North Branch Media

Geopolitics, AI & markets.

5-minute reads posted to Chicago

[North Branch Media @NorthBranchCo]

How to grow America

1) Modular reactors in every city > 100K citizens

2) Subsidize rare earth processing facilities

3) Subsidize GLP-1s

4) Digital ID program

5) Advanced market commit of defense drones (like COVID vaccines)

6) Attack entitlements (raise age, reduce COLA)

[Jeffrey Emanuel @doodlestein]

I wonder if the FCC had never been created and the air waves were a complete Wild West-style free-for-all, if the ingenuity of the market would’ve just created extremely robust and clever codecs with stuff like RaptorQ that always “just work” even with crazy interference.

[North Branch Media @NorthBranchCo]

The space economy will become more valuable than the global economy - maybe sooner thank you think.

And when that happens, the powers that be (Elon, Jeff) will create a constitution similar to the US but try to prevent much of the modern bullshit... and it could go terribly wrong.

[North Branch Media @NorthBranchCo]

@elonmusk would be great for the debt!

[North Branch Media @NorthBranchCo]

As of May 2024, countries with no Antarctic territorial claim operated 69/113 facilities Australia's sector holds 25 facilities with Russia running 8 of them and China 4, while Australia itself only runs 6.

[North Branch Media @NorthBranchCo]

An Ohio-class ballistic missile submarine (SSBN) launches a Trident II D5 on March 26, 2018 off the coast of Southern California.

Tridents can be equipped with W76-1, W88, or the low-yield W76-2 nuclear warheads.

[North Branch Media @NorthBranchCo]

@landon20s @JBPritzker @cmitchellforlg Giving crypto businesses 6 months to minimize their tax bill is certainly an effective way to maximize tax revenue.

It's quite similar to how Trump has been publicly mulling the diesel export ban, allowing oil to preemptively be moved.

[North Branch Media @NorthBranchCo]

The dollar's share of global FX reserves fell from 70.7% to 57.1% from 2000 to 2026.

10.1 of those percentage points went to currencies outside the euro, yen and sterling.

The renminbi was only allocated 2 of those points.

The rest went to the Canadian dollar, Australian dollar, Swiss franc, Korean won, Singapore dollar and Swedish and Norwegian krona.

[Crémieux @cremieuxrecueil]

Amazing.

These researchers found that there's a spike in Bitcoin activity around the time foreign aid money goes out.

Somewhere between 2 and 6 cents of every dollar of World Bank foreign aid disbursements got siphoned off into crypto wallets:

[North Branch Media @NorthBranchCo]

~40x zoom of a 7B-Intel80186 chip

[North Branch Media @NorthBranchCo]

The dollar's share of global FX reserves fell from 70.7% to 57.1% from 2000 to 2026.

10.1 of those percentage points went to currencies outside the euro, yen and sterling.

The renminbi was only allocated 2 of those points.

The rest went to the Canadian dollar, Australian dollar, Swiss franc, Korean won, Singapore dollar and Swedish and Norwegian krona.

[North Branch Media @NorthBranchCo]

The dollar's share of global FX reserves fell from 70.7% to 57.1% from 2000 to 2026.

10.1 of those percentage points went to currencies outside the euro, yen and sterling.

The renminbi was only allocated 2 of those points.

The rest went to the Canadian dollar, Australian dollar, Swiss franc, Korean won, Singapore dollar and Swedish and Norwegian krona.

[Polymarket @Polymarket]

JUST IN: Illinois moves forward with the nation’s first crypto tax, set to take effect January 1, 2027, even on trades that lose money.

[Gannon Breslin @gannonbreslin]

the only investment research you need for the next two years is looking at this photo

[North Branch Media @NorthBranchCo]

From Jan 2025–Sep 2026, Chinese models' share of weekly text tokens rose from 6.1% to 56.3%. US share fell from 80.6% to 25.6%.

@OpenRouter

[Yano 🟪 @JasonYanowitz]

Fascinating.

Chief Economist at Apollo: agents could cause a bank run by sweeping household cash into accounts paying 3-5% instead of the 0.1% national average, causing banks to lose a large share of their cheap deposits.

[Noah Gordon @noah_gordon_]

US investments in minerals are starting to pay off, but China will remain dominant through 2030

[Javier Blas @JavierBlas]

CHART OF THE DAY: Crude oil exports from Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Qatar (via all routes). At a huge costs and with the help of the US Navy, the group has lifted oil exports to nearly 80% of pre-war levels (Important to note is only *crude*).

[North Branch Media @NorthBranchCo]

From 2015–2025, China's annual electricity generation grew by 4.8K TWh, more than the 4.5K TWh the entire US generated in 2025.

[North Branch Media @NorthBranchCo]

From 2015–2025, China's annual electricity generation grew by 4.8K TWh, more than the 4.5K TWh the entire US generated in 2025.

[North Branch Media @NorthBranchCo]

From 2015–2025, China's annual electricity generation grew by 4.8K TWh, more than the 4.5K TWh the entire US generated in 2025.