Here's the U.S. Dollar Index over the last 57 years (constituents changed with introduction of the euro):
99.691 up 0.104 last
Here's the U.S. Dollar Index over the last 57 years (constituents changed with introduction of the euro):
99.691 up 0.104 last
From Geopolitical Monitor, April 16:
Kra Canal: The Impossible Dream of Southeast Asia Shipping
The idea of the Kra Canal has been a topic of discussion for centuries, as the promise of an alternative route between the Andaman Sea and Gulf of Thailand could revolutionize shipping and reshape regional geopolitics. While the project has never come to fruition, its potential impact keeps it in strategic conversations, particularly in light of China’s expanding influence in Southeast Asia and the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). As of now, Thailand has opted for a different path, but debates over the canal’s feasibility and geopolitical consequences remain very much alive.
Historical Background
The concept of the Kra Canal dates back to 1677 when Thai King Narai commissioned French engineer de Lamar to survey the Kra Isthmus for a possible canal. At the time, the idea was not to connect the Gulf of Thailand with the Andaman Sea but rather to establish a navigable waterway between Songkhla and Marid (now Myanmar). De Lamar’s assessment concluded that the mountainous terrain, dense jungles, and the technological limitations of the era rendered the project unfeasible. The immense effort required to dig through the isthmus using 17th-century engineering methods made construction virtually impossible, leading to its abandonment.
In the 19th century, as European colonial powers expanded their influence in Southeast Asia, the concept of the Kra Canal resurfaced. The British, who controlled key maritime trade routes through Singapore and the Strait of Malacca, viewed any alternative shipping channel with suspicion. They feared that a canal through Thailand would weaken Singapore’s strategic importance and threaten British dominance in regional trade. Meanwhile, France, eager to strengthen its presence in Indochina, saw the canal as a way to establish a stronger foothold in the region and counterbalance British influence. However, the Siamese government, wary of foreign intervention and territorial disputes, strategically resisted both British and French involvement. By carefully balancing diplomatic relations with European powers while preserving its sovereignty, Siam managed to prevent any progress on the canal during this period.
Kra Canal in the Contemporary Context
The Kra Canal attracted renewed interest in 1972 when an American firm, Tippetts-Abbett-McCarthy-Stratton (TAMS), proposed a 102-km-long canal connecting Satun to Songkhla. This proposal was driven by the need for an alternative shipping route to alleviate congestion in the Malacca Strait and provide a more direct maritime passage between the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea. The plan involvedadvanced engineering techniques of the time, envisioning a deep-water canal capable of handling large cargo vessels and oil tankers. However, with a projected cost of $5.6 billion and a projected 10–12 year construction period, the Thai government ultimately rejected the plan. Concerns included the massive financial burden, environmental impact, and the risk of regional instability, particularly stemming from foreign influence and internal security challenges.
More recently, China has become increasingly interested in reviving the project as part of its Maritime Silk Road initiative, a key component of its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). In 2015, an MoU was signed between private entities from China and Thailand to explore the feasibility of the canal, highlighting its potential to reshape trade routes and reduce reliance on the Malacca Strait. However, both governments quickly distanced themselves from the agreement, likely due to political sensitivities and opposition from regional players like Singapore and India. The canal never progressed beyond preliminary discussions. As of 2025, Thailand has instead opted to prioritize a $28 billion land bridge project—an overland transport corridor designed to facilitate cargo movement between the Gulf of Thailand and the Andaman Sea. This alternative aims to achieve similar economic benefits without the political and environmental challenges posed by a canal, making it a more viable and strategically balanced solution.
Geopolitical Stakes
Why the Kra Canal Matters
If constructed, the Kra Canal would provide a strategic alternative to the Strait of Malacca, reducing shipping distances by approximately 1,200 nautical miles. This shortcut would save fuel costs, cut transit times, and ease congestion in the Strait of Malacca, which currently handles nearly 94,000 vessel passages annually. As global trade continues to expand, particularly in energy and container shipping, the demand for efficient and secure maritime routes is higher than ever. The canal would create an additional passage, reducing bottlenecks and alleviating concerns about over-reliance on a single trade route.
China, as the world’s largest trading nation, would stand to benefit immensely by reducing its reliance on the Malacca Strait for energy imports and trade. Currently, approximately 80% of China’s oil imports pass through the Malacca Strait, making it a critical vulnerability in times of geopolitical tensions. Diversifying maritime routes through the Kra Canal could enhance China’s energy security, providing an alternative supply chain for crude oil and liquefied natural gas (LNG) imports from the Middle East and Africa.
China-US Competition
For China, the Kra Canal would address its “Malacca dilemma“—the vulnerability of its maritime trade routes to potential blockades by rival naval forces, particularly the United States. A hypothetical China-controlled canal would enhance Beijing’s control over its supply chain and maritime security, while boosting its geopolitical influence in the region. Notably, the canal would enable China to establish a stronger presence in the Indian Ocean, allowing the PLA Navy greater operational flexibility and enhancing its ability to protect critical sea lanes.
The United States and its allies, particularly Singapore and India, oppose the canal’s construction owing in large part to these geopolitical considerations. A China-dominated Kra Canal could reduce Singapore’s significance as a shipping hub, potentially diminishing its economic and strategic value. Singapore, which benefits heavily from transshipment fees and trade facilitation, would likely experience economic losses if traffic were diverted to a new canal. India, which has growing concerns over China’s increasing influence in the Indian Ocean, sees the Kra Canal as another strategic asset that could strengthen China’s maritime footprint near its sphere of influence....
....MUCH MORE
You can see how this project ties in with China's naval base across the Gulf of Thailand on Cambodia's west coast at Ream:
From April 22's "RAND: "The Gulf of Thailand May Be the Next U.S.-China Flashpoint":
In fact the Kra canal project would allow China's navy a much more direct route to their only other overseas base on the route into the Suez Canal.
February 2024 - "Red Sea Rivalries"
The most amazing thing that has been pointed out over the last couple months is that China's base on Djibouti's Gulf of Aden coast, at the approaches to the Bab al-Mandab chokepoint into the Red Sea, gives them the perfect location to monitor Houthi action and American reaction:
—China Officially Sets Up Its First Overseas Base in Djibouti, The Diplomat
From Phenomenal World, February 15....
This was first posted 2013 and it may have been prescient. Since January 2020 the U.S. economy has been propped up by trillions (approaching ten trillion) of dollars of deficit spending. Without that massive amount of stimulus there is no growth in the economy. In fact, the U.S. economy would collapse without it.
And as Mssr. Cantillon pointed out all those years ago, the spoils go to the people closest to the fire hose of money, financiers, politicians and their cronies*
A question that economic and market modelers had better be aware of. It
is important enough that I've brought it up more than once:
Dec 2012
Other than that...Nov 2008
We only have one sample of U.S. market history, only one time the U.S. rose to economic dominance, only one period of invention like the one described above.
Anyone who uses past performance as anything more than past performance is either a mental defective or a charlatan.
I've had my copy of the Cowles Commission's Common Stock Indexes 1871-1937 open on the desk for pretty much the past year.Anyone serious about this stuff in light of fiduciary duty should probably read Dimson, Marsh and Staunton's Triumph of the Optimists, links below.
I am struck by two things:
1) In the U.S. markets we've got one data-set, with a total of 1642 (Oct. '08) monthly points. Anyone trying to forecast off that had better have HUGE error bars. Or, fess up to the fact that no one really knows and acknowledge that this year a portfolio had a better chance if directed by an astrologer. (Arch Crawford is Hulbert's #1 market letter YTD...
From New York Magazine:
Illustration by Mario Hugo
|
Picture this, arranged along a time line.
For all of measurable human history up until the year 1750, nothing happened that mattered. This isn’t to say history was stagnant, or that life was only grim and blank, but the well-being of average people did not perceptibly improve. All of the wars, literature, love affairs, and religious schisms, the schemes for empire-making and ocean-crossing and simple profit and freedom, the entire human theater of ambition and deceit and redemption took place on a scale too small to register, too minor to much improve the lot of ordinary human beings.
In England before the middle of the eighteenth century, where industrialization first began, the pace of progress was so slow that it took 350 years for a family to double its standard of living. In Sweden, during a similar 200-year period, there was essentially no improvement at all. By the middle of the eighteenth century, the state of technology and the luxury and quality of life afforded the average individual were little better than they had been two millennia earlier, in ancient Rome.
Then two things happened that did matter, and they were so grand that they dwarfed everything that had come before and encompassed most everything that has come since: the first industrial revolution, beginning in 1750 or so in the north of England, and the second industrial revolution, beginning around 1870 and created mostly in this country. That the second industrial revolution happened just as the first had begun to dissipate was an incredible stroke of good luck. It meant that during the whole modern era from 1750 onward—which contains, not coincidentally, the full life span of the United States—human well-being accelerated at a rate that could barely have been contemplated before. Instead of permanent stagnation, growth became so rapid and so seemingly automatic that by the fifties and sixties the average American would roughly double his or her parents’ standard of living. In the space of a single generation, for most everybody, life was getting twice as good.
At some point in the late sixties or early seventies, this great acceleration began to taper off. The shift was modest at first, and it was concealed in the hectic up-and-down of yearly data. But if you examine the growth data since the early seventies, and if you are mathematically astute enough to fit a curve to it, you can see a clear trend: The rate at which life is improving here, on the frontier of human well-being, has slowed.
If you are like most economists—until a couple of years ago, it was virtually all economists—you are not greatly troubled by this story, which is, with some variation, the consensus long-arc view of economic history. The machinery of innovation, after all, is now more organized and sophisticated than it has ever been, human intelligence is more efficiently marshaled by spreading education and expanding global connectedness, and the examples of the Internet, and perhaps artificial intelligence, suggest that progress continues to be rapid....MUCH MORE
Re Triumph of the Optimists, the main point to take away is how
different your portfolio returns look if you were invested in the Berlin
market in late 1944, the Chinese market in 1949 or the U.S. market over
the last 150 years. As The Economist pointed out the authors deliberately excluded the Warsaw and Moscow Exchanges "since they were closed down under communist rule. That led to returns
best described as “steeply negative”. If these markets were taken into
account, the historical equity premium would be even lower"
CXO Advisory put together the crib notes:
Triumph of the Optimists (Chapter-by-Chapter Review)
Victor Niederhofer takes a look at the methodology and conclusions.
What follows is a repost from May 2020 i.e. the market miracle of Spring 2020, originally titled "With JP Morgan Up 7.10%, Bank of America Up 7.15% and Citigroup Up 9.23% On the Day, Let's Talk Cantillon Effect (JPM; BAC; C)"
I know a lot of this stuff is junior high school material for many of our readers but talking about currency in the post immediately below got me thinking about money more broadly and I might have a shot at a sustainable business model for a pitchfork manufacturing business if gentle reader indulges me....
First up, from the World Bank via Pakistan's The Tribune, April 24. a study conducted before the terrorist attack and India's suspension of the Indus Waters agreement:
10m Pakistanis at risk of acute food insecurity: WB
The report brings back the focus on issues that are not frequently discussed in the official meetings
The World Bank cautioned on Wednesday that nearly 10 million Pakistanis could face acute food insecurity during the current fiscal year, with poverty levels expected to rise. The warning came as the bank also revised Pakistan's economic growth forecast downward to 2.7%, citing tight economic policies that are suppressing national output.
In its flagship biannual Pakistan Economic Update report, the Washington-based lender noted that the government is likely to miss its annual budget deficit target. Additionally, the country's debt burden is projected to increase both in absolute terms and as a proportion of GDP.
"With climatic conditions impacting overall agricultural production of key crops such as rice and maize, nearly 10 million people, mostly in rural areas, are expected to experience high levels of acute food insecurity in FY25", said the World Bank.
The report brings back the focus on issues that are not frequently discussed in the official meetings – the food insecurity, poverty, unemployment and decreasing real wages.
The report underlined that "key sectors for the poor—agriculture, construction, and low-value added services—experienced low or negative growth, causing stagnant real wages".
Combined with population growth of around 2% this is expected to push approximately 1.9 million more individuals into poverty in this fiscal year. Not only that, the employment-to-population ratio is at 49.7%, which reflects low labour market engagement, particularly among youth and women, said the WB.
The report stated that social protection expenditures have not kept pace with inflation, constraining resources available to the poor for food, health, education, and other critical items, with negative implications for human capital and labour productivity.
It said that 37% of youth and 62% of women are not in education, employment, or training. "Despite nominal daily wages nearly doubling for low skilled workers, such as masons, painters, plumbers, and unskilled workers, real wages remained stagnant or even slightly decreased," according to the lender....
....MUCH MORE
Here's the April 2025 World Bank report, the food insecurity mention and reference is on page 22 of the 40 page report.
Also at the Tribune: "Water levels surge in Jhelum River after India's unannounced discharge".
That release would have two effects:
1. It would be scary as hell to have the river soar to flood stage with no warning.
2. Unless Pakistan moved quickly to impound the water. it is wasted and allows India to halt further flows as sluices are closed and the Indian reservoirs refill.
As an outsider looking in, the actions of the two countries almost seem scripted.
Pakistanis are saying "Either water or blood will flow" while India ratchets the pressure even higher:
Sourav Ganguly calls for breaking Indias cricketing ties with Pakistan following Pahalgam terror attack
And I don't mean scripted like the controlled hatred of the Wagah Crossing (now closed) flag-lowering ceremony:
But rather more like the choreography of the Tamil language movie "I", particularly the Battle of the Pecs scene (warning: once seen it can't be unseen):
One thing I never understood about the British gang-rapists is you never read about them being beaten or worse.
Didn't the girls have brothers and fathers and other male relatives to put a stop to what was going on?
VIGILANTE JUSTICE IN THE BRONX - RAPIST ENDS UP IN HOSPITALpic.twitter.com/z8wZ13OoqF
— Citizen Free Press (@CitizenFreePres) April 23, 2025
Two from Barron's. First up, April 25:
If you’re looking for a canary in the economic coal mine, check the freight business.
Trucks, trains, and ships that transport goods from around the world to the U.S. are the economy’s circulatory system. Problems are emerging: Business activity is slowing down as trade between the U.S. and China stalls, putting millions of jobs at risk.
Truckers Knight-Swift Transportation Holdings and Old Dominion Freight Line both reported first-quarter numbers this week. Knight-Swift stopped offering sales guidance for the next two quarters at a time, opting instead for one quarter, and won’t go back “until enough clarity develops.” For its part, Old Dominion said April was off to a soft start, with revenue a day in the month down 7% year over year so far.
Following earnings, Wall Street analysts cut their price targets on Old Dominion stock, bringing the average target down by $9 a share to $168. Knight-Swift’s average price target came down $4 to $50 a share.
Union Pacific, a railroad company, also reported earnings. Analysts, worried that volumes will fall off in the second half of 2025, cut their price targets, with the average falling by $6 to $256. Barclays cited deteriorating trans-Pacific trade for its cut.
Deteriorating might be an understatement. “Trade between China and the U.S. [is] collapsing,” wrote Apollo Global Management Chief Economist Torsten Slok on Friday. Container ships leaving China for the U.S. are down some 50% over the past few weeks, according to data from Apollo. Similar data from Bloomberg also shows a sharp downturn.
Slok has some dire warnings. “The consequence will be empty shelves in US stores in a few weeks and Covid-like shortages for consumers and for firms using Chinese products as intermediate goods,” he said. Inflation will pick up as well.
“In May, we will begin to see significant layoffs in trucking, logistics, and retail—particularly in small businesses such as your independent toy store, your independent hardware store, and your independent men’s clothing store,” added Slok....
....MORE
And April 24:
Supply Shortages Loom as U.S. Shipments From China Plummet
President Donald Trump’s tariff war is sharply slowing traffic on a major shipping route between China and the U.S. The pain of a near-standstill in goods shipments could spread from trucking companies to retail shelves in a matter of weeks.
Ocean container bookings from China to the U.S. fell 64% in the first week of April compared with the week earlier, according to logistics data platform Vizion. Overall imports to the U.S. also fell 64%. Categories with the most dramatic drops included imports of apparel, fabrics and other textiles, Vizion said in a blog post.
The rate to ship a 40-foot container between Shanghai and Los Angeles has halved, according to data from Bloomberg, implying little demand for the critical shipping route.
In the past week, cancellations of voyages and port calls have also risen, in what maritime analysis firm Sea-Intelligence called “a dramatic change in the market,” in a report on Thursday....
....MUCH MORE
From Works in Progress, March 13, 2025:
The Hanseatic League united merchants to bargain with kings, blockade cities, and even win wars. But when technology changed, defections began and the coalition fell apart.
Today, we typically think of coalitions in the context of modern electoral politics. So it might be surprising that one of the greatest case studies in the history of coalitions is a community of medieval German merchants known as the Hansa.
Starting as individual traveling traders, the Hansa built up coalitions for collective bargaining, collective action, and collective security. Through this process, they formed Northern Europe’s first ever long-distance trade network.
Without corporate structures, they built supply chains that distributed goods between Northern Europe’s major ports, with capillaries that spread into each city’s hinterlands. Without formal territory, their laws governed trading hubs spanning thousands of miles, from London all the way to Western Russia. And, despite being composed of hundreds of member cities, the Hanseatic League had no head of state. Yet the Hansa still managed to sign treaty after treaty with foreign rulers and, a few times, even fought (and won!) wars.
The Hanseatic system lasted for nearly 500 years. Like any governing system, it struggled with division, factionalism, and defection – and eventually, it would succumb to these forces. While Hansa alliances proved impermanent, their impact was enduring. They made Northern Europe’s trade routes secure and grew European state capacity to support commerce.
The birth of long distance trade
Europe during the Dark Ages was in a state of dire subsistence. Europe’s population declined for several centuries after the collapse of the Roman system due to low crop yields. Historians and archaeologists have not yet reached a consensus on the causes, but there are a few suspects. The collapse of Roman state capacity made it harder to collect taxes, which meant that irrigation infrastructure like aqueducts fell into disrepair, and the yields of the surrounding farms fell with them. A volcanic eruption in 536, likely in Iceland or North America, triggered the Late Antique Ice Age, which chilled the climate of the northern hemisphere for approximately 200 years.
While the causal story is hazy, its impact on European life is painfully clear. The Roman system of smallholder farms collapsed, which dragged previously independent farmers into serfdom on large manors controlled by landowners. Without significant agricultural surpluses, Europe could no longer support a large population of craftsmen and artisans. As the artisan class vanished, so too did urban markets, and even money. Copper and silver coins, which Romans had used in day-to-day transactions, fully disappeared. Some kingdoms still minted gold coins, but these were primarily stores of value to pay administrative fees and rarely used in trade. Europe’s population by the 600s, reduced to subsistence, serfdom, and barter, was just 14–18 million people. But shortly after hitting rock bottom, its fortunes began to reverse.
Starting in the 800s, the flow of goods and people – especially in Northern Europe – began to pick up tempo. Temperatures recovered during what is known as the Medieval Warm Period (900–1300) which improved agricultural yields by making more regions arable for longer stretches of the year. Simultaneously, medieval farmers advanced their agricultural processes in a period that archaeologist Helena Hamerow describes as a Medieval Agricultural Revolution. Northern European farmers adopted the moldboard plow, an oxen-driven heavy plow that significantly increased the amount of highly arable land available for farming by making it possible to plow nutrient-rich but badly drained river silt....
....MUCH MORE
Previously:
It was raining, people were crabby.
And they wouldn't stop talking about it.
If the reader desires more, here is the journal Nature, October 24, 2022:
Dual ancestries and ecologies of the Late Glacial Palaeolithic in Britain
Related:
Imagine That: Earliest Surviving Secular Song Is An English Guy Talking About The Weather
I grew up being told Sumer Is Icumen In was the earliest surviving but this one is a decade or two older, as the post points out.
Adios cuckoo, hello English guy griping about the cold and wind....
From the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, October 31, 2024:
Distracting the adversary, concealing intentions, donning disguises, making evidence disappear, and escaping unnoticed… CIA has been applying the magician’s craft to the world of espionage for decades.
The arts of misdirection, sleight-of-hand, and recognition signals are all conjurers’ tricks used for covert intelligence operations.
Just ask Tony Mendez, CIA’s former Chief of Disguise, who championed the use of illusions in a variety of intelligence operations during the Cold War. The most famous operation was probably ARGO, which was made into a Hollywood blockbuster. Mendez was played by Ben Affleck.
Mendez—along with his close associate Ed Johnson—snuck six Americans out of Iran by disguising them as a Hollywood film crew.
According to magician Jim Steinmeyer, the ruse worked because, “Mendez’s illusion came down to meticulous detail. He actually established a Hollywood production company, with a script, artwork, job descriptions, and trade ads announcing their upcoming project. This was matched, in detail, by the forged documents and disguises for the six Americans. It was an indulgence that was the dream of any magician. Mendez’s improvisation was performed within carefully rehearsed scenes, meticulous paperwork, backstopped stories, and exhaustive research. If the six Americans seemed to saunter effortlessly through the Teheran airport, it was because the stage had been beautifully set and the scene masterfully presented. It was a demonstration of Kellar the Magician’s famous boast that, once he had an audience under his spell, he could ‘march an elephant across the stage and no one would notice.’”
Mendez, throughout his career, was a huge advocate of adopting the tricks and tools of magicians and applying them in intelligence work. He even sought out Hollywood disguise and special effects artists to better the Agency’s techniques and illusions.
But he wasn’t the first at CIA to take an interest in magic for intelligence purposes.“Magic and intelligence work would appear on the surface to be an unlikely combination, but as the partnership between the dark arts and the Agency evolved, the craft of magic and the CIA’s need for clandestine operations locked together like the last two pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.”The Missing Magic Manuals of Langley
Former CIA Chief of Disguise
Tony Mendez
“Magic and espionage are really kindred arts,” or so wrote former CIA Deputy Director John McLaughlin, an amateur magician himself, in the forward to the book, The Official CIA Manual of Trickery and Deception, by Keith Melton and Robert Wallace.
This book, created from two long-lost training guides designed to teach Agency officers how to integrate elements of the magician’s craft into clandestine operations, revealed that the CIA’s connection to the world of magic was decades old.
In the 1950s, the Agency hired magician John Mulholland to teach young officers techniques of deception suitable for the field, such as sleight-of-hand brush passes and smuggling assets out of East Germany during the Cold War in vehicles that resembled the magic boxes used in stage illusions.“Counterintelligence officers—people who specialize in catching spies—work in a part of the profession so labyrinthine that it is often referred to as a “wilderness of mirrors”—a phrase, of course, with magical overtones.”As part of his contract, Mulholland compiled his Houdini-like advice into two training manuals; “Some Operational Applications of the Art of Deception” and “Recognition Signals.”
- The Official CIA Manual of Trickery and Deception
The magic manuals were thought to be lost to history. However, in 2007, while going through some unrelated documents, Robert Wallace, a former director of the CIA’s Office of Technical Services, discovered references to the manuals and tracked down poor-quality copies of each that had miraculously escaped the shredder.
The manuals were no longer classified, so Wallace worked with intelligence historian and collector, Keith Melton, to publish them in their entirety.“Analysts must be as familiar as magicians with methods of deception, because analysts are almost always working with incomplete information and in circumstances where an adversary is seeking to mislead them—or in the magician’s term, misdirect them.”The tricks and tools of spycraft borrowed from the world of magic and illusion are vast. They include things like twinning and teaming—deploying look-a-likes as decoys and setting the roles of trickster and assistant—to using props and gimmicks such as invisible ink, hidden compartments, and forged documents.
Former Deputy Director of CIA
John McLaughlin
Tricks of the Trade
Creating believable and plausible stories are vital to many illusions, as are skills like timing, body position, and the art of distraction.
Here are some of the ways magic and intelligence mingle, creating illusions, deceptions, and trickery that could fool even the most skilled of spies....
....MUCH MORE
Previously:
October 2018 - "The CIA'a Former "Chief of Disguise" on How to Disappear Into the Crowd"
January 2019 - Tony Mendez, 'Argo' Spy Who Smuggled U.S Hostages Out of Iran During Crisis Died This Week
Let us hope they stop or this could end very badly.
From Türkiye Today, April 23:
A series of earthquakes have rattled the Istanbul region on Wednesday, with 47 recorded tremors within a span of just three hours, according to Türkiye’s Disaster and Emergency Management Authority (AFAD).
The seismic activity began at 12:13 p.m. local time with a magnitude 3.9 earthquake off the coast of Silivri. What followed was an intense sequence of aftershocks, the most powerful of which struck the same area with a magnitude of 6.2.
The smallest recorded tremor during this period measured 1.6 magnitude and occurred off the coasts of Silivri and Buyukcekmece....
....MUCH MORE
Our concern has been and is the slow march westward of big quakes toward Istanbul. Previously:
Risk: Massive Earthquake Could Hit Istanbul at any Moment with just SECONDS Warning, Say Scientists
From Reuters, April 25:
Amgen (AMGN.O), on Friday announced a $900 million expansion of its Ohio biotech manufacturing facility, becoming the latest in a string of drugmakers pledging to increase U.S. capacity amid Trump administration threats of potential import tariffs.
Amgen, based in Thousand Oaks, California, said the plans bring its total investment in central Ohio to more than $1.4 billion, creating 750 jobs.Other drugmakers committing recently to U.S. manufacturing expansions include Eli Lilly, Novartis, Roche, and Johnson & Johnson....
....MUCH MORE
The one that really stood out for us was "Swiss pharmaceuticals company Roche announces $50B investment in US over next 5 years" because it followed so closely on the warning from the EFPIA (also because of the 50 large, that's a lot of money, no matter who you are):
...April 13's "Pharma CEOs alert President von der Leyen to risk of exodus to the US" on The European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations:
Here's who "These folks" are:
- Abbvie
- Almiral
- Amgen
- Astellas
- AstraZeneca
- Bayer
- Biogen
- Boehringer Ingleheim
- Bristol Myers Squibb
- Dai Ichi Sankyo
- Gilead
- Grunenthal
- GSK
- Johnson&Johnson
- LEO
- Lilly
- Merck
- Novartis
- Novo Nordisk
- Pfizer
- Roche
- Sanofi
- Takeda
- Teva
And many more. My thought when seeing the membership list was: I have heard of these companies.
No good can come of this product.
From Bloomberg, April 25:
The world’s first-ever exchange-traded fund based on catastrophe bonds has failed to get the seed capital it expected after launching on the eve of the Trump administration’s tariff war.
“Some of our seed capital investors are sitting on the sidelines because the market turmoil has taken people’s eyes off new asset classes,” said Ethan Powell, chief investment officer of Texas-based Brookmont Capital Management LLC, which oversees the fund. “It’s a crazy environment,” and “we don’t want to be too pushy right now.”
The Brookmont Catastrophic Bond ETF (Ticker: ILS US), which began trading on the New York Stock Exchange on April 1, is intended to make one of the most esoteric corners of the bond market more accessible to regular investors. The bonds have consistently generated market-beating returns in recent years, with record issuance levels turning the asset class into a $50 billion market.
Catastrophe bonds, which last year returned 17% after rising a record 20% in 2023, are issued by insurers looking for ways to pass on part of their risk to the capital markets. Investors can be on the hook for large sums if a natural disaster such as a hurricane hits, but stand to make sizable profits if it doesn’t. Loss probabilities are dictated by highly calibrated terms that set narrow windows for when investors need to fork out payments.
In recent years, the bonds have managed to clock in gains despite being exposed to a series of major hurricanes. And as other asset classes slumped during this month’s market turmoil, so-called cat bonds were among the few financial instruments that were unscathed by the wider selloff.
But the securities can be a hard sell for retail investors who have never before had to price the risk of a typhoon or earthquake.
“The misconception is that you’re bailing out insurers and not being properly compensated for the risk,” Powell said. “The asset class does itself no favors by having ‘catastrophe’ in the name.”....
....MORE
On the other hand, here at Obscure Perils Group our custom small-batch artisanal offerings are sure to fill those gaps in your portfolio you weren't even aware existed.
As mentioned in "And In Other Volcano News: More than 120,000 flee Bali’s Mt Agung volcano":...Volcano insurance?
Why yes stranger.
The state of Washington wants everyone to know about "Volcano coverage for your home and auto"
The major property/casualty insurer State Farm has a page devoted to "How Volcano Damage is Covered on Your Insurance"
Here's a testimonial:
Peter: "No, no, no. I read about this in a book once."Salesman: "How about I let you in on something every home owner needs: VOLCANO INSURANCE!
Brian: "You sure it was a book? You sure it wasn't nothing?"
Now, I have an uncle that knows a lot about volcanoes, and he says a volcano is coming THIS WAY."
Peter: "But we've never had any trouble with volcanoes."
Salesman: "Well don't you think we're due for one?"
Peter (thinking): Touche, salesman. I too have an uncle.
Peter: Come in....
And a reminder, despite the Large Hadron Collider not being much in the news these days we remain an agent for Long or Short Capital's End of the Universe puts in the event CERN goes all whack. Some previous marketing material:
CERN Cranks LHC To 11 In Bid To Find Parallel Universes
Regarding
the puts, we have attempted to quote their action (reaction) with each
CERN announcement since the machine was turned on back in 2008:
...That is why Long or Short is now offering LHC End of the Universe Puts. It’s a simple put option wherein the buyer retains the write to sell the Universe at a strike price of “Existing”. Based on our Black-Holes model used to value all “end of the world” options, the July 2008 vintage options are currently priced at $20....Followed by "Large Hadron Collider Starts Up, Earth Suvives, End of the World Puts Plummet":
UPDATE: The marketers at LoS Capital* are still pushing product:
...We continue to reiterate the importance of LHC End of the Universe Puts.
“The LHC is a discovery machine,” said CERN Director General Robert AymarIf this is true and you extrapolate it out, it is only a matter of time until they discover the end of the Earth and existence as we know it. Who is to say they won’t do that tomorrow? Again, not us.
From - Baguette breaks Large Hadron Collider (End of the Universe Puts Trade Down)Recommendation: These securities do NOT benefit from the implicit guarantee of the US government, God or your locally relevant deity. Wink wink nudge nudge, but between you and me, they DO.*At Long or Short LLC, we leverage our superior intellect and extensive investing experience to recommend explicit Long or Short positions and related abstract trades, which may or may not be possible with real world financial derivatives. We use science to improve the lives of the rich.
More About LoS
Also - CERN: Light Once Again Faster then Neutrinos, Problem May Have Been a Loose Cable
Don't you hate it when that happens? A bad connection and all of a sudden you're calling Einstein a moron.
From CERN:...
From Matt Van Swol:
🚨#BREAKING: Chimney Rock NC officials have confirmed that a mind-blowing 2,000 members of the Pennsylvania Amish Community have been quietly rebuilding the town's homes, businesses, and bridges...
— Matt Van Swol (@matt_vanswol) April 22, 2025
...for 6 months straight
GOD BLESS THE AMISH!! pic.twitter.com/DfwOFLyO8Q
From The Register, April 25:
Still plans to invest $75B in CapEx this year as unable to meet capacity demand
Google says the mega capital splurge on datacenters in recent years is putting more strain on its balance sheet due to rising depreciation costs, yet it still plans to splash $75 billion on bit barns in 2025.
The ad search-cum-cloud titan spent $17.2 billion on "technical infrastructure" in calendar Q1 [PDF], said CFO Anat Ashkenazi on a conference call to discuss the results. "The largest components," she added, "being investment in servers, followed by datacenters" to support the search, cloud and DeepMind divisions.
Google owns and operates 135 datacenters across the world and uses colocation providers as part of its cloud interconnect services. Yet the CFO admitted it is still not able to entirely meet customer demand.
"We're in a tight demand supply environment and given that revenues are correlated with the timing of deployment of new capacity, we could see variability in cloud revenue growth rates depending on capacity deployment each quarter," she warned the financial analysts that had dialled in....
....MUCH MORE
Vice-President Vance and wife Usha were in India a few days ago, she was the star:
JD Vance says his wife Usha has received ‘celebrity’ treatment in India
From the Indian Express, April 25:
India-US Trade Deal: According to a New York Post report, Bessent told a group of journalists on Wednesday that trade talks with India are “very close” to reaching a successful conclusion as it doesn’t have “so many high tariffs.”
India-US Trade Agreement: US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has said that India is likely to become the first nation to finalise a bilateral trade agreement with the US — a development that would help New Delhi sidestep the 26 per cent reciprocal tariffs that have been paused till July.
According to a New York Post report, Bessent told a group of journalists on Wednesday that trade talks with India are “very close” to reaching a successful conclusion as it doesn’t have “so many high tariffs.” “India also has fewer non-tariff trade barriers, obviously, no currency manipulation, very, very little government subsidies, so reaching a deal with the Indians is much easier,” he said.
A bilateral trade agreement (BTA) between India and the US, proposed during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s meeting with US President Donald Trump in Washington in February, seeks to more than double trade to $500 billion by 2030 from over $190 billion at present....
....MUCH MORE
From the International Monetary Fund:
IMF Growth Projections for 2025:
— IMF (@IMFNews) April 23, 2025
🇦🇷Argentina: 5.5%
🇧🇷Brazil: 2.0%
🇨🇳China: 4.0%
🇪🇬Egypt: 3.8%
🇮🇳India: 6.2%
🇮🇩Indonesia: 4.7%
🇳🇬Nigeria: 3.0%
🇵🇰Pakistan: 2.6%
🇸🇦Saudi Arabia: 3.0%
🇿🇦South Africa: 1.0%
🇹🇷Türkiye: 2.7% https://t.co/zbFEIL3V12 pic.twitter.com/97Sk99eog5
From engadget, April 22:
ChatGPT Search will display summaries, quotes and links from the publisher.
The Washington Post is partnering with OpenAI to bring its reporting to ChatGPT. The two organizations did not disclose the financial terms of the agreement, but the deal will see ChatGPT display summaries, quotes and links to articles from The Post when users prompt the chatbot to search the web.
"We're all in on meeting our audiences where they are," said Peter Elkins-Williams, head of global partnerships at The Post. "Ensuring ChatGPT users have our impactful reporting at their fingertips builds on our commitment to provide access where, how and when our audiences want it."
The Post is no stranger to generative AI. In November, the publisher began using the technology to offer article summaries. Since the start of February, ChatGPT Search has been available to everyone, with no account or sign-in necessary....
....MORE
As introduction, an observation from a post fourteen months ago:
Ray Dalio: "Are We In A Bubble?"
He says no but he was also pushing investments in China* that are now down 50 - 60%.
He's such an odd duck. I mean most multi-billionaires are odd ducks, it's sort of a prerequisite for the self-made or a condition of employment for inheritors but even in this cohort he sticks out.
I on the other hand think things are bubbly but will get even more bubblicious as long as "the grass shall grow and excess liquidity flow." (apologies to all the U.S. - indigenous treaty writers of a couple centuries ago)....
And regarding the Soros clan, I've thought about it and I still wonder why Alex got the old man's nod to run the money.
From New York Magazine, April 22:
The New Soros With Trump on the rampage, Alex Soros takes control of his father’s empire. What will he do with his influence?
Alex Soros lives in the duplex penthouse of a building in downtown Manhattan. The elevator opens onto the apartment, where a framed photograph of Alex and his fiancée, Huma Abedin, sits on a small table by the entrance. Apart from its artwork I am asked not to identify for security reasons, his home is sleek and uncluttered and has south-facing floor-to-ceiling windows and an exposed spiral staircase leading to the upper level. An atriumlike living room is appointed with white leather sofas Abedin dislikes, and is in the process of replacing, and a glass coffee table, on which rests a recent compendium on sculpture co-edited by Alex’s mother, Susan Weber, a historian of the decorative arts.
He invites me to meet him there for the first time in early February, not long after his return from the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, where the architects of globalization watched from Alpine remove as their consensus positions on free trade, migration, and international relations were, one by one, abandoned in Donald Trump’s new Washington. For years, Alex’s father, George Soros, the founder of the family’s Open Society Foundations, was a headliner at Davos. In the Soros household, Alex dryly notes, late January held special significance: “I would go back to school, and my father would go to Davos.”
Alex, 39, is dressed in black leather boots, black pants, and a black turtleneck, a uniform that matches his pallid complexion, intense demeanor, and Ph.D. in European intellectual history. I have been cautioned that he is socially uneasy and impatient with chitchat. “I don’t know how to explain this,” says his close friend Svante Myrick, the former mayor of Ithaca, “but he will walk away from a boring person mid-sentence.” After mumbling pleasantries and offering to make me an espresso, Alex sits down at a dining-room table, ready to answer questions. Working on a laptop at the table is 62-year-old Michael Vachon, an intimidating, arch-loyal adviser whom Alex offhandedly and with only a trace of irony calls his father’s consigliere.
The setting itself is a testament to a certain indifference to public opinion on Alex’s part — or perhaps a lack of awareness. This past fall, he held a fundraiser at the apartment for vice-presidential candidate Tim Walz, then created a PR headache by posting photos from the event on social media, as is his custom after meeting heads of state and elected officials. (As a former OSF higher-up says, Alex likes to collect “shiny objects.”) It was deemed unhelpful to a presidential ticket straining to underscore its regularness that the son of the 94-year-old hedge-fund billionaire accused of puppeteering the Democratic Party was publicly advertising his centrality to the election effort from a New York City penthouse.
In a way, Alex was being transparent: Between the roughly $100 million he spent to elect Democrats and the several hundred million more his endowed foundations spent on sympathetic causes, George was probably the biggest liberal donor of the most recent election cycle. (It is hard to know for sure because of untrackable dark-money spending.) Alex told The Wall Street Journal it was better for the family to operate in full view rather than be subject to antisemitic tropes about shadowy Jewish financiers. “There’s a view that we are some sort of hidden conspiracy,” he said.
The right ascribes a near-unlimited influence to George — from orchestrating the Women’s March and other mass protests in the U.S. to funding migrant caravans from Latin America to undermining Christian values in Europe — and coverage of his activities can imply that he is personally tipping the scales in various causes and races. The reality is that, while the money is his, George is no longer active. It is his chosen successor, Alex, the second youngest of his five children from two marriages, who now makes the bets as president of George’s super-PAC and chairman of his $20 billion philanthropic empire. This functionally makes Alex the key megadonor poised to bankroll the liberal movement for years to come.
Alex’s appointment in late 2022 jarred loyalists and veteran hands in his father’s orbit. A decade ago, he gained a “Page Six”–stoked reputation for decadent Hamptons parties and stereotypical heir behavior. He follows dozens of models on Instagram; fellow billionaire benefactor Michael Bloomberg follows unicef and Canadian prime minister Mark Carney. But in private he is brooding and cerebral and has a propensity for candor and bursts of hot-temperedness. His halting, Peter Thiel–like baritone is full of ahs and ums, and his sentences can sound like records skipping, as if he were unable to easily put into language what is clear in his mind.
This slightly tortured persona has invited comparisons with his elder half-brother Jonathan, who sprang from Harvard Law School and a federal clerkship to work alongside his father in finance and philanthropy. Jonathan is described as an even-keeled presence and looked the part of a successor, down to his cheerful, full-faced resemblance to a younger George. After Alex was announced as chair, the organization’s first president, Aryeh Neier, spoke for many when he said, “I expected Jonathan to be the one.” Someone with deep OSF ties says, “The real story is that every single person who knows the family knows that Alex was exactly the wrong person to lead the foundation.”
When Soros insiders try to explain the family dynamic, they draw on the standard texts of empire and heredity. “Roman is Alex,” says a former OSF senior official, referring to Roman Roy, the sardonic failson in Succession. “Smart but fucking impossible and not particularly interested in the details.” Another Soros insider cites not HBO but the Gospel of Luke, casting Alex in the role of the Prodigal Son, who is rewarded with his father’s love despite his wayward years.
If Alex feels underqualified to be a liberal power broker, he doesn’t show it. When I ask for his autopsy of the presidential election, he breezily argues Joe Biden was “assassinated” by “the pundit class” after his disastrous debate, erasing a proven Trump-beater from the ballot while giving his successor too little runway to achieve liftoff. “The fact of the matter is that if Donald Trump had gone on that debate stage and, you know, shit his pants and had a heart attack, Republicans would still be there saying, ‘Yeah, he’s our guy,’” he says. “That meltdown that we had publicly is a discipline problem.”
As invested as he is in the success of the Democratic mainstream, Alex is simultaneously supportive of the party’s progressive wing, via OSF-funded NGOs that advocate left-leaning stances on immigration, criminal justice, and other issues. As one donor adviser puts it, Sorosworld is the “metronome” that sets the tempo of the progressive movement. When I ask him to respond to the critique that many of these groups — or the Groups, in Beltwayspeak — were responsible for pulling the party too far left and costing it the election, he is dismissive. “First of all, it’s not smart after an election to go after your base,” he says. “Second of all, you know, the quick takes, the hot takes — let’s see which age well.”
Alex might be too entangled in the institutions of liberalism, ranging from the centrist Establishment to the activist pressure groups, to perceive its failures. And that’s not even to mention his impending June wedding to Abedin, Hillary Clinton’s longtime aide-de-camp and the ex-wife of former congressman Anthony Weiner — a gift to anyone looking for proof that the globalists are at last closing in on a one-world government, with the Weiner side plot as a prurient throw-in.
But Alex has a penchant for arguing both sides, like someone who enjoys playing chess with himself. Despite his reluctance to criticize the activists his foundation funds, he can seem out of sync with them, rolling his eyes at the advertising of one’s pronouns and the left-wing censoriousness of the past era. (“Should we, you know, have rebelled against … Dave Chappelle?”) And though he might sometimes seem a Davosboy to his father’s Davosman, he finds the corporate-friendly scene at the World Economic Forum pretty lame, using his princely status there to look bored at panels and mock its shibboleths. In an onstage interview a couple of years ago, he announced to the gathered neo-liberals, “Neoliberalism is dead.” Absent a new socioeconomic model, he forecast, “the alternative will be owned by MAGA extremists, by populists, by nationalists.”
As we spoke throughout the spring, Alex could be maddeningly discursive about the Trump administration’s escalating assault on civil society, which may well come next for his own organization. He said America was in a “nihilistic moment,” and he worried about the “lasting damage” the president was inflicting — even as he dismissed Trump as a self-destructive chaos agent. “I talk to real strongmen around the world, and they laugh at him.”
Exactly how to push back against the madness he leaves unclear. Nor does he offer any coherent agenda for the Democrats, whose roiling, inconclusive debates can seem personified by Alex himself. He was a regular presence at the Biden White House, one-half of an odd power couple, yet few in the broader political universe have a grasp of how he thinks about the world and plans to spend the wealth at his disposal. That money could help determine the fate not only of a rudderless Democratic Party but of a country that every day is disappearing legal residents and immigrants, shaking down universities, defying court orders, and otherwise taking aim at the very open society his father’s global philanthropy exists to uphold. After the intrusions of the Kochs and the Adelsons, America is in its most nakedly oligarchic era since the Gilded Age, one in which the most visible billionaire ultradonor, Elon Musk, has taken charge of swaths of the federal government. Alex Soros, an aspiring kingmaker who also spends the better part of his day in his own head, is, for better or worse, standing on the other side.
An hour or so into our first meeting, Alex’s chief of staff, Laura Silber, shows up to accompany him to his next engagement, a tour of the new Anne Frank exhibition at the Center for Jewish History, where he is on the board. Silber also oversees communications for OSF, and like Vachon, she has known Alex since he was a kid. She manages many of the practicalities of Alex’s life and accompanies him more or less everywhere he goes. Although he is almost 40 years old, Alex has a distracted, adolescent quality. I suspect he is not fully aware of his own calendar and must often be dragged by Silber to things that are on it.
Silber invites me to join them at the exhibition, and the three of us head down after she hails an Uber. Alex groans: “Do we have to give them money?” He means Uber. We hop in the SUV, and he begins a vexed monologue about the start-up types he’d bump into when he was a grad student at the University of California, Berkeley. “The people who worked at Facebook, the people who created Uber, they really believed their own bullshit. They really believed they were helping the world,” he says. “It was a bunch of nice Jewish boys who kind of gamed the system and, Oh, lets not become doctors, lawyers; I’m helping the world by putting taxis out of business.”....
....MUCH MORE
From CNBC, April 22:
- Fruitist, known for its jumbo blueberries, has surpassed $400 million in annual sales and received backing from Ray Dalio’s family office.
- Sales of its jumbo blueberries alone have tripled in the last 12 months, fueling the company’s growth.
- Fruitist, formerly known as Agrovision, relies on a vertically integrated supply chain and machine learning to produce berries that last longer on shelves.
Berry unicorn startup Fruitist has surpassed $400 million in annual sales, thanks to the success of its long-lasting jumbo blueberries.
The company, which was founded in 2012, announced on Tuesday that it is changing its name from Agrovision to Fruitist. It previously only used the name for branding its consumer products, which also include raspberries, blackberries and blueberries.
As sales of its berries grow, Fruitist has raised more than $600 million in venture capital, according to Pitchbook data. Notable backers include the family office of Bridgewater Associates founder Ray Dalio.
Fruitist is reportedly considering going public as soon as this year, even as global trade conflicts hit stocks and raise fears about a global economic slowdown.
The company has tried to set itself apart in a crowded space in part by positioning its berries as “snackable.” The snacking category has been one of the fastest growing in the food industry in recent years.
While many consumers still enjoy potato chips and pretzels, many big food companies have expanded their portfolios in recent years to include healthier options. The adoption of GLP-1 drugs and the “Make America Healthy Again” agenda pushed by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. have made healthier snacking options even more attractive to both consumers and investors.
Today, Fruitist’s berries can be found in more than 12,500 North American retailers, including Costco, Walmart and Whole Foods. Sales of its jumbo blueberries alone have tripled in the last 12 months, fueling the company’s growth.
Fixing ‘berry roulette’...
Our interest is in the non-voting class C shares, the GOOG, which ended the after-hours session up 7%.*
From CNBC, April 24:
- Alphabet reported revenue of $90.23 billion and earnings per share of $2.81.
- The company’s shares rose as much as 4% on stronger-than-expected revenue growth.
- Alphabet’s search and advertising units are still showing strong growth despite AI competition heating up, according to its first-quarter earnings report.
Alphabet, the parent company of Google and YouTube, reported stronger-than-expected first-quarter growth on Thursday after the bell. Shares rose more than 5% in after-hours trading.
Here’s how the company did, compared with estimates from analysts polled by LSEG:
- Revenue: $90.23 billion vs. $89.12 billion, estimated
- Earnings per share: $2.81 vs. $2.01, estimated
Wall Street is also watching several other numbers in the report:
- YouTube advertising revenue: $8.93 billion versus $8.97 billion, according to StreetAccount
- Google Cloud revenue: $12.26 billion versus $12.27 billion, according to StreetAccount
- Traffic acquisition costs (TAC): $13.75 billion versus $13.66 billion, according to StreetAccount
Alphabet’s search and advertising units are still showing strong growth despite AI competition heating up, according to its first-quarter earnings report.
The company’s overall revenue grew 12% year-over-year, higher than the 10% Wall Street expected.
Google’s YouTube advertising revenue came in just short of analyst expectations at $8.93 billion. Overall advertising brought in $66.89 billion, up 8.5% from the year prior....
From Cowboy State Daily (Wyoming and the world), April 22:
The company developing a rare earth element mine in Ranchester added former West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin to its team. While in office, Manchin was a leading advocate for the mining industry.
Former U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia has joined the board of directors of Ramaco Resources, bringing an expertise that complements the company’s ambition to become “the first new rare earth mine in the country,” said Randall Atkins, Ramaco's chairman and CEO.
Along with metallurgical coal mining operations in West Virginia, Virginia and Kentucky, Ramaco has the Brook Mine in Wyoming along with a carbon business incubator in Sheridan County. It also is pursuing a huge rare earth deposit in Wyoming the company has estimated could be valued at more than $37 billion....
....MUCH MORE
Our last visit to Cowboy State Daily:
Bill Gates Goes To Wyoming Coal Country, Breaks Ground On A Nuke Plant, Plays Poker With The Locals
From The Diplomat, April 21:
China’s Humanoid Marathon Signals a New Kind of AI RaceOn April 19, just months after Unitree’s dancing humanoid robots captured international headlines for their appearance in the CCTV Spring Festival Gala, Beijing hosted the world’s first-ever humanoid robot half marathon. The event drew thousands of live spectators along the course and millions more watching via the CCTV livestream and online platforms, quickly becoming the most widely viewed robotics competitions in history.
Co-organized by Beijing municipal government bureaus, the Beijing Yizhuang Half Marathon and Humanoid Robot Half Marathon marked a milestone in China’s push to accelerate humanoid robot development. The event featured 1,200 human runners alongside 20 robot teams from private companies and state-backed projects, including industry leaders Unitree and X-Humanoid. While humans and robots raced on separate tracks, the event podium featured top finishers in both categories — symbolizing Beijing’s ambition to integrate humanoid robots into everyday life.
The results revealed that the performance gap between humans and robots remains substantial. While the men’s winner finished in 1:02:36 and the women’s champion in 1:11:07, Tiangong Ultra, the leading robot, completed the course in 2:40:27. Despite this gap, the event demonstrated the significant technological progress Chinese companies have made in relation to their U.S. counterparts. Tiangong Ultra maintained an average pace of 8.2 km/hr and reached speeds of up to 12 km/hr — surpassing the maximum 8 km/hr demonstrated by Tesla’s much-hyped Optimus. Meanwhile, although Boston Dynamics’ Atlas is faster than Tiangong Ultra, its battery life is much shorter when performing at maximum capacity.
“This represents a technological and engineering milestone,” noted ZongZe Wu, a research associate at Tsinghua University’s Institute for Artificial Intelligence International Governance. “Although humanoid robots still have a long way to go, simply completing a course of this distance is a remarkable feat.”
This sentiment resonated broadly across Chinese media and social platforms. Sam Zhu, a 16-year-old tech enthusiast from Wuhan, captured the public mood saying, “This feels like witnessing the start of something transformative — potentially as significant as the early stages of the Industrial Revolution.”
Although the event lasted only hours, its symbolism extends far beyond sport. For policymakers and technologists across China, the half-marathon represents a tangible demonstration of the country’s accelerating capabilities in “humanoid robotics” (人形机器人) and “embodied intelligence” (具身智能). It also marked a turning point in a field Beijing has explicitly prioritized as central to its vision of an AI-powered economic transformation – and the beginning of a new era in physical AI applications.
China’s Humanoid Robot National Strategy: From Policy to Execution
In November 2023, the Chinese government laid out its first official development plan for humanoid robots with ambitious two-stage targets. The initial phase, with a target date of this year, focuses on technical breakthroughs, industrial deployment, and cultivating globally competitive enterprises. So far, these goals that already appear to have been largely met.
China has developed advanced movement control technology, and launched “Gewu,” an open-source platform that trains over a hundred robot variants with a single codebase. Additionally, according to Morgan Stanley’s 2025 Humanoid 100 Report, Chinese companies now represent 35 of the top 100 firms in the humanoid robotics value chain and nine of the 22 companies capable of producing fully integrated humanoid robots — compared to just five in the United States.
The second stage aims to establish a secure industrial supply chain, integrate robotics throughout the economy, and achieve global technological leadership. This also seems to be largely on track with a 2024 analysis by the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT) reporting that Chinese firms already “cover the entire industrial chain” from components to systems integration.
The national strategy has triggered a cascade of regional initiatives. In March, Shenzhen released an ambitious 2027 action plan targeting 100-plus billion yuan ($13.7-plus billion) in robotics-related industries while expanding its embodied intelligence cluster to include over 1,200 companies. Beijing quickly followed by launching a dedicated humanoid robot data training center with project funding subsidies of up to 24 million yuan per company for qualified R&D initiatives. Within weeks, at least ten other provinces introduced similar policies supporting humanoid robot development, uniformly describing the sector as “a key driver for high-quality economic growth and industrial upgrading.”
This coordinated push reflects how Chinese policymakers view humanoid robotics not merely as a technological showcase but as a strategic solution to the country’s most pressing structural challenges. With youth unemployment hovering around 17 percent and the working-age population projected to contract significantly by 2030, Beijing is urgently seeking new engines of productivity and economic growth. Humanoid robotics offers a compelling two-pronged approach: simultaneously driving industrial modernization while addressing emerging labor shortages in elder care, logistics, manufacturing, and service sectors—areas critical to China’s economic stability as its demographic crisis deepens.
The Competitive Edge: Why China Could Lead in Real-World Robotics...
....MUCH MORE
Reuse of headline because here at Climateer Investing we recycle! (also, happy belated Earth Day):
August 2024 - In Addition To Nvidia, China Also Seems To Think There May Be Something To This Humanoid Robot Stuff
Related:
While You Were Busy Living Your Life: "Nvidia Announces GR00T, a Foundation Model for Humanoids"
February 2025 - "Boston Dynamics Partners with Its Former CEO to Build a Humanoid Robot"
HSBC is staffing branches with humanoid robots that dance, take selfies and push credit cards
Now that's dystopia.