The United States had won, and thus other countries could only be second.

Secondly, many large nations that were interested in landing on the Moon had large funding cuts to their space and defense budgets due to the lack of being first, Cold War dynamics, and other geopolitical elements.

Over the last decade, these factors have been pushed aside. Space infrastructure and development costs have come down exponentially. Technological development has rapidly increased. Private space players are striving and competing to be the first commercial entities to go to the Moon.

However, these haven’t been without their issues. Now, space programs are constantly in tension, with ambitious announcements to drive funding and public interest combined with a track record of failures and repeated delays.

All of this shapes up to an interesting, competitive 2020s Space Race 2.0.

United States: The Opaque Leader

By officially communicated timelines and standards, the United States is projected to be the first back to the Moon.

The Artemis program officially began in 2017, formally establishing its ongoing endeavor to land humans back on the Moon. The goal of the program is to establish a sustainable, long-term lunar presence and lay the technical groundwork for eventual human missions to Mars.

So far, the Artemis program continues to drive towards its ultimate goal, progressing through major milestones along the way.

Artemis I, the first of the Artemis missions, was completed in December 2022 and was an uncrewed lunar orbit test. This was the maiden flight of the massive SLS rocket and Orion spacecraft. Orion traveled 1.4M miles, entered a distant retrograde orbit around the Moon, and tested deep-space radiation protection and the spacecraft’s heat shield during a high-speed re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere.

Artemis II, was competed earlier this year in April 2026 and was a crewed lunar flyby. This was humanity’s historic return to deep space. A four-astronaut crew (Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen) traveled on Orion for a 10-day flight. During the voyage they performed critical life-support checkouts in high Earth orbit before taking a free-return trajectory around the far side of the Moon. The crew traveled 252,706 miles from Earth, breaking the all-time human distance record set by the crew of Apollo 13.

Upcoming are three critical milestones: Artemis III, IV, and V.

Artemis III is expected in late 2027 and will be a crewed Earth orbit rendezvous and lander demo. Rather than a direct moon landing, this mission serves as a checkpoint of critical solutions. The crew will launch on SLS/Orion and perform complex rendezvous, docking, and system tests in low Earth orbit with the commercially produced human landing systems (such as SpaceX’s Starship) and test out the next-generation Axiom space suits.

Artemis IV is projected in early 2028 and will be the first crewed lunar landing since Apollo 17 in 1972. Ahead of the launch, a commercial lander will be pre-staged in lunar orbit. The crew will fly Orion to the Moon, dock with the lander, and two astronauts will descend to the lunar surface near the South Pole for multiple spacewalks before returning to Earth.

And finally, Artemis V is expected in late 2028 and will be a sustained surface exploration and base building initiative. This mission marks the transition to a permanent presence on the Moon. It will be the second crewed landing and begin deploying long-term infrastructure, such as advanced surface power systems and early logistics modules.

There are missions planned for 2029 and beyond, comprising Artemis VI through X, with the focus on creating a robust lunar economy and semi-permanent habitation on the moon. The goal is to build a small space station in lunar orbit to serve as the communication hub, science lab, and short-term habitat for astronauts.

Notably, in recent months, NASA restructured the flight sequence so that Artemis III is no longer the landing mission. Rather, it’s a crewed test flight in low Earth orbit to test docking with SpaceX Starship and Blue Origin Blue Moon lander prototypes.

This is the third major slip in the Artemis landing timeline, which, if the trend continues, could lead to missing the entire milestone of reaching the Moon first again.

China: The New Space Contender

China’s lunar ambitions are organized under the Chinese Lunar Exploration Program, widely known as the Chang’e project. While NASA’s Artemis program relies on massive, single-rocket launches, China has executed a highly methodical step-by-step strategy over the last two decades.

China’s early phases focused on mastering orbital mechanics and perfecting soft landings on the lunar surface.

• Chang’e 1 & 2 (2007 and 2010) created highly detailed 3D maps of the Moon’s surface to scout future landing sites

• Chang’e 3 in 2013 marked China’s first robotic soft-landing on the Moon, deploying the Yutu-1 rover

• Chang’e 4 in 2019 was a world first, successfully landing a spacecraft on the far side of the Moon. In addition, China deployed the Queqiao satellite to bounce signals back to Earth. In 2026, the Yutu-2 rover is still operational, making it the longest-surviving rover on the Moon.

More recently, China has been focused on sample returns, shifting the focus to complex, multi-stage robotic operations explicitly designed to test the mechanics needed for human flight.

In 2020, Chang’e 5 landed on the near-side of the Moon, drilled 2 meters into the surface, and returned 1.73 kg of young lunar rocks to Earth. This made China the third nation to successfully retrieve lunar samples.

In 2024, Chang’e 6 accomplished another world first. The probe successfully landed in the South Pole on the far side of the Moon, scooping up pristine subsurface samples, launched back into lunar orbit, and safely returned them to Earth.

Currently, there are two major upcoming missions planned, focused on evaluating resources to prepare for infrastructure building.

Chang’e 7, projected for late 2026, will be a highly complex mission to launch toward the lunar South Pole. It will carry an orbiter, a lander, a rover, and a specialized mini-flying hopper designed to fly into permanently shadowed craters to physically hunt for water ice.

Then in 2028, Chang’e 8 will test key technologies for utilizing local materials. It will experiment with 3D printing bricks out of lunar soil to see if structures can be built directly on the Moon.

Ultimately, China’s Manned Space Agency is rapidly scaling up hardware to land two astronauts on the Moon by 2030.

China’s approach is much slower but steadier than the US’s more start-stop political funding cycles. If, as many young kids learned, you’ve heard the story of the tortoise and the hare, slow but steady may win the race.

Long-Term Play for India Space Programs

In terms of a near-term Moon landing, India is more of a long-term aspirant.

Historically, India’s initial strategy relied on high-resolution mapping and testing the waters to establish a foundational baseline for global lunar science.

India’s first deep-space mission in 2008, Chandrayaan-1, carried the Moon Impact Probe, which crashed into the southern polar region to collect data. This led to the definitive presence of water molecules (ice) in the lunar soil.

Over a decade later, in 2019, Chandrayaan-2 was an orbiter, the Vikram lander, and the Pragyan rover. The orbiter was a massive success and continues to provide some of the highest-resolution radar and optical imagery of the Moon today. Unfortunately, a software glitch in the final minutes of descent caused the lander to crash.

Most recently, in 2023, the Chandrayaan-3 became the first spacecraft to land on the rugged lunar South Pole region, additionally marking India as the fourth nation overall to achieve a soft moon landing.

Upcoming is the Chandrayaan-4 mission in 2027 or 2028, using a two-launch, split-modular architecture to carry the modules and scoop up 3 kg of lunar soil. In 2029 or later, Chandrayaan-5 will be a collaboration with Japan to target the permanently shadowed region at the South Pole, trying to use a heavy rover to physically quantify the abundance of water ice.

Encouraged by the recent milestones achieved, the Indian government has formally expanded its long-term roadmap. It has established initiatives to construct the Bharatiya Antariksha Station, India’s own modular space station in low Earth orbit.

As it currently stands, India is targeting human boots on the Moon in the 2040s, leveraging the upcoming Gaganyaan human spaceflight program.

Japanese Engineering Showcased in Space

Japan’s lunar program, directed by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), is characterized by extreme precision, technical mastery, and large commercial-government partnerships (notably with Toyota).

Rather than building massive rockets entirely alone, Japan has positioned itself as a core partner to international efforts like NASA’s Artemis program, trading world-class engineering for seats on human flights.

Japan has an extensive history with space. In 1990, Japan’s first lunar probe, the Hiten, made them the third nation to send a spacecraft to the Moon. It tested highly complex, fuel-saving gravitational slingshot trajectories.

Then in 2007, the Japanese built one of the most sophisticated lunar orbiters to date, utilizing three distinct spacecraft to construct highly precise topographical and magnetic field maps of the Moon, while capturing the iconic high-definition “Earthrise” videos.

In 2024, Japan made history by becoming the fifth country to softly land on the Moon. The Smart Lander for Investigating Moon’s primary mission was to test a revolutionary vision navigation system, achieving precise landing within 55 meters of its target.

On the horizon is two major initiatives. The LUPEX (lunar polar exploration) mission is projected in 2027 or 2028 which is a joint partnership between JAXA and India’s ISRO. Japan is providing the heavy exploration -*rover and the primary launch vehicle. The goal of this mission is to profile the polar ice to see if life can be supported.

Similarly, Japan is tied to NASA’s Artemis program, specifically through the Toyota Lunar Cruiser. Unlike the open buggy driven during the Apollo missions, it’s a pressurized lunar rover with next-generation hydrogen fuel cell technology. It will allow two astronauts to drive over 10,000 miles or 30-45 days continuously.

In return for this infrastructure, two Japanese astronauts will land on the lunar surface during future Artemis missions, which could make a JAXA explorer the first non-American human to set foot on the Moon.

Russia’s Long-Lived But Underwhelming Space Aspirations

Russia’s space aspirations largely peaked during the Space Race 1.0. Russia was once the Moon-race pioneer via the Luna program, putting the first human in space, but its independent lunar ambitions have stalled since.

The current Luna-Glob program launched as a successor to Soviet-era Luna missions. In 2023, the Luna 25 mission was Russia’s first domestic lunar attempt in nearly 47 years. The goal was to land near a crater in the south polar region to test landing technologies and analyze soil composition. The spaceship entered lunar orbit successfully, but an improper thruster burn caused the spacecraft to crash into the lunar system. This mission truly underscored Russia’s decline in capability.

Now, the next Luna mission, 26, is expected in 2028, with the goal of placing the orbiter in a polar orbit to conduct remote sensing, map water ice distributions, measure cosmic radiation, and solar wind interactions.

Subsequent missions, 27, 28, and 29, will continue surface explorations, develop satellite communications technology, and collect soil samples.

Now, Russia’s future lunar involvement is mostly as a partner in China’s ILRS project rather than an independent effort.

Sanctions, funding constraints, and the Ukraine war have all strained Russia’s deep-space ambitions.

Additional Commercial Entrants Into The Space Market

The landscape of Moon and outer space exploration has undergone a fundamental shift over the past few decades. Commercial companies are no longer just building components for government agencies; they are acting as prime operators providing end-to-end delivery, surface communications, and landing systems.

Much of this activity is anchored by NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services initiative, which is a fixed-price contract model that leverages private industry to establish a steady, low-cost pipeline to the Moon ahead of crewed Artemis missions.

Intuitive Machines is a leading commercial operator in the lunar domain, using its landers to establish communications and delivery routes near the lunar south pole. IM-1 made history in 2024 as the first commercial spacecraft to perform a soft landing on the Moon. Future missions target high-value scientific regions and expanding lunar orbital relay services.

Firefly Aerospace entered the market with its Blue Ghost lander series. In 2025, Blue Ghost Mission 1 executed a fully successful touchdown and surface operation campaign on the Moon. Future missions include targeting the far side of the Moon for landing.

SpaceX’s lunar program is focused on the Starship Human Landing System under a contract with NASA to land the first crewed Artemis missions on the surface in 2028. SpaceX is currently executing uncrewed flight tests to demonstrate propellant transfer in Low Earth Orbit. SpaceX is also designing uncrewed cargo Starship variants capable of delivering up to 100 metric tons of heavy equipment and infrastructure directly to the Moon’s surface.

Blue Origin is developing both robotic and cargo landers and a crewed lander for later Artemis flights. Blue Origin is the second, competing HLS provider to SpaceX, providing redundant access to the Moon. They are expected to execute their Moon landing for Artemis V in 2028-2029.

ispace is designing small-to-medium landers aimed at payload transit, micro-rover development, and international commercial partnerships. Early flight demonstrations in 2025 provided critical operational data for autonomous high-altitude braking and landing algorithms. Next missions are developed to deliver commercial and agency payloads to complex terrain, including far-side regions.

As of 2026, When Will Humans Actually Be Back on the Moon?

In 2024, the projected first to the Moon was the United States via the Artemis program.

In 2026, this trend continues, although the difference between the United States and its competition has shortened significantly.

Now, as the United States program continues to push timelines from 2027 to 2028 and other countries and private organizations make significant milestones, including the recent Chinese catch of the reusable rocket, the race isn’t able to be called as easily.

Some analysts think China could plausibly beat the US given its more consistent funding and schedule discipline.

What are the chances countries or private entities can accelerate their timelines? What if someone decides to simply take a shot, even if they aren’t fully prepared or tested, simply to try to become the first?

As it currently stands, humans will be back on the Moon in the next two years. Will it be sooner? Time will tell.

Those familiar with the aerospace, defense, and space market will know that timelines and milestones often change, usually pushing out further and further. Virtually every announced date so far has slipped, so healthy skepticism is warranted even as the underling momentum is real.

Keep your eyes and ears peeled, as the trip to the Moon will be made soon here, hopefully successfully in a major world first (in over 50 years).

That’s a wrap on this deep dive.

Drew Jackson

Founder & Writer

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• Next Deep Dive: Lessons Learned from a Hostage Negotiator - September 16th, 2026

• This Saturday: Weekly roundup of breaking developments across energy, space, venture capital, economics, intellectual property, and philosophy

• Previous Editions: View the archive here

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This Week I’m Tracking: 13 developments across the sectors shaping our future

Reading Time: 5 minutes of curated insights

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Let’s dive in.

#1: AGent Energy

Description: AGent Energy integrates backup generators into the grid during emergencies.

Why Is This Company Interesting? AGent Energy recently raised $11M in seed funding. AGent is an energy technology platform that turns idle commercial and industrial backup generators into revenue generators for businesses. By remotely managing and monetizing underutilized power generation, AGent provides demand-response services to strengthen power grid reliability during peak and emergency conditions.

#2: Naked Energy

Description: Naked Energy is a solar thermal developer for businesses.

Why Is This Company Interesting? Naked Energy recently raised $10.4M in venture capital funding. Naked Energy specializes in solar thermal and hybrid photovoltaic-thermal energy collectors. Its modular, vacuum-tube solar systems decarbonize heat and power for commercial and industrial buildings while using significantly less roof space than traditional solar installations.

#3: Venus Aerospace

Description: Venus Aerospace is a developer of rocket engines for hypersonic flight.

Why Is This Company Interesting? Venus Aerospace recently raised $91M in venture capital funding. Venus is developing hypersonic transportation systems and defense technologies. Known for its rotating detonation rocket engine, Venus aims to enable ultra-high-speed commercial flight and advanced space launch and defense capabilities.

#4: Hephae Energy Technology

Description: Hephae Energy Technology is a geothermal drilling startup.

Why Is This Company Interesting? Hephae Energy Technology recently raised $17.8M in venture capital funding. Hephae is developing ultra-high-temperature electronics and sensors for extreme environments. The company has developed specialized drilling, measurement, and logging tools that withstand temperatures exceeding 200 Celsius to accelerate deep geothermal energy extraction.

#5: Flexell Space

Description: Flexell Space is a developer of space solar solutions.

Why Is This Company Interesting? Flexell Space recently raised $20M in venture capital funding. Flexell Space is manufacturing flexible, ultra-lightweight solar cells for orbit. They use flexible solar cell technology to power satellites, rovers, and space infrastructure, with higher power-to-weight ratios than current market solutions.

The New York Times: Climate Change Raises Risk of Disasters Like Nepal Floods

This week there was deadly flash flooding in Nepal and Tibet. Scientists are still determining the exact cause of this week’s catastrophe. Climate change is heating up the world and increasing the risk of disasters. As humans warm the planet by burning fossil fuels, mountains are losing their permafrost, a layer that has remained frozen for thousands of years. This destabilizes the foundation beneath glaciers, leading to collapses.

The New York Times: This Year’s Record-Breaking El Niño in 3 Charts

This year’s El Niño is already very intense, and it’s just the start. Scientists expect that by December, this series of events may be the strongest in the last 80 years. This could alter weather patterns across the planet, with projections estimating that 49 million people will be driven into hunger as a result. This article highlights three charts and data sets that show the true power we’re facing.

Reuters: The Little Reactors that Could? How SMRs Became Nuclear’s Best Bet

As the world needs more clean, reliable sources of electricity, small modular nuclear reactors are becoming one of the favorite underdogs, potentially capable of disrupting the entire sector once they reach scale. The technology remains largely unproven commercially, yet market tailwinds are propelling developers toward what may be the best opportunity in nuclear energy in recent history.

Smithsonian Magazine: A Startup Just Got Approval to Test Beaming Sunlight to Earth. Here’s Why Experts Are Worried

Reflect Orbital is a company aiming to beam sunlight from space to Earth using a fleet of mirrored satellites. The goal is to improve the source of sunlight to power solar energy on Earth. Reflect Orbital wants to extend solar panels’ working hours into the nighttime. They recently received FCC approval to launch the first test satellite, but scientists are worried about the sunlight’s effects on wildlife, research, and human health.

Pitchbook: VCs Are Finding Their Best Returns Outside the Coasts

VC investment has traditionally stayed concentrated on the coasts; however, those investments have performed much more moderately. Startups in smaller hubs have been much more lucrative this year on a MOIC basis. VCs are increasingly looking outside of major metro areas for the next generation of founders.

The New York Times: This Is Why People Hate the Government

This economist describes the “time tax”: the burden of work (emotional, logistical, knowledge, etc.) that goes into any paperwork or bureaucratic process where you are the end user. Many government forms aren’t purposeful; they’re designed more to make people feel good about themselves and the government. Additionally, they’re one of the ways that we construct class—segmenting who can and who can’t.

IP Watchdog: How Patent Filings Are Now the World’s Largest Open-Source Intelligence Database

For the last 200 years, investors have publicly disclosed their inventions in exchange for a limited-time monopoly. Now, governments, intelligence agencies, and, most importantly, AI systems mine patent filings. Patent databases have become one of the world’s richest sources of open-source technology intelligence. At this point, does patent disclosure, given where AI is today, fundamentally change its strategic value?

Philosophy Break: Simone de Beauvoir: the Best Romantic Partners Celebrate Each Other’s Freedom

One of Simone de Beauvoir’s main philosophies is “To will oneself free is also to will others free.”

This is what Beauvoir thinks authentic love will look like. If we value our own freedom, then we must value the freedom of others. She believes an authentically loving relationship involves the meeting and continuation of two individual freedoms, governed by reciprocity, free choice, and respect.

In other words, love is not about forever committing to pre-given roles: the best romantic relationships consist in mutual projects of growth and change.

I’m not saying this is by any means the best or only statement on love in the universe. I think it’s a very interesting one, one that we should think more about—how love is a dynamic process that enables all to have freedom.

That’s a wrap on this week’s roundup.

Drew Jackson

Founder & Writer

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Keep Exploring

• Next Deep Dive: When Will Humans Next Be On the Moon? - September 2nd, 2026

• Previous Editions: View the archive here

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© 2026 Brainwaves. All rights reserved.

I built Brainwaves on a promise of radical transparency, and Q3 really put that to the test. It wasn’t all wins and milestones—there are always ups and downs. In this update, I’m pulling back the curtain on the hard lessons we’ve learned, the numbers we’ve hit (and missed), and the roadmap guiding us through the rest of Year 3.

A Key Insight into Producing Content: Prioritization

There’s never enough time for everything you could possibly want to do in your life. I’d love to run a bakery, take up art, remodel a few homes, and do a multitude of other opportunities.

How do you manage all of these ambitions at once? Prioritization is key.

In every 24 hours, what are the highest-importance activities that you could do? If you compare what you do each day to what the highest-importance things were that day, often those aren’t always the same thing.

When it comes to newsletter writing, where should it sit in your priority stack? This is a difficult question. The key to good newsletter writing is taking time away from the writing to compose your thoughts, see parts of the world, and come to the pieces with new perspectives.

But you also need to keep up your backlog and pipeline, and keep building your brand outside your content (social media, interviews, websites, etc.).

In my life, this means some nights and a lot of the weekend are devoted to my newsletter. For you, this could be a 9-5 gig, where you spend every waking hour on the newsletter. Or it could be much more of a part-time venture where you occasionally spend time on it.

If it brings you happiness and joy, it should probably be prioritized in your life. If it feels more like work, maybe it shouldn’t eat up every waking hour you have.

Thanks for listening to my short monologue, and with that, let’s get into the quarterly update.

Brainwaves: What Happened This Quarter?

This quarter, I experimented more with shorter-form content (<2,500 words). They’re much easier to write on my side, and I like emphasizing the point and keeping the punchiness of each topic without needlessly droning on for length.

I’ll keep experimenting with these content formats as I continue to see how they perform and which you guys like better. To everyone who’s followed this content journey so far, thank you, and I hope you keep enjoying the different depths of content.

There were some good articles released this quarter, and I’m looking forward to what’s coming. Hopefully, you caught each one; if not, take a peek below (I highly recommend We Love Lying Ourselves and The Generation That Can Only Fail Upwards if you’re looking for a nice short read).

Articles You May Have Missed From This Quarter:

• Special Edition: Interview with Joe Biel - An interview with the owner of Microcosm Publishing, discussing the publishing industry

• The High Cost of Indispensable People - A guide on tips to survive the transition of an indispensable team member

• Fluctuat Nec Mergitur - A long-form deep dive into Futures Thinking series tenet #8

• The Generation That Can Only Fail Upwards - A modern wealth-based phenomenon preventing the young from succeeding

• Real Options - My guest post on Innovate, Disrupt, or Die in October 2025

• We Love Lying to Ourselves - Self-deception as a coping mechanism

• Carrots, Sticks, and Kilowatts - Dissecting the incentive structure behind the move to clean energy

The Saturday Morning Newsletter: What Happened This Quarter?

This quarter has continued the recent streak of busyness, where the newsletter is fit in wherever possible (leading to some late nights and early mornings). I’m super excited that you keep reading it each week and stay up to date on current events - only more to come in the future!

Articles You May Have Missed:

• The Saturday Morning Newsletter #92: Living in the Wilderness, Deepfake Laws, and NASA Buying Two Cars for the Moon

• The Saturday Morning Newsletter #93: Bias in Every Decision, 3 Summer Reading Books, and Why Groceries Are So Expensive

• The Saturday Morning Newsletter #94: What To Do About Children, El Nino Is Here, and Growing Insects for Animal Nutrition

• The Saturday Morning Newsletter #95: Missing Your Childhood or the Future You Imagined, Space Permanently Changes the Human Body, and The Secrets of the Turf Master

• The Saturday Morning Newsletter #96: How to Become a Likable Person, European Heat Waves, and Robotics Servicing Satellites in Orbit

• The Saturday Morning Newsletter #97: The Value of Freedom, Grocery Price Emergency in America, and Tracking Dangerous Heat in the U.S.

• The Saturday Morning Newsletter #98: Best Mental Health Advice, America’s Inventions, and What We Can Learn From Nordic Happiness

• The Saturday Morning Newsletter #99: Books & Life Smarts, China’s Successful Rocket Launch, and How Companies Have Abandoned Climate Goals

• The Saturday Morning Newsletter #100: 100th Edition, Trump’s Plan for Science, and Fin-Based Renewable Tidal Energy

• The Saturday Morning Newsletter #101: Genuinely Uncommon Ideas, Thinking For Yourself Not AI, and Destroying Books

• The Saturday Morning Newsletter #102: What Children Owe Their Parents, Saving Endangered Species, and Adapting to the New Wildfire Age

• The Saturday Morning Newsletter #103: Evolutionary Mismatch, Federal Cuts for Wildfire Fighters, and Developing New Crop Varieties

• The Saturday Morning Newsletter #104: The Decline of Genuine Connection, Obesity Investing, and Smart Weather Balloons

Brainwaves: By The Numbers

This quarter saw some pretty massive growth, going from 309 to 379 subscribers. I’m so glad to have beaten our goal this quarter, and I’m hoping it’s only good momentum to come. I have several ideas to keep this positive trend going, and I hope you’ll see a few of them come down the pipeline. Ultimately, having more subscribers increases the likelihood that someone benefits from my content each week, which is my ultimate goal.

After a breakout performance last quarter with some very large articles, this quarter has been more muted, with lower views and open rates. I’m still trying to figure out some behind-the-scenes variables with SEO and the website, which hasn’t driven as many views this quarter as it has historically (I’m thinking some indexing issues), so hopefully that will be sorted out this quarter. Thank you to the consistent readers each week who push the numbers up. It’s always great to see what content resonates the most.

The Saturday Morning Newsletter is incredibly consistent with its performance. However, if you throw a trend line on the newsletter views and open rate graphs, the trend isn’t pretty. From other newsletters I subscribe to like this, it’s easy to let them keep hitting your inbox without really reading them, just always having the intention to read them at some later date. Hopefully, this trend reverses this quarter, with some standout articles gaining traction.

We’ve been revamping the website for optimal performance this quarter and last, and the results show up in the numbers. My favorite metric is scroll depth, which is best in class for newsletters, and one of my goals is to keep producing content people want to view and keep reading in depth.

Last Quarter Goal Execution

1) Dive into my unique brainwaves each day, write about them, and publish my in-progress views each week, hopefully making a positive impact on someone’s life each week

Success.

As I’ve already touched on, this quarter has been a very exciting time for learning, discovery, and growth. I can’t wait to share what I’ve learned in the upcoming quarters.

2) Curate an experience that readers enjoy, one that makes them want to return for more

Success.

I think readers enjoyed the experience this quarter - I see more of you liking posts than we’ve had historically, which I appreciate. Obviously, there is always room for improvement, but hopefully I’m doing a good job overall.

3) Subscriber Goal In 3 Months: 375

Success.

Readers, I greatly appreciate all of the work you have put in this quarter sharing the newsletter with friends, colleagues, and family. As you continue to enjoy it, please keep sharing it with those you think would value these insights. It makes me happy to see the platform keep growing and evolving, touching the lives of more and more people along the way.

4) Continue building on our social media success

Success (ish).

Social media performance has been similar this quarter to prior quarters, with no measurable increase in performance through scale or increased learnings. I’m glad performance hasn’t meaningfully decreased, but I think we can stay intentional this quarter about where we spend our efforts.

5) Drive subscribers through the referral program

Fail.

Three quarters ago, I began the referral program (here). It hasn’t caught on yet. So far, I’ve mainly pursued it through small initiatives to drive traffic.

I’m not sure whether I should double down or cut my losses for now. I’ll keep thinking about this over the next bit to see what I want to do.

6) Read more books associated with subjects I’m interested in

Success.

I read a few books this quarter that relate to the topics discussed in the newsletter, and I’m excited to incorporate these insights and perspectives into upcoming articles. I hope to continue having time here to broaden my perspective and share interesting finds with you.

Goals For This Quarter

1) Dive into my unique brainwaves each day, write about them, and publish my in-progress views each week, hopefully making a positive impact on someone’s life each week

This is the first and most important goal of this platform, and the reason I started this journey. I view this platform as a great excuse to share my unique perspectives on some of my favorite topics, trying to understand and continually refine my viewpoint on each subject.

I subscribe to the mantra that you learn more about a subject when you have to teach someone else. Through the Brainwaves platform, I’ve created an artificial obligation to produce content each week, which means I’m carving out time in my schedule to learn about new topics I might not have prioritized before.

This platform also allows me to publish my in-progress views on each subject I learn about each week. This is a great opportunity to get feedback from readers who may know more about these subjects than I do or have a unique viewpoint I haven’t considered.

This entire process is driven by the goal of making a positive impact on someone’s life each week.

2) Curate an experience that readers enjoy, one that makes them want to return for more

The goal of this platform is to create an experience readers enjoy so much that they keep coming back each week for more and more content. Now, that’s an incredibly lofty goal, but one I continue to strive towards each week.

I hope you enjoy the content each and every week!

3) Subscriber Goal In 3 Months: 480

I hate asking people for help, so I normally keep my “ask” to share/subscribe to this publication very short, and usually, most people just brush right past it.

Today, I’m putting it front and center.

If you enjoy and/or get any value from the Brainwaves platform, help me get to 480 subscribers by the end of November by doing any of the following:

• Forward this email to friends and tell them to subscribe,

• Share on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook with a short note,

• Share within your existing community or your company Slack channel.

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Getting to 480 people shouldn’t be hard. To put it into perspective, with 379 of you currently subscribed, we just need a referral rate of 0.26 (~1 in 4 people sharing) to reach 480. I’d really appreciate it if you could take a couple of minutes to help me broaden this platform’s reach and impact.

To reiterate, the goal of this platform is not to become famous or generate an income stream; it is purely to educate people like you about critical factors in our future. So, the goal of increasing subscribers is not to grow larger (although that is a nice economies-of-scale byproduct); it is simply to reach a broader audience consistently, and an audience that I will hopefully have a positive impact on every single week.

In addition, more subscribers mean more views and a greater likelihood that one of my readers knows more about a subject than I do, creating more opportunities for me to learn and grow through this process.

4) Expand my backlog of articles

I’ve not had as much time as I’ve wished lately to spend on writing long-form bi-weekly newsletter articles. My backlog is in a fine spot, but I think it can be much better.

I’ll keep making concerted efforts to work through my backlog this quarter, which will hopefully translate into better, more structured articles in the quarters to come.

I think it’s ambitious, but well within reach.

5) Read more books associated with subjects I’m interested in

I’ve started reading books on subjects that interest me, and they’ve definitely helped round out my thinking, offer new perspectives, and deepen my knowledge of the niche subsegments within each sector.

I’ve already got some exciting books lined up for some segments I’m interested in. Hopefully, you’ll get to see a couple of insights here and there.

Thank You + Bonus Content

Thank you for sticking around. For anyone new here: thank you too! I hope you’ve enjoyed your time here and will keep coming back for more content each week.

I’m excited to see what happens this next quarter. This passion project keeps growing and developing, and it astounds me every day. Like always, this is purely for fun and learning, and so far it’s been great.

As a little thank you, here’s a little hint at what’s coming down the pipeline:

Moon Landings?

Hostage Negotiators?

Adding to 1000s of Articles?

….and more

With that, thank you again for your support! As is customary, here’s a Kardashian + friends quote to brighten your week:

“Being a mom is what life is about. I hope people realize what the priorities in life should be and know not everything has to be perfect.”

- Kourtney Kardashian

Thank you again for another great quarter!

Drew Jackson

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This Week I’m Tracking: 14 developments across the sectors shaping our future

Reading Time: 5 minutes of curated insights

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#1: InsectBiotech

Description: InsectBiotech is a startup using fly larvae to convert agricultural byproducts.

Why Is This Company Interesting? InsectBiotech recently raised $7.2M in venture capital funding. InsectBiotech is a circular bioeconomy startup that uses fly larvae to process agricultural waste, specifically olive pomace and brewery byproducts. InsectBiotech converts these low-value byproducts into sustainable protein meal for animal feed, organic fertilizer, and biodiesel oils.

#2: Mitti Labs

Description: Mitti Labs is reducing methane emissions from rice farming.

Why Is This Company Interesting? Mitti Labs recently raised $9.5M in venture capital funding. Mitti Labs is a climate-tech company leveraging satellite data and AI to transform rice farming. Mitti Labs helps smallholder farms adopt sustainable agricultural techniques that reduce methane emissions and water usage, generating carbon credits for corporate sustainability programs.

#3: Neuraspace

Description: Neuraspace is a space domain awareness and traffic management platform.

Why Is This Company Interesting? Neuraspace recently raised $15.6M in venture capital funding. Neuraspace is a space-tech company building AI and machine learning software for space traffic management. The platform tracks orbital debris, predicts collision risks, and provides satellite operators with automated maneuver suggestions to prevent costly in-space accidents.

#4: WindBorne Systems

Description: WindBorne Systems is a developer of smart weather balloons.

Why Is This Company Interesting? WindBorne Systems recently raised $37M in venture capital funding. WindBorne Systems is a weather intelligence company deploying autonomous, long-duration smart microballoons. WindBorne collects atmospheric data from regions to power high-resolution planetary weather models and improve extreme weather predictions.

#5: Plantible Foods

Description: Plantible Foods is a plant-based protein producer.

Why Is This Company Interesting? Plantible Foods recently raised $10M in venture capital funding. Plantible Foods is a B2B food technology company cultivating duckweed. Plantible extracts a functional plant protein called Rubi, which exceeds animal proteins in binding, emulsifying, and gelation capabilities for food and cosmetic applications.

Reuters: Solar Industry Grapples with Growing Waste Stream

As solar continues to grow exponentially as a share of global energy, the world doesn’t have a complete plan for the waste. What happens to the panels when they break? What happens when solar panels are replaced with newer technology? Solar panels contain valuable materials that can be recycled, but many parts can’t. Where do they go?

Oil Price: Americans’ $4B Wind Retreat Is a Bet on Permanently Cheap Gas

The United States has committed around $4B to reimburse companies for abandoning offshore-wind leases, directing future capital to oil and natural-gas projects instead. Natural gas already supplies around 40% of US electricity. Increasing this concentration leaves consumers, businesses, and the country more exposed to fuel-price volatility, as seen during the Iran War.

The New York Times: The Gulf Oil Shock is Pushing EV Sales to New Heights Globally

Electric car sales are on track to hit record highs this year, with 29% of all new cars purchased worldwide expected to be either purely battery-powered models or plug-in hybrids. The recent sales boom was unexpected. The US war with Iran caused oil and gas prices to spike, leading to a frenzy of electric car sales in unexpected corners of the globe.

The New York Times: Nation’s Largest Reservoirs Are Drying Up

Lake Powell and Lake Mead are drying up. This is creating cascade effects where the Colorado River has less flow, restricting water and electricity for millions of people. These are essential water sources for cities and farms across Arizona, Nevada, and Southern California. Shrinking reservoirs result from record-low snowpack this winter, a byproduct of climate change.

The New York Times: The Golden Age of Space Transportation

The Trump Administration released a space policy aimed at increasing the number of rockets going up to space and back down. The goal is more than 1,000 rocket launches and spacecraft re-entries per year by 2030. This incredible goal puts heavy emphasis on developing additional launch and landing sites.

Pitchbook: Obesity Investing’s Way Forward

Obesity drugs have created a massive market through a proven blueprint with blockbuster GLP-1s. Pitchbook mapped hundreds of clinical-stage obesity programs across development stages and biological mechanisms. This field is rapidly developing, although providers need to show differentiation and true efficacy to survive.

The New York Times: The Next China Shock is Here

China continues to dominate many advanced manufacturing sectors, from electric vehicles to batteries to solar panels to AI software. China is at the frontier, and that will transform geopolitics much like its large export phase. Some are calling this the “China Shock 2.0.”

Timberjay: A Possible Path to Hope and Tranquility

Humans continually lay the groundwork for future generations throughout all of history. However, man’s curiosity, relentlessness, and inventiveness will lead them into deep trouble. These traits will also enable him to bounce back. Do what you can to bring lightness and tranquility into your life.

Reddit: The Decline of Genuinely Deep Connections is Scaring Me

Today, connections are instant. You can easily talk with, see posts from, and communicate with people across the globe at the blink of an eye.

In many ways, this has been a positive trend, especially for those who are isolated and lonely. People can find more people like them, like-minded communities, and people who are on their wavelength more easily.

On the flip side, this has made many people cold and emotionless. Because connections can be made so easily and quickly, it’s also incredibly easy to throw them away on a whim because you know how easy it is to make another when needed.

People are simply being used more and more. People want friendships but don’t want to be friends.

This is a reminder to continue pursuing the genuine relationships in your life. People in your life matter; keep them around.

That’s a wrap on this week’s roundup.

Drew Jackson

Founder & Writer

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Credit Southern Cross

Carrots and sticks compel governments, businesses, and consumers to transition to clean energy, but is the current system enough?

Reading Time: 12 minutes for full analysis + key takeaways highlighted throughout

Key Question: How are people incentivized to transition to clean energy?

My Take: Transitioning to clean energy is driven by a powerful mix of carrots (positive incentives such as tax breaks and cost savings) and sticks (negative incentives such as carbon taxes and reputational risk). Often, the sticks are more powerful than the carrots, but this varies by sector.

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Let’s dive in.

As solar, wind, geothermal, and other clean energy sources entered the mainstream in the early 2000s and gained momentum in the 2010s, the main push was to “save the environment.” Major news networks consistently ran studies showing how fossil fuels were destroying our planet and that it was everyone’s responsibility to make a change. For example, a 2010 article by NASA concluded with the following:

Ultimately, global warming will impact life on Earth in many ways, but the extent of the change is largely up to us. Scientists have shown that human emissions of greenhouse gases are pushing global temperatures up, and many aspects of climate are responding to the warming in the way that scientists predicted they would. This offers hope. Since people are causing global warming, people can mitigate global warming, if they act in time. Greenhouse gases are long-lived, so the planet will continue to warm and changes will continue to happen far into the future, but the degree to which global warming changes life on Earth depends on our decisions now.

Consumers were pushed to install solar panels on their homes, switch to electric vehicles, and recycle every last piece of plastic, paper, glass, and metal products. Consumers pushed businesses to adopt clean energy, recycling, and green sourcing processes. Governments pushed consumers and businesses to change, often driven by scientific pressure, geopolitical concerns, and international agreements.

Why should they change? At the most basic level: for the greater good—the survival of all, the thriving of the forests, the clean air, the environmental ramifications.

For some, that was enough incentive to change their behavior. For many others, however, they needed more incentives.

Now in 2026, the clean energy transition is no longer just an environmental crusade—it’s evolved into an economic and geopolitical chess match.

National Security & Economic Prosperity

Arguably, the entities most affected by the clean energy transition (or lack thereof) are countries.

For nations, the clean energy transition often boils down to creating domestic energy sources, which is becoming increasingly critical to national security and economic dominance.

This is one of the most important incentives driving the clean energy transition. As the recent closure of the Strait of Hormuz showed, many countries remain heavily dependent on fossil fuels and can be crippled by supply cutoffs due to geopolitical issues.

Thus, in these scenarios, energy security from domestic sources is crucial—whether from clean sources, domestic fossil fuel supplies, nuclear energy, or other domestic energy sources. In other words, this solution isn’t entirely proprietary to clean energy; it applies to any energy source that can be supplied domestically. Many countries lack domestic supplies of many fossil fuels or other energy sources, but almost all have sun and wind to leverage.

Credit MacroTrends

As we’ve seen through the Iran war conflict, the price of a barrel of oil (shown in the graph above) has risen dramatically, creating tension in countries that lack true energy independence through supply chain issues and price spikes.

Beyond national security concerns, building infrastructure for new energy sources creates massive job growth in manufacturing, logistics, infrastructure, and technology development. This keeps funding in-country, bolsters the energy grid, and provides income for families across the region.

For example, the Department of Energy in 2024 cited that jobs in the clean energy sector grew at more than twice the rate of overall U.S. employment. Jobs in clean energy grew by 4.2%, more than twice the overall economy’s job growth rate of 2.0%.

On the flip side, countries have been forced to transition to clean energy because they face heavy tariffs or potential trade penalties from trading partners if they don’t decarbonize domestic goods.

And, most importantly, countries and their citizens must pay ever-increasing bills for the destruction caused by extreme weather events. The National Centers for Environmental Information report that since 1980, there have been 403 weather events with over $1B in losses in the United States, averaging 9 events per year, with the average over the last 5 years at an astonishing 23.

This demonstrates a worrying trend: unmitigated climate effects are causing disproportionate harm compared to the costs of mitigation. Governments must drive and even impose change at a national level to have any true effect; simply waiting for individuals and businesses to change will not create the urgency necessary to succeed and prevent further impacts.

ESG & Consumer Preferences

Over the last decade, a new term has emerged in business: “ESG.” As I wrote two years ago, consumers, employees, and regulators are increasingly demanding that companies be good stewards of natural and social capital and have the governance in place to support these efforts.

In many ways, sustainability is now an unofficial fiduciary duty.

Some of the most important economic minds have weighed in on this topic over time, most notably Nobel laureate Milton Friedman. In Friedman’s viewpoint, a corporation’s sole responsibility is to increase profits for its shareholders. Thus, using funds for social causes or efforts unrelated to profitability is a reckless, negligent act for a manager and effectively amounts to spending other people’s money without their consent. Why should corporate executives be the ones to decide what is socially responsible? Instead, if profit is maximized, each shareholder will have more money to give to these causes, potentially providing a larger total benefit to the “best” causes.

In contrast, many modern economists argue that corporations cannot operate in a vacuum and must account for all stakeholders—including employees, customers, suppliers, and local communities. The rationale is that companies create social and environmental externalities, such as pollution, and thus should bear responsibility for mitigating these impacts rather than offloading the costs to society.

To my knowledge, there hasn’t been a conclusive answer on this subject, although one of the leading perspectives (the middle camp) I’ve seen is a modified version of the Friedman position, arguing that corporations should be socially and environmentally responsible to the extent it helps them maximize profits—any further should not be pursued, as it detracts from the maximization of profit.

This is an important issue because it dramatically affects companies’ perceptions of the external environment. For example, a key concern for many workers evaluating companies as potential employers is their stance on ESG issues and how much they promote and integrate ESG into their business operations.

Beyond ESG concerns, companies face many other incentives and disincentives to transition to clean energy. For instance, many governments offer lucrative tax credits and grants to help companies green their operations.

From an operational cost standpoint, businesses are facing difficult decisions on every front, especially in the United States, as supply chain uncertainties and inflation abound. Luckily, in 2026, solar and wind are now the cheapest forms of new electricity in most of the world, leading to cheaper corporate power purchase agreements, with some corporations choosing to build and own clean energy infrastructure rather than buy from grid operators.

This directly impacts the bottom line, creating an incentive structure that employees, customers, and shareholders can support while protecting the environment and the planet’s resources.

Negative incentives also push companies to transition to clean energy. In many countries, companies face strict carbon taxes, emissions caps, and mandatory climate disclosure laws. Corporations that don’t pursue ESG and/or clean energy transitions risk consumer boycotts and greenwashing lawsuits that damage brand equity.

Given rising energy costs, oil companies and other infrastructure-oriented and -reliant companies risk being left with billions of dollars in fossil-fuel and legacy energy infrastructure that will become obsolete and worthless before it pays for itself. As a result, many are decreasing or entirely halting development of new fossil-fuel infrastructure.

Financial Incentives & Infrastructure Upgrades

Over the last decade, perhaps the group most relentlessly pushed to transition to clean energy was everyday individuals.

Consumers were promised that home values would increase by more than the cost of the solar panels and installation, and that their monthly energy bills would be significantly reduced. Opendoor estimates that solar panels typically add 3-4% to a home’s sale price nationally, a medium premium of around $15k (often less than the true cost of the panels).

Given recent geopolitical and other economic factors, third-party energy costs have steadily increased. Luckily, those who proactively installed rooftop solar and home batteries have been insulated from these rising grid electricity prices. In 2023, more than 1 in 5 new residential solar systems included batteries, and that share is climbing rapidly.

For individual consumers, vehicles and transportation have historically been among the largest CO2 emitters. Luckily, governments have been pushing large-scale electric vehicle point-of-sale discounts and tax credits.

Credit EIA

As you can see on the graph above, the share of electric and hybrid vehicles has steadily increased as a share of total cars on the road; there is still much market share to gain over time.

It hasn’t been all sunshine and rainbows. Especially over the last few years, consumers in the United States have faced rising inflation across all product categories. Perhaps an overlooked cost has been the dramatic increase in energy costs in addition to physical products. Over the last 5 years, energy costs have increased by ~50%.

This has resulted from rising gas and heating oil costs as governments phase out fossil fuel subsidies, infrastructure continues to age, and supply has been further constrained beyond OPEC thresholds.

On a larger scale, traditional gas cars and inefficient homes, as they become increasingly outdated and face rising refurbishment and/or operating costs, are losing market value faster than other “cleaner” peer assets.

More Incentives Are Needed to Enact Short-Term Change

Ultimately, the clean energy transition has fundamentally outgrown its original identity as a purely altruistic environmental crusade. What began as a plea to “save the planet” has evolved into a reality driving global economics, national security strategy, and consumer financial decisions.

As we’ve seen over the last decade, the effects of climate change continue to compound, leaving a deadly trail of destruction, casualties, disease, drought, and more. Governments continue to urge their citizens and businesses to change, to no avail. Some countries, businesses, and consumers remain in deep denial about these changes, undermining global initiatives and muddying the political waters.

Today, the world faces a cost of inaction. Often, decision-making doesn’t factor in that cost. Without the threat of climate change, we wouldn’t be moving toward green energy sources even 10% as fast as we are currently. To shape our future, green energy sources must address economic challenges, which is only possible through innovation and public policy.

Luckily, all hope is not lost. Renewable energy accounted for ~32% of global electricity generation in 2024. Already, 10 countries are fully renewable-based, with another 11 over 90%. As seen above, electric vehicles account for around 21% of all cars in the United States, are rapidly growing in market share, and are projected to become the majority in the near future.

For many, the incentives currently in place are enough to inspire long-term change. However, to ensure mass change across the entire world in the short term, on the scale necessary to stall and reverse the effects of climate change, more and larger incentives need to be created. Generally, people move twice as fast away from pain as they do towards gain.

That’s a wrap on this deep dive.

Drew Jackson

Founder & Writer

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This Week I’m Tracking: 10 developments across the sectors shaping our future

Reading Time: 5 minutes of curated insights

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#1: Quaise Energy

Description: Quaise Energy is a developer of geothermal energy drilling tech.

Why Is This Company Interesting? Quaise Energy recently raised $114M in venture capital funding. Quaise is a clean energy startup developing deep geothermal technology. By utilizing high-power millimeter-wave beam drilling, Quaise melts through rock to access superhot, deep geothermal heat and repurpose existing fossil-fuel power plant infrastructure.

#2: TaiSan

Description: TaiSan is a battery materials startup.

Why Is This Company Interesting? TaiSan recently raised $4.7M in venture capital funding. TaiSan is developing quasi-solid-state sodium-ion batteries. Using a non-flammable polymer electrolyte and abundant raw materials, its technology eliminates lithium dependencies to deliver lower costs, enhanced safety, and seamless integration with existing battery manufacturing.

#3: Proxima Fusion

Description: Proxima Fusion is a developer of stellarator-based fusion power plants.

Why Is This Company Interesting? Proxima Fusion recently raised $470M in venture capital funding. Proxima is a fusion energy startup spun out of the Max Planck Institute. The company combines advanced stellarator magnetic confinement, high-temperature superconductors, and computational physics to design scalable, grid-ready clean fusion power plants.

#4: Aardaia

Description: Aardaia is a developer of new crop varieties from wild plants.

Why Is This Company Interesting? Aardaia recently raised $5M in venture capital funding. Aardaia is an agtech startup focused on domesticating wild plant species to create high-yield, resilient crops for the future. Its primary focus is the aardaker crop, which combines high tuber yields with nitrogen-fixing legume biology to supply sustainable plant protein without synthetic fertilizers.

#5: Ranchbot

Description: Ranchbot is a water-management tech developer for farms and livestock.

Why Is This Company Interesting? Ranchbot recently raised $15M in venture capital funding. Ranchbot is an agricultural IoT company providing satellite-connected remote monitoring systems for livestock ranches. Its sensors monitor water tanks, pipelines, and troughs in real time, reducing fuel costs, labor hours, and livestock risk for farmers.

The New York Times: Federal Job Cuts Are Making Wildfires Harder to Fight

At the start of an intense wildfire season, federal officials announced a 15% decrease in “hotshot” teams, the elite squads that fight complex blazes in the most rugged areas. Firefighters keep requesting help but wait days or weeks while fires get out of hand, causing incredible damage and costing taxpayers more.

Pitchbook: Why Defensibility is The Hook for VC Data Center Investments

The AI infrastructure boom has increased rapidly at a staggering pace. Nvidia signed memorandums of understanding with 6 large asset managers and investment banks to raise the capital to fund AI factories. AI infrastructure shows no signs of slowing, with VCs backing that buildout by funding the semiconductors that power it.

Lider Legal: Intellectual Property as a Strategic Asset

When companies want to grow, they often don’t prioritize maintaining and developing intellectual property through their growth stages. These processes often get postponed until they become real problems—by then, it’s too late. Proactively protecting and enforcing IP is critical to the growth of IP-powered companies.

New Trader U: The Top 10 Philosophy Books That Everyone Should Read

Here are 10 great philosophy books that offer a strong entry point.

• Meditations by Marcus Aurelius

• The Republic by Plato

• Nicomachean Ethics by Aristotle

• Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl

• Beyond Good and Evil and Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche

• The Stranger and The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus

• Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu

• The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli

• Letters from a Stoic by Seneca

• Sophie’s World by Jostein Gaarder

Asia Research News: Modern Life May Be Outpacing the Human Mind

Over millions of years, the human brain evolved to perceive a world of familiar faces, immediate threats, and small social groups. But the world as it currently stands is changing far faster than biology can keep pace.

This constantly diverging dynamic may help explain much of the stress, loneliness, and constant comparison people experience today.

This phenomenon is known as evolutionary mismatch, which describes what happens when human instincts shaped in one environment are forced to operate in a very different one. For instance, humans evolved in smaller, close-knit groups, where danger, belonging, status, relationships, and trust were read through familiar people and face-to-face interactions.

Now, those same instincts are being triggered in dense cities, digital platforms, unequal societies, and constant pressures. The end result that we feel is constant confusion, where responses that once made evolutionary sense can feel out of place.

I think this research is incredibly important and can explain a large portion of the out-of-whack behavior people feel these days—we simply weren’t bred for it. I’m super interested to see where this field goes.

That’s a wrap on this week’s roundup.

Drew Jackson

Founder & Writer

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This Week I’m Tracking: 12 developments across the sectors shaping our future

Reading Time: 5 minutes of curated insights

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#1: Cambridge Aerospace

Description: Cambridge Aerospace is an air defense startup.

Why Is This Company Interesting? Cambridge Aerospace recently raised $200M in venture capital funding. Cambridge is a defense tech company specializing in low-cost, mass-producible autonomous interceptor systems for counter-UAS and air defense applications. Its flagship system, Skyhammer, provides scalable, tube-launched interception capabilities designed to efficiently defeat drone threats.

#2: WeSort AI

Description: WeSort AI is a developer of recycling technology.

Why Is This Company Interesting? WeSort AI recently raised $10M in venture capital funding. WeSort AI is a technology company developing AI-powered computer vision and automated waste-sorting systems. Their platform analyzes, categorizes, and separates waste streams to optimize recycling operations and recover critical raw materials from complex waste fractions.

#3: AgZen

Description: AgZen is a developer of smart irrigation systems.

Why Is This Company Interesting? AgZen recently raised $10M in venture capital funding. AgZen is an MIT spinoff that creates intelligent agricultural spraying technologies. By combining real-time sensing and fluid dynamics, AgZen optimizes droplet adhesion on plant surfaces, drastically reducing pesticide waste, lowering input costs for farmers, and promoting sustainable agriculture.

#4: DISA Technologies

Description: DISA Technologies is a uranium remediation and resource recovery startup.

Why Is This Company Interesting? DISA Technologies recently raised $33M in venture capital funding. DISA is an advanced mineral processing company that utilizes the patented high-pressure slurry ablation technology. DISA’s platform uses particle collisions to selectively segment critical minerals, boosting recovery yields while reducing energy intensity compared to conventional grinding methods.

#5: Level Nine

Description: Level Nine developer of catalysts to enable sustainable chemical production.

Why Is This Company Interesting? Level Nine recently raised $4M in venture capital funding. Level Nine is developing the catalyst technology to convert locally abundant biobased feedstocks into high-performance chemicals. These chemical building blocks outperform traditional petrochemicals on cost and performance.

The Hill: DOE Identifies Five States to Hold Nuclear Waste

The Department of Energy signed agreements with Utah, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Louisiana, and Idaho to explore possible nuclear waste storage in these states. The goal is to have initial facilities online to hold nuclear waste in 2027. These sites will be known as Nuclear Lifecycle Innovation Campuses.

The New York Times: 100 Animals And Plants Just Got Some Much-Needed Help

A new fund, the Phoenix Species Project, said it would invest $200M in efforts to bring 100 animals and plants back from near extinction. This is among the largest philanthropic funds focused entirely on species recovery and is a collaboration between Re:wild (a nonprofit founded by Leonardo DiCaprio) and the Bezos Earth Fund.

The New York Times: Nothing Can Prevent the New Wildfires. We Have to Adapt

As the climate continues to change, wildfires are a constant. Per-person smoke exposure has increased 4x between 2006 and 2019. One source estimated over 10,000 people died as a result of the 2023 wildfires. We need to adapt to this new normal of life indoors, with air purifiers, and find solutions that meet our needs under these new circumstances.

NBC News: SpaceX Plan to Launch 1 Million Data Center Satellites

SpaceX has a new proposal to launch 1 million data center satellites into space to capitalize on current demand for AI compute technology. Scientists argue that the plan comes with severe environmental risks, potentially filling Earth’s atmosphere with vaporized spacecraft material. It’s an ambitious plan, one that will require extensive planning, but the ramifications may be significant.

The New York Times: What Are Companies Getting for All That A.I. Spending?

Companies have gone through many phases of AI usage. First there was the token surge as executives encouraged the use of AI as much as possible. Then, once the costly bills came in, executives rapidly changed course, encouraging minimal spending and harsh budgets. People are investing right now, but there’s not a sense of what they’re getting in return, which is what AI has to continually push to offer users.

JD Supra: The Biggest Threats to Intellectual Property in the Digital Age

Intellectual property is one of the most valuable assets in the modern economy. Almost every organization depends on proprietary info, data, and trade secrets to compete in the market. Digital technology has changed these dynamics, as copying is instantaneous, distribution is global, and bad actors can operate anywhere. Infringement is occurring at extraordinary speed and enforcement mechanisms are moving incredibly slowly.

Philosophy Break: Jane English: Children Do Not ‘Owe’ their Parents Anything

I’d love to argue that my relationship with my parents couldn’t be better. But even with this, what do I “owe” them?

See, the first relationship each of us experiences is with our parents or primary caregivers. How long should we obey our parents? Should we always respect their authority? If they overly constrain who we are as we grow up, are we justified in overcoming them - as we might overcome other constraints in our lives?

These are incredibly complicated questions.

The Bible says to honor your father and mother. Confucius argued that you should serve and revere your parents. Is this the way in 2026?

This philosopher argues that unconditional filial duty is ill-founded. If parents do not sow seeds of love with their children, then children owe them nothing at all. In other words, if you don’t provide what is necessary to succeed for your children (within reason), then your children don’t owe you anything.

I’m not sure how exactly I feel about this. On one hand, it does put the responsibility in the parents’ hands, with your actions having the appropriate consequences (we hope). On the other hand, to what end is family family, and should you look past any shortcomings?

That’s a wrap on this week’s roundup.

Drew Jackson

Founder & Writer

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Credit Marco Furniture

I often make New Year’s Resolutions I honestly don’t expect to complete. But I continue making them every year. Why?

Reading Time: 9 minutes for full analysis + key takeaways highlighted throughout

Key Question: Why do we love lying to ourselves?

My Take: Everyone lies to themselves more often than they think, from New Year’s resolutions to AI output to many other situations. We use this self-deception to avoid facing harsh truths and honest realities. There isn’t an easy solution to this problem because we need to build more structural systems that cut to the core of each issue and flip incentive cycles.

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Let’s dive in.

Over the last four years, the world has become entrenched in the new age of AI. This has forced people to learn, relearn, and adapt to the new way the world is and will be for the foreseeable future.

In school, teachers are going back to in-person, handwritten tests and assignments. On social media, AI images are everywhere, with various degrees of accuracy in representing real life. In corporate settings, many firms are reluctant to adopt these tools—citing data privacy, security, and learning concerns.

One of the main messages proclaimed throughout modern news cycles and intellectual circles is to triple-check AI output to ensure accuracy. AI output is not fact; it can be wrong, and should be verified.

This takes time and effort—which, I’m sorry to say, causes many (including myself at times) to simply take what’s outputted as hard fact, without going through the proper verification process. There are thousands of reasons people use to justify this practice, which tends to lead to increasingly unverified use due to convenience and muscle memory.

Why do we continue this practice, even though we know better?

Credit The Guardian

The Ritual of Resolutions

For the last 5 years, I’ve made official New Year’s resolutions. Looking back at my performance, I’d estimate that I succeed in 50% of them (usually the easy ones).

Some of the harder ones missed (play piano once every week or run a half-marathon) require a concerted effort towards an extensive initiative. I’ve often seen myself set these goals with decent intentions to try to do them, while knowing in the back of my mind they probably won’t be achieved.

Why do we continue to deceive ourselves by setting outrageous goals without the intention to see them through?

The data surrounding New Year’s Resolutions is fascinating. For instance, the Pew Research Center publishes a significant data pack on the topic, including demographic, topic, and other analyses.

They found that younger people are much more likely to make New Year’s resolutions than older generations (49% for ages 18-29, 31% for ages 30-49, 24% for ages 50-64, and only 18% for ages 65+). 54% of parents with kids at home are likely to set resolutions compared to only 33% of those without kids. The most common topics of resolutions are shown below:

Credit Pew Research Center

A similar study conducted by Forbes found the top New Year’s resolutions to be improving fitness, finances, and mental health; losing weight; improving diet; and making more time for loved ones. Around half of people state they tend to set three New Year’s resolutions, with only ~7% setting five or more.

What’s more interesting is the percentage of people keeping their resolutions. At the beginning of February (one month in), 59% reported keeping all their resolutions, 28% kept some, and a shocking 13% kept none. Interestingly, there are only small demographic differences underlying this data, meaning that groups of all shapes and sizes tend to struggle (and/or be overrepresented) in achieving their goals. Forbes provides a further detailed breakdown:

Credit Forbes

Furthermore, the types of goals you set matter significantly when it comes to chances of success. For example, action-oriented goals are more likely to result in success after 12 months than avoidance-oriented goals (59% compared to 47%).

My theory is that New Year’s resolutions and other goals we set provide a quick hit of dopamine when we declare them, rather than when we actually do the work of achieving them. Resolutions allow us to test out and envision a better version of ourselves without the cost of entry.

Often, we aren’t failing at the goal; we’re succeeding at feeling like the kind of person who has goals.

Credit Shezlong

Just One More Time

The human brain is a brilliant rationalization machine. When a desire conflicts with our long-term goals (outlined above), we don’t simply abandon the goal all at once. Instead, we negotiate with ourselves.

We use the language of equity and reward to justify our behavior. A common practice is moral licensing, a phenomenon in which doing something we consider good or virtuous makes us feel entitled to subsequently indulge in less ethical, unhealthy, or lazy behaviors. People use their past positive actions as a moral pass to justify negative choices.

For instance, I’ve used this practice in the past, such as: “I did a good job during my workout today, so I deserve to eat this stack of Oreos.”

We trick ourselves into treating a destructive or unproductive habit as a form of self-care. By framing the action as an earned reward or an emotional necessity, we bypass the guilt.

Why is it so easy to borrow happiness from tomorrow to pay for a thrill today?

In addition to moral licensing, we often fall prey to the cognitive bias of temporal discounting. This is a cognitive bias where people perceive future rewards or consequences as inherently less valuable than immediate ones.

A common psychology experiment demonstrating this principle asks people whether they would prefer an amount of money now (say, $100) or a greater amount in the future (say, $110).

Often, the brain treats our future self as a stranger, reducing motivation to make sacrifices today for tomorrow’s benefit. From a neurological perspective, when you think about your future self, your brain fires in the exact same region it does when you think about a complete stranger.

We view this version of us that exists next year, next week, or even tomorrow as a different person entirely. The present self desires immediate gratification, wanting the dopamine hit now. The future self is viewed as a faraway entity with infinite patience, ironclad willpower, and an uncanny ability to function on minimal sleep.

This disconnect creates a massive empathy gap. We’re more than happy to stick future us with the bill—the lack of sleep, the empty bank account, the sadness, the grief—while the present version of ourselves reaps the rewards.

Credit HowStuffWorks

The Mirage of Truth

Underlying the examples above is this mirage of truth: we don’t lie to ourselves because we are unintelligent; we lie because the truth is often a high-friction environment. Thus, our self-deception is a strategy for comfort.

In others, we look at self-deception as a moral failing or a significant flaw. We assume that if someone is self-aware enough or smart enough, they will be able to see the world clearly. But this is a fundamental misunderstanding of the human mind.

We don’t lie to ourselves because we are stupid; we lie because we are wired to seek the path of least resistance.

In nature, friction is the force that resists motion. When water runs down the mountain, it slowly carves ravines and ditches to run through, curating the path of least resistance that future water compounds upon.

In humans, truth is much more complicated, exhibiting greater friction. Looking at a situation with absolute honesty requires immense energy and clarity. It requires looking at uncomfortable realities (e.g., failed projects, stagnating relationships, missed goals). Accepting this truth is painful, often requiring us to rewrite our self-image.

Truth is heavy and expensive. In contrast, deception is smooth, allowing us to glide past uncomfortable realizations without doing the hard work of changing.

When we’re in these situations, our brain has two options: truth or deception. We can either change our behavior, a high-energy, high-friction outcome, or we can change the narrative, a low-energy, low-friction outcome. In most scenarios, the brain chooses option 2.

By constructing a mirage of truth, we insulate our egos from threat. For example, the entrepreneur tells themselves and others that the market just isn’t ready, rather than admitting their product has no demand. We tell ourselves we are waiting for the precise moment rather than admitting we’re paralyzed by fear.

We struggle to hold two contradictory beliefs at the same time. For instance, the fact that our New Year’s resolution was to eat healthy every single day, while we’re currently sitting on the couch halfway through a bucket of ice cream. In this circumstance, the brain experiences cognitive dissonance.

In these circumstances, self-deception acts as a calming, easy solution. By generating a quick lie, like “this ice cream keeps me happy, which is actually healthier for me”, the brain instantly resolves the contradiction.

If we were 100% honest about flaws, limitations, and the odds against us, human history would have stalled very early on. Evolutionary psychologists have theorized that a certain level of delusion and overconfidence is necessary for survival and thriving.

Credit The University of Kansas

Is There Any Hope?

We truly do love lying to ourselves.

Over time, we’ve evolved this system, which we now rely on, in which we engage in self-deception rather than facing harsh truths.

Unfortunately, there is no “easy” solution; this is not something we can simply cure with willpower alone. It’s not as easy as telling ourselves to start being honest, because we’re too clever for that.

To break these cycles, we need to build more structural systems that bypass our ego and emotions to cut straight to the core of each issue. We need to flip the incentive cycles, making truth a low-friction environment and self-deception come at a high price.

The brain easily rationalizes away scenarios, but struggles to defeat cold, raw facts. To stop lying to yourself, you need to move the data outside of your head into spreadsheets, journals, conversations with other people, and many other places. This creates a source of external accountability and transparency that keeps us closer to being on track.

Additionally, we need to force our present selves to give adequate consideration to the future. Good examples I’ve used in my life are setting time limits on social media apps or moving my alarm clock across the room, so I actually have to get up to hit snooze.

We lie because the truth is often hard to bear. If we want to accept the truth more often, we have to lower the cost of being wrong (i.e., having the truth go against our views of the world). One great way to do this is to adopt a growth or learner’s mindset. Finding out you are wrong in this mindset is an opportunity for positive action, rather than a negative reaction.

Perhaps the simplest way to evaluate and change our behavior is to practice open awareness. Ask yourself questions such as “Are there any parts of my life stagnating or frustrating now? What uncomfortable truths am I actively pretending not to know right now?”

The answers that come as a result, the ones that may put a sour taste in your mouth, are right where the self-deception ends and the truth begins—where action starts, and lies stop.

That’s a wrap on this deep dive.

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This Week I’m Tracking: 15 developments across the sectors shaping our future

Reading Time: 7 minutes of curated insights

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#1: Base Power

Description: Base Power is an installer and manager of home batteries.

Why Is This Company Interesting? Base Power is currently raising additional venture capital to dramatically increase its scale. Base Power is a modern energy startup operating as a distributed, technology-driven power company. Base installs and manages home battery storage systems to create a resilient, decentralized power network. By deploying these batteries, Base helps stabilize the grid during peak energy demand while offering homeowners affordable electricity and reliable backup power during blackouts.

#2: CleanDesign

Description: CleanDesign is a developer of software-managed batteries.

Why Is This Company Interesting? CleanDesign recently raised $20M in venture capital funding. CleanDesign is a hybrid energy management company specializing in optimizing power systems for heavy industries like oil and gas, mining, and EV fleet charging. Its proprietary Hybrid Energy Management System combines battery energy storage, generator automation, and real-time machine learning software to match power output to actual demand. By automating generator use and smoothing energy spikes, CleanDesign helps commercial operators reduce fuel consumption, minimize operational downtime, and cut carbon emissions.

#3: AuX Labs

Description: AuX Labs is a producer of casein for vegan cheese.

Why Is This Company Interesting? AuX Labs recently raised $4M in venture capital funding. AuX Labs is a biotechnology and food startup focused on developing animal-free dairy products using precision fermentation. By genetically engineering specialized microorganisms, the company produces essential milk proteins like casein without relying on traditional livestock. Their technology aims to create sustainable cheese and dairy alternatives that replicate the exact functional properties, taste, and texture of conventional dairy.

#4: Slate Auto

Description: Slate Auto is building low-cost electric pickup trucks.

Why Is This Company Interesting? Slate Auto recently raised $650M in venture capital funding. Slate Auto is an electric vehicle startup, backed by major investors including Jeff Bezos and Mark Walter. The company focuses on building versatile, low-cost modular EVs, featuring a platform that can be configured as a compact two-seat pickup truck or a five-seat SUV.

#5: Eternal Ag

Description: Eternal Ag is building autonomous robots for greenhouse harvesting.

Why Is This Company Interesting? Eternal Ag recently raised $8M in venture capital funding. Eternal Ag is an agricultural robotics company specializing in autonomous solutions for controlled-environment agriculture, such as greenhouses. The company builds AI-driven, omnidirectional robots designed to perform labor-intensive tasks like crop monitoring and selective harvesting. Integrating computer vision, deep learning, and advanced robotics, Eternal Ag helps greenhouse growers address labor shortages, cut operational costs, and boost crop yields.

The New York Times: The Science of Climate Change Explained: Facts, Evidence and Proof

The science behind climate change is more solid and agreed upon than you would think. The scope of the topic and rampant disinformation can make it hard to separate fact from fiction. In this analysis, the authors have done a good job of presenting the most accurate scientific information and explaining why and how we know it.

The Guardian: What is the US-Saudi Arabia Nuclear Deal and Why is it Causing Concern?

The United States and Saudi Arabia have agreed to a 30-year deal that would use American technology and expertise to establish a nuclear energy program in Saudi Arabia. Current concerns are around whether Saudi Arabia would have the capability to enrich uranium domestically and what that means for nuclear proliferation. As the American government argues, this denies competitors like China and Russia from gaining a foothold in the country.

The New York Times: Europe’s Summer of Reckoning Is ‘Just the Beginning’

Fires, heat waves, storms, and more are currently plaguing Europe. The summer of 2026 has already shattered many meteorological records across Europe. It has displaced more than 300,000 people across France and Spain, where they are currently experiencing the largest fires in those countries’ modern histories. Temperatures readily soar above 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit).

The New York Times: A Ton of Space Junk Tumbles Unpredictably to Earth Every Week

More debris from space is coming down to Earth than ever before. This is one of the unfortunate by-products of the current and former space races. In 2025, the U.S. Space Force issued alerts for ~820 objects entering the Earth’s atmosphere. In 2015, that number was only 110. Huge objects weighing a ton or more arrive around once a week. Most of the debris splashes into the ocean, but some does crash onto land. What we can do about it and who is ultimately responsible for this damage is still up in the air.

Pitchbook: A Few VC Firms are Poised to Win the Future

Since 2022, the venture capital landscape has concentrated. A small number of high-growth AI companies have absorbed vast amounts of venture capital stockpiles and received unprecedented private market valuations. Over this period, the number of VC firms shrank, but some grew ever larger and came to dominate the market. Thus, if AI continues to be the technological shift many believe it is, the leading VC firms will have an opportunity to reap vast profits soon.

Yahoo: AI Companies Are Buying Antique Books, Ingesting Their Contents to Train Models, and Then Destroying Them at Incredible Scale

One of the biggest pieces of news in intellectual property in recent history has been the AI scraping of book knowledge. Recently, AI companies have begun scanning and learning from physical books using industrial-grade imaging equipment. When sued for the practice, Anthropic invoked the first-sale doctrine, which allows a buyer to do what they want with a purchased item without the original copyright holder’s approval. Judges ruled this was transformative enough and thus protected by fair use.

Forbes: ​In A World Where Anyone Can Build Anything, Intellectual Property Is The Last Moat

Intellectual property has become more valuable as the economy has increasingly become more digital. Now in the era of AI, creation of IP is also dramatically cheaper. Machines can write articles (not exactly well yet but getting there), design logos, draft patent claims, and build apps. Intellectual property is no longer just your most valuable property; it’s also your last defensible one.

TechCrunch: US Threatens Sanctions Against Chinese AI Models over IP Theft

The United States government is beginning to examine open source models from China for signs of intellectual property theft, threatening sanctions against Chinese AI companies if IP theft is established. We support open-source models from China, but not intellectual property theft.

Big Think: A Philosopher’s Guide to Thinking for Yourself in an Age Built to Think for You

Stupidity is not a lack of IQ or cognitive capability but a moral and psychological failure. See, there are three elements to stupidity: outsourcing your autonomy, where you surrender independent critical thinking to an external party; willful ignorance, where you reject or brush aside contradictory evidence; and conformity, where you exhibit groupthink. While normal evil can be identified, stupidity is far more dangerous, as facts and reason fall on deaf ears.

Reddit: I’m looking for philosophers with genuinely uncommon ideas. Am I expecting the wrong thing from philosophy?

I came across this post today, and it caught my eye.

The author began reading philosophy as a mental exercise to encounter unfamiliar ideas, but was disappointed to find that thinkers like Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle mostly felt like common sense. Do these ancient figures seem obvious because their ideas are naturally intuitive, or because thousands of years have shaped how modern society thinks?

They enjoyed thinkers like Kant, Stirner, Ayn Rand, and Nietzsche for presenting novel concepts and challenging mainstream values.

One of the comments was truly enlightening, which is why I wanted to write this today. To paraphrase:

“To be blunt, you might be misinterpreting these texts more than you realize. Beginners often project their own beliefs onto philosophers, especially when dealing with subtle or cryptic thinkers like Plato. Since Plato and Aristotle disagree on fundamental points, it is impossible to align with both without contradicting yourself. To get more out of philosophy, focus on the fine details and see how small distinctions lead to drastically different conclusions. If you truly want radically non-intuitive ideas, look into David Benatar’s view that having children is immoral, Peter Unger’s assertion that knowledge and human existence are illusions, or Peter Singer’s argument that failing to donate all excess wealth makes us morally failing.”

That’s a wrap on this week’s roundup.

Drew Jackson

Founder & Writer

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This Week I’m Tracking: 11 developments across the sectors shaping our future

Reading Time: 5 minutes of curated insights

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#1: Thea Energy

Description: Thea Energy is a stellarator fusion system developer.

Why Is This Company Interesting? Thea Energy recently raised $100M in venture capital funding. Thea is developing the most economical and scalable fusion energy system using mass-manufacturable magnets and powerful software controls. Complex magnet structures currently used in other fusion designs are prohibitive of success in the field on a wide commercial scale. Thea is aiming for this goal, innovating to create a design that uses mass-produced magnets at a lower overall cost.

#2: Caudal Energy

Description: Caudal Energy is a producer of fin-based tidal energy systems.

Why Is This Company Interesting? Caudal Energy recently raised $5.8M in venture capital funding. As grids decarbonize and demand for renewable energy grows, the world continues to seek innovative solutions. Caudal is providing this solution, developing a fin that harnesses energy from tidal flows. This method captures a constant, highly renewable energy source that is cost-efficient.

#3: Observable Space

Description: Observable Space is a producer of laser communications ground systems.

Why Is This Company Interesting? Observable Space recently raised $90M in venture capital funding. In the 21st century, space-based communications have become a key business asset and an even more crucial component of national security equipment. Observable Space is developing advanced laser communications systems. This money will help them accelerate their partnerships, scale in-space systems, and expand internationally.

#4: Scout Space

Description: Scout Space is a developer of space domain awareness sensors and software.

Why Is This Company Interesting? Scout Space recently raised $18M in venture capital funding. Scout Space provides satellite sensors, mission autonomy software, edge processing, and mission design products for space commercialization providers. Their mission is to enable their customers to perform complex missions and avoid threats by using on-board sensing, processing, and autonomous decision-making.

#5: Moment Energy

Description: Moment Energy is an EV battery repurposing startup.

Why Is This Company Interesting? Moment Energy recently raised $40M in venture capital funding. As the AI revolution and rapid increase in electrification push grids to the breaking point, power is now the primary constraint on human progress. Moment Energy is doing what other battery manufacturers aren’t - activating the millions of EV batteries already on roads today. Repurposing batteries is the short-term solution and is expected to continue to support demand for many years to come.

Oil Price: World-First Floating Wind Technology to Help Power Oil Rigs

China has launched the world’s first floating wind turbine designed to power offshore oil production. China currently accounts for 78% of the new global offshore wind capacity in 2025 and around half of the total global offshore wind capacity. In the meantime, the United States has seen policy setbacks, with offshore wind projects facing cancellations, regulatory freezes, and legal battles.

The New York Times: Oil Firms Knew for Decades of Methane’s Danger to Planet, Documents Suggest

A new set of industry documents revealed that the oil and gas industry has known for decades that its wells were releasing far more methane than companies acknowledged. For years, the industry standpoint was that they “were always unclear what the results of methane were.” However, similar to the oil and gas industry, it seems as though they knew better but didn’t disclose any findings to the public.

The New York Times: Trump’s Plan for Science

The Trump administration is planning to overhaul the country’s approach to scientific research by shifting research funding away from universities toward individual researchers and private companies. The administration is prioritizing artificial intelligence, robotics, and nuclear energy, while reducing the government’s focus on life sciences.

The Wall Street Journal: SpaceX Launches Another Starship, and This Time the Market Is Watching

After a few aborted missions, SpaceX successfully launched the Starship rocket this week. This was the first time it was launched since the IPO. As the Company continues to grow following the influx of IPO funds, successful launches will further drive stock price appreciation.

National Interest: How China Is Winning the Global Intellectual Property Race

Currently, China is strengthening its intellectual property protections, while US leadership is weakening, threatening innovation, competitiveness, and the future of global technology. In a recent national test, Chinese high schoolers were asked why strong intellectual property rights matter. This underscores the priorities and showcases how China is revolutionizing the world of intellectual property.

It’s number 100 today!

Triple digits! That’s almost two full years of consistently publishing The Saturday Morning Newsletter.

Honestly, I’m pretty impressed with myself. When I first began this initiative, I would’ve been shocked if you'd told me I'd be doing it over two years later with this consistency.

It’s always been my drive to never miss a week—and I haven’t once yet. This has translated into consistency and stability in other parts of my life, providing a standing foundation I can continue to build on.

So here’s to the next 900, when we hit quadruple digits.

That’s a wrap on this week’s roundup.

Drew Jackson

Founder & Writer

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© 2026 Brainwaves. All rights reserved.

In most circumstances, having more options is preferred to having fewer. How do we continue to create and maximize optionality in regular life?

Reading Time: 7 minutes for full analysis + key takeaways highlighted throughout

Key Question: What are real options, and how can we use them?

My Take: Optionality is the only way to outperform the average over the long run, enabling corporations to achieve large payoffs with limited risk. More importantly, maintaining optionality addresses much of the market’s uncertainty and unpredictability, preventing leaders from viewing market volatility or technological uncertainty as threats to be avoided.

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How To Preserve Optimal Optionality

In July 2025, after applying over a year previously, Shell was granted environmental authorization to drill up to five deep-water wells off South Africa’s west coast.

Oil companies have been pursuing drilling opportunities in the region for years, seeking to tap into the Orange Basin, which extends southwards into the country’s waters. Successful nearby attempts in Namibia spurred attempts to recreate the model in South Africa.

While the payout value is highly relevant to Shell (billions of dollars in profits from oil sales), the true value lies in the real option they possess (the opportunity to drill).

Shell, among many other major oil and gas companies, seeks to pursue multi-year exploration licenses on offshore fields or deep-sea blocks. These licenses provide them the exclusive right to drill and develop in that area.

There are hundreds of these licenses granted every year worldwide; some are never acted on. Why?

The Science of Real Options

Options are most often discussed in a financial context, where they give the holder the option, but not the obligation, to buy or sell at a specified price.

Similarly, there exists a real option for companies that provides management with the right, but not the obligation, to take a specific business initiative.

The scenario described above details Shell’s option to defer investment, also known as a timing option, which allows waiting and gathering more information before committing to an irreversible investment.

For oil companies, exclusive licenses enable them to delay development of the area until they have confirmed the presence of oil and ensured that the net present value of the investment is positive.

If the current price of oil is $60 per barrel and Shell believes it has a good chance of rising to $80 per barrel over the next two years, the optimal decision for its South African investment is to wait. By deferring the investment, they preserve the option value. If prices jump, they exercise the option (to invest and develop). If prices crash, they let the option expire, saving the huge cost of a development that would have lost money.

Besides timing options, the most popular real options are growth options and exit options.

Growth options allow increasing the scale of a project or making follow-on investments if initial results are favorable. If a pharmaceutical company successfully completes an early-stage R&D project, it can exercise the option to invest further and fund the next stage of testing. If the early-stage project fails, the company can easily abandon it without having invested prematurely in the next stage.

Exit options allow a project to be stopped and the assets sold at market value if market conditions or performance are worse than expected. If a manufacturing company builds a new plant with general-purpose, reusable equipment and the product fails, it can exercise the option to abandon by selling the equipment and/or the facility, limiting its losses.

Optionality Is the Solution to Uncertainty + Unpredictability

Businesses are vulnerable to uncertainty and unpredictability throughout every stage of the innovation and disruption cycle.

How should business leaders address the constant uncertainty and unpredictability they encounter?

Cultivating optionality is the solution.

Nassim Taleb writes, “If you start from the premise that we are living in an uncertain world, then optionality is the only way to outperform the average over the long run.”

Taleb’s Antifragile framework is centered on the concept of optionality. He believes an antifragile system, in his opinion, the “best” modern system, is one that benefits, rather than is harmed, from randomness, volatility, and stress.

Optionality creates antifragility. It represents a convex payoff function, meaning the potential upside from the opportunity (Shell choosing to drill and making billions) is far greater than the limited downside (Shell losing a little money on the option rights).

The business strategy of having the right but not the obligation to expand, wait, or abandon a project is a textbook example of a convex payoff: Your losses are capped at the cost of the initial investment, but you retain the option of potentially unlimited gains.

In essence, optionality proactively addresses uncertainty and unpredictability: it allows you to discard the bad outcomes while selecting and amplifying the good ones. It ensures that volatility—the very thing that causes trouble for fragile systems—actually becomes a source of benefit for those with options.

Corporate Venture Capital: A Cheat Code?

Many large corporations have a proprietary generator of real options: corporate venture capital funds (CVC).

In 2009, Google unsuccessfully tried to gain a foothold in the smart home market by launching the PowerMeter service, which it subsequently shut down in 2011. In 2011, still interested in the sector, co-founder Sergey Brin met Nest’s team and viewed a proprietary prototype of their thermostat.

Later that year, Google Ventures joined others in a $55M Series B funding raise for Nest.

Only 3 years later, Google announced its $3.2B acquisition of Nest.

The initial investment gave Google the opportunity to observe Nest’s technology, team, and market fit, providing access to information competitors lacked and significantly reducing the uncertainty of a future acquisition.

Instead of committing massive R&D resources internally (a large, irreversible investment with high risk), corporations can pay a small premium (the CVC investment) to gain a flexible path to future acquisitions.

The Lesson for Business Leaders

Small investments today can yield large benefits in the future.

Managerial flexibility is an asset that must be factored into project valuation. Standard methodologies undervalue projects with high uncertainty and flexibility, causing companies to reject potentially valuable ventures.

Real options give the company an asymmetric payoff structure: limited losses (the initial investment) and potentially unlimited gains (the growth opportunity).

Leaders should stop viewing market volatility or technological uncertainty purely as threats to be avoided and start viewing them as potential sources of strategic advantage to be exploited through staged, flexible investments.

Case Study

Amazon Creates Optionality With Initial Investments

In the early days of operating Amazon, executives experienced how hard and expensive it was to provision and manage the backend technological infrastructure.

Deciding in-house was the best investment; they launched Amazon Web Services (AWS) in 2006.

After significant investments, Amazon built a world-class IT infrastructure to support its e-commerce site.

This created the option to sell any excess capacity as a service to other companies, capturing the upside payoff on the initial investment (by exercising the option).

Over the last two decades, this option has continued to snowball, reaching over $17B in revenue in 2025 (about 17% of Amazon’s total revenue).

The Value of Real Options

In an unpredictable economic landscape, the traditional tools of financial analysis often fall short by treating future outcomes as static, rigid paths. Real options shift the focus from simple forecasting to active strategic management. By framing investments not as single, irreversible decisions but as a series of flexible choices, real options allow organizations to capitalize on upside potential while capping downside exposure.

This framework values the managerial freedom to scale up, defer, or completely abandon a project as new data emerges. Ultimately, it transforms uncertainty from an overarching risk into a new competitive advantage, ensuring that strategic flexibility is prioritized rather than treated as an afterthought.

Furthermore, the true value of real options extends far beyond the world of finance; it drives a profound cultural shift in how organizations approach risk and innovation.

When teams adopt a real options mindset, they move away from the fear of failure and embrace a philosophy of calculated decision trees. This approach encourages companies to deploy small, low-cost strategic bets in highly volatile environments, secure in the knowledge that they can pivot or continue to invest as the dust settles.

In a complex world characterized by nonlinearity and rapid change, embedding this structural flexibility into corporate strategy is what separates fragile enterprises from those that are truly antifragile—turning unpredictability into the very engine that fuels long-term resilience and growth.

That’s a wrap on this deep dive.

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This Week I’m Tracking: 12 developments across the sectors shaping our future

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#1: GPS Renewables

Description: GPS Renewables is a developer of biogas and biofuel.

Why Is This Company Interesting? GPS Renewables recently raised $66.3M in venture capital funding. GPS Renewables is the world’s largest biogas engineering company. They specialize in special microbial solutions for advanced gas purification technologies. Their goal is to create the most efficient and captive biogas technologies on the market. Today, it provides end-to-end solutions for the development, production, and distribution of green fuels, continuing to support the net-zero economic development of India.

#2: Avian

Description: Avian is a developer of thermal monitoring solutions for facilities.

Why Is This Company Interesting? Avian recently raised $2.6M in venture capital funding. Avian is software that monitors critical assets to detect abnormal heat, alerts the right people, and helps operators and maintenance crews act before a fire or damage occurs. Avian functions by monitoring abnormal heat, transitioning it into alerts, responses, and maintenance decisions before critical points happen.

#3: Aboard

Description: Aboard develops electric travel trailers with onboard batteries.

Why Is This Company Interesting? Aboard recently raised $13M in venture capital funding. Aboard is a developer of a hybrid-electric smart travel trailer, combining large-format lithium batteries and vehicle technology to extend off-grid living and long-range adventure. Aboard combines a hybrid-electric powertrain, a range extender, and smart towing technology to create a seamless, powerful experience for outdoor enthusiasts.

#4: Stride

Description: Stride is a financier of rooftop solar installations.

Why Is This Company Interesting? Stride recently raised $15M in venture capital funding. Stride is a Vietnamese-based provider of solar installation payments, enabling homeowners to pay for their solar installations in a flexible and efficient way. This enables reductions in electricity bills, increases in property values, and accelerated environmental sustainability, all through the integration of rooftop solar paid for via monthly payments to Stride. This continues to be a global trend, with many companies helping consumers develop and integrate residential solar panels.

#5: Pacifico Biolabs

Description: Pacifico Biolabs is an alternative meats developer.

Why Is This Company Interesting? Pacifico Biolabs recently raised $7M in venture capital funding. Pacifico is developing the next generation of alternative meats using mycelium fermentation technology. The process uses mycelium, a type of fungus, to develop a meat alternative that captures the taste and texture of traditional meat. I can’t say I’ve done a true taste test here yet, but plant- and alternative-based meats continue to hit the market and will likely gain significant traction over the next few years.

NPR: Iran War Pushing Countries to Switch to Renewables

After 4 months after the start of the Iran war, some countries are not going back to fossil fuel imports in the same way they had in the past. Countries across Asia and Africa are increasing their adoption of solar, batteries, and electric vehicles. In this way, countries have continued to recognize the precarity of oil and natural gas supplies worldwide.

The New York Times: How Companies Have Abandoned Their Climate Goals

Over the last decade, many of the largest companies made big promises about saving the planet. These pledges included stopping pollution, transitioning to renewable energy, and using recyclable materials. However, many of these environmental commitments have evaporated, with some changing the way they measure progress and others postponing their deadlines. How do we continue to hold them accountable?

The New York Times: Climate Change Contributes to Rising Wildfire Deaths

Wildfire smoke is linked to tens of thousands of deaths each year. Scientists estimate climate change is responsible for most of them. In the 1960s, this was around 50,000 deaths a year. Now, in the 2010s, this was closer to 100,000 deaths a year. The number of deaths attributed to climate change increased 12-fold over this period and is expected to continue rising.

The New York Times: China’s Successful Rocket Launch & Catch

This week, the Long March 10B rocket successfully completed its initial flight. Notably, the booster slowed to a stop and maneuvered into the grid of wires that caught it. By snagging the booster as such, it eliminated the need for reusable rockets. China’s space industry, while still trailing that of the U.S., may be closing the gap.

Space Daily: ISS Gravity & Motion Physics

The physics of space often baffles me and goes over my head constantly. However, this article distills it well, explaining that although there is still 90% gravity on the ISS, the astronauts continue to feel weightlessness. I’d recommend a read if you’re interested in the science and physics behind the space dynamics.

Lexology: The Value of IP in Defense Tech

In the 21st century, a large portion of defense advancements are driven by private technology companies, startups, and R&D centers. The development is not purely driven by state-owned defense enterprises. Startups continue to face issues as the technology works, investors are interested, and markets are ready, but the rights to these technologies have not been secured, creating additional risk. Properly protecting these assets is important for future development.

Reddit: Books & Life Smarts

“Book smarts and life smarts are driven by the exact same intelligence, study finds. Information learned through personal life experiences and information learned in a classroom are actually driven by exactly the same underlying mental ability.”

This is such an intriguing concept. Growing up, in our house, this was always called “street smarts” and “book smarts.” It was always assumed that some people had one, some people had another, and some had both.

Turns out they might be cut from the same cloth!

Now, this isn’t exactly what it’s made out to be. In fact, it’s not as ambitious a claim as it seems once you look at the underlying research. See, the researchers found that people who are good at school knowledge are pretty good with general life knowledge. Now, life skills in this case were difficult to measure, more amounting to general life trivia, which these book-smart people were able to answer pretty easily.

How critical is this finding? Given this context, a lot less so, but it does hint at a great field primed for further study. I’d personally love to know whether there are any biological or cognitive differences that lead to one, the other, or both.

That’s a wrap on this week’s roundup.

Drew Jackson

Founder & Writer

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This Week I’m Tracking: 13 developments across the sectors shaping our future

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#1: The Protein Brewery

Description: The Protein Brewery is a producer of fungi-based ingredients.

Why Is This Company Interesting? The Protein Brewery recently raised $18M in venture capital funding. Protein is the new craze currently, being added to all sorts of previously untouched foods. The Protein Brewery is creating the next generation of protein, with prebiotic fibers and complete protein. They have become a category leader in nutrient-dense mycoprotein, offering a versatile whole-food ingredient.

#2: Superlight

Description: Superlight develops electric trucks for middle-mile logistics operators.

Why Is This Company Interesting? Superlight recently raised $21M in venture capital funding. As electric vehicles became increasingly popular, pretty much all manufacturers started with existing designs and adapted them to run on electricity. Superlight worked in the opposite way, designing an electric truck from the ground up, favoring lighter-weight materials, better electronics, and software integrations.

#3: Cuprum Metals

Description: Cuprum Metals is a copper extraction company.

Why Is This Company Interesting? Cuprum Metals recently raised $19.4M in venture capital funding. The mining industry continues to invest in developing more efficient methods to extract copper from copper sulfide ores. These account for around 80% of the world’s copper deposits and are critical to supply chains around the globe. Their technology works by circumventing the passivation layer effect, allowing the direct oxidation of copper.

#4: Omni

Description: Omni is a developer of plant-based pet foods.

Why Is This Company Interesting? Omni recently raised $11M in venture capital funding. Omni is a provider of plant-based pet food products. The pet food industry continues to grow as people expand their pet arsenals globally, a trend that persists post-COVID. Pet food has traditionally been skewed toward meat-based products; however, plant-based products can deliver similar performance. Omni is perfectly optimized to capture this excess demand.

#5: Astral Systems

Description: Astral Systems builds compact fusion reactors.

Why Is This Company Interesting? Astral Systems recently raised $30.3M in venture capital funding. Astral Systems is developing fusion energy to provide medical byproducts. The global healthcare industry lacks a steady supply of these critical minerals, creating a significant market opportunity. Astral Systems intends to capture this demand using revolutionary fusion energy solutions.

Department of Energy: DoE Meets Trump’s Goal, Delivers 3rd Advanced Reactor Criticality

This week, Deployable Energy’s demonstration reactor Unity successfully completed a zero-power field criticality demonstration. This was the third advanced reactor to go critical by the Trump administration’s deadline. These are advanced microreactor designs, proving the next generation of nuclear energy can and will work.

The New York Times: Fighting Fires

A European team is currently trying to stop Europe from burning. They combine information from satellites, weather models, and expert analysis to track fires. This system is critical to Europe’s centralized firefighting strategy. How can countries be prepared for extreme fire situations? Countries have raced to improve their ability to track fires and proactively address them.

Space: Swift Space Telescope Rescue Mission

The Swift Boost mission launched the LINK satellite this week. It will rendezvous with the Swift Observatory and tow it into a stable orbit, saving it from being burned up in the atmosphere. This successful launch came after many attempts were called off due to weather and software issues

The New York Times: Blue Origin To Raise Big Fund

The rocket company founded by Jeff Bezos to compete with SpaceX is beginning to take on external money for the first time, at a $130B+ valuation. The Company is raising $10B, hoping to further accelerate the current space race and missions to the Moon. As SpaceX just raised tons of money in its IPO, there will be a lot of capital deployed in space now.

The New York Times: What We Should Learn From Nordic Happiness

In Norway, there is a minimum wage of around $20/hr, 5 weeks of paid vacation each year, a pension, maternity and paternity leave, and paid leave when a child is sick. A big question is, if American companies can offer terms for these jobs in Norway, why not do so in America?

CBS News: Inventions that Tell the Story of America

There is one invention that many historians believe powered the innovation in the United States over the past centuries: the patent process. This created a powerful incentive system, unreplicated worldwide, that drove lasting change and externalities. This was established in the Constitution and continues to be strengthened today.

Quartz: 25 Ideas from Philosophy That Are More Practical Than They Sound

There are many useful philosophical ideas—although they are traditionally portrayed as being abstract and obtuse. These ideas are actionable, helping you understand life changes, what questions to ask, and what choices you want to make. Would recommend; it’s a solid list.

Reddit: 6 Best Mental Health Advice I Was Ever Given

1. If it still bothers you after 24 hours, speak up within 48 hours.

2. Treat yourself like someone you are responsible for taking care of.

3. A bad day doesn’t mean a bad life.

4. The critical judge in your head does not tell the truth, and it does not have your best interest at heart.

5. Your brain can’t be grateful and anxious at the same time. When anxiety takes hold, look for gratitude.

6. Stop apologizing for expressing your feelings. You’re convincing yourself that you are not worth the space you take up.

I think this list is intriguing. Many people in the comments have issues with the gratitude and anxiety position, but the rest seem to hold up to the general standard.

That’s a wrap on this week’s roundup.

Drew Jackson

Founder & Writer

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Credit The Sun

The younger generation is in a Sisyphus-like situation, where the harder they work and the more they push, the older generations become increasingly wealthy by comparison. Why?

Reading Time: 8 minutes for full analysis + key takeaways highlighted throughout

Key Question: Why is it that the older generations continue to get wealthier and wealthier, despite younger generations’ efforts?

My Take: Older generations seem to keep succeeding, often largely due to factors present at birth. Despite their failures and flaws, members of this generation continue to receive promotions, accumulate wealth, and make decisions in government. These factors prevent upward mobility for younger generations and lead to long-term negative outcomes as meritocracy-based hierarchies break down, creating a downward spiral.

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Some people can only fail upwards. Others get shot down at the slightest infraction—cripling careers and kneecapping generations.

Michael Ovitz is a perfect example of this in practice. After attending UCLA and bouncing around a bit, Michael and a small team co-founded Creative Artists Agency, which became the world’s leading talent agency. Ovitz leveraged this success to become the President of the Walt Disney Company in October 1995.

The goal was to help CEO Michael Eisner with relationships and corporate growth. His 16-month tenure was marked by cultural friction and power struggles, resulting in his eventual termination. Ovitz was not a good fit for Disney’s corporate culture and struggled to establish authority, leading to a breakdown in his relationship with Eisner.

He was fired in January 1997 after only 14–16 months, walking away with a severance package totaling around $140 million in cash and stock.

In contrast to $100 million-plus exit packages, low-level employees are frequently terminated for minor violations of company policy, often involving nominal monetary values. In 2015, Thomas Smith, a 52-year-old Walmart employee, was fired for redeeming $2 worth of cans he collected while gathering shopping carts in the store’s parking lot.

These cans were left empty in a shopping cart just inside the store’s entrance, which Walmart deemed “company property,” and thus, Smith’s actions were unacceptable. The Walmart representative said Smith was guilty of “gross misconduct” by redeeming them.

While an executive like Ovitz can cost a company millions in lost productivity and still receive a fortune to leave, a worker can lose their entire livelihood over a literal handful of change.

The Generation That Can Only Fail Upwards

In 2026, younger people are reporting lower levels of happiness than their elders. A recent World Happiness Report found that the United States ranked 23rd out of 147 countries. What’s more concerning is the state of happiness for young people aged 15-24. The United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand each ranked between 122 and 133 in terms of young people’s happiness.

Why might this be?

There’s a wide variety of factors cited, from the proliferation of smartphones and social media, the consumption of ultra-processed foods, lack of social ties, lack of close family ties, weaker social support networks, and anxiety around the future (work, climate change, affordability of housing, rising cost of education, and political polarization).

It’s this last factor that I want to dive deeper into today, which I think is more important than people realize.

Having been around young people for many years now, I’ve heard a common sentiment: they’re complaining about the situation they’ve been brought into. They often feel as if they have inherited a broken system.

While every generation faces challenges, the current sentiment is that the social contract—in this case, the idea that if you work hard and go to school, you will be rewarded, if not more rewarded than your parents—has been voided. Education is no longer a path to wealth but a prerequisite for entry-level work, often coming with five- or six-figure debt.

In the past, if you were struggling, the advice was “work more hours; work harder.” Today, that often doesn’t prove correct. The gig economy and the passion economy mean that income is often dictated by algorithms rather than a direct boss or employment agreement. In addition, large corporations and private equity firms are buying up single-family homes, making the barrier to entry for homeownership a moving target that outpaces wage growth.

Younger generations have lived through a rapid succession of once-in-a-lifetime events that were once thought to be historical anomalies but have become the norm. The 2008 Financial Crisis hit right as Millennials were entering the workforce, followed by the COVID-19 pandemic as Gen Z entered the workforce.

Credit Gallup

A series of polls by Gallup illustrates this mindset, showing that current and future sentiment (categorized by respondents as “thriving”, “struggling”, or “suffering”) has fluctuated wildly over the last two decades and is currently near a 20-year low.

To be clear, the argument isn’t entirely that previous generations had it easier (they had the Cold War, stagflation, civil unrest, civil rights issues, etc.). Rather, the argument is that the math has changed. Median housing prices in the 1970s and 80s were around 3-4x a householder’s annual income; now, in the 2020s, it’s around 7-10x. Tuition was often fundable with a part-time summer job; now it requires decades of structured payments. There used to be high potential for upward mobility; now wages are stagnant relative to the cost of living.

In many ways, we’ve entered an era in which an older generation can only fail upward.

What does that mean?

Failing upwards refers to a phenomenon where individuals, usually those already in positions of power or established wealth (Boomers control 51% of U.S. wealth, followed by Gen X (26%), the Silent Generation (12%), and then Millennials and Gen Z (10.5% combined)), face few consequences for mistakes and continue to receive promotions, bailouts, or accolades. It’s often born of the belief that the safety net for older generations is much wider and stronger.

For many in older generations, the sheer timing of their lives acted as a massive hedge against personal failure. For example, an older individual could make poor career choices or experience job loss, but if they bought a home in the 70s-90s, the unearned equity in that home often grew faster than their actual salary. Even a “mediocre” financial landscape was bailed out by the massive appreciation of assets, allowing them to retire comfortably, despite mistakes that would bankrupt a member of the younger generation today.

In many corporate and political structures, years of service often outweigh current performance. Older generations usually hold the power to admit who they choose into the inner circle. Because they control the hiring and promotion cycles, they may favor peers with similar backgrounds, creating a cycle where high-level mistakes are handled with lucrative exit packages (termed “golden parachutes”) rather than simple termination.

Credit Politics News / FiveThirtyEight

We see this in government, where the average age of leadership is at a historic high. Younger people see leaders remain in power despite clear policy lapses, cognitive decline, scandals, and more, leading to the perception that once you reach a certain level, you are “too big to fail.”

This is a classic example of the network effect. For these individuals, it’s often not what they know, but who they grew up with. If they fail at Company A (or Government position A), their father’s roommate hires them at Company B to give them a “fresh start.”

To provide another example, the 2008 Financial Crisis is often cited as a case study of failing upwards, serving as a foundational memory for Millennials: socialized losses and privatized gains.

The core of the 2008 crisis was the belief that certain financial institutions were so interconnected that their collapse would trigger a global cascade of failures. The government’s response was an injection of $500B+ into the banking sector. The very institutions that triggered the crisis through subprime mortgage speculation were given a lifeline to prevent bankruptcy.

The primary frustration lay in the government’s asymmetrical assistance. Banks received direct liquidity, whereas the people actually holding the mortgages faced a much harsher reality. As a result, millions of Americans lost their homes due to foreclosure. A bank executive whose firm collapsed due to risky bets could keep their career and wealth, while a family that lost their home faced a credit score destruction that would take a decade to repair.

This feeling that older people fail upwards is magnified by the fact that younger people feel they have zero or very minimal margin for error. For a Gen Z or Millennial, one bad medical bill, one month of unemployment, one car crash, or one poorly chosen degree can lead to decades of debt.

They see older generations who may have struggled with substance issues, job hopping, or financial mismanagement in their youth, but were still able to recover because the cost of living was low enough to enable a second try.

This phenomenon can lead to a significant brain drain, in which talented individuals from less privileged backgrounds stop trying to climb the ladder when they realize the rungs are greased. This is happening in small ways in the United States currently, as younger generations continue to see the once-captivating American Dream as little more than a hopeless catastrophe rather than the captivating trophy it once was.

Additionally, there is a psychological element at play. Younger people primarily see the successful members of the older generation who are still in the workforce or in the news (silent evidence). They don’t see the millions of older individuals who failed and are now struggling in poverty.

Despite this, the median wealth of older households has soared, while that of younger households has remained relatively stagnant or declined—leading to the collective image of a generation that succeeded regardless of individual ability.

When a society experiences a generation that can only fail upward, it erodes the foundational principle of meritocracy. When competence is decoupled from advancement, it creates a systemic crisis among the truly skilled.

Over time, high-potential individuals who lack adequate social safety nets or institutional backing become disillusioned, leading them to either leave the workforce or disengage entirely. This stagnation of talent ensures that leadership roles are occupied by those prioritized for their pedigree or risk aversion rather than their ability to innovate, effectively capping a society’s capacity for growth and problem-solving.

In the long term, this cycle institutionalizes mediocrity and poses a significant threat to social stability. When a specific demographic or class is perceived as immune to failure, it fosters deep-seated resentment and a sense of profound injustice among the rest of the populace.

Society is perceived as a rigged game, undermining trust in public and private institutions. Without the corrective pressure of accountability, organizations become fragile, prone to catastrophic errors, and unable to adapt to external shocks. Ultimately, a society that rewards failure at the top while punishing it at the bottom risks total institutional decay and the eventual collapse of the social contract.

That’s a wrap on this deep dive.

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This Week I’m Tracking: 14 developments across the sectors shaping our future

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#1: Muon Space

Description: Muon Space is a creator of satellite constellations.

Why Is This Company Interesting? Muon Space recently raised $250M in venture capital funding. Muon Space is a technology stack that enables companies’ satellite constellations. This technology enables faster time-to-orbit and superior constellation performance. Their technology integrates information from the physical sciences, aerospace engineering, software engineering, data science, and industry domain expertise.

#2: Longshot

Description: Longshot is developing kinetic launch systems.

Why Is This Company Interesting? Longshot recently raised $5M in venture capital funding. Rockets are too complex. Longshot is striving to move more of the fuel and systems onto the ground. The infrastructure behind hypersonic testing is costly, scarce, and too low-cadence for the speed modern development requires. Longshot’s goal is to create lower-cost access to orbit for many space commercialization companies.

#3: H2SITE

Description: H2SITE is an industrial hydrogen production and separation company.

Why Is This Company Interesting? H2SITE recently raised $6M in venture capital funding. One of the more underappreciated parts of the clean energy transition is that we will need large volumes of low-carbon hydrogen to decarbonize heavy sectors. H2SITE’s membrane reactor technology allows hydrogen to be separated from certain molecules, filtering out and absorbing hydrogen with a 99%+ purity.

#4: Ubotica

Description: Ubotica enables satellites to analyze Earth observation data onboard.

Why Is This Company Interesting? Ubotica recently raised $11M in venture capital funding. Ubotica is creating solutions for cognitive Earth observation, static surveillance, and cognitive EO. Their solutions help companies and organizations predict where to look, process at the edge, and make decisions quickly and confidently. Cognitive EO predicts risk, decides what to task, and learns from every cycle to create an actionable intelligence master platform.

#5: Melazyme

Description: Melazyme is a precision fermentation startup.

Why Is This Company Interesting? Melazyme recently raised $2M in venture capital funding. Melazyme is creating a domestic source of melanin. In the biotech industry, it has been termed “black gold” for the high cost of extraction and purification. Applications include cosmetics, UV protection, hair colorants, and much more. Their fermentation process produces melanin at 99%+ purity at a scale previously untouched by current solutions on the market.

The Hill: Trump Administration Announces $17.5B in Loans to Support 10 Nuclear Plants

The Trump administration is planning to loan $17.5B to speed up the process of building 10 large-scale nuclear power plants. These loans are expected to go toward the purchase of nuclear plant components that require long lead times to produce, in order to speed up the process once other portions of the design and permitting stages are completed. This continues the rapid expansion of nuclear energy in the United States.

The New York Times: Tracking Dangerous Heat in the U.S.

This week, close to half of the population in the United States lives in areas expected to experience dangerous levels of heat. This equates to over 114 major cities experiencing heat over 103 degrees Fahrenheit. Summer temperatures have become hotter and more extreme in recent decades, with health effects increasingly severe.

The New York Times: U.S. to Overhaul Radiation Safety Rules to Spur Nuclear Expansion

The NRC is proposing to readjust the safety rules for radiation exposure from nuclear. It proposes eliminating the principle that nuclear power operators should keep radiation exposure as low as reasonably achievable. They argued this led to additional costs without a measurable safety benefit, with maximum dose limits set well below levels associated with known health effects.

Space: Rocket Lab Launches US Space Force Mission With Less Than 17 Hours’ Notice

Rocket Lab successfully launched a spacecraft for the U.S. Space Force’s Victus Haze TacRS mission with less than 17 hours’ notice from when they received the notice to launch and lift off. This beat the previously set record by over 10 hours. This continues the trend of rapid responses designed to simulate a real-world orbital threat. How fast can we go?

The New York Times: We Crunched the Data: There’s a Grocery Price Emergency in America

Even well-off families are struggling with high prices and financial stress, despite the tax cuts and wage gains the Trump administration highlights as the “solution” to these problems. These experts argue that this administration isn’t investing in long-term solutions or offering short-term relief. “Respondents split almost evenly among three worries: prices that are too high; prices that change unexpectedly; and the feeling of getting less value for their money from products and services because of shrinkflation, hidden fees or declining quality.”

Pitchbook: 8 Charts: SPACs, From Boom to Bust, and Back Again

SPACs were incredibly popular in 2021 and are beginning to regain their popularity. After the hype, the SEC eventually rolled out disclosure requirements that bar SPAC issuers from advertising forward-looking growth and revenue projections. Now, investors in SPACs will be better protected, as there is less ability to sell them on future growth and speculative excitement.

Your Tango: Smart People With Deep Hearts Almost Always Have The Same Experience In Common

Most people assume that life is automatically easier for someone who is smart. This isn’t exactly the case. Highly intelligent people often struggle with feeling misunderstood and not fitting in with traditional societal norms. Dostoevsky wrote, “Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart.”

The New York Times: What Does It All Mean? Once a Year, French Students Try to Explain.

French students were debating the following philosophical question this year: Can one be happy when others are not? And, do we have control of our words? Philosophy students take a written philosophy test each year and must answer one of the questions above. French blogs simultaneously invite actual philosophers to discuss their own responses to the questions.

‘Merica!

It’s Independence Day today in the United States of America. For those of you celebrating today, thank you for spending a bit of your day off with us here.

For those of you not celebrating, hopefully you’ll also make a bit of time this week to do something fun, take a break, do a cool activity, or have some time to yourself. Everyone needs a good break every now and then.

Freedom is an interesting concept to consider. It’s a classic “with great power comes great responsibility.” We should all be pushing for more and more freedoms, but know that the cost is that we must be responsible with how we use them.

In most cases, freedom is a great thing and should be pursued at all costs. In other cases, additional freedom is detrimental to the current status quo.

Today, be mindful of where you are, take breaks from your everyday life, and reflect on the freedoms you have and where there may still be room to expand.

That’s a wrap on this week’s roundup.

Drew Jackson

Founder & Writer

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This Week I’m Tracking: 12 developments across the sectors shaping our future

Reading Time: 5 minutes of curated insights

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Let’s dive in.

#1: Aston Power

Description: Aston Power is an energy provider for data centers.

Why Is This Company Interesting? Aston Power recently raised $20M in venture capital funding. Aston Power is developing new power sources and capabilities to serve datacenters, which is especially relevant given new growth. As utility timelines continue to stretch out years, if not decades, datacenters will need more immediate growth drivers. Powered by renewable energy, Aston Power provides a perfect solution to the current issues.

#2: Katalyst Space Technologies

Description: Katalyst Space Technologies is a developer of satellite servicing spacecraft.

Why Is This Company Interesting? Katalyst Space Technologies recently raised $12M in venture capital funding. Katalyst Space Technologies is introducing a multi-mission-capable robotic spacecraft capable of docking with other satellites, maneuvering in orbit, and performing robotic servicing. These devices deliver hardware payloads to upgrade in-orbit machinery quickly. They are currently validating their technologies, enabling future de-risking of missions.

#3: Galvany Energy

Description: Galvany Energy is a heat pump installer.

Why Is This Company Interesting? Galvany Energy recently raised $10M in venture capital funding. Galvany Energy is a developer of a system and methodology for deploying and operating heat pumps in residential buildings. They have the Galvany Cube, a modular heat pump system, and Galvany Fusion, an energy management system that connects heat pumps to drive efficiencies and integration with legacy technologies.

#4: Tomorrow

Description: Tomorrow is a weather intelligence startup.

Why Is This Company Interesting? Tomorrow recently raised $35M in venture capital funding. Tomorrow is the only space-based, AI-powered weather intelligence platform. They deliver cloud-penetrating analysis and data that competitors can’t replicate. They have solutions for every industry, primarily targeting insurance, manufacturing, aviation, energy, and transportation.

#5: Stilta

Description: Stilta is an agentic AI platform for patents.

Why Is This Company Interesting? Stilts recently raised $10.5M in venture capital funding. Stilta is an agentic AI platform targeted at the patent and intellectual property industry. It provides more evidence on prior art, cites sources, and draws on much more data than other patent LLM providers. They provide modules for patent infringement, attorney workflows, patent creation, and more.

NAM: DOE Unveils a Roadmap for Scalable Nuclear Fusion

DOE’s fusion strategy outlines the infrastructure needed to commercialize the technology in the next 10 years and sets timelines for milestones. It created a new Office of Fusion. What it doesn’t do is commit specific funding, which is compounded by the Trump administration’s 2027 budget, cutting $50M in fusion-related funds. It’s a confusing message where they want to push the technology forward while simultaneously cutting funding.

The New York Times: Is Climate Change Fueling Europe’s Heat Wave? Yes, Research Says.

Climate change is worsening Europe’s current heat wave. All of the extra heat on the Earth’s surface pushes summer weather patterns to deliver hotter days and nights than in recent history. This causes ripple effects across all aspects of life, including the economy, death rates, indoor and outdoor activities, shopping, and much more.

The New York Times: Energy Department Unveils $17.5B Plan to Kick-Start New Nuclear Plants

This week, the Trump administration announced a plan for up to $17.5B in low-cost loans to help electric utilities purchase expensive components for up to 10 new nuclear reactors developed by Westinghouse. These utilities would still need to put up hundreds of millions of their own money to unlock this financing, but the opportunities are on the table.

JD Supra: Intellectual Property in the 21st Century

In recent years, intellectual property has become one of the central pillars of the global economy. Business value is increasingly driven by intangible assets like brands, innovation, patents, technology, proprietary data, and more. Intellectual property is increasingly a central area of competition between businesses and countries as leadership in key technologies drives GDP and enterprise values across the board.

Nautilus: How to Feel at Home in the Modern World

Home-making and belonging are central features of all life forms, argues this philosopher. Humans try their whole lives to understand who they are and how they fit. The home is the solution—where we all start from. As you grow up, you continue to go out and explore. Unfortunately, many aspects of modern life are preventing or discouraging homecoming, which affects our ability to sense who we are, how we fit, and what all this means.

Big Think: A Philosopher’s 5 Tips on How to Become the Most Likable Person

David Hume famously argued that being well-liked is important not only because it feels good but because it reduces social friction. His 5 tips for becoming likable are below:

• The mutual sacrifice of ego

• Take things lightly

• Let others shine

• The Scottish Confucian

• Wash your clothes now and again

I was reading an article this week about the idea of linear scientific progress.

For instance, a person with this view would say something along the lines of “science will eventually explain everything. It’s just a matter of time.”

And honestly, there are some solid reasons to agree with this mindset. Science is a field that responds to and actively seeks new evidence. And, in the vast majority of circumstances, what is indicated by new evidence is closer to the real truth.

If you think about it in math terms, we’re on a plane of diminishing marginal returns and/or linear progress towards the eventuality wherein science explains everything.

How close are we? I don’t think we truly know at any given time. 500 years ago, we would have said we were close. Now we’ve seen how far we were. There’s probably so much further to go.

That’s a wrap on this week’s roundup.

Drew Jackson

Founder & Writer

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Keep Exploring

• Next Deep Dive: The Generation That Can Only Fail Upwards - July 8th, 2026

• Previous Editions: View the archive here

New to Brainwaves? Join hundreds of readers getting bi-weekly deep dives into the forces reshaping our world.

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Sponsor This Newsletter: Reach an engaged audience of forward-thinking readers. Email us for details.

Disclaimer: Views expressed are personal opinions, not financial advice. This content is educational only. Investment decisions carry risks - always consult professionals and do your own research. All sponsorships are clearly disclosed.

© 2026 Brainwaves. All rights reserved.