In this week's issue:

- **SXSW is shrinking.** Attendance dropped 21% in one year. Music acts nearly halved. The Convention Center—the festival's anchor for decades—is gone. But the real story isn't just decline: it's what it means when Austin's defining cultural export contracts while the city pivots toward something more durable.

- **Austin is becoming part of America's defense-tech backbone.** The Capital Factory Startup Crawl this week showed 85 companies, but the real signal came from the