The Culled Collections
Deep analysis of the forces shaping AI, finance, labor, geopolitics, and governance. We cut through noise to reveal the patterns that matter.
Latest Analysis
Wall Street Questions $660B AI Infrastructure Bet
After a year celebrating massive AI infrastructure spending, Wall Street abruptly shifted in early February 2026. Alphabet's announcement of $185 billion in annual capex—more than double 2025—forced investors to confront whether the industry's $660 billion buildout represents rational investment or developing bubble.
China's AI Efficiency Revolution Challenges $600B Silicon Valley Bet
While U.S. hyperscalers committed $660 billion to a GPU arms race, Chinese researchers developed algorithmic innovations achieving similar results at a fraction of the cost. DeepSeek's success represents more than competitive threat—it's a fundamental challenge to assumptions underpinning the West's AI development strategy, with implications for capex sustainability, export control effectiveness, and trillion-dollar market valuations.
AI Layoffs Target Middle Management as Potential Beats Performance
Over half of executives now expect AI-driven job losses, but the target has shifted from entry-level repetition to mid-tier knowledge work. January's 25,000 tech layoffs and Oracle's planned 30,000 cuts signal a bet on agentic AI replacing managerial judgment—except the technology isn't ready. The result: companies are destroying organizational capacity to fund infrastructure for automation that may take years to deliver.
Gold Whipsaws as Safe Haven Calculus Breaks
Silver plunged from $120 to $89 per ounce in days, erasing January's record run. Gold rallied 5% off recent lows. The metal markets are convulsing not from supply shocks but from a more fundamental crisis: investors can't agree on what constitutes a store of value when the Fed holds rates steady under political siege, the dollar strengthens on Venezuela intervention fears, and Treasury yields signal economic confusion.
AI & Compute Infrastructure
Wall Street Questions $660B AI Infrastructure Bet
After a year celebrating massive AI infrastructure spending, Wall Street abruptly shifted in early February 2026. Alphabet's announcement of $185 billion in annual capex—more than double 2025—forced investors to confront whether the industry's $660 billion buildout represents rational investment or developing bubble.
China's AI Efficiency Revolution Challenges $600B Silicon Valley Bet
While U.S. hyperscalers committed $660 billion to a GPU arms race, Chinese researchers developed algorithmic innovations achieving similar results at a fraction of the cost. DeepSeek's success represents more than competitive threat—it's a fundamental challenge to assumptions underpinning the West's AI development strategy, with implications for capex sustainability, export control effectiveness, and trillion-dollar market valuations.
TSMC Commits $56B to AI Buildout as Supply Stays Tight
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company reported record fourth-quarter earnings Thursday and raised 2026 capital expenditures to as much as $56 billion—a potential 40 percent increase from 2025—as CEO C.C. Wei told investors that supply constraints for AI chips will persist through 2027 despite aggressive expansion. The guidance signals that the world's largest contract chipmaker views artificial intelligence demand as structural rather than cyclical, committing unprecedented capital to fabrication capacity that won't materially contribute to supply until 2028.
Truist’s Northrop Grumman Downgrade Signals Tentative Repricing in Defense Margins
Truist downgraded Northrop Grumman, citing margin risk at a moment when defense contractors face cost inflation, program schedule pressure and increasing prime–subcontractor friction. The move could presage a modest sector-wide repricing if profit deterioration proves persistent rather than idiosyncratic.
New Financial Architecture
Private Equity's $880B Liquidity Reckoning
After years of stalled exits, private equity sits on record backlog while dry powder fell from $1.3T to $880B. The fundamental business model is shifting from traditional IPOs and strategic sales to continuation funds, NAV loans, and secondaries—liquidity mechanisms that are controversial, expensive, and potentially artificial.
Gold Whipsaws as Safe Haven Calculus Breaks
Silver plunged from $120 to $89 per ounce in days, erasing January's record run. Gold rallied 5% off recent lows. The metal markets are convulsing not from supply shocks but from a more fundamental crisis: investors can't agree on what constitutes a store of value when the Fed holds rates steady under political siege, the dollar strengthens on Venezuela intervention fears, and Treasury yields signal economic confusion.
Senate Delays Crypto Vote as $6B Stablecoin Fight Intensifies
The Senate postponed its January 15 markup of comprehensive crypto legislation, pushing the vote to late January after failing to secure bipartisan support. The delay centers on whether crypto exchanges can offer rewards on stablecoins—a $6 billion question that has fractured the industry coalition built around regulatory clarity. Meanwhile, Wyoming launched the nation's first state-backed stablecoin, and liquidity is returning to markets after December's risk-off period.
Crypto Clarity Bill Momentum: What Republicans, Tim Scott, and Markets Are Watching
A Senate effort to define crypto under securities law has picked up unexpectedly broad attention: Republicans weighing political optics, Senator Tim Scott’s draft as the procedural hinge, and traders pricing regulatory re-risk into exchange listings and venture exits. The outcome will determine who regulates, which tokens survive, and how quickly capital reallocates.
Consumer Economy & Labor
AI Layoffs Target Middle Management as Potential Beats Performance
Over half of executives now expect AI-driven job losses, but the target has shifted from entry-level repetition to mid-tier knowledge work. January's 25,000 tech layoffs and Oracle's planned 30,000 cuts signal a bet on agentic AI replacing managerial judgment—except the technology isn't ready. The result: companies are destroying organizational capacity to fund infrastructure for automation that may take years to deliver.
AB InBev Reclaims US Can Plants in $3B Vertical Bet
AB InBev is acquiring several U.S.-based can manufacturing assets for roughly $3 billion, repositioning an erstwhile outsourced input into a controlled supply-line. The deal is less about immediate synergies than about certainty — securing packaging capacity, cushioning commodity swings, and protecting distribution in an era of fractured logistics.
Insider Moves and Regulatory Scrutiny at Lakeland Industries
Lakeland Industries faces renewed investor scrutiny after a cluster of insider share sales and purchases overlapped with fresh Financial Conduct Authority inquiries. The sequence—timing, counterparties and disclosure cadence—raises governance and market‑abuse questions for a small-cap specialist whose pandemic-era sales growth has cooled.
Telework as Reasonable Accommodation: The New Legal Baseline
Courts and agencies have begun treating telework not merely as convenience but as a legally reasonable accommodation under disability law. That shift forces employers to rearchitect policies, risk models, and talent strategies to align compliance with shareholder value.
Geopolitics & Trade
The World Reorders Itself, and Markets Notice
The post-Cold War order is being actively dismantled across five simultaneous fronts: alliance fragmentation, nuclear rearmament, intelligence disruption, trade weaponization, and a Middle East flashpoint that threatens energy markets. Each trend compounds the others. Together, they are repricing the cost of geopolitical stability for a generation.
Trump Tariffs Target NATO Allies Over Greenland
President Trump announced 10% tariffs on Denmark, Germany, France, the UK, and four other NATO members starting February 1, escalating to 25% by June unless the US acquires Greenland. The move follows Operation Arctic Endurance, a Danish-led military exercise that deployed European troops to the Arctic territory this week, marking the first instance of a NATO ally threatening punitive economic measures against partners for collective defense activities.
Gold Displaces Dollar as Central Banks Shift Reserves
Gold's 65 percent rally in 2025—the strongest annual performance since 1979—reflects a fundamental reorganization of global monetary reserves as central banks pursue sustained diversification away from dollar-denominated assets. The milestone crossing of Treasury holdings validates a multi-year structural shift, even as record prices create demand destruction in consumer markets that historically absorbed 40 percent of physical gold consumption.
Tokyo and Seoul Deepen Alignment as China Tensions Rise
Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi and South Korean President Lee Jae-myung agreed Tuesday to expand cooperation across economic security, defense, and technology sectors, marking their second bilateral summit in three months. The Nara meeting advances strategic alignment between Asia's most capable middle powers as China's rare earth restrictions against Japan intensify and North Korea's nuclear threat persists. Both leaders committed to semiconductor supply chain resilience, critical minerals diversification, and closer trilateral coordination with the United States.
Governance & Corporate Strategy
Boston Scientific Bets $14.5B on Thrombectomy Market
Boston Scientific agreed Thursday to acquire Penumbra for approximately $14.5 billion, entering the mechanical thrombectomy and neurovascular markets through its largest transaction since the 2006 Guidant purchase. The deal values Penumbra at $374 per share—a 19 percent premium—and marks the first major healthcare acquisition of 2026, a year analysts expect will bring intensified medtech consolidation as companies leverage favorable regulatory conditions and easing interest rates to capture growth in cardiovascular intervention.
AI and the Governance Frontier: Superminds Need Boundaries, Not Blind Faith
AI is no longer a tool at humanity’s periphery: it is an organizing institution. As models scale and human-AI collectives—‘superminds’—take on consequential tasks, governance faces a new constraint: setting clear boundaries, accountabilities and failure modes. Absent those, markets and platforms will harden norms that are brittle, opaque and socially regressive.
The $60 Billion Question Facing U.S. Authorities
Following the dramatic January 3 capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, U.S. authorities confront an unprecedented challenge: locating and seizing what intelligence sources estimate could be $60-67 billion in Bitcoin, allegedly hidden across cold wallets controlled by a small circle of operatives designed to survive exactly this scenario.
Wind Turbines vs. Bald Eagles: Trump Recasts Renewable Policy as a Wildlife Fight
Donald Trump has made wildlife—specifically bald eagles—the focal point of his renewed attack on renewable energy policy. His rhetoric and proposed regulatory changes aim to tighten permitting for wind projects, reshaping the calculus for developers, utilities and investors while raising legal and ecological questions.