Riskgaming

An astonishing majority of Americans claim that they hate their job and wish they could do something else. Often though, what might drive our passions is an unknown. How do we find the right path in life and how do we know we are on our way?Joining the Riskgaming podcast this week is Bill Gurley, a legendary venture capitalist who for more than two decades invested at Benchmark in such defining...

I’m going to admit, sports betting isn’t really my thing. I don’t know my parlay from my parler (that’s a French joke), and I can barely keep three balls in the air at work, let alone track the balls across dozens of matches every weekend. But I’m an odd duck, since that is what Americans — and increasingly the world — do for entertainment. Nearly a majority of men in the United States have a...

The world is overwhelmingly chaotic as the international system buckles. The practically placid era of cooperation that marked the 1990s and early 2000s is increasingly looking like a winner-takes-all competition among a handful of great powers, even as the world is succumbing to the opportunities of new technologies and the challenges of climate security. It all boggles, and that’s not even...

If you live in a city in North America or Europe, you almost certainly have had the experience of watching a construction site slowly morph into a building over the course of many years. You might ask, “why’s it taking so long” as you traipse through a dirty sidewalk shed, frustrations mounting. You are not wrong, since construction has flatlined on efficiency even as other industries find ever...

Reindustrialization is the word du jour in American policymaking circles. The hope is that a reinvigorated manufacturing base will bring back middle-class jobs and ensure our strategic autonomy in what looks like a tough century ahead. It’s a towering task, and it will take many strategic decisions to undo the last several decades of deindustrialization.One person who has made it his mission to...

Well, 2025 is already running by with a massive whoosh sound. It goes without saying that every year feels like it is getting more chaotic, intense and yet exciting. There’s never been a better moment to go deep on risk, decision-making, complex scenario analysis and more, and that’s precisely what we did across 45 episodes of Riskgaming this year. We covered the gamut from espionage and defense...

Software kind of sucks these days, doesn’t it? Cory Doctorow invented the word “enshittification” to describe a pattern he repeatedly observed across software platforms. They start generous and flexible, but over time, they increase their value capture to maximize profits at the expense of their users. Software ends up feeling over-optimized and hostile, constantly fighting our desires. But...

The space race was once between the United States and the Soviet Union; now it’s between two tech billionaires trying to seize the mantle of most powerful space lord. For Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, the development of SpaceX and Blue Origin respectively is the culmination of a lifetime commitment to technology growth and science fiction. It’s also increasingly a ferocious campaign, one that has...

As we’ve crossed three years since OpenAI debuted ChatGPT in 2022, AI technologies have gone from a curiosity among academic scientists to one of the most popular products ever shipped. Billions of people now use AI for everything from sundry amusements to mission-critical applications, and it has started to diffuse into nearly every industry imaginable. But along with such power comes great...

Everyone loves a good Renaissance man or woman, but it’s hard to do it all with tenacity and verve. There’s also the constant balance between perfectionism and dilettantism — how long should you keep refining a project versus just bringing it to a close? For those of us prone to procrastination, even asking that question might prompt a delay.That’s why I am excited to bring my good friend Uri...