- Japan’s Sanae Takaichi finds perfect playlist for Donald Trump, and a profile: Sanae Takaichi, Japan’s iron lady is set to surprise
- Sequoia COO quit over Shaun Maguire’s comments about Mamdani. I think many of Mamdani’s proposals are idiotic, but with enemies like this combined with the media harangue against him — including from the nominally liberal NYT — I can’t help but root for the guy. Which, I realize, is the position many republicans took with the current President.
- Europe and the curse of geography. “When Trump has his much-anticipated meeting with Xi Jinping this week, Europe will resemble a child looking up at two parents squabbling over its head. Successive generations of European leaders deserve all the criticism in the world for letting the continent become the cringing vassal that it is today. The military neglect, the preference for a “social market” over growth at all costs: these were life-and-death errors, smugly made.” From Janan Ganesh.
- The relentless rise of China’s biotechs, which I will quote more extensively:
While US groups have poured resources into gene therapy, many have been held back by soaring costs and regulatory hurdles in their home market. In China, by contrast, regulators have supported the field by allowing earlier human trials and more flexibility in how they are designed. […] But while Chinese regulators have nurtured innovation, low domestic drug prices have forced companies to look abroad to recoup investment. “One huge disappointment has been that the commercial sales for China’s drug sector have never bloomed,” said Loncar.
So let me see if I got this right: Americans are paying for health care out of their noses to finance the world’s medical innovation which nowadays mostly comes from China, the citizens of which have among the lowest medical costs in the world. Someone here is being played.