I have never understood the Eastern and Northern European mindset of going on vacation during summer. When your city is 75 degrees and beautiful and everything is available, you go to Greece and pay $300 a day to turn yourself into a lobster. Instead of just... going in November. You know, when your city is 40 and dreary and grey with 4 hours of "sun "a day. And Greece is 75 and you get a private beach. Make it make sense.

And it's HQ'ed in King's Cross. It's neighbours include OpenAI, DeepMind, Meta, Wayve, and Anthropic's new 800-person office is just down the road. London is on a generational run.

In 48 hours at the Munich Security Conference I met British & European founders building: - space data centers - fusion power - cyber defences for AI (x2) - intelligence drones - robotic exo-skeletons - novel geothermal energy plants - new AI-designed body armour - new AI-designed plastic eating enzymes - a laser-mining company for rare earth metals Something is happening that’s for sure.

This has also not been covered AT ALL in The Guardian or The Telegraph. What are we doing here guys? Our ecosystem has absolutely zero exposure. Zero.

I have been posting repeatedly on X about the extraordinarily fast collapse of births across the planet: in rich and poor countries, in fast-growing and slow-growing economies, in religious and secular societies, under right-wing and left-wing governments, with high taxes and with low taxes. The pattern is universal. I knew this trend would continue. Still, the figures released this morning left me genuinely speechless. China’s government announced on Monday (see screenshot below) that births in 2025 fell to 7.92 million, a staggering 1.62 million fewer than in 2024, and that the total fertility rate has dropped to 0.93. Few economists have been more forceful than yours truly in arguing that births are collapsing, yet even I was surprised by these numbers. I was forecasting around 8.5 million births, not 7.92. To put this into perspective: if China could somehow sustain 7.92 million births per year from now on, its population would eventually stabilize at roughly 625 million, far below today’s 1.405 billion. In reality, as smaller cohorts reach childbearing age, births will fall well below 7.92 million. Hence, 625 million is a very generous upper bound, even under implausibly optimistic assumptions about life expectancy. Put differently, there were fewer births in China in 2025 than in 1776, the year the United States declared independence. I am still trying to process these numbers. This is the defining issue of our time.

That fry represents one, maybe 2 shelf stable, long storage, Idaho potatoes grown in a single field by a single farmer, processed and flash frozen for indefinite storage until needed, fried on demand as needed That fruit cup is the result of 7 different fruit suppliers, harvested and shipped fresh from global supplies in a matter of hours to a day, hand cut and assembled and served immediately before browning and decay sets in. The fact you can do that for the cost of 15 minutes of labor or less is a f---ing miracle.

China's trade surplus tops $1tn for the first time and reconfirms the question: What does China really need to import from the rest of the world? It believes it can make everything better, faster and cheaper, and it's probably right.. ft.com/content/b9bf3d8f-d5d2…

The ideal outcome is that founders incorporate, raise, hire, build, pay tax and ultimately list in the UK. The second best outcome is that they have a Delaware topco and ultimately list in the US, but everything between is in the UK. An exit tax is just going to push founders to move elsewhere as soon as they can. It’s a terrible idea which further limits potential. Instead of managed decline, the UK needs to reorient towards a growth environment: - Let BBB funds invest outside of the UK - Shift GLP activity to early stage EMs - Improve EMI incentives - Remove S/EIS for funds - Improve S/EIS for angels (remove long stop requirements) - Full expensing for capital investments - Remove SBRR cliffs - etc Incentivise growth at the base, use the US to support growth while UK capital catches up, and build a more attractive exit market. More on much of this in @andrewjb_’s excellent article:

In 2000, UK top 10% incomes were no 3 in the world, but they’ve since gradually fallen and are now behind the rest of the Anglosphere and northwestern Europe; just above Spain and Italy.

Albania has appointed an AI-generated government minister who will avoid getting corrupted.

🧵The US-EU trade deal has generated a lot of talk on X about how this is a humiliation for the #EU, how it should be a wake up call for Europe, how Europe must assert itself, etc. My take is that if anything it should finally put paid to all the talk about the EU as “Europe.”1/5

Eastern and Northern Europe refused to confront Trump due to security concerns, fearing an American retreat. Italy is sceptical of the Franco-German axis and thus wanted to keep the USA on their side. Angry about the deal? Blame weakness, distrust and disunity in Europe.

A few random thoughts on the deal 1) After a "happy globalisation" phase, the EU risks entering "happy vassalisation" phase (@GillesGressani) The US went from being a "benign" liege lord to a much more aggressive one.

🇪🇺 Further European integration would add around €3 trillion in GDP every year! Almost 4 times the entire US defence budget. It's time to complete the Union

Let's change the narrative 👀 projecteurope.co/

Ik vind dit zó erg. De overheid zou een plek moeten zijn waar de allerbeste ITers van ons land met veel plezier werken. Maar moet je kijken waar je mee te maken krijgt als je iets simpels wil doen als ITer. Zo erg. anneschuth.nl/2025/03/07/hos…

Lovable will change Europe's startup culture forever. Never has a company grown so fast and so profitably. This team, company and product will inspire multiple generations of European builders.

🚨 MARIO DRAGHI JUST TORCHED THE EUROPEAN STATUS QUO “The EU economy is stagnating while the rest of the world grows. Time is not on our side.” A brutal reality check from one of Europe’s most respected leaders. Key takeaways from his speech 👇: 1️⃣ EUROPE IS FALLING BEHIND IN AI. “8 out of the top 10 large language models come from the US. The other 2? China. Every day we delay, the technology frontier moves away from us.” 2️⃣ ENERGY PRICES ARE A DISASTER. “European power prices are 2-3x higher than in the US. A severe winter event saw German electricity prices spike tenfold.” 3️⃣ A TRADE WAR IS COMING. “The new US administration will impose tariffs on the EU—probably in weeks, not months. China’s overcapacity will flood our markets. European firms will suffer.” 4️⃣ EUROPE IS ITS OWN WORST ENEMY. “Our internal barriers act as a 45 percent tariff on manufacturing and 110 percent on services. We are blocking our own growth.” 5️⃣ CAPITAL MARKETS ARE BROKEN. “We sit on €300 billion a year in savings, yet our startups struggle for funding because we rely on bank lending instead of equity markets.” 6️⃣ ENERGY, AI, AND DEFENSE ARE EXISTENTIAL RISKS. “We act as 27 different countries while the world moves as blocs. The EU is less than the sum of its parts. That must change.” 7️⃣ LEGISLATION IS TOO SLOW. “If we take 20 months to legislate, we’re already outdated before implementation.” 8️⃣ FINAL WARNING: “If we want to defend our interests, keep our industries, and offer hope to our people, we must act as one state. Or we will be left behind.” Draghi did not hold back. Will Europe listen? RT if you agree.

Policy failure in a single graph.

We’re excited to announce the inauguration of the International MICE Summit 2024: Expanding Horizons, hosted by @scega_sa in Riyadh this December. Stay tuned for a transformative journey in #Riyadh to redefine the future of how we convene. 📅 December 15-17, 2024 📍 Riyadh #IMS24