Climateer Investing: 2026

Saturday, August 22, 2026

"An Abecedary Of Scientific Serendipity"

The author of this excursion, Sheldon Lee Glashow, is old
(emeritus professor at both Harvard and Boston University)
He also has one of those Nobel thingies. (physics, 1979)

From the (possibly) resurrected Inference Review:

The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not ‘Eureka!’ but: ‘That’s funny...’

—Isaac Asimov

Horace Walpole coined the word serendipity in a letter to Horace Mann. The two men had become friends during Walpole’s Grand Tour of Europe in 1739. Walpole returned to England a year later while Mann remained in Florence as Britain’s permanent envoy, a position he secured with assistance from Walpole’s father. The two men never met again but corresponded for forty-six years.

In one of his letters, Walpole wrote:

I once read a silly fairy tale, The Three Princes of Serendip. As their highnesses traveled they were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things they were not in quest for: for instance, one of them discovered that a mule blind of the right eye had traveled the same road lately, because the grass was eaten only on the left side where it was worse than on the right — now do you understand serendipity?

The Travels and Adventures of the Three Princes of Serendip first appeared in a fourteenth century Persian poem by Amir Khusrau. The mule that Walpole recalled from childhood had actually been a one-eyed lame camel, driven by a woman and laden with bags of butter and honey. Given these clues, the prince deduced the path the lost camel had taken. The camel was found, the princes richly rewarded. The tale was translated from Persian to Italian in 1557, from Italian to French in 1619, and then to English in 1721. The story of the wayward one-eyed camel may be traced back to the sixth century Talmud, the princes replaced by Jewish slaves, the butter and honey, by wine and oil.

The Abecedary

A is for the first aniline dye, stumbled upon in 1856 by the 18-year-old English chemist Henry Perkin whose German tutor asked him to synthesize quinine from coal tar. Perkin ended up with a dirty brown sludge. After cleaning his beaker with alcohol, he noticed that the sludge had turned purple. Patented and marketed as Perkin’s Mauve, it was exhibited publicly by Empress Eugénie thereby becoming highly fashionable and making Perkin rich. His tutor synthesized another aniline dye, magenta, and helped to create the huge German dye industry. Sir William Henry Perkin was knighted in 1906 and quinine itself was first synthesized in 1944, just in time for its use in World War II. Mauve was not alone among serendipitous synthetic dyes: Prussian blue was accidentally hit upon in 1706, Scheele’s Green in 1775, Monastral blue in 1927, Pyrrole red in 1974, and Yin Mn blue in 2009. Serendipity comes in many colors.

B is for Botox. The powerful toxin produced by botulism bacteria was introduced to medicine by Alan B. Scott. His experimental drug, a form of the toxin later called Botox, was approved in 1989 for treating eye muscle problems, but often found off-label targets such as migraine headache or urinary incontinence. Its bonanza application arose by chance when Jean Carruthers saw her patient’s facial wrinkles vanish after treating her with Botox. For years she and her husband explored the many cosmetic applications of Botox. Once approved for such purposes, Botox became a multi-billion dollar drug, but the Carrothers had neglected to patent its cosmetic use.

C is for Cisplatin, the trade name for a chemical first synthesized in 1844 and called Peyrone’s salt. A century later, the American chemist Barnett Rosenberg set out to explore the effect of electricity on bacterial growth by sending electric currents through media containing live bacteria. Noticing that the cells stopped dividing, Rosenberg hoped that electricity might be used to treat cancer, but the suppression of cell division had resulted from a compound produced at their platinum electrodes. Rosenberg identified Peyrone’s salt as the most effective such platinum compound. Cisplatin arrived at clinics in 1978 to treat testicular and ovarian cancers. It is often used off label for other cancers. Cisplatin, along with several other platinum-based drugs, account for about forty percent of all effective chemotherapeutic agents.

D is for Dynamite, devised by Alfred Nobel in 1867. Two decades earlier, Ascanio Sobrero had created the liquid explosive nitroglycerine. Due to its instability, he could find no practical use for it. Nobel sought a material that could absorb nitroglycerine thereby yielding a stable solid that could safely be shaped, transported and triggered. He tried many materials – sawdust, cement, charcoal – but with no success. The serendipity of Nobel’s discovery lay in his fortuitous use of sand from dunes near his lab as his absorbent material – not the sand of ocean beaches nor that used to make concrete or fill children’s sandboxes, but kieselguhr, a diatomaceous earth made of ancient fossilized organisms. You can buy it as a health food or an insecticide and it gave rise to Nobel’s prize-creating discovery. Incidentally, symptoms often reported by nitroglycerine workers led to its serendipitous use to treat angina. Late in life Nobel was prescribed nitroglycerine pills for heart disease.

E is for chemical elements discovered more or less by chance. Nine of the prenuclear ninety-two elements qualify: Helium, Phosphorus, Oxygen, Argon, Iodine, Yttrium, Lanthanum, Praseodymium and Neodymium. Three more are found among the twenty-six transuranic elements: Neptunium, Einsteinium and Fermium. Phosphorus was discovered by alchemist Hennig Brand in 1669. He found it by distilling urine in quest of the Philosopher’s Stone. Three centuries later phosphorus bombs helped destroy his hometown of Hamburg. Lanthanum and didymium were chanced upon in 1840 when Carl Mosander tried to purify cerium. Both were regarded as elements and included in Mendeleev’s Table, but forty-five years later Carl von Weisbach was amazed to find didymium to be an alloy of two new elements, which he named Praseodymium and Neodymium....

....MUCH MORE

Previously from Inference Review:

Disease, Famine, Drudgery, Bondage: A Lively Look at the Birth of the Modern
Not that kind of bondage. Not that lively a look, sorry.
Refunds available at the entrance.

"Reviewing Mervyn King's The End of Alchemy: Money, Banking, and the Future of the Global Economy"

"The Euro Is Doomed"

Lo and Behold: Andrew Lo's Adaptive Markets

"The Subjective Statistician"

Review: "The Great Leveler: Violence and the History of Inequality from the Stone Age to the Twenty-First Century"

One Euro, One Europe (One Love)

When France Invented The Internet

Tribes and States: Human Self-Organization

"The Great Transition: Climate, Disease and Society in the Late-Medieval World"
Emanuel Derman: "Trading Volatility"
The BIS and the Rise of Secular Stagnation
The Great Transition: Climate, Disease and Society in the Late-Medieval World
Economics: "The Miracle of General Equilibrium"
In response to 'At Lunch with Freeman Dyson': "Escape from the Prisoner’s Dilemma"
Vaclav Smil Is A Party Pooper: "History and Risk"

And many more. Use the 'search blog' box upper left, if interested.

"Who Really Runs Canada? Inside Mark Carney’s Influence Network"

It used to be Desmarais and Power Corporation of Canada and Maurice Strong and that whole crowd.

Now I think it's Brookfield that's in charge.

From Canada's The Walrus, August 21:

Government priorities increasingly reflect the interests of a small, well-connected elite

Rockcliffe Park is as lovely a neighbourhood as you can find in this country. It has large, secluded yards and calm, shady streets. Its residents’ stately manors and homes are nestled between the river, forests, and a semi-private lake, which the plebes are only welcome to swim in upon invitation from owners of private docks along its shore. Some of Ottawa’s best private schools claim the neighbourhood as their home, and the residents’ association is certainly one of the city’s best resourced.
Rockcliffe Park also houses a significant portion of the capital’s decision makers and gross domestic product.

The prime minister and governor general live there. The leader of the opposition shares a backyard fence with the high commissioner of India. There are so many diplomats hanging around, their neighbourhood block parties may now have to register on the foreign interference registry. Venerable public servants, a handful of journalists, business leaders, and, of course, lobbyists rub shoulders on the hiking trails or at the sailing club.

In 2024, Mark Carney—then just one of the illustrious members of the Rockcliffe community—was the headliner for the association’s speaker series. He was described by the association president as “our Mark,” before he spoke to a packed fieldhouse crowd, which included Joe Clark as well as probably more members of the Order of Canada than any other room in the nation.

Rockcliffe isn’t the star of this story. I don’t mean to bother the good people who live there. But I happen to be fascinated with the connections between this country’s handful of policy influencers, business people, politicians, media pundits, and moguls who run much of Canada. There are neighbourhoods quite similar to Rockcliffe across the country. Not all of them hold the same level of power, but all share common characteristics: safe and quiet streets, good or excellent infrastructure, access to nature or, at a minimum, ample green space, and a great chance of residents being put in touch with the right people.

I don’t believe any of this is a conspiracy. Rich and influential people have wanted to live among one another since tribes started to settle down in the earliest days of Mesopotamia. But as we experience a widening chasm between what Canadians want and the policies they are being given, I believe there is value in examining where the government is getting their ideas from. And part of the answer, I believe, resides in the circles in which our decision makers exist....

....MUCH MORE

If interested see also:

July 2021 - "Mark Carney Was the World’s Rock-Star Banker. Now He’s Ready for His Encore"
October 2021 - Climate/Energy: "Mark Carney, man of destiny, arises to revolutionize society. It won't be pleasant"
March 2025 - "Mark Carney, crisis-fighting central banker, hopes to lead Canada through trade war"
Man, he gets all the best titles....

Followup II: "Interrogation Tapes Reveal Journalist Murder Suspect Pointing to Highest Levels of Maltese Power"

From the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, August 19:

Police interviews played for a Maltese jury show Yorgen Fenech accusing the prime minister’s chief of staff of ordering the 2017 car bombing of Daphne Caruana Galizia, while insisting his payments to the plot's middleman were extortion.

Audio recordings of police interrogations played to a Maltese jury this week revealed that Yorgen Fenech, the businessman on trial for the 2017 car bomb assassination of investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, pointed the finger at the highest levels of government at the time, claiming the murder was commissioned by the former prime minister’s chief of staff....

....MUCH MORE

August 15's Followup: "Tapes Hidden in an Ice Cream Box Lay Bare a Maltese Journalist’s Assassination" has most of our backlinks to the murder story,

Mansfield Energy: Petroleum Markets At A Glance

From Mansfield, one of the largest, if not the largest, independent distributors of diesel fuel in the U.S. August 21:

Oil Prices Head for Second Weekly Gain as U.S. Pressure on Iran Intensifies

Oil prices are heading for a second consecutive weekly gain as renewed U.S. pressure on Iran and continued disruptions to Middle East crude flows keep supply concerns at the center of the market. WTI was trading near $86.90/bbl Friday morning and is up roughly 5.3% for the week. Brent was trading near $93.98/bbl, up more than 6% week over week. Prices pulled back from earlier gains Friday after Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said it would be better to end the war now, introducing the possibility of de-escalation after a week dominated by tighter supply concerns....

....MUCH MORE, narrative, charts.

Also at Mansfield:

Natural Gas News – August 21, 2026

Friday, August 21, 2026

"Artificial intelligence boosts automated biolabs"

This is the stuff that Nvidia's Jensen Huang has been pitching* for the last half-decade or so.

It's also why we saw this in October 2024:

Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2024

From Knowable Magazine, August 18:

AI and machine learning are kicking synthetic biology up to new levels of innovation. Researchers see huge potential for novel drugs and other chemicals; some also see risks.

James Field believes his automated laboratory is closing in on a powerful new drug to kill cancer cells with unprecedented precision. Yet the drug wasn’t created by any of the biologists working in his lab — it was generated by artificial intelligence.
Field is a protein engineer working in synthetic biology, a discipline that uses the latest technology to engineer novel cells or biological components. In his world, researchers often talk about a cycle known as DBTL — design, build, test, learn — an iterative process where the end product, whether it is a molecule or a new strain of bacteria, is repeatedly optimized until it has the traits scientists seek. Field’s company, LabGenius, is one of a group of startups that is at the forefront of a revolution in which AI increasingly runs the DBTL cycle from beginning to end.
The work takes place at the company’s sophisticated automated laboratory in a former biscuit factory in south London. Such laboratories, known as biofoundries, first emerged in the 2010s as gene editing technology, combined with “high-throughput” machines — which can conduct hundreds of experiments at once — accelerated the DBTL cycle by many orders of magnitude.
Experiments using biofoundries often involve adapting a piece of DNA that is then added to a host organism — frequently the bacterium Escherichia coli or yeast — to get it to produce a desired molecule, which can be anything from an antibody to an ingredient for sustainable plastic.
Algorithms have been integral to biofoundries from the start in managing the operation of high-throughput machines. But the industry is now approaching a point where AI models are becoming sophisticated enough to program DNA to produce new medicines and industrial chemicals, an emerging field known as SynBioxAI.
Rather than helping only to run the machinery, AI can now work iteratively, learning from results and suggesting new avenues of experimentation, reducing the development time for new drugs or industrial chemicals from years to months.
According to Paul Freemont, who heads synthetic biology at Imperial College London, we are approaching a powerful point of “convergence of automation, data and machine learning and AI.” He was the founding chair of the Global Biofoundries Alliance, an international group of publicly funded biofoundries that launched in 2019 in Kobe, Japan, with 16 members. The group has now grown to over 40 members across the world, spread from China to Mexico.
Since that launch, countries have been rapidly investing in biofoundry capacity. The United States, for example, is spending $75 million on the development of five new biofoundries, while China has named biomanufacturing and synthetic biology as core strategic priorities for its 2026-2030 five-year plan.
The objective is to engineer biology, programming cells to produce new drugs and industrial products, a technology that Freemont says is going to “become essential for mankind.”
However, he believes the field hasn’t fully reached this point of convergence. “I think there’s a massive amount of technical work that needs to be done to achieve the vision of what people are trying to do,” he says....

....MUCH MORE
*Some previous posts:

July 2021 - NVIDIA Opens UK's Fastest Supercomputer To Outside Researchers, Academic and Commercial

NVIDIA Claims Install of UK’s Top Supercomputer, for Research in AI and Healthcare

Announced last October, NVIDIA today launched Cambridge-1, calling it the United Kingdom’s most powerful supercomputer. Enabling scientists and healthcare experts to use the combination of AI and simulation to accelerate the digital biology revolution, Cambridge-1 represents a $100 million investment by NVIDIA.....

March 2023 - "The Biorevolution: Its Implications for U.S. National Security, Economic Competitiveness, and National Power"
The author of this piece, Dr. Tara O'Toole is Senior Vice-President of the CIA's venture capital arm, In-Q-Tel.

January 2024 - Boston Consulting Group: "Synthetic Biology Is Getting Closer to Industrial Scale"

January 2024 - We Are Going To Hear More And More About Digital Biology (NVDA)

February 2024 - Taking Nvidia's Jensen Huang Seriously: Paris-Based "Bioptimus primed with $35m to unravel disease biology using AI"

Two pitches that Nvidia's CEO will be making at next month's NVDA lovefest (Nvidia GTC Conference, March 17 - 21, 300,000 attendees in-person and online) are 1) sovereign AI, every country, even every city needs its own supercomputer powered by Nvidia chips and its own Large Language Model trained on those supercomputers and 2) digital biology - everything from rapid drug discovery to individually tailored gene therapy.*

February 2024 - "17 key takeaways from the 2024 J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference"

April 2024 - "RAND: 'Artificial Intelligence and Biotechnology: Risks and Opportunities"

October 2024 - Paris-based baCta Is Using Engineered Bacteria to Grow Natural Rubber and Slash CO2 Emissions
AI-powered synthetic biology is so hot right now.

April 2026 - "Genomics Has Revealed An Age Undreamed Of"

This piece was published at Palladium magazine in 2023, so a few years after Nvidia's Jensen Huang started talking about AI and medicine and artificial biology*, but before the possibilities really started to become apparent. Now genomics looks to be very investable.**

In many ways the vibe feels similar to the zeitgeist around chips and training AI a dozen years ago.

I don't know if it is going to work out as well as 2013's "Why Is Machine Learning (CS 229) The Most Popular Course At Stanford?"—which was followed by 2014's Deep Learning is VC Worthy—which was followed by 2015-to-date: "Saaaay, this Nvidia may be on to something."

But we shall see.

"US says hackers are targeting vulnerable water systems with the help of AI"

From TechCrunch, August 20:

Amidst a spate of ongoing cyberattacks targeting water systems across the country, the U.S. government’s security agencies are warning that hackers are actively breaking into Siemens devices used in critical infrastructure.

U.S. cybersecurity agency CISA, the FBI, and the National Security Agency, among others, said on Wednesday that hackers are targeting “all” Siemens S7 programmable logic controllers, which are devices used for controlling automated physical processes in energy, water systems, manufacturing, and agriculture.
CISA said the attacks are part of broader activity targeting water supply and wastewater systems around the United States. The agency said that the disruption could result in downtime, safety incidents, or equipment damage to critical infrastructure that relies on these devices.

The agencies said the hackers are using AI to generate exploit scripts that rely on publicly available information to find and exploit vulnerable programmable logic controllers that are running out-of-date software or are otherwise poorly secured.

CISA has long warned owners of critical infrastructure to keep these devices disconnected from the internet, and officials have acknowledged that rural communities are often the most affected because these systems service large geographic areas.

An incident response professional who works with critical infrastructure told TechCrunch that it was noteworthy that the hackers are using AI to identify and target vulnerable programmable logic controllers, as well as to understand how these devices work. But he cautioned that these devices are already highly vulnerable to begin with....

....MORE

Vaguely reminiscent of Stuxnet vs. the Iranian nuclear program:

"When Stuxnet infects a computer, it checks to see if that computer is connected to specific models of programmable logic controllers (PLCs) manufactured by Siemens. PLCs are how computers interact with and control industrial machinery like uranium centrifuges. If no PLCs are detected, the worm does nothing; if they are, Stuxnet then alters the PLCs’ programming, resulting in the centrifuges being spun irregularly, damaging or destroying them in the process. While this is happening, the PLCs tell the controller computer (incorrectly) that everything is working fine, making it difficult to detect or diagnose what’s going wrong until it’s too late."

—Stuxnet explained: The first known cyberweapon

FrenchTech: "drones are becoming a new way to smuggle goods into prisons"

From EuroNews, August 18:

In Villefranche-sur-Saône, more than 1,800 deliveries have been recorded in less than two months, while in Strasbourg, drone flights now disrupt rescue helicopters.

....MUCH MORE

Catherine Herridge: "EXCLUSIVE: Fauci Text Implicates Biden Task Force"

As Mother used to say: Attempts at concealment are evidence of consciousness of guilt.
(she was raised in an atmosphere of attorneys, Father, Grandfather, Great-Grandfather, great-greats back into the mists of time)

The subject of Herridge's tweet, Michael Osterholm, was one of the poobahs of pandemic policy.

Via her Xitter feed:

EXCLUSIVE: Fauci Text Implicates Biden Task Force

“I’m sending this via text messaging to avoid any FOIA issues.” -Michael Osterholm COVID-19 Advisory Board

Obtained by @ChuckGrassley via @HHS:

- Apparent admission Osterholm @mtosterholm is creating a federal record
-… pic.twitter.com/5E46HZ9YR9
— Catherine Herridge (@C__Herridge) August 19, 2026

Continues:

....Obtained by @ChuckGrassley via @HHS:

- Apparent admission Osterholm @mtosterholm is creating a federal record
- Allegedly seeks to avoid disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act
- 18 USC 2071 makes it a crime to willfully hide, remove, damage, or destroy government documents
- How widespread, and how many separate channels were used to avoid FOIA?

GROUP TEXT: Cloth Masks Provide Limited Protection

“Since April, 2020, I have been consistent in my messaging about the roles that aerosols play in transmission, and the limited benefit that cloth face coverings play in reducing risk.”

PARTICIPANTS
- “Jeff” – most likely Jeff Zients, then-Biden Covid Coordinator (later became Biden’s Chief of Staff)
- “Vivek” – most likely Vivek Murthy, co-chair, Biden Covid Task Force
- “Tony” – confirmed to be Anthony Fauci
- “Rochelle” – most likely Rochelle Walensky, then-CDC Director

CONTEXT: Sen. Grassley obtained the Fauci texts through his investigation into COVID origins which began in 2020 as Chair Senate Finance Committee.

As Chairman Senate Judiciary, Grassley also has jurisdiction over FOIA statute

Your support and subscriptions @C__Herridge make my independent reporting possible!

So not only do we have one of the country's leading epidemiologists saying masks as they were recommended don't work on viruses (Do you know why surgeons wear those blue masks? It's to avoid blowing spit bubbles into the open wound of the patient they are operating on. spit bubbles are much bigger than viruses)

Not only is Osterholm stating the obvious about masks but like long-time Fauci aide David Morens, who just pleaded guilty to covering-up official communication, Osterholm was evidencing the frame of mind of a conspirator. (if interested here are the jury instructions favored by the Ninth Circuit on conspiracy) [note: that's not a direct link to all the instructions, you have to search the site. nice overview on conspiracy though]

As mother also used to say: You won't be punished for telling the truth. You may be punished for what the truth reveals, but not for telling the truth.

Which to a four year old is a distinction without a difference: I will be punished; though the four year old in question did not learn the distinction/difference phrase for another fifteen years;

For more on Morens, he of the February 2021 email:

“i learned from our foia lady here how to make emails disappear after i am foia’d but before the search starts, so i think we are all safe, Plus i deleted most of those earlier emails after sending them to gmail.”

For more on Morens, we have on offer August 18's "Former Fauci aide admits hiding emails to thwart pandemic inquiry" and before that, May 2024's "Is This Important? This Seems Like It Might Be Important: 'I Did Delete All Of Peter's Emails Relating To Origin' (Covid-19)" with the "FOIA lady" email among others.

It appears that Morens is spilling his guts to the Department of Justice in an attempt to reduce his punishment, we'll be able to infer more at sentencing should part of the DOJ recommendation be entered under seal.

Regarding those blue masks, Osterholm is in good company:

....And then there was the smart-ass eight-year-old who asked "If I can smell a fart through the mask does that mean it's working or not?"
Go away kid, you bother me.

As last seen in June 14's "Look Back In Anger: Masking And The SARS-CoV-2 Virus"

"Nvidia plays matchmaker in Nordics, sources tell CNBC, as AI data center deals boom in region" (NVDA)

From CNBC, August 19:

Nvidia is seeking to connect companies with its GPUs to data-center operators with available capacity in the Nordics, sources familiar with the matter told CNBC.
It reflects Nvidia’s attempts to broaden its role in the AI ecosystem as it builds influence beyond chips.
The Nordics are attracting large AI data-center projects because of access to power and land, as well as a cooler climate.
Nvidia is playing matchmaker, trying to connect companies with its graphics processing units to data-center operators that have the capacity to deploy them in the Nordics, sources have told CNBC.
While Nvidia has established an effective monopoly over the most powerful AI chips, it has worked to exert greater influence across the AI ecosystem as the race to build infrastructure accelerates. That reach extends through its software stack, relationships with governments and direct investments in other companies.
The chip giant has also sought a role in AI infrastructure deals. Two sources familiar with the matter have told CNBC that Nvidia has offered to introduce companies with data centers in the Nordics, an increasingly sought-after AI infrastructure region, to firms with its GPUs that are in the market for capacity.
The sources asked to remain anonymous when discussing private information.
How Nvidia is playing matchmaker for AI infrastructure
Their accounts add context to remarks by Nvidia Chief Financial Officer Colette Kress, who said in June that Nvidia had “certainly engaged” in “matchmaking” with companies. “How can we help them obtain land, power, shell?” she added. “How do we help them in terms of standing up the compute as fast as possible for what they need to do?”Gigawatts of data-center capacity are due to be built in the Nordics in the coming years, thanks to access to power and abundant land. Neoclouds and hyperscalers including Nebius and Microsoft have inked deals in the region in 2026.
One source said that Nvidia had reached out to a data-center company, sounding out potential offtakers: customers that commit to buying or leasing computing capacity.
This is part of what Nvidia sees as its “value proposition to GPU customers,” the source said, adding that the chip giant “often” didn’t name the companies on whose behalf it was reaching out.
The other source told CNBC that Nvidia had also made introductions between a company building AI infrastructure and those with GPUs in the U.S. and Asia. Nvidia is “helping make sure people who have money and demand for GPUs also have data center space,” they added....

....MUCH MORE

U.S. Drought Continues To Spread And Intensify

Though there was some improvement from Iowa into Illinois the south-central region showed deterioration across wide swaths of Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas and Mississippi.

Again this week we'll feature the change map, the current conditions map is available at the link.

From the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, August 20:

The experimental Drought Severity and Coverage Index (DSCI) was up 6 points to 171 on the 0 - 500 scale. This is the fourth consecutive weekly increase in the index but still a dramatic improvement from Spring and early Summer.

Week	None	D0-D4	D1-D4	D2-D4	D3-D4	D4	DSCI
2026-08-18	23.79	76.21	52.70	29.87	10.60	1.35	171
2026-08-11	26.38	73.62	50.38	29.50	10.27	1.04	165
2026-08-04	29.05	70.95	48.54	28.57	9.51	0.95	159
2026-07-28	32.08	67.92	47.89	28.30	10.00	0.86	155
2026-07-21	34.76	65.24	45.77	29.14	10.71	0.93	152
2026-07-14	34.28	65.72	46.47	29.10	10.71	0.98	153

....MUCH MORE

Thursday, August 20, 2026

Treasury Debt Buybacks: Analysts React

As with currency operations, you must go big or go home. Halfway measures only incentivize the other side.

From Bloomberg, August 19:

Bessent Deploys Debt Buybacks in Sign of Concern Over Yield Rise

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent made a fresh attempt to rein-in long-term borrowing costs from multi-year highs, sending Treasury yields and the dollar down.

Just two weeks after releasing its planned schedule for buybacks this quarter, the Treasury Department on Wednesday said it’s “increasing, by at least double, the size of liquidity support buyback operations” for securities dated from the 10-year to the 30-year sector....

*****

....“This administration needs a win, and maybe that comes in the form of artificially trying to keep long Treasury rates contained,” said Jack McIntyre, a portfolio manager at Brandywine Global Investment Management. “They have to try something. Sentiment around the long-end globally is about as bearish as I have seen in a very long time.”...

***

....“The buyback is a clear signal the Treasury is watching markets and is concerned about long-end yields. That sort of increase in flow cannot in and of itself turn the tide of long-end selling, though the signal may be sufficient to prompt further short-covering.” — Cameron Crise, macro strategist. For more analysis,.....

***

...“If yields go too far, Treasury will try and fight it — and now we know where some pain points are,” said John Briggs, head of US rates strategy at Natixis North America....

***

....“Operation twist is here,” Deutsche Bank AG’s George Saravelos, global head of FX research, wrote in a note. “Treasury would have to issue more treasury bills to finance the removal of duration from the market.” They added that it’s effectively a “soft-form financial repression.”...

....MORE

Also at Bloomberg, August 19:

‘The Treasury Is Watching’: Bessent’s Buybacks Jolt Bonds

....“In our view, this action is to control long-end yields and was not for market functioning purposes,” said the Citi team led by Jason Williams. “Today’s action, combined with cooling inflation, sets the stage for a strong rally in the months ahead.”....

***

Padhraic Garvey, ING Groep NV’s regional head of research in New York:

Officially, the buybacks in long-dated maturities are being increased to enhance liquidity. But this could have been done two weeks ago as a part of the regular quarterly announcement. The fact that it’s being done now suggests an ulterior motive – to calm nerves with long yields under meaningful upward pressure. It will dampen but not abort the pressure

***

Barclays Plc strategists led by Anshul Pradhan in a note to clients titled ‘The Treasury is Watching’:

We see today’s announcement of the increased buyback program at the long end as effectively reducing long-end supply. Such announcements are typically made at the refunding meeting, not in between, suggesting that the recent rise in yields did catch the Treasury’s attention... Signaling is important. Investors now know that Treasury is prepared to adjust around the edges if long-end yields rise... Should the rally reverse, the Treasury can always increase long-end buybacks. The announcement says “at least $4 billion per operation”

***

Will Hoffman and Ira Jersey, Bloomberg Intelligence strategists:

The timing of the announcement was surprising and likely strategic. Choosing to announce this change outside of the quarterly refunding cycle, in a quiet summer week with no meaningful economic data and likely thin summer liquidity, was meant to boost the magnitude of market reaction from the announcement. It remains to be seen what the addition of “at least $4 billion” means in practice, but this marks the first major issuance lever this administration has pulled, and opens the door to future creativity.

***

Guy Miller, chief strategist at Zurich Insurance:

This was quite a good way of doing it. It shows intent. It shows a consistency in wanting to bring the long end down. It also shows a continuation of what we’ve been doing in terms of twisting towards more shorter dated issuance... You’ve shown your pain point, and I suspect the market will challenge that again. To be fair to Bessent and the administration, they’ve got significant firepower. They can intervene again and they can push back. But ultimately, it’s going to be policy that dictates where you’ll go in the long term. We’re talking about the symptoms again, not fixing the cause. And this only works for so long. It can be quite a potent intervention when you’ve got the Treasury saying that they’re very much committed to doing this. But ultimately, unless you tackle profligate policy, that’s not sustainable indefinitely.

....MUCH MORE

"Hyperscalers’ off-grid power push comes with risks"

From the Wall Street Journal via MSN, August 20:

Big tech companies are cobbling together off-grid power systems to match their rushed timelines for AI development. What if these systems are glitchy?

Off-grid power comes with hefty price tags and operating risks. Tech giants are pursuing them anyway. Power providers, some of whom don’t have much data-center experience, are jumping at the chance to sign deals with deep-pocketed customers. But cracks have shown at the few on-site power projects that have started up, highlighting potential costs to both tech companies and their power providers.
In the U.S., there are four operational data centers with off-grid or partially grid-connected power, according to data provider Cleanview. These are xAI’s Colossus and Colossus II, Crusoe’s Stargate Abilene and Vantage Data Centers’ Vantage VA 2. Three of these have already had reported issues.

Earlier this month, Bloomberg reported that some data centers experienced cranks breaking off on combustion engines. The report also said that cracks had formed at gas-fired turbines powering xAI’s Colossus data center in Memphis, Tenn.
In response to the report, Solaris Energy Infrastructure, which operates turbines for the campus, didn’t directly confirm or deny the existence of turbine cracks on its earnings call but said its turbines were “in great shape.” In an emailed statement, Solaris co-CEO Bill Zartler said the company has “not seen any extraordinary operating issues or failure rates on our generation equipment.”
Cracked turbines and broken engine cranks both are major failures that require replacement, according to Nina Sadighi, founder of Eradeh Power Consulting, an electrical engineer who formerly worked at Amazon and Tesla.
In July, Vantage Data Centers experienced a critical power failure at its data-center campus in Loudoun County, Va., forcing the operator to switch over to diesel backup power for about a day, a spokesperson confirmed. Distributed Power Solutions, which Kodiak Gas Services bought earlier this year, operates the on-site power. Crusoe has also run into turbine glitches and other technical problems at Stargate Abilene, according to the Information. Stargate partner Oracle runs servers for OpenAI.
What’s causing these problems? First, AI data centers’ power demands can be incredibly taxing on power systems. AI workloads cause massive power demand spikes during computation, and a drop off as those computation results are gathered, according to a paper from Schneider Electric. As data centers get bigger, oscillations could reach hundreds of megawatts or even gigawatts, according to the paper. Big swings can stress and shorten the life of engines and turbines, and can even cause shaft fractures, according to the energy research and consulting firm Wood Mackenzie.
The same problem has surfaced on power grids, when grid-connected data centers suddenly drop power usage. Grid operators have had to scramble to take power supply offline to make sure the sudden excess of supply doesn’t damage power plants and infrastructure.
Troy Patton, general manager at on-site power provider AlphaStruxure, said in an interview that he spoke to a potential hyperscaler client who required a very short power response time—tens of milliseconds, rather than hundreds of milliseconds as the industry is used to. These are response times that no rotating equipment, or a lithium battery, has ever had to respond to, he said....

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"A dropout living in a trailer, he got $1 million from Peter Thiel at 19—now he’s a billionaire who says the American Dream isn’t dead" (plus the un-scholarships)

From Fortune Magazine, August 18:

The billionaire Oculus and Anduril founder Palmer Luckey says he’s living proof the American Dream is alive and well. He went from a teen college dropout who was living in a trailer to selling his first company to Facebook (now Meta) for $2 billion by just 21 years old—and he says that rags-to-riches rise could happen only in America.

“I was a 19-year-old kid working a minimum wage job with no college degree, living in a 19-foot camper trailer, and Peter Thiel gave me a million dollars when nobody else would to start Oculus,” Luckey told the Hoover Institution. “That’s not happening in China, I’ll tell you that.”

The now 33-year-old said “there’s a million complaints” about opportunity drying up in the U.S. “Oh, you can’t get a break in America. Blah, blah, blah, blah.”

Indeed, AI is cutting 16,000 U.S. jobs a month, and many Gen Zers can’t even land a summer job at an ice cream shop right now. But Luckey says his own story—and those of countless other founders just like him—proves that America is still the golden land of opportunity.

Palmer Luckey went from a homeschooled teenager building VR headsets to a $5 billion net worth

While homeschooled, 17-year-old Luckey started building a virtual reality headset in his family’s garage: the Oculus Rift VR headset.

After raising $2.4 million on the crowdfunding site Kickstarter two years later, he dropped out of California State University, hired a handful of employees, and rented an office space to launch his virtual reality startup.

Although Luckey missed the application window for the famous Thiel Fellowship, his prototype still caught the attention of PayPal cofounder Peter Thiel, who invested in Oculus through his venture firm, Founders Fund.

Thiel’s investment paid off almost immediately. Just one year later, in 2014, Facebook acquired Oculus for $2 billion. But the partnership didn’t end there.

In 2017, Thiel and Founders Fund backed Luckey again, this time in a very different kind of startup: Anduril, a defense tech company building autonomous weapons systems and surveillance technology for the U.S. military. Founders Fund led Anduril’s first funding rounds, and the company has since grown into one of the most valuable defense startups in the world, now worth $61 billion.

His latest venture? Erebor Bank....

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And from Chicago Boyz, August 13:

In 2011 Peter Thiel started the Thiel Fellowship program to award several hundred thousand dollars apiece and mentorship access to extraordinary individuals willing to skip college or drop out by age 22. Recipients were expected to go straight to work in a mode identified as “extraordinary agency.” In 15 years Thiel has awarded several hundred grants. Success stories during just the first 5 years include:

Laura Deming (2011) — Awarded at age 17 upon dropping out of MIT; Founder of Longevity Fund/age1.
Dylan Field (2012) — Co-founder/CEO of Figma, a multi-billion-dollar collaborative design tool.
Chris Olah (2012) — Co-founder of Anthropic.
Austin Russell (2013) — Founder of Luminar Technologies; became one of the youngest self-made billionaires after the company went public.
Ritesh Agarwal (2013) — Founder of OYO Rooms (hospitality).
Lucy Guo (2014) — Co-founder of Scale AI and later Passes.
Vitalik Buterin (2014) — Co-creator of Ethereum.
Boyan Slat (2016) — Founder of The Ocean Cleanup.

I was led to investigate the Thiel program upon reading about Mach Industries, and up-and-coming asymmetric drone warfare success story. Its founder, Ethan Thornton, was raised near Boerne, Texas, in a family with military ties. He received a Thiel award 3 years ago when he left MIT at about age 19. Mach Industries now makes low-cost unmanned strike, counter-UAS, and related platforms. Its “Forge” flexible manufacturing model prioritizes rapid iteration, software-defined processes, and supply-chain control. It has raised nearly two billion dollars and focuses on solving bottlenecks like solid rocket motor availability....

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Capital Markets: "To Support the US Treasury Market, Bessent Sent the Greenback Reeling"

From Marc Chandler at Bannockburn Global Forex:

The US Treasury announcement early in North America yesterday that it would at least double the size of liquidity support buyback operations for longer-dated nominal coupon securities. The current maximum size is $16 bln a quarter. The stepped-up purchases will take effect on September 9. Treasury will provide more information about future buyback sizes at the next quarterly refunding, announcement scheduled for November 4, 2026. The announcement changed the tone of the capital markets. We suspect the timing and signal effect is more potent than the actual size relative to the daily turnover in the US Treasury market. It drove down long-term US yields, fueled a recovery in equities, and sent the greenback reeling.

The US 10- and 30-year yields are a couple of basis points firmer today, but the US dollar is softer against most currencies today. While Asia Pacific markets were pulled higher today by yesterday’s action, European markets are seeing little follow-through, and the Stoxx 600 is struggling to sustain upticks with a six-day drop in tow. Meanwhile, October WTI has advanced more than 2.5%, and is extending its rally for the fifth consecutive session and near $86.60 is at its highest level in a month....

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Wednesday, August 19, 2026

"China Sentences Evergrande Founder Hui Ka Yan to Life in Prison"

Lifted in toto from Bloomberg News, August 19:

China sentenced China Evergrande Group’s founder Hui Ka Yan to life imprisonment and fined the group and an affiliate a total of 15.82 billion yuan ($2.4 billion), cementing the downfall of the property tycoon who exemplified the country’s real estate boom and bust.
Hui was sentenced by a court in Shenzhen after being accused of a litany of crimes including illegally absorbing public deposits and fundraising fraud, according to the official Xinhua News Agency on Thursday.

"pour encourager les autres"

As recalled exiting 2022's "Some Of The Upsides Of President Biden's Comments On The Proximity Of Nuclear Armageddon":

Voltaire wasn't always at his most chipper in Candide. There's Martin who is pretty much the anti-Pangloss who, arriving in England during the Seven Years War just after the execution of Admiral Byng for not doing his utmost against the French tells Candide:
"Dans ce pays-ci, il est bon de tuer de temps en temps un amiral pour encourager les autres."
(in this country, it is good to kill an admiral from time to time to encourage the others)

Capital Untamed: "What 19th-Century France Teaches Us About Today's Economy"

From Harvard Business School's Working Knowledge, August 11:

In the book Capital Untamed, Charlotte Robertson examines how France used financial markets to pursue political, economic, and social goals. This excerpt sheds light on the enduring relationship between governments and financial markets.

This is an excerpt from the book Capital Untamed: The Politics of Finance in Nineteenth-Century France by Charlotte Robertson. The University of Chicago Press, June 2026.
The stories told about the relationship between the state and financial markets in the modern era have traditionally revolved around determinations of more or less state regulation, more or less market freedom, and how these elements have been reconfigured across historical regimes of political economy.
The received wisdom is that the nineteenth century marked the period of classical liberalism in Europe, before the crises of the 1930s drove states governing advanced economies to assume more interventionist postures in the organization of investment and financial markets. The post–World War II consensus in Europe and the United States held that if markets were tightly bound by regulation, they could be made to serve the needs of the real economy.
This model of “embedded liberalism,” which entailed state control over finance, was understood as a necessary condition for ensuring stability by encouraging investment into productive capital formation and preventing speculative excesses. The neoliberal consensus that emerged in the 1980s assumed the opposite: that if markets were unbound, they would stimulate growth and wealth creation.
In France by the 1830s, financial thought was not confined to the realm of profit-making economic activity.
The premise was that financial deregulation would enhance efficiency, unlocking private capital for productive investment while reducing distortions introduced by state intervention. Beyond the ideal types of contained or unbridled finance, scholars have drawn attention to the qualitative complexity of efforts by states in the twentieth century to do more—to steer capital toward a variety of social, political, and economic goals through planning, industrial policy, credit policy, and other instruments.
This book does not aim to redefine capitalism, propose a new theory of capital, or periodize a distinct capitalist era, all of which are important and ongoing projects in a rich and expanding literature on the history of capitalism. Instead, it explores how a particular dynamic between political authority and financial markets shaped nineteenth-century France—foreshadowing a form of state-finance entanglement that would become increasingly typical of modern capitalism.
The analysis does not proceed from an explicit application of deductive theory but from a close reading of historical archives. From this reading, I have arrived at two concepts—instrumental and autonomous finance—to describe the twin poles of this dynamic, concepts that I believe are heuristically useful for identifying the evolution of power relations between the modern state and the financial markets, which both enable and constrain state action.
Postrevolutionary France offers a productive starting point for this line of inquiry because of the striking proliferation of ideas and projects to instrumentalize finance that emerged there and then. In France by the 1830s, financial thought was not confined to the realm of profit-making economic activity; it also functioned as a mode of political thought.
A variety of historical actors—from theorists and politicians to laborers, bankers, and radical reformers—embraced financial vehicles, instruments, plans and programs because they appeared uniquely placed to offer pragmatic solutions to the impasses of their times. On the one hand, its appeal derived from the political instability of the era; finance presented the prospect of salutary revolutionary change without revolutionary upheaval. On the other hand, this consciousness stemmed from the much larger capital demands and expansion of market-based financing that arose alongside early industrialization....

....MUCH MORE

Also at HBS Working Knowledge: "When Companies Treat Corruption as a 'Source of Competitive Advantage'"

And all this time my dream has been to turn compliance into a profit center.

Must. Think. Bigger.

Possibly related on the economy of France, the outro from "The Shortest History Of France":

***

....Shortest history? Hardly (insert ill-founded Pepin joke here).
At least for mid/late 18th century French economic history it can be summarized as:

Food got expensive, there were riots.

(oh, and Jacques Necker)

Pericles Press: France - The Economic History

—Chronology of Economic Events

1768

Riots over prices in Le Havre and Nantes.
1770
Riots in Rheims.
Government efforts to deal with shortages lead to popular rumors of a 'famine pact' among the nobility to starve the people.
1774
May 10 - Louis XVI ascends to throne of France.
Poor harvest in the fall.
1775
April 27-May - "Flour War"
Bread prices in Paris increase by over 50%..
Rioting starts at Beaumont-sur-Oise, spreads to Paris..
Hundreds arrested, two executed, before order is restored.
June 11 - Coronation of Louis XVI.
1776
October 22 - Necker appointed Director of the Treasury.
1777
Necker begins financing money for American War of Independence through governmental loans, rather than taxes. System will raise 520 million livres by May 1781. 1781
May 19 - Necker resigns.
Successor Joly de Fleury implements tax increases. By December 1782 will raise 252 million livres.
1788
June - Government tries to implement overhaul of judicial system.
June 7 - Day of Tiles (Grenoble); Mob bombards troops with tiles.; 4 people killed in rioting, 40 injured.
July 13 - Severe hailstorm destroys crops in northern France.
August 8 - Announcement of convocation of Estates General.
Will formally meet on May 1, 1789.
August 16 - Government suspends treasury payments on loans due to lack of funds, causing panic in French stock market, as well as a bank run.
August 24 - Necker reappointed.
Reimposes price controls, in anticipation of shortages from poor harvest.
September - Restoration of Parlements.
Oct 5 - Dec 12 - Second Assembly of Notables meets.
Oct 24 - 26 - Necker reappointed Minister of Finance.

1789
January 24 - Summoning of the Estates General.
January 26-29 - Crowd demanding lower bread prices is attacked by bands of students. Several killed in the fighting.
Winter-spring - Shortages lead to higher prices and rising unemployment.
April 27-28 - Reveillon riots. Acting on rumors of wage cuts, rioters destroy factory of wallpaper manufacturer; 25 killed when troops open fire.
May 5 - Estates General convene.
May - Bread riots occur throughout Flanders, Artois, Picardy, and Normandy.
June 17 - National Assembly proclaimed.
June 20 - Tennis Court Oath.
June 28-30 - Rioters protesting high prices destroy city's toll-gates.
Early July - Troops assigned to protect convoys of grain and flour.
July 11 - Necker dismissed.
July 14 - Rising grain prices and food shortages finally peak.
Fall of the Bastille.
July 22 - Foulon and Bertier, rumored to have been part of a plot to starve Paris, are murdered and decapitated by a mob.
July 20 - 31 - "Great Fear" - Fear that nobility intends to use force to reverse gains causes panic among peasantry throughout France.
Castles and abbeys sacked.
August 26 - Declaration of Rights of Man and the Citizen.
August - Government attempt to float two loans fails.
September - Grain prices increase. Grain riots occur around Paris and groups of women stop grain convoys. Guards placed around bakers' shops.
October 5-6 - Fueled by rumors of another starvation plot, crowd marches to Versailles. Lafayette escorts king back to Paris, followed by a procession of 60,000.
October 21 - Martial Law against Tumults passed. Allows local authorities to declare martial law to deal with disturbances.

1790
January - 22 chateaus destroyed by peasants in northern Brittany.
June 13-17 - Fighting between Catholics and Protestants leaves 300 dead in Nimes.
August 31 - Mutiny by troops at Nancy put down. 23 mutineers executed.
September 3 - Necker resigns.

1791
February - Emigration of nobility and closure of church organizations leads to rising unemployment.
March 2 - Trade guilds abolished by National Assembly.
June 14 - Le Chapelier Law bans worker organizations and collective actions, effectively preventing strikes and collective bargaining.
June 20 - Louis XVI tries to flee. Stopped at Varennes.
July 17 - Champ de Mars massacre - 50 people killed when National Guard troops open fire on crowd of 50,000.
September - December - Paris authorities increase grain reserves in anticipation of shortages. Leads to depletion of stocks in outlying regions.
September 14 - Louis XVI accepts constitution.
September 30 - National Assembly dissolved.
October 1 - Legislative Assembly meets for first time.

1792
January - Slave rebellion in West Indies causes sugar shortage in Paris. Sugar prices triple.
January-February - Grain riots in northeastern France due to depleted stocks.
February - Mayor of Etampes lynched for failing to lower grain price reduction.
Dunkirk's warehouses destroyed in three days of rioting provoked by attempts to export grain.
April 20 - France declares war on Austria.
August 10 - Tuileries stormed and monarchy overthrown.
September 2 - 6 - September Massacres. An estimated 1,200 to 1,400 prisoners murdered by mobs and tribunals.
September 21 - National Convention meets.
September 22 - Republic proclaimed.
December - Trial of Louis XVI.

1793
January 21 - Execution of Louis XVI.
February - Sugar and coffee price increases lead to petitions for the passage of a maximum price law.
February 26 - Grocery riots in Paris. Grocery shops and warehouses attacked and sales forced at fixed prices.
March 10 - Revolutionary Tribunal created.
April 6 - Committee of Public Safety created.

May 1 - 8,000 demonstrators mob Convention demanding the introduction of price controls on bread. Girondins resist maximum.
May 20 - Forced loan on the rich.
May 24 - Crowds in Lyons invade warehouse and sell army provisions.
May 31 - Anti-Girondin uprising in Paris.
June 2 - Crowd of around 80,000 surrounds Convention and forces it to purge Girondins. (21 would be executed in October.)
June 24 - Constitution of 1793 accepted.
June 25 - Crowds of women attack soap suppliers and force sales.
July 26 - Death penalty for hoarding law passed.
September 4 - Workers in Paris march on the Convention, demanding end to shortages.
September 5 - "Reign of Terror" begins when Convention votes to implement terror.
September 23 - Forced loan on the rich.
September 29 - General Maximum Law imposes price controls on goods.
October 16 - Marie Antoinette beheaded.
Oct. 24-30 - Trial of Girondins.
October 31 - Execution of Girondins.

1794
February 21 - Nationwide schedule of maximum prices promulgated.
March - Hebertists arrested and executed.
April 5 - Danton and Desmoulins executed.
April - Le Chapelier law against price increases used to punish ringleaders of tobacco workers who had asked for a wage increase.
July 5 - Wage controls introduced in Paris.
July 27-28 - Robespierre loses support among Parisian laborers following implementation of wage controls, is ousted from power and guillotined.
August 1 - Law of 22 Prairial repealed. Terror begins to collapse with governmental reorganization.
August 9 - Wage controls abandoned.
August 11 - Committee of Public Safety deprived of major role in government.
September 7 - Maximum Law extended by Convention for another year.
December 24 - Maximum abolished.
Frozen rivers disrupt transport system for winter.

1795
January-February - Winter shortages lead to bread rationing and government- subsidized purchases by spring.
March 22 - Women petition Convention for better bread supplies.
March 24 - Convention orders requisition of two-thirds of available grain supplies from suppliers.
March 27-28 - Bread riots in sections of Paris.
April 1-2 - Uprising of Germinal. Crowd (10,000) marches on Convention.
April 10 - Convention authorizes disarming of "terrorists."
May 4 - Former terrorists massacred by mob in Lyons.
May 20-23 - Uprising of Prairial. Mob invades Convention hall. Slogan "Bread and the Constitution of 1793" is heard. Deputy Feraud killed.
Convention restores order and executes mob leaders in retaliation.
May 31 - Revolutionary Tribunal abolished.
Summer - Paris endures shortages of basic commodities and inflation.
July 21 - Royalist invasion at Quiberon repulsed.
November 2 - Directory constituted.
December 10 - Forced loan.

1796
February - Bread and meat rations reduced as supplies dwindle.
March 2 - Napoleon Bonaparte appointed commander in Italy.

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The Marco Rubio Museum Of Jobs

From The Museum of Marco Rubio Jobs:

January 2025 – Present
72nd Secretary of State of the United States
Confirmed by the Senate 99–0, a margin so unanimous it borders on the suspicious. With this appointment, "Little Marco" became the nation's chief diplomat — and apparently, just getting started.
February – August 2025
Acting Administrator of USAID
Tasked with overseeing the U.S. Agency for International Development, Rubio's tenure in this role coincided with — and actively facilitated — the agency's dismantlement. A short but decisive chapter.
February 2025 – Present
Acting Archivist of the United States / NARA
The nation's custodian of records, from the Declaration of Independence to presidential documents. One might say America's memory is now filed under "R."
May 2025 – Present
Acting National Security Advisor
A dual appointment of historic rarity. The last person to serve simultaneously as Secretary of State and National Security Advisor was Henry Kissinger — a comparison that the museum presents without editorial comment.
January 2026 – Present
Overseer of Post-Maduro Venezuela / "Viceroy of Venezuela"
The newest acquisition. Following the collapse of the Maduro regime, Rubio was tapped to coordinate U.S. involvement in Venezuela's transition — adding hemispheric reconstruction to a portfolio already straining under its own weight.

⚠ YOU ARE NOW ENTERING THE MEME WING ⚠

President of Venezuela /