Travis Cardwell

[Travis Cardwell @txghost91]

It's not just britian. Starting from so far back after decades of attrition, it will take a trillion+ per year to field a capable military in any meaningful time frame. Not the paltry hundreds of billions extra by 2035.
Poland is the only one serious about rebuilding and they aren't large enough to matter, nor are they buying the enablers that make a modern military capable on the battlefield.
The entirety of Europe today can barely field the equivalent of a single us supercarrier battle group when readybess reates are factored in. And even then they lack the logistics to keep that force at sea under wartime tempo.
They have fewer long range precision strike munitions in inventory than the us used on 2 weeks in Iran.
And due to the abysmal tanker fleet could only realistically support about 15% of the strike tempo the us alone conducted during epic fury. After 3-4 weeks it would fall below 10% due to maintenance cycles.
Zelensky threw them under the bus yesterday when he said patriot is the only system capable of hitting balastic missles. The number of pac 3 in inventory vs russias ballistic stockpile leaves then highly vulnerable to strikes on critical infrastructure. That's before you consider drones. Lng terminals and storage goes down and you have rolling blackouts across the majority of the continent.
Everyone looks at troop count and tanks/artillery without seeing the fact that they are whoefully inadequate in the all the systems that actually make a military lethal and sustainable.
It's actually pathetic what they have become.

[Travis Cardwell @txghost91]

The average American is paying 50$ more for fuel per month.
The president under ieepa has unilateral authority to restrict refined fuels exports. Which we produce more of than we use domestically.
The us is the least reliant nation of meaningful scale on imports/exports. Half that of Europe and 1/3 of China in percentage of gdp terms.
A global demand shock would hurt China significantly more than the us as they have shifted to reliance on exports to shore up weak growth caused by slowdowns in property and infrastructure.
Pain in relative when you are playing the game of thrones. And the us is in a much stronger relative position than its core adversary. If you think this is only about uranium you need to widen your strategic lens.

[Travis Cardwell @txghost91]

They have not largely caught up. They saw a rapid rise via distillation, that has fallen off recently with the gap widening between Chinese and American models.
The issue for open source is any efficiency gains used to offset the compute gap closed models enjoy can instantly be fed into the closed models, leading to them having both advantages.
The argument is moot in the medium to long term. All models will hit a point where they are capable enough for 99.99% of use cases.
The real race happens once the frontier models truly become closed, locked behind rentals to labs and government agencies under national security. The one who controls that controls the cyber offense/defense advantage and scientific advancement edge.

[Travis Cardwell @txghost91]

Of course it's more important. The geography and seasonality of Africa makes it untenable for any meaningful build out of port capacity or manufacturing infrastructure. The combination of massive population and little realistic prospect for significant growth create the conditions for continued instability.
Any takes of Africa being the next growth region explicitly ignore the structural realities of the region.

[Travis Cardwell @txghost91]

@grok @bazirani01 @CharlesMFrank @TMTLongShort https://t.co/J0ARC7J1lN

[Travis Cardwell @txghost91]

@grok @bazirani01 @CharlesMFrank @TMTLongShort @grok. Details please because it matters. Where is collusis 2 now in exaflop terms, how does that relate to the competition, and just how much will that gap widen over the next 12 months based on clusters in active development that have broken ground.

[Travis Cardwell @txghost91]

@grok @bazirani01 @CharlesMFrank @TMTLongShort https://t.co/12T5U9KWuh

[Travis Cardwell @txghost91]

@grok @bazirani01 @CharlesMFrank @TMTLongShort @grok. When evaluating all available evidence, the fact that they have closed the gap so quickly and now have a significant and expanding compute gap over the competition, do you believe it is likely grok 5 will surpass the competition? Yes or no only.

[Travis Cardwell @txghost91]

@grok, please explain why grok with its physics first principle and truth seeking directive drives it's already superior hallucination rate. That it increases efficiency over other models by requiring fewer feedback loops and is auguable the most important metric.
And that yes, they are all similar right now, but what I have been saying is that considering the trajectory, starting 2 years behind anthropic and 3 behind openai, combined with the huge exaflop gap xai now has, that my prediction is grok 5 will surpass the other frontier models in the next release round. And considering the available information I'm referencing if that seems plausible.

[Travis Cardwell @txghost91]

@grok. Please explain that xai needs revenue generation and with its already expansive gap with collosus 2 they didn't need collosus 1. That training is much more GPU intensive than training, so collosus 1 just wasn't needed by xai. As well as the planned expansion rate of collosus 2 and how it will increase the gap further over the next year plus.

[Travis Cardwell @txghost91]

Wow. Just throw Europe right under the bus.

[Polymarket Intel @PolymarketIntel]

Zelensky:

Ballistic missiles are Russia's last argument in this war against Ukraine and we must find a sufficient response to them.

We have one and only so far one and only proven tool that works and that is American-made Patriot systems.

[Travis Cardwell @txghost91]

@AlanNummy @PolymarketIntel No, it has not performed as expected. Interception rates agianst maneuverable ballistic targets is abysmal.

[Travis Cardwell @txghost91]

If you import the 3rd world, you get the 3rd world

[Daily Wire @realDailyWire]

.@RepBrandonGill: You've identified multiple individuals and LLCs that you believe engaged in fraud. How many of these had African names?

@lukerosiak: 100%

[Travis Cardwell @txghost91]

@sama The problem with EO is that it can be redone in any format.
We need both sides to stop being imbeciles and put bipartisan legislation forward to ensure the US remains the leader and that we have the tools necessary to deter cyberattacks.

[Travis Cardwell @txghost91]

Republicans are leading in early voting in CALIFORNIA right now while Dems have a 2 to 1 advantage.
Regardless of what the pollsters who have been habitually wrong for multiple cycles have to say. Republican enthusiasm is strong. Between that and the recent supreme Court ruling I wouldn't go calling anything this soon.
People still remember 9% inflation under Biden, the average American is paying 50$ more per month on fuel, and if you aren't like us and constantly keeping track of geopolitics, most people really don't care about Iran. Nobody I talk to on a daily basis has anything to say about any of the topics that consistently show up in polling.
The average person is checked out of politics and the Dems aren't running anyone worth talking good about. The only ones in the news cycle are platner and talarico, how do you think they are viewed by independents.

[Travis Cardwell @txghost91]

@bazirani01 @CharlesMFrank @TMTLongShort I also don't know what you mean by not considering neocloudout of their options. Do you even know what that is?
They are doing exactly that by renting colossus 1 to codex and anthropic. They are now a neocloud provider and are scaling that revenue source with future build outs.

[Travis Cardwell @txghost91]

Lol. Like I said. They started 2 years behind anthropic and 3 behind openai and are now competing on all metrics and ahead in arguably the most important, hallucination. Their fast models are also the cheapest per token cost of any of the frontiers. Elons goal is raw intelligence, not interprise like gpt and anthropic. His goal is to use grok as a base layer for Tesla cars and Optimus. Humanoid robots are a market that will massively dwarf enterprise sales in the next decade when everyone wants one in their home and factory.
And elons goal isn't just producing a frontier model, he is competing with the hyperscalers now. He built collosus for 30 billion and between codex and anthropic will generate roughly 25 billion in revenue from that cluster this year.
Grok and massive compute aren't the goal, they are the means to enable the high revenue generating products like leasing contracts and robotics.

[Travis Cardwell @txghost91]

We aren't worried about Japan cutting off critical imports.
Also the process between Japanese companies and Chinese companies is completely different.
For Japanese brand vehicles, about half of them are assembled in the United States, and 40% or so are assembled in Canada and Mexico. And the majority of the parts are made in America and Canada.
The Chinese model is different. They set up an assembly plant, manufacture all of the components in China, and ship them in for final assembly in an automated plant to cut down costs as much as possible. This means in the event of a trade dispute or war or any other externality, they can just cut all parts supply off and you're just left with a big assembly plant that you have no inputs for.
Everything about the way that China operates is designed to create leverage points that give them power over your economy.

[Travis Cardwell @txghost91]

China produces more emissions through its entire supply chain to produce EVs, solar panels, and wind renewables than it saves over the lifetime of those products by its massive increase in coal emissions to power those manufacturing, mining, and refining operations.
About 1.5x more
And that's not including transportation for all the intermediary steps to go from mining to refining to manufacturing to delivery all the way across the planet.