Welcome to the Weekly KAOS — UrbanKaoboy’s end-of-week roundup covering Macro and Geopolitics, where I try and tease out the most impactful bits of the week.

Themes of the Week

The third head of Iran's Cerberus stirs at Bab al-Mandeb, Oil finally bites with Brent back through $100, and cheap Chinese open models flood in as Washington eyes a soft ban

In Greek mythology, Cerberus is the three-headed hound guarding the gate to the underworld, and I have argued that Iran runs its own three-headed beast: the Hamas, Hezbollah, and Houthi network I keep calling my H³ Cerberus. Two of those heads have been beaten down to stumps over the past year, which always left the uncomfortable question of when the third would wake. This was the week it did.

The Houthis declared a maritime embargo on Saudi Arabia and then made good on it, claiming strikes on tankers in the Red Sea, and just like that Bab al-Mandeb becomes the chokepoint that matters, not the Strait of Hormuz everyone has been staring at.

And here is the twist the Oil bulls have waited three weeks for: crude yawned through live fire in Hormuz all month, and this week it finally bit, with Brent pushing back through $100 as a second chokepoint lit up.

Quieter but arguably bigger runs the other Geopolitical flashpoint: a flood of cheap Chinese open models, Kimi and Qwen, is potentially dragging Washington toward a de facto soft ban, even as the Warsh Fed still has to weigh genuine Disinflation against an Oil bid that just woke up.

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Welcome to the Weekly KAOS — UrbanKaoboy’s end-of-week roundup covering Macro and Geopolitics, where I try and tease out the most impactful bits of the week.

Themes of the Week

A third straight week of Hormuz strikes and crude still won’t hold a bid, benign Disinflation battles a hot Philly Fed for the Warsh Fed’s ear, and a SCOTUS Tariff ruling could hand China a windfall

A third straight week of live fire in and around the Strait of Hormuz still can’t put a lasting bid under Oil, benign Disinflation and a red-hot Philly Fed print pull the Warsh Fed in opposite directions, and a looming SCOTUS ruling on Tariffs threatens to hand China a windfall.

There’s an old truth about car alarms: the more often one shrieks across the parking lot, the fewer heads it turns — and that indifference is precisely the moment the car actually gets stolen. That was the Oil tape this week. We got a THIRD round of US strikes on Iran, Tehran declaring the Strait “closed until further notice,” US forces boarding ships, and fresh blasts on Iranian bridges — the alarm blaring at full volume — and yet crude spiked on each headline only to bleed right back toward flat. As I flagged in last week’s KAOS, the market has quietly shifted from pricing disruption to pricing durability, and this week it doubled down on that bet.

Meanwhile the Warsh Fed inherits its own two-sided trap — genuine Disinflation on one side, a factory print that just ripped to a four-year high on the other — and that is the KAOS he has to price in his first act.

Special Reminder:

Don’t forget that a Paid Subscription to Kaoboy Musings also gets you free access to the closed beta of UrbanKaoberg!

I’ve made significant progress in my Data Epistemology project over the last several months, which I detailed in “Revenge of the Mullet,” and I encourage you to test out the Equities/EARNS module this earnings season:

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7/13/26: Episode 13 — Michael Every Redux

In the latest episode of KAOS Theory, Grant Williams and I welcome Michael Every back to the show for a wide-ranging discussion on the latest confrontation with Iran and what it reveals about the rapidly changing geopolitical landscape.

Moving well beyond the daily headlines, our conversation examines the strategic calculations of the United States, Iran, Israel, and China, and explores why the assumptions underpinning the post-Cold War order continue to unravel.

Along the way, Michael explains why today’s conflicts are increasingly fought through economic leverage, supply chains, and energy infrastructure rather than simply military force, while Grant and I probe the implications for markets, investors, and policymakers as the global balance of power continues to shift.

Where you can find Michael Every:

X: https://x.com/TheMichaelEvery

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/barry-strauss-8848702/

Show Notes

As always, I include my Show Notes, and this time it’s useful to point out that no matter how much I prep for a show, the geopolitical volatility of the day is such that our conversations with Michael seldom follow any predetermined script!

Proposed Agenda for KAOS THEORY 13: Michael Every Redux

0:00–5:00 — Opening Frame: “The Peacefire and the Physical War”

Goal: Establish that this is not a normal macro conversation.

Opening prompt:

“Michael, your recent notes basically say CPI, central banks, PMIs, and oil prices are now pieces of a much larger puzzle: war, shipping, industrial choke points, and economic statecraft. So let’s start with the big frame: are Iran and China separate geopolitical problems, or are they two theaters in the same physical-world conflict?”

Core question:

“What is your current base case: messy MOU extension, renewed military escalation, or a fake peace that becomes a different kind of war?”

Part I — Iran / Middle East: The MOU as Battlefield

5:00–17:00 — Segment 1: Is the Iran MOU Sustainable?

Core questions:

• You’ve described the current situation as a ‘peacefire.’ The U.S. seems to read the MOU as a path to Iran containment; Tehran seems to read it as a path to sanctions relief while preserving Hezbollah and Hormuz leverage. Can both interpretations survive inside the same document?

• Is there a Venn diagram overlap for acceptable Win Conditions between Trump, Netanyahu, and IRGC?

Follow-ups:

• “Is the MOU really a peace framework, or just a temporary balance sheet for coercion?”

• “Who needs the MOU more: Trump, Iranian political leadership, the IRGC, Israel, or China?”

• “Does Iran’s political leadership want assets unfrozen while the IRGC wants Hormuz semi-frozen?”

• “What would make you say the MOU is dead even if nobody has declared it dead?”

Best trapdoor:

“Is the MOU a ceasefire, a hostage negotiation over Hormuz, or a countdown clock?”

17:00–30:00 — Segment 2: Hormuz — Open, Closed, or Weaponized?

Core questions:

· Is China playing games by restricting product exports (thereby keeping consumer-facing inflation high) while keeping oil imports low (thereby assuaging Trump)?

· The market keeps looking at crude. You keep pointing to Hormuz traffic, refined product prices, bunker fuel, war-risk insurance, and crack spreads. Is Brent now the wrong scoreboard?

Follow-ups:

• “If Hormuz traffic is climbing but refined products are still tight, what is the market missing?”

• “Can Iran allow enough traffic to avoid global panic while keeping enough friction to preserve leverage?”

• “Is this less about closing Hormuz and more about turning Hormuz into a toll booth?”

• “How important is the southern Oman passage, and why would Iran oppose its normalization?”

• “Can the U.S. escort enough oil to calm markets without restoring true normality?”

Market bridge:

“Could we get the weird outcome where crude looks contained, but consumer inflation tightens through jet fuel, diesel, bunker fuel, shipping, food, and utilities?”

30:00–45:00 — Segment 3: Hezbollah, Lebanon, Israel — The MOU’s Hidden Contradiction

Core questions:

· “I want to test my Hannibalesque double-envelopment thesis. Maybe Trump appears weak in the center through the MOU, while letting the pincers form: Israel/Lebanon against Hezbollah on one side, and potentially Iraq anti-corruption / anti-IRGC moves on the other. Clever-but-too-cute, or plausible?”

· “You wrote that Tehran may read the MOU as peace where Hezbollah wins despite losing the battle, while the U.S. reads it as peace where Hezbollah loses because Israel stays or Hezbollah is disarmed. Isn’t that contradiction the real war?”

Follow-ups:

• “If Israel stays in southern Lebanon until Hezbollah is disarmed, is that a violation of peace or the enforcement mechanism of peace?”

• “Could Lebanon’s state interest now diverge from Hezbollah’s interest?”

• “Are U.S./Gulf sanctions against Hezbollah part of the same military-diplomatic campaign?”

• “Would Iran tolerate Hezbollah being slowly strangled under cover of an Iran MOU?”

• “Is Israel the spoiler, the enforcer, or the pincer?”

45:00–55:00 — Segment 4: Iraq and the Second Pincer

Core question:

· “If Iraq becomes the second pincer — through anti-corruption probes, state cleanup, or pressure on pro-IRGC commercial and militia networks — how dangerous is that for Iran’s regional architecture?”

· The Houthis have been eerily quiet. If the first 2 pincers are real, shouldn’t there be a 3^rd pincer to wipe out the third H of the Houthi/Hezbollah/Hamas Cerberus to preempt any problems at Bab al Mandab?

Follow-ups:

• “Is Iraq more important to Iran than markets appreciate?”

• “Could anti-corruption become the polite name for anti-IRGC financial warfare?”

• “Would Iran be more threatened by losing influence in Iraq than by temporary pressure in Lebanon?”

• “If Hezbollah is one forward-defense pillar and Iraq is another, does pressure on both make renewed escalation more likely?”

Make-him-choose:

“If this double envelopment is real, does Iran respond in Hormuz, Lebanon, Iraq, Israel, or through China/Russia diplomatic channels?”

Part II — China / Geo-Economics: The Other Front

55:00–67:00 — Segment 5: China’s Oil Game

Core question:

“China’s oil imports have dropped sharply while the U.S., Japan, and others are using emergency or abnormal flows to keep prices contained. Is China helping suppress oil to assuage Trump, managing inventory, or positioning itself for a longer conflict?”

Follow-ups:

• “Is lower Chinese oil demand a peace signal or a war hedge?”

• “Could China be deliberately reducing visible oil pressure while retaining leverage elsewhere?”

• “Does Beijing want Trump to get lower crude but still suffer higher consumer inflation through product bottlenecks?”

• “How sustainable is the current oil calm if China resumes normal imports?”

• “Would China prefer Iran to keep Hormuz semi-disrupted but not fully catastrophic?”

Sharp formulation:

“Is China playing good cop in crude and bad cop in goods?”

67:00–80:00 — Segment 6: China’s Product Export Restrictions and Industrial Choke Points

Core question:

“You’ve pointed to rare earths, Japan, tungsten scrap, cobalt curbs, Chinese solar inverters, and the broader industrial security map. Is China’s real leverage no longer commodities, but the products and components that embody commodities?”

Follow-ups:

• “Are we moving from commodity inflation to product scarcity inflation?”

• “Is China restricting exports to inflict inflation pain, expose Western dependency, or force a negotiation?”

• “How should we think about China’s leverage over Japan specifically?”

• “Is the West finally realizing that supply chains are not economic plumbing but strategic terrain?”

• “Does China’s playbook amount to: ‘You control the dollar and sea lanes; we control the industrial choke points’?”

Best trapdoor:

“If China can reduce oil imports while restricting critical product exports, are markets using the wrong inflation model entirely?”

80:00–87:00 — Segment 7: Fortress North America vs China

Core questions:

· What are the US levers in bifurcating world energy flows? My gut says that the geopolitical imperative for Product Export Bans is higher than ever now given Trump’s focus on lowering gasoline prices.

· “You’ve floated the NAFTA-to-NAPHTHA idea — North America as an energy, hydrocarbons, commodities, consumers, technology, and military bloc. Is Fortress North America the logical U.S. response to China’s choke-point strategy?”

Follow-ups:

• “Would a reworked USMCA become the economic backbone of a Donroe Doctrine?”

• “Is the U.S. trying to build a trusted-bloc industrial system around energy, defense, minerals, chips, and capital markets?”

• “Where does that leave Europe, Japan, Australia, India, and the Gulf?”

• “Is this still globalization with security filters, or is it bloc formation?”

• “Does Fortress North America lower inflation through energy abundance or raise inflation through deglobalization?”

87:00–90:00 — Closing Rapid Fire

Keep this brutal and clean.

1. “Iran MOU: extended, broken, or militarized?”

2. “Most likely next escalation point: Hormuz, Lebanon, Iraq, Israel, or Red Sea?”

3. “China: calming crude or weaponizing goods?”

4. “Most mispriced market variable: oil, dollar, rates, gold, shipping, or crack spreads?”

5. “What does the market still not understand?”

6. “One indicator you would watch every morning before looking at the S&P?”

Final Questions:

· You and I saw eye-to-eye on Trump’s Economic Statecraft goals and you agreed with my Reverse Marshall Plan mental model. Question: Can we still get to the nirvana of Disinflationary Growth? We were there briefly before the Iran War.

· “If you had to summarize this whole moment for a portfolio manager still staring at Fed dots and CPI prints, what would you say?”

KAOS THEORY 9: Michael Every

ICYMI, please listen to our conversation with Michael last year about the Tariff Wars:

Welcome to the Weekly KAOS — UrbanKaoboy’s end-of-week roundup covering Macro and Geopolitics, where I try and tease out the most impactful bits of the week.

Themes of the Week

Live fire returns to Hormuz but crude round-trips to flat, the Tech tape splits into a semis-over-software civil war, and cooling payrolls + Deregulation hand the Warsh Fed a sliver of daylight

This was the week Oil turned into Schrödinger’s Oil — as I posted midweek, the price is trapped in a quantum superposition, pricing a war premium and a coming OPEC+ glut at the very same time, and the Fog of War stubbornly refuses to collapse the wave function either way. Trump declared the ceasefire “over,” US warplanes hit dozens of IRGC boats, Iran claimed retaliation across the Gulf — and Brent still can’t hold a bid. I don’t envy anyone trying to trade Oil right now; I’ll lay out both the Bull and the Bear below and let the Fog of War lift on its own schedule.

Away from crude, the throughline is Bifurcation — along several fronts.

The USD Wrecking Ball caught another bid as reserve managers quietly added dollars; the Tech complex is no longer “everything wins” but a Darwinian sort of Semis over Software — my DEBT GOVERNOR and SaaSpocalypse calls made visible on the tape. Finally, a cooler Labor number plus upcoming Deregulation lets me stay hopeful that the Benign Gravity of Disinflationary Growth can reassert — but the jury is very much still out, with Goldman now flagging AI as a genuine side door into core PCE.

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Welcome to the Weekly KAOS — UrbanKaoboy’s end-of-week roundup covering Macro and Geopolitics, where I try and tease out the most impactful bits of the week.

Apologies for the skip last week, as I was on my last week of vacation in Poland. This week is coming to you early because of the holiday-shortened week — Happy Early 250th Birthday to the United States of America!

Themes of the Week

Live fire in the Strait can’t wake Oil, the USD Wrecking Ball drives the yen to a four-decade low, and Warsh debuts by declaring inflation risks have come down

The most important thing Oil did this week was that it didn’t do much for a change.

In one of the Sherlock Holmes stories, the clue that cracks the case is the guard dog that didn’t bark in the night — the silence itself is the tell. That was Oil this week. Washington and Tehran traded live strikes over a tanker in the Strait of Hormuz, both sides accused the other of breaking the cease-fire, and then — after a two-percent twitch — Brent shrugged and went back to sleep.

Although still too early to tell, this potentially bodes well for the “Benign Gravity” of Disinflationary Growth I mentioned in Into The Void?: with OPEC+ sitting on rebuilt spare capacity and the war premium repeatedly failing to stick, the Geopolitical risk to Oil seems asymmetric to the downside right now — confounding so many in the market (including me) who had previously worried about the asymmetry being to the upside after over 100 days of Hormuz being shut.

Meanwhile, the USD Wrecking Ball swung straight through the yen — USD/JPY punched past 162, a four-decade low that has the BoJ eyeing the intervention button — and Kevin Warsh walked onto the Sintra stage for his debut and told the world Inflation risks “have come down.” Warsh seems to also think that the “Benign Gravity” of Disinflationary Growth can reassert itself, but the jury is very much out — Oil and the physical AI buildout still get a vote.

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Welcome to the Weekly KAOS — UrbanKaoboy’s end-of-week roundup covering Macro and Geopolitics, where I try and tease out the most impactful bits of the week.

Themes of the Week

A record SpaceX float and a Hormuz peace deal drain the war premium from Oil — but the Warsh Fed stays boxed as import prices climb and housing buckles

Two literal escape-velocity stories anchored the tape this week — SpaceX hitting the public market at a staggering ~$1.77T (the largest IPO ever printed), and a US-Iran deal that promises to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and bleed the war premium that’s haunted Brent all spring. Risk-on everywhere: futures ripped, crude slid to multi-month lows, consumer sentiment ticked up on cheaper gasoline.

The tape wants to file all of this as a clean disinflationary all-clear — the “worst of Inflation is behind us” trade. I’m not buying the all-clear yet, and here’s the friction: the same week handed us core import prices at +0.8% and housing starts down 15.4%. That’s not Goldilocks — that still smacks of Stagflation, with Inflation seeping up through a side door while growth buckles underneath.

It’s the bimodal box I mapped when the war first shut Hormuz in Into The Void?, and the new Warsh Fed inherits it intact — Goldman expects Kevin Warsh’s first meeting to hold and quietly retire the cut-biased guidance, with headline PCE north of 4% all year. Economists just shoved the first cut into 2027. The Warsh Fed is boxed, exactly as I’ve argued. And notice what’s funding the gasoline “peace dividend”: the SPR just hit a 43-year low. We’re not disinflating so much as draining the buffer — the same squandering of our energy advantage I’ve warned about for years; I didn’t like it under Biden, and I don’t like it under Trump. Oil’s downside this week is the Sword of Inelastic Supply resting, not retired. KAOS, as ever, hides in the second derivative of price (the rate of the change of the rate of change in price), and I’m still watching for signs of a reversal on that front.

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Welcome to the Weekly KAOS — UrbanKaoboy’s end-of-week roundup covering Macro and Geopolitics, where I try and tease out the most impactful bits of the week.

Themes of the Week

A dangled Iran peace deal and history’s biggest IPO are repricing the tape — but the Inflation that already seeped in has the Warsh Fed holding, not cutting

Tantalus stood neck-deep in water that receded every time he bent to drink, under fruit that lifted away every time he reached. This week the market got its own version — a “great settlement” to end the Iran war, dangled by Trump and disclaimed by Tehran within hours (”nothing finalised”), while Oil bled to its lowest level in months as the war premium drained out of the barrel. The tape is reaching for the grapes: futures up, Copper bouncing off the lows, and SpaceX — the biggest IPO in history — pricing straight into the euphoria. This is the Tantalus Tease in its purest form, and I think the consensus is mis-reading what it means for the Fed.

Here’s the asymmetry: a peace deal, if it actually lands, blunts the Oil edge of the Sword of Inelastic Supply — but it does NOTHING about the Inflation that already seeped in through the side door. The May print was hot, June converges on the same junction, the ECB just delivered the first G7 hike since the war began, and the economists’ consensus has now pushed the first Fed cut all the way into 2027. My read: the peace-tease leg lower in Oil has further to run than the “tail risk retired” crowd assumes — and the Warsh Fed still will NOT validate it with a cut, because the Vodka/Red Bull economy (Fiscal Red Bull in one hand, Monetary Depressant in the other) still needs reversing. Peace would change the headline; it would not unbox the Fed.

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It is my pleasure to be back with Tom on his own show this time, The Competent Investor Podcast. We talked all things Macro and Geopolitics.

Here is the interview on YouTube:

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Welcome to the Weekly KAOS — UrbanKaoboy’s end-of-week roundup covering Macro and Geopolitics, where I try and tease out the most impactful bits of the week.

Themes of the Week

Three months into the Iran war, Hormuz is still the Macro linchpin while Gold quietly dethrones Treasuries on central-bank balance sheets (or not)

Three months into the Iran war and we still don’t have a deal. To borrow from Michael Every, the pattern is Zeno’s dichotomy dressed up as diplomacy — both sides agree on the broad shape of a 60-day ceasefire extension, a Hormuz reopening, a sanctions-for-constraints swap — and then keep halving the distance over sequencing and signatures.

I have another mythological mental model: The Tantalus Tease

Meanwhile the IRGC keeps lobbing drones at Kuwait’s airport, we keep hitting Qeshm, and BBC Verify’s satellite analysis now counts twenty US military sites damaged since the shooting started. This is the Han Solo asteroid-field run I laid out in last week’s Weekly KAOS — except Han hasn’t found the hole yet, and the chokepoint that was supposed to be a bargaining chip has become the IRGC’s principal leverage.

The week’s KAOS confirms the structural call: Oil is the Macro linchpin, Inflation is seeping back in via a side door nobody is watching (Chinese refined-product exports — Beijing refining only for domestic demand, exporting zero product, lifting global product prices straight into Western core), and the Mag7 tape is pushing into a 10-week run matched only by Dec ‘99, Aug ‘20, and Jun ‘24 — all three followed by drawdowns inside 40 trading days. Watch for my interview tomorrow about this.

In other news, the ECB made a big point in showing how Gold has overtaken US Treasuries as the world’s top reserve asset, 27% versus 22%, with total USD-denominated reserves down to 42% from roughly 60% twenty-five years ago.

Too bad they forgot to tell you that it was mainly because of the price movement of Gold:

The Sword of Inelastic Supply cuts both ways, and this week’s carnage in Gold prices reminds you why it won’t supplant the UST as the primary central bank reserve asset.

My standing view is that USD/UST hegemony rests on geographic balance-sheet assets — waterways, arable land, blue-water navy — that no rival can match, and I still think that’s right at the level of National Power.

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Welcome to the Weekly KAOS — UrbanKaoboy’s end-of-week roundup covering Macro and Geopolitics, where I try and tease out the most impactful bits of the week.

Themes of the Week

A fraying Iran ceasefire, a hawkish Waller pivot, and a SpaceX-shaped question mark over the entire AI capex trade

Han Solo’s asteroid field is still the right mental model — and this week the asteroids got bigger, faster, and started shooting back. CENTCOM lit up Iranian missile sites and small boats while the White House simultaneously briefed that a 60-day ceasefire, a Hormuz reopening, and a frozen-asset release were “in draft.” Tehran’s answer was to target a US base and let Trump publicly accuse them of stalling. Markets, doing their best C-3PO impression of “Sir, the possibility of successfully navigating an asteroid field is approximately 3,720 to 1,” instead pulled a Han and bid risk into a historic weekly run. Never tell me the odds, indeed.

Underneath the geopolitical fireworks, three slower-moving plates are spinning. Waller went on tape supporting the removal of the FOMC’s easing bias and refused to rule out hikes — at the same moment UMich sentiment printed the lowest reading in the survey’s history and 1-yr inflation expectations jumped to 4.8%. That is a genuinely ugly setup for a Fed that’s already drifting hawkish, and the dollar/rates tape is starting to price it. UBS, for its part, named the $38T federal debt — 122% of GDP heading to 175% — as *the* dominant tail risk. Their bull case? An AI-productivity burst on the 1990s analog. Which brings us to the third plate: Tilson calling OpenAI “the greatest cash-burning furnace of all time” and Stratechery admitting no model justifies SpaceX’s IPO unless you underwrite data centers in orbit.

The honest read: this is a market levitating on a peace deal that hasn’t closed, a Fed that may not cut, and a capex cycle whose terminal value lives on a slide deck. The throughline isn’t fear — it’s that the asteroid field rewards pilots who know which rocks are real and which are CGI. Welcome to the KAOS.

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I was part of a roundtable at the LA branch of the SF Federal Reserve Bank last week, where I summarized some of these views. Each branch of the Fed conducts …

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Remember the Mullet of the ’80s — “business in front, party in back”? I think LLM coding produces “Mullet Code”: professional in front, KAOS in back. This piece is about taming the KAOS.

When I wrote about the origin story of UrbanKaoberg in "There And Back Again" two months ago, I talked about the “euphoria of infinite productivity.” I had gone from not…

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Consider this post to be a “Meta-Directory” of all of my Substack Sub-Directories grouped by Topic.

I will keep this post pinned so that subscribers can access this directory easily without having to wade through the archives in chronological order.

I was honored to be a guest speaker at UCLA Anderson School of Management’s Entrepreneurship Leadership Development Program (ELDP), a mentorship program for MBA students.

The ELDP is a mentorship program for select UCLA MBA students to meet monthly with their CEO/Entrepreneur mentors in a format that resembles a YPO (Young Presidents’ Organization) Forum…

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Introducing UrbanKaoberg.com:

“800+ commits. 55+ modules. 9 asset classes. 44 API endpoints. Almost 100K lines of code. All in less than a month by a person who hadn’t written code in 35 years.”

I built UrbanKaoberg.com in less than a month with AI. This piece is about my journey down one of the most frenetic, creative rabbit holes I have experienced and …

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Given the huge amount of social media misinformation around CLO Equities and CLO Equity CEFs, I decided to distill a FAQ from the many daily private chat threads I write about this topic. I will use ECC as my primary example, since it is the company and management team I am most familiar with in the space.

In case you missed it, here is Part I:

Today’s pi…

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Given the huge amount of social media misinformation around CLO Equities and CLO Equity CEFs, I decided to distill a FAQ from the many daily private chat threads I write about this topic. I will use ECC as my primary example, since it is the company and management team I am most familiar with in the space.

Disclaimer: This is a compilation of my publicly…

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2/16/26: Episode 12 — Meredith Angwin

I first came across Meredith’s book Shorting The Grid: The Hidden Fragility of Our Electric Grid in 2022 when I was researching a policy paper on the topic of US National Power that I eventually co-presented at West Point in early 2023.

Meredith’s work elucidated for me a critical example of how the United States is “long on resources, but short on policies,” whereas our biggest Geopolitical rival China is “short on resources, but long on policies” — especially when it comes to the critical issue of Energy Security.

This conversation is extremely topical because:

If AI is potentially the Apex Predator of Capital Light industries, it is important to understand what fuels that Apex Predator — Electricity.

My hope is that this interview not only exposes some of the fragilities embedded in the current US Electric Grid, but hopefully also presents some ideas for solutions and hedges to America’s Energy Achilles' Heel.

Biography

Meredith Angwin is an energy analyst and the author of Shorting the Grid: The Hidden Fragility of our Electric Grid, published in 2020. She also has a Substack publication endearingly entitled “The Electric Grandma” that focuses on the reliability of the electric grid.

Meredith has studied and participated in grid over-sight and governance for the bulk of her career. For four years, she served on the Coordinating Committee for the Consumer Liaison Group associated with ISO-NE, her local grid operator. She teaches courses and presents workshops on the electric grid.

As a working chemist, Meredith Angwin headed projects that lowered pollution and increased reliability on the electric grid. Her work included pollution control for nitrogen oxides in gas-fired combustion turbines, and corrosion control in geothermal and nuclear systems. She is inventor on several patents. She was one of the first women to be a project manager at the Electric Power Research Institute where she led projects in renewable and nuclear energy.

Meredith has a Master’s Degree in Chemistry from the University of Chicago.

Where to find Meredith Angwin

Shorting The Grid at the Amazon Store: https://amzn.to/4qJ1P3V

X: https://x.com/MeredithAngwin

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/meredithangwin/

Substack: “The Electric Grandma”

The Electric Grandma

Meredith Angwin's Substack. In favor of reliable electricity for all.

By Meredith Angwin

Show Notes

As usual, I am sharing my outline for this conversation. It contains some questions for follow-up research that we did not have time to cover in our conversation.

Interview Agenda for KAOS THEORY 12: Meredith Angwin

Topic: Grid Fragility & Energy Security

• Intro / Bio

• Opening Premise: I’ve observed in a past lecture I gave on Energy Security that the “US is long on resources / short on policies” whereas China is short on resources but long on policies.”

• Brief History of Utility Deregulation

  • Compared with Telecom and Airline Deregulation

    • Q: How did Utility Deregulation result in higher consumer prices?

  • Brief explanation of the before and after of Utility Deregulation

    • Q: Can you explain how RTOs work and where grids are worse off?

• Sources of Grid Fragility in the US

  • Meredith’s “Failed Trifecta”:

    • Dependence on Renewables

      • Intermittent Renewables (wind/solar) don’t provide “firm” power, which then relies on “just-in-time” Natural Gas peaker capacity

    • “Just In Time” Natural Gas Peaker Capacity

    • LNG Import Constraints

  • Differentiate between types of Grid Capacity:

    • Nameplate Capacity

      • Q: Why do policymakers keep confusing capacity with reliability?

      • Q: Is there any realistic scenario where intermittent sources form true baseload without massive overbuild?

    • Peaker Capacity

      • Q :How is Natural Gas Peaker Capacity different from Natural Gas Baseload Capacity?

    • Baseload Capacity

      • Viable Baseload Sources

        • Coal

        • Nuclear

        • Geothermal

        • Natural Gas (CCGTs - Combined Cycle Gas Turbines)

          • Q: Explain CCGTs and why Natural Gas Baseload via CCGTs can overcome the JIT liabilities of Natural Gas Peaker Capacity?

• US Energy Achilles’ Heel Trifecta (“Premature Electrification” + AI Data Center Buildout + LNG Export Demand)

  • Context: US electricity demand was flat for 15 years, but this trifecta is converging at the same time

  • Natural Gas Paradox: Meredith, you highlight the fragility of “just-in-time” gas. I see AI Data Centers as “high load factor” users who want 100% power, 24/7. Coal and nuclear store fuel on site, but Natural Gas is “Just In Time” and depends on pipelines, compressors, electric power to move gas, yet it also seems to be the lowest hanging fruit for Baseload

    • Q: Given the decommissioning of Coal and the persistent NIMBYism/time-to-market and cost disadvantages of Nuclear, do “all roads lead to Natural Gas”?

    • Q: Do you see any other bridge solution that can compete with Natural Gas in terms of cost and time-to-market advantages?

  • Transmission Bottlenecks: JPM data shows long-distance transmission projects take 15-20 years and have been declining for 40 years

    • Q: Does “behind-the-meter” colocation solve really anything given the bypass of transmission bottlenecks without the bypass of generation bottlenecks, or are we headed to inevitable Electricity Inflation?

• Concluding Questions

  • Q: How did we go from “Resource Advantages” to “Policy Disadvantages”?

    • We’re chasing carbon reduction but ignoring Grid Resilience and basic physics.

  • Q: What are we getting right? Are there any case studies of successful Energy Grids in America?

    • Where they are keeping adequate Base Load

  • Q: If you were the “Grid Czar” in a Trump 2.0 administration, how would design the “Perfect Grid?

  • Q: How do you deal with the US Energy Achilles’ Heel Trifecta and solve for real-world constraints of ESG/costs/time-to-market/NIMBYism at the same time?

Further Reading

The topic of Energy Security and Policy is near and dear to my heart, and I have written at length about it. Here are some of my past writings you might be interested in:

Recent pieces in 2026:

Guest lecture on the Geopolitics of Energy (US vs. China comparisons):

Compendium of Climate Change / ESG pieces:

Compendium of Oil Macro pieces: