🧵 1/8 The Illusion of Thinking: Are reasoning models like o1/o3, DeepSeek-R1, and Claude 3.7 Sonnet really "thinking"? 🤔 Or are they just throwing more compute towards pattern matching? The new Large Reasoning Models (LRMs) show promising gains on math and coding benchmarks,

“The continuation of Trump’s current foreign policy would weaken the United States and accelerate the erosion of the international order that since World War II has served so many countries well—most of all, the United States.” fam.ag/4kGHx93

Most academic writing is *optimized* to be bad — good writing is all about making ideas as simple as possible but career incentives push authors to make their ideas seem more profound and complicated than they are.

The new Israel-Iran war carries major risks for the South Caucasus. Iran's threats of military intervention against Azerbaijan if the latter (again) invades Armenia have been perhaps the greatest single deterrent to renewed war.

The Israeli gov, for all its ills, did not, in fact, do anything to provoke the undying hostility of an ideologically obsessed, domestically unpopular military-clerical elite of a country hundreds of kilometers and three borders away, which could (and used to) just act normal.

Still waiting for the economic “devastation” to hit Argentina

One sometimes hears, "economists said tariffs would cause a recession but they haven't therefore economic models are wrong". 4 points: 1. Economic models, including this from Yale Budget Lab, generally have said growth down 0.5 to 1.0pp. By itself not enough for a recession.

I am happy that the paperback of "Sovereign Funds: How the Communist Party of China Finances Its Global Ambitions" is now available! Get a copy and chat with me, or to impress your in-laws! 😊 a.co/d/al0rW31

Exciting personal news: I've just signed a book contract with Princeton University Press. My book will be about China's industrial policy, from EVs and batteries to AI and robotics. It's aimed at both general readers and researchers, in the style of my High Capacity newsletter.

I clicked on the article; it is as silly as you'd expect

Ein paar Bemerkungen zum so genannten EU-US Zolldeal: (1/10) Ein trauriger Tag für den Freihandel: 15% Zoll auf EU-Waren in den USA ist besser als 20 oder 30%, keine Frage. Aber der „Deal“ ist teuer erkauft. Vielleicht zu teuer.

Perhaps the authors could have done greater justice to decent research by asking why many Asian countries, including those in Southeast Asia, continue to keep the U.S. military presence anchored in the region?

Germany's in trouble. Its manufacturing faces a structural shock for which the fix is a weaker Euro and structural reforms. But its intellectual elite think the fix is fiscal stimulus & more debt, a policy that's only led to more debt - not growth - in the rest of the Euro zone.

Why the current negotiation process is so confusing : There is a lot of "strategic communication" by Europeans. Most of their optimistic statements aren't true beliefs, but meant to influence Trump. Europeans hype up expectations to create a reality in which Putin disappoints.

Yeah, you can tell I've spent my morning reading Foreign Affairs. Ahead of Dan Wang 's book "Breakneck" coming out later this week I think — I'm interviewing him for the Sinica Podcast tomorrow morning — do read this excellent piece co-authored with Arthur Kroeber. Gift link below.

To those who care: Milei hasn't stopped inflation, if you take M2 as an indicator for money supply. Since he took office, the money supply has increased at roughly the same rate than before. You may ask why CPI is lower than? The answer is that destroying regulations has led to

My first book project is a co-edited volume with Marshall Meyer titled “The Arc of the Chinese Economy” that will be published by Cambridge University Press in November 2025! Chapters by leading experts:

On Dan Wang's new book: Breakneck This essay assesses the book's big idea: China is an engineering state facing off against America, a lawyerly society. The book is well-informed and packed with wit. But I wanted more data. So I assembled some.🧵 cogitations.co/p/litigation-n…

Macron's coalition is at 13.5% in polls = 100 seats/577 It means: A) Macron would be nuts to go for another snap election B) He's probably going to have to build another minority government C) pressure to mount on him to resign What a disastrous 2nd term Jupiter is gone

Putin ist ein Kriegsverbrecher. Er ist vielleicht der schwerste Kriegsverbrecher unserer Zeit, den wir im großen Maßstab sehen. Wir müssen uns darüber im Klaren sein, wie man mit Kriegsverbrechern umgeht: Da ist Nachgiebigkeit fehl am Platz.