SHOWNOTES

This week we weave through energy geopolitics, U.S. fiscal chess, breakthrough healthcare economics, and the exploding compute demands of frontier AI—plus part 2 of our Software History mini-series.

[00:00] Intro

[01:04] Oil Market War Premium & Russia Risk (Exhibit C)

Hunt explains how secondary sanctions on Russian crude—now part of U.S.–China talks—add a $10-15/bbl war premium. Market oversupply persists, but geopolitical uncertainty keeps Brent in the mid-$60s.

[02:22] Natural Gas Backwardation & OPEC Capacity (Exhibit B)

Despite OPEC+ barrels returning, LNG prices remain backwardated. Oversupply could fade if new offshore and Permian projects stall, yet investors should stay patient before adding exposure.

[04:05] U.S. Budget Scenarios & Rescission Strategy (Exhibit A)

Hunt outlines a GOP plan to pass 12 spending bills, then trim via rescission to dodge Senate filibusters. Estimated FY 26 deficit could fall from $1.9 T to $1.5 T—Jason calls that “progress, but still daunting.”

[07:04] Healthcare Round-Up (pp. 15, 20)

• Vertex wins CMS support in 33 states for Casgevy, its $2.2 M CRISPR cure—savings outweigh costs for Medicaid.

• Harrow licenses two Samsung biosimilars (including an Eylea rival), leveraging its ophthalmology sales force.

• Tenet’s 23 % spike in exchange-patient admissions signals at least 20 % premium hikes ahead; brokers’ incentives deserve scrutiny.

[11:54] Software History Part 2 – From Enigma to COBOL

Mike & Jason trace WWII codebreaking: Turing’s Bombe, the “stored-program” breakthrough, and FORTRAN’s 1957 debut. Grace Hopper’s COBOL makes business computing accessible, seeding modern software.

Ken Thompson’s Bell Labs team invents Unix and the C language, enabling software to hop across hardware platforms—the foundation of today’s macOS, iOS, and most cloud servers.

[21:41] Sponsor Break – Oakcliff Sailing

A behind-the-scenes look at repairing match boat #4 and training the next generation of marine-industry pros.

[23:47] Big-Tech Earnings & OpenAI–Microsoft Friction (p 1)

Ahead of Alphabet and Tesla prints, the crew debates Microsoft/OpenAI tensions and how Elon Musk’s portfolio complicates the AI landscape.

[24:26] xAI’s Colossus 2 Compute Surge (p 1)

Musk plans 550 k GB200/GB300 GPUs for training only—no inference—while OpenAI inks a 4.5 GW power deal in Abilene. Meta’s 6 GW push brings the trio’s new capacity to 12 GW.

[26:37] Frontier-Model Arms Race (p 1)

Is XAI iterating faster because its GPUs are clustered? Hunt thinks so; Mike notes Meta, OpenAI, and Oracle scrambling to match the single-site scale.

[28:46] Looking One Year Ahead in Large Language Models (p 1)

Data may be scarce, but synthetic data, bigger contexts, and reasoning engines should keep model quality on an exponential curve. Jason now defaults to reasoning models despite 50 × compute cost—latency is good enough.

[31:38] Closing & Next Week

More Software History and fresh cash-flow insights in seven days—download the memo, share the show, and stay healthy!

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