Angelo Motta

NY Technology Executive

[Angelo Motta @angeloamotta]

@IBDinvestors How To Invest Weekly

[Jim Bianco @biancoresearch]

I am not a military analyst. I'm a financial analyst focused on macroeconomic risk.

That different lens might explain why I see something most military strategists and investors are missing.
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The New Rules of Warfare—And Why We Can't Opt Out

For nearly a century, warfare belonged to whoever controlled the biggest defense budget. Aircraft carriers. Stealth bombers. Multibillion-dollar weapons systems.

That model is changing in ways many aren't appreciating.

Ukraine and Iran are showing the West what 21st-century conflict actually looks like: decentralized, highly iterative, fast-changing, unmanned, and cheap. Neither the US nor Russia—beginning in 2022—appears prepared.

We might now have no choice but to show we can fight and win such a war.

The Ukraine Approach

Faced with a small defense budget, a much smaller population, and a vastly outnumbered army, Ukraine had to get creative. They couldn't match Russia's industrial capacity or spending. So they abandoned that playbook entirely.

They developed an entirely new way to fight, highly decentralized, iterative, and most importantly, cheap.
They also created Brave1—a completely new way to conduct war.

Frontline commanders log into an iPad and bypass central command entirely. They spend digital points to purchase equipment directly from hundreds of (Ukrainian) manufacturers. When they encounter a new threat, they message the manufacturer directly and work with the engineers to find a solution, even if that means they visit to the front. The result is hardware or software upgrades that once took months now take days.

Here's the crucial part: hundreds of manufacturers compete fiercely for these dollars by offering the best possible product as fast as possible. This isn't centralized procurement. It's a market. Competition drives innovation at scale. Weapons evolve as the enemy evolves in real time.

Units are also awarded points for confirmed kills, uploaded from drone video—a powerfully eloquent way to grade effectiveness.

But the real innovation might be how they decentralized manufacturing itself. Instead of building weapons in massive, centralized factories that make perfect targets for Russian bombing, Ukraine distributed production across hundreds of small manufacturers—workshops, machine shops, garages, and yes, kitchens. Each produces components or complete systems. This approach serves two purposes: speed and survival.

You can bomb a tank factory. You destroy production for months. You cannot bomb ten thousand kitchens. If one workshop gets hit, ninety-nine others keep producing. The network regenerates faster than Russia can destroy it. This is why the manufacturing process includes actual kitchens—it's not a metaphor. It's a strategy.

The Metric That Defines a New Era

The result is staggering: at least 70% of battlefield casualties now come from drones. This is the first time in over a century that the primary cause of combat death is neither a bullet nor an artillery shell. Since World War I, industrial warfare meant industrial killing. Ukraine has broken that equation entirely.

As a result, Russia is now controlling less territory than at any point since 2022 and going backward. In March, Ukraine made gains while Russia recorded no gains for the first time in two and a half years, and Drone-led offensives recaptured 470 square kilometers while paralyzing 40% of Russian oil exports.

Ukraine has lowered the "cost per kill" to less than $1,000 per casualty—a 99.98% reduction from the millions of dollars that were common in the post-9/11 wars. This isn't an incremental improvement. This is a complete inversion of modern military economics.
Yet the Western defense establishment is not learning from this.

Rheinmetall CEO Armin Papperger mocked Ukraine's entire approach. In The Atlantic, he called Ukrainian manufacturers "housewives with 3D printers," dismissing their work as "playing with Legos." They are not studying this revolution. They are mocking it.

And the "housewives with 3D printers" are beating the Russian army!

Ukraine Is Now in the Middle East

The US Military and Gulf states face an eerily similar problem. Iran's Shahed drones threaten shipping in the Strait of Hormuz—a chokepoint that funnels 21% of global oil. They cannot fend off Iran by firing a $4 million Patriot missiles at $20,000 drones.

They need what Ukraine has discovered: a decentralized, rapidly adaptive defense network that doesn't require centralized industrial capacity.

That's why Ukraine just signed historic 10-year defense deals with Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the UAE.

Over 220 Ukrainian specialists are now on the front lines of the Persian Gulf—exporting not just weapons, but a completely new doctrine of how to fight.

The precedent is set. The model works. Everyone is watching.

Mosaic

On April 1st, Trump threatened to bomb Iran "back to the stone ages" if they don't reopen the Strait within weeks.

It's the classic 20th-century playbook: overwhelming offense force, massive bombardment, industrial-scale destruction.

The problem? That playbook doesn't work against distributed, cheap, rapid-iteration systems—especially when your enemy is organized under a mosaic structure.

Iran's "Mosaic Defense" doctrine is a decentralized command system where authority and capability are distributed across multiple geographic and organizational nodes.

Each region operates semi-autonomously with overlapping chains of command and pre-planned contingencies. It's designed so that when you destroy the center, the edges keep fighting. You cannot decapitate a system with no head. You cannot out-bomb your way to victory when your enemy is not centralized; this was the solution for 20th-century industrial warfare.

Defense Wins Championships

21st-century asymmetrical threats require defensive shields, not aggressive offenses. Ukraine has built exactly that: rapid-iteration defenses, decentralized manufacturing, commanders empowered to buy solutions in real time and rewarded for success.

That same defensive model may hold the key to opening the Strait of Hormuz. Not through massive offense, but through the ability to adapt and defend quickly.

Why We're Stuck

Whether you viewed this as a war of choice or not, it has now become a war to keep global trade open. And that makes it inescapable.

This is precisely why the US cannot declare victory and walk away from the Strait of Hormuz— or TACO.

Every adversary on the planet will interpret American withdrawal as confirmation that cheap asymmetric systems work against powerful centralized platforms.

And these adversaries might have sent us a message last month. In mid-March 2026, an unauthorized drone swarm penetrated Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana, home to the U.S. Air Force's Global Strike Command.

The fact that this happened not overseas but in the United States, and that these tests occurred just weeks ago, underscores how close this threat is now.

They didn't attack. They announced their presence. Every adversary watching learned that cheap drone networks can reach into the US.

The Global Supply Chain Risk

If the US abandons the Gulf while Iran holds the Strait contested, markets will price this as validation that cheap systems can hold global trade hostage. The current market disruptions will become permanent.

Supply chains will have to pivot from "just-in-time" efficiency back to "just-in-case" redundancy. Inflation returns as safety costs money. Trade routes diversify away from vulnerable chokepoints. The global friction tax becomes permanent.

The Unavoidable Truth

Once you prove that cheap, asymmetric systems can hold global trade hostage, that knowledge spreads globally and irreversibly. Every adversary learns the same lesson: you don't need a $2 trillion Navy—you need $20 million in drones and the will to use them.

Withdrawing while the Strait remains contested would permanently validate this model. Supply chains shift to "just-in-case" redundancy. Insurance costs rise. The friction tax becomes structural—baked into every global transaction for decades.

The cost of staying is measured in months. The cost of leaving is measured in decades of economic drag.

We cannot leave unfinished business.

[Angelo Motta @angeloamotta]

@traderstewie @TraderZ Are you concerned about the MACD rollover on the daily time frame?

[Angelo Motta @angeloamotta]

@MarketMike What LLM and data did you use? Would you share your prompt for us to learn?

[Angelo Motta @angeloamotta]

@KeithMcCullough @grok explain

[Angelo Motta @angeloamotta]

WeWork?!?!

[Scott Maragioglio, CMT @smaragio]

Masa is not going to like it if Google steps up and really starts to compete (undercut) OpenAI, which is the only logical thing for Google to do.

[Angelo Motta @angeloamotta]

One possible explanation for the shift from Covid is our consumer mindset shift from buying things to buying experiences.

[ISABELNET @ISABELNET_SA]

🇺🇸 S&P 500

The Truck Tonnage Index rose 0.1% in December. Historically, the S&P 500 tends to increase in line with the physical size and expansion of the US economy
👉 https://t.co/yIk7SZYp6p

#truck #trucking #freight #equity #stockmarket $spx #spx #stocks

[Neil deGrasse Tyson @neiltyson]

January 21, 2026
After one year. Decisions, decisions.

Which hat to wear today?
( 48-hour poll )

[Angelo Motta @angeloamotta]

@Barchart Futures are trying to tell a different story

[Tom McClellan @McClellanOsc]

I created these tables back in 2005, looking at how there is a 40ish-year cycle in both gold rushes and "economic wars".

Gold Rushes
1703-1720 Brazil gold boom
and 1720 So. Pacific Bubble
1768 Mexico silver boom
1798-1824 No. Carolina and Georgia gold rush
1848 Sutter’s Mill (California)
1897 Klondike
1930s Mini U.S. gold rush
1970s Gold/oil boom (Hunt brothers)
2010s Next gold boom due

The current gold and silver boom is arriving a little bit late, similar to how the Klondike gold rush was a bit late.

Economic Wars
1776-1783 Revolutionary War
1812-1815 War with England
1861-1865 Civil War
1914-1918 WWI
1941-1945 WWII
1980s Cold War peaks
2020s Next economic war

The 40-year period between big economic wars relates to how long people live, and remain in the workforce. By the time 40 years has gone by, most of the people who remember how bad the last war was have either died or gone from national leadership, and so those who remain have no one to tell them how bad it is, and what an awful idea it would be to enter into one.

Economic wars are different from "border wars", such as Korea, Vietnam, and the Persian Gulf wars. Economic wars are bigger and more involved, with countries attacking not just each other's armies but also their economies. Each one in the history of the USA has led to the collapse of an economic system, e.g. British colonial power, slavery, Japanese imperialism and Nazi/Fascism, or Soviet communism.

Within the US now, there sadly seems to be a desire by some people to get into combat again with each other, similar to the sentiments in 1860-61.

[Kurt Supe, CPA & Retirement Planner @KurtSupeCPA]

Standing at 7,000 feet in the Rockies this morning and I finally get it.

One of my clients retired at 58 specifically so he could hike these trails while his knees still worked.

He told me, "Kurt, I watched my dad save until 75, retire with $2 million, and spend the next 10 years too tired to do anything but sit on the couch."

The altitude here is no joke. You're gasping for air after 100 yards if you're not in shape. Hydration is brutal. Your body works twice as hard for everything.

My client hikes 8 miles +. At 62, he's crushing his bucket list because he retired early enough to still be healthy.

Here's what nobody tells you about retirement planning: The money is only half the equation.

Retire at 70 with $3 million but bad knees, a weak heart, and no energy? You'll spend it on medical bills and cruises where you never leave the ship.

Retire at 58 with less and a healthy body? You'll actually live the life you saved for.

People obsess over account balances. But I'm watching clients who waited too long struggle to walk a mile, while the ones who left earlier are hiking mountains.

The brutal truth: Your body has an expiration date on adventure. Your 401(k) doesn't.
Plan for both.

[Alexandra Semenova @alexandraandnyc]

wealth managers putting your money in an index fund

[Angelo Motta @angeloamotta]

@smaragio Need to build more. Problem is that once a person builds they don't want more people building around them. This would be a good use of deregulation.

[Angelo Motta @angeloamotta]

@Andrea_Lisi_CFA BEAR

[Angelo Motta @angeloamotta]

@Jake__Wujastyk @alphatrends ALPHA... and Merry Christmas!

[Brian Shannon, CMT @alphatrends]

I just found out about this today. Go to the $AMZN search bar and type in "thank my driver"

the driver of the last delivery will receive $5 from AMZN, it doesn't cost you anything

https://t.co/2L7cirN7pY

[Angelo Motta @angeloamotta]

@smaragio Good session Scott. Hope you had a nice Thanksgiving today!

[Angelo Motta @angeloamotta]

@Andrea_Texas_82 Seems like a ponzi scheme to me.

[Andrea Lisi, CFA @Andrea_Lisi_CFA]

China strategy to avoid using dollar in trade continues in full swing. That’s bad news for the US Treasury

[Angelo Motta @angeloamotta]

@smaragio No worries. I was running a work call so couldn't make the session.