Sunday Snapshots (10th May, 2020)
The Marshall Plan, Auctions x AI x Freight, Zoom's moves, COVID-19 and the climate, Drafts, Death of Stalin, and Bánh mì
Hey everyone,
Greetings from Evanston!
As I go through the kayfabe-esque motions of online classes, it's been good to spend some time reflecting on the journey that has been writing this newsletter for 51 weeks. For the one year anniversary issue of Snapshots next week, I have a very special edition planned with some fun collaborations. Sit tight!
If you want to give me an anniversary present, share Snapshots by forwarding this email to your smartest friends, sharing on LinkedIn or Twitter with a short note, or sharing within your existing community or company Slacks.
In this week’s issue of Snapshots, I want to talk about:
A historical blueprint for re-building economies
Auctions, AI, and Freight
Zoom’s latest moves against large players
COVID-19’s impact on the environment
My new favorite writing app
The funniest movie I’ve watched this year
And more!
Book of the week
How do you create a new world order after one of the most important world events? How do you do it in the face of an unsympathetic enemy? How do you convince your country that these are the right steps to take? I'm not taking about the reconstruction of the economy after COVID-19. I'm taking about the post-World War 2 Marshall Plan implemented by the United States to revive the decimated European economy.
There are lessons to be learned from the last time a mass economic reconstruction. Here were my main takeaways:
Europe after World War 2: First, let’s quickly set the scene. During World War 2, entire national economies were re-directed to the war effort. The Allied forces (Britain, France, Russia, etc.) were largely financed by loans from the United States. After the war, these countries wanted reparations from Germany to pay for the damage done to their economies. However, it was becoming clear that the shaky alliance between the US and the Soviet Union would not survive after their battle against their now vanquished foe, Hitler. The US wanted the Germany economy to become self-sufficient and not repeat the mistakes of the Treaty of Versailles after World War 1. In the meantime, it was financing Germany’s survival. If Germany started paying reparations to the Soviet Union, then the US would be indirectly financing their emerging rivals. The Marshall Plan was the antidote to this unacceptable situation.
Via Negativa: It's commonly accepted that we can study history through the leadership at the time. Think Rome since 27BC to the 14th century, Britain from the 17th century to 1914, and the US post the World Wars. But we can also study history through eldership vacuums – via negativa. In this case, it was Britain’s decline as a world power that led to many of the problems after World War 2. When the Jupiter in a region wanes in strength, orbits become unstable. Everyone’s economies were tied in to Britain’s. With the mounting cost of servicing US loans and maintaining colonies abroad, Britain’s economy was decimated. While the sun still never set on the British Empire, the metaphorical grandeur in that phrase had no meaning. The US had to fill this leadership vaccuum.
The Wise Men: After Harry Truman became President in 1945, the United States developed a strong containment policy of the Soviet Union. The architects of this policy were 6 men – Dean Acheson, Charles Bohlen, William Harriman, George Kennan, Robert Lovett, and John McCloy. They were nicknamed The Wise Men. It is fair to say that we live in the world created by just a handful of individuals and reading about the time period makes any skeptic of The Great Man Theory take a second look. But the much more important question is who are today’s wise men? I would consider myself an above average consumer of political information and I’m not sure who they are. Instead, the center has been replaced by the network. I would argue that Balaji Srinivasan is one. He has been consistently right about the COVID-19 crisis since January. His platform? Not the State Department. Not the Department of Defense. Not any elected or appointed office. His platform is Twitter.
The book is an OK read. It is laborious at times and I wouldn’t recommend it if you’re not a big policy buff. I’m also not sure if my original reasoning for reading the book was valid – are there any universal principles of reconstruction to be applied in the age of internet? I’m not so sure.
Long read of the week
Auctions, AI, and Freight by W.J.A. van Heeswijk
When people talk about the autonomous vehicles, they often focus on the first-order changes that will happen – unemployment for truck drivers, lower overall supply chain costs, and reduced traffic accidents. But the more interesting stuff comes downstream.
This paper focuses on one of those downstream effects that and hits the sweet spot for all my interests. Logistics? Check. AI? Check. Auction theory? Check.
Let's do some world-building. You have a "smart" freight container (think something like this.) Its weight, contents, destination, and current situation can be managed. Imagine a network of these containers around the country going to some particular destination. If they come across another container with some cargo that is also going to the same destination, it could “sell” its services to this cargo (more accurately to the company that owns the cargo). A bunch of these transactions would happen dynamically across the network. Instead of having an equilibrium and optimal solution for the global network, the network at each point in time would be moving towards some very good solution.
It’s a fascinating world and one that would be built after the advent of autonomous trucks. I’m excited for these 2nd order companies.
Business move of the week
Zoom chooses Oracle as its cloud provider
As it runs the world around us, Zoom has had to make large adjustments to its products. And it has had to make these adjustments very quickly.
One such adjustment is how to power all those WFH meetings, cooking lessons, university classes, and your friend group’s gossip-fueled conference calls. Zoom needs cloud computing services to process all of the above.
To do so, it has chosen Oracle.
What? I haven’t heard about Oracle since I read Larry Ellison’s Code of the Samurai talk. It is one of the legacy names in Silicon Valley. How can it better than Amazon’s AWS, Microsoft’s Azure, and Google’s Cloud Platform? It may not be, but Oracle has a key characteristic that is important to Zoom – it doesn't have a video-conferencing service. Microsoft and Google do. No business is too ambitious for Amazon. It can enter and capture the field at any point.
As the internet went from its adolescent to its young adult phase, you would often hear the phrase, "Data is the new oil." This was meant to underscore the value of data. Well, I disagree. Data is not as valuable as oil.
It's more valuable.
Amazon has shown through its AmazonBasics line that data can be used to serve up superior products. Other companies have made similar moves. At a time where Zoom is being hit from the consumer side by Facebook Messenger and from the enterprise side by Microsoft Teams, it doesn’t need to give them more information. It especially doesn’t need Bezos’ determination against it. Eric Yuan is one smart CEO.
Zoom continues to have real privacy concerns. In order to alleviate them, it has made two strong moves. First, it nominated H.R. McMaster to its board. Nothing says “don’t worry about our China problem” – Zoom’s R&D centers are in China – than putting one of the most respected China hawks on your board. Second, it acquired Keybase to bolster its encrypted offerings.
Zoom has proved to be a company that is adaptable to change. In a world full of uncertainty, that’s all you can ask for.
Random corner of the week
Short random corner this week. Since human activity has halted in most places and slowed down almost everywhere, the earth is moving less and you can actually measure the effect.
More on how COVID-19 has affected the physical world here.
App of the week
I'm not a big fan of changing apps too frequently. But after using Bear for a year and a half, I’ve switched over to Drafts for writing.
Pros: The big pulling force for me was the shear speed of the app compared to others. It allows me to quickly create new notes to add a section of this newsletter on my walks (which is where I do most of my writing.) After that, I bring everything into the Substack editor for a final polish.
Cons: I don’t think it’s as well suited to long form writing as note-taking because of its lackluster editing kit. I think Bear is also just much more aesthetically pleasing if you’re going to be writing for longer periods of time.
If you take a lot of notes, considering giving Drafts a shot and let me know what you think.
Movie of the week
Never has the death of a dictator been so funny. The spiritual precursor to this year’s Jojo Rabbit, Death of Stalin follows the shenanigans of Stalin’s closest advisor in the aftermath of his death. It’s got it all – coups, derangement, clash of egos, ruthlessness. All with a unique veneer of comedy.
I’ve re-written this section a couple of times and I just can’t do the movie justice. Just go watch it on Netflix.
Meal of the week
My friend Somil and I made some Bánh mì this week. It was fresh, unique, and most importantly, delicious. Go follow his food instagram at @somileats.
That wraps up this week’s newsletter. If you want to discuss any of the ideas mentioned above or have any books/papers/links you think would be interesting to share on a future edition of Sunday Snapshots, please reach out to me by replying to this email or sending me a direct message on Twitter at @sidharthajha.
Until next Sunday,
Sid