Blake Masters

🇺🇸🌵

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

@AJamesMcCarthy Read books, talk to people & iterate rapidly with hardware & software

[Blake Masters @bgmasters]

Today I'm thinking about Staff Sgt. Kevin McEnroe of Tucson, Arizona. He was killed in action in Jordan in 2016. Before Kevin became a Green Beret, we were high school classmates.

[Palmer Luckey @PalmerLuckey]

One of the reasons homeschooled kids have superior educational outcomes is avoiding the slow-progress-across-all-subjects method public schools impose on every student, no matter how they learn.

The evaluation/testing you are talking about would almost certainly prohibit that sort of tailored education, especially since they would be designed and administered by a system that wants to eliminate homeschooling in almost all cases.

[delian @zebulgar]

I was so ready for this to be real

[Lomez @L0m3z]

Today our partners @ChHouseBooks have launched an amazing new project. For any child K-6 you can buy a full year of expertly curated reading in one easy click.

It includes box sets of remastered classics that introduces young readers to Homer, Shakespeare, Beowulf and the foundations of the Western Canon. As well as carefully curated book bundles that cover everything from nature study to handwriting, beginner's Latin to math, to the best of school-age literature from Tolkien to Milne.

One stop shop. No fuss. Each box sets also comes with a 70-80 pg teaching guide that helps parents best deliver this material to their children.

Perfect for homeschoolers or any parent who just wants more for their kids.

Available for pre-order now.

https://t.co/VjBvB4PXxU

[Eric S. Raymond @esrtweet]

Gotta admit I've changed my mind about this. I was in the camp that loved the Hog but was grudgingly prepared to concede that its time had passed - not survivable in a modern threat environment stiff with drones and MANPADs.

But damned if the A-10 didn't turn out to be an effective tool against small-boat swarms in the Straits of Hormuz. And not so expensive to fly or ammo up that you end up with a nasty shot-exchange problem either - not something you can say for putting the F-35 on that job.

The Hog has demonstrated that there is still a tier of missions in between the envelope of an attack helicopter and a fast fighter for which the Hog is excellently fitted. Still. In 2026.

Of course you need to have done SEAD to lower the odds that it will be popped by competent air defense, but the US Air Force is very good at that mission. As it keeps demonstrating.

I was wrong. The Hog deserves its extension. And we ought to be seriously looking at building an A11. Maybe not a manned A11, but a functionally similar instrument with a big fucking gun and the ability to fly low and slow and loiter on a patrol area.

In conclusion: "Let me sing you the song of my people: BRRRRRRRRRT."

[Norgard @BrianNorgard]

This is Scout, a USV from @standardsubsea of El Segundo, CA founded by @cwamidon. One of the most impressive young companies building to secure our maritime future. Yet another example of what’s happening is South Los Angeles.

[Zane Hengsperger @zanehengsperger]

when spacex was getting started, the first and last men to walk on the moon testified before congress against it.

gene cernan told congress commercial space companies "do not yet know what they don't know."

he said the boeings and lockheed martins were "the folks who have been working on everything we've done for the last 50 years. they know how it can be done."

neil armstrong said he was "not confident" the newcomers could achieve their goals.

together with jim lovell they warned it would put america on "a long downward slide to mediocrity."

spacex now launches more rockets than every country on earth combined.

the experts will always tell you it can't be done. build it anyway!

[Blake Masters @bgmasters]

Every VC claims they want to fund atoms. Very few mean it literally. Substrate means it literally. They’re building AI-optimized lithography tools, and soon the fabs that use them.

AI is not just a software story: the chips enable the models, and the models improve the chips. AI is designing its own fabrication, literally down to the atoms.

Chips are the single biggest bottleneck America faces in achieving AI dominance. Substrate is going to unblock it. I do not think you realize how big a deal this is. Soon you will! 🇺🇸

[Substrate @substrate]

Over the past few months, we have integrated @googledeepmind's AlphaEvolve into our computational lithography. Enabled by AlphaEvolve's algorithmic leaps, we are now printing complex patterns in a single exposure that would otherwise require multiple. https://t.co/0ujvA4ALWz

[Blake Masters @bgmasters]

Christ is risen! Indeed He is risen!

Happy Easter from my family to yours.

[James Lucas @JamesLucasIT]

This was New York City on Good Friday in 1956

[Erich Hartmann @erichhartmann]

Do you really believe that this 👇 was the intent of the 14th?

[Blake Neff @BlakeSNeff]

The most blackpilling part of the birthright citizenship debate at SCOTUS isn't that they might rule the Constitution requires it. It's that, if they do, there isn't a hope in Hell that our Congress would ever pass a new amendment to fix it.

It should be the easiest thing in the world to pass a new law clarifying that tourist anchor babies and surrogate children bought by CCP oligarchs don't get lifelong U.S. citizenship. Yet everybody knows Congress will never do this. There aren't enough votes to repeal a policy of obvious long-term national suicide.

That should fill us with a lot of dread for the country's future.

[nicolas, 30 ans @nic_carter]

it hasn't sunk in for most people. we already live in a post-scarcity society. UBI is already here.

basic package: disability, medicaid, food stamps etc

bonus package: literally getting paid for staying at home and hanging out with your relatives

extra bonus: if you are willing to commit fraud, pretend your kids are autistic and get paid for that. get paid for watching your neighbor's kid. pretend you are taking care of your grandma. fake hospice clinic. fake rehab clinic. fake therapy clinic.

giga bonus: during a time of crisis take advantage of PPP or CARES and open a fake business and get paid for existing

people are shocked when they learn that defense is the FIFTH largest line item in the budget. ahead of defense: social security ($1.6T), interest on debt ($1.1T) medicare ($1T), medicaid + ACA ($1T), AND THEN defense ($0.9T)

complain about defense all you like, but healthcare fraud is a way bigger factor. hundreds of billions per year.

this is only going to get worse, because the fraud is a structural part of the system – payouts to client groups in exchange for votes (normally D).

in the US, only 47% of the population actually works (fully 14% of the population is working age and does not work). retirees are 18% and children 22%.

the system I described above subsidizes 50m non-working people absolute minimum, but really it's far more because people that are paid to stay home and take care of their relatives are considered "workers"

of that 47% of "actual workers" maybe one third does real work, the rest are shuffling papers around or doing fake email jobs. so you have, rough math, 50 million actual workers supporting 300 million dependents. that's the nature of the economy today. it will only accelerate. eventually you will have 10 million using AI tools to do all the work and 340 million dependents.

the reason no one roots out the fraud is because it's the system that keeps our extremely fragile polity intact. the fraud is the UBI. the purpose of the system is what it does.

of course, it's a deeply unfair system, because you are allowed to commit fraud if you are a politically protected client group of the democrats. DOGE was killed faster than any government program ever, because it attempted to root out the fraud. if you are honest and unwilling to commit fraud, you are a huge loser in this system. your neighbor will have their mortgage subsidized by some government program. they will get favorable SBA loans due to DEI. they will open a fake hospice or autism clinic. they will get paid for taking care of their neighbor's kid and vice versa. the primary skill in the labor market is learning how to extract money from state and federal government programs, not gaining skills or making yourself employable. if you are just trying to work an ordinary wagie job you are a huge sucker. you are paying 40-50% effective all in taxes to everyone else who is a net taker.

the sad part is because AI is such a substantial productivity boost, it will actually keep this system going for a while longer, and maybe in perpetuity. AI boosts the 15% of the population that is actually productive so much that the remaining 85% can coast by. no one in charge will change this because they can't think of anything else. the political costs of a real UBI program are too great and we don't have the money for it anyway. so we will keep this covert fraud-based UBI program running indefinitely. unfortunately, if you are an honest wagie, you lose.

[Nayib Bukele @nayibbukele]

Cuadra por cuadra... tardará un poco, pero quedará hermoso.

[Eliano A Younes @eliano]

what do these books have in common?

answer: New York Times Best Seller List

[Gray Connolly @GrayConnolly]

Hard to think of a strategic as well as national energy policy that is more vindicated, each day, than the French decision to go big into Nuclear power. A French victory that rivals with Austerlitz.

[Bill Melugin @BillMelugin_]

Makes me sick. Survives all of that just to be murdered on US soil by a terrorist who should have never been on the streets.

RIP.

[Sarah Gallagher @sgallz_]

2026: the year of the patriot

[Wes Winder @weswinder]

this is exactly what happened to music

> barrier to record an album in 2000: a studio, a label, $500k
> barrier to record an album in 2015: a laptop and garageband
> result: more music than ever. most of it niche. some of it massive

software is about 5 years behind that curve

vibe coders with claude code are the new bedroom producers

and the bedroom producers won

do with that what you will