Writing Review for Weeks of Dec 3 & 10, 2018

We are fast cruising to the end of the year, and lots of major stories as we close out the rapid news cycle before the holidays.

The nation-state of the internet

This was my most in-depth, thoughtful article the past two weeks. It’s maybe a little heady, but essentially, the internet is creating the context for a new form of the nation-state. That discussion was in the context of Imagined Communities, a book that is one of most cited of all time in the social sciences and discusses how the printing press was the enabling technology for the first nation-states to form. May try to follow up on this in the coming weeks.

Nvidia newsletters

• After losing half its value, Nvidia faces reckoning
• On stock prices and Nvidia
• Nvidia’s limited China connections

I wrote a series of analyses of Nvidia and some of the challenges it is facing. It’s stock is down nearly 50% in the past two months (!), and it is facing challenges from its own customers, from the crypto crash, and from China. It’s still a unique company, but its massive growth over the past three years looks like it is going to be receding a lot.

China Trade

• Investors still don’t understand the fundamentals of US/China relations
• Foxconn or Foxgone? Tariffs, Wisconsin, and iPhone fires
• Huawei, Google, and the tiring politics of tech

Three newsletters about the challenges in US/China relations, plus some other topics. I think the trade conflict will continue pretty much unabated. As I wrote:

Let’s be clear on my position: I expect the trade conflict to get worse, not better. There is not a single issue for Trump that has better optics, political positioning, and broad support than improving the status quo around China trade. There is broad bipartisan agreement that the status quo is untenable, and while folks might disagree about specific approaches or tactics, no one thinks that China has played fair in trade for years. Trump can look like a fighter for the American worker while bringing (some) Democrats and most of his entire party on board. It’s a potent issue.

The trust dilemma of continuous background checks

There are now continuous background checking services available for startups and companies. Should executives use these tools? Probably, but there are serious costs to building trust with your employees, and that trust has a lot of value that is hard to quantify but easy to lose.

Why Oath keeps Tumblring

I go after my parent company for its decisions around Tumblr. It is what it is.

Image by barnyz used under Creative Commons