⏩ FP! Week In Review, Briefly #36

Also: Key Up Wing and Down Wing news from the week that was

In Case You Missed It ...

🛗 How to finance a space elevator (Tuesday, 1685 words)

✨🧚 What story is Fable telling about the state of AI? (Wednesday, 1383 words)

☀️ Star power, almost within reach (Thursday, 830 words)

🚀 Elon Musk is a trillionaire. Why that’s good news for all of us (Friday, 917 words)

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⤴️⤵️ Up Wing/Down Wing

A selection of pro-progress and anti-progress news items from the past week.

⤴ Up Wing Things

SpaceX, the IPO & the Trillionaire Debate

• SpaceX, Now Worth $2.1 Trillion, Pulls Off Goldilocks Debut - WSJ

• Elon Musk is the world’s first trillionaire (on paper) thanks to the SpaceX IPO - The Washington Post

• Musk should go more boldly with fantastical SpaceX projections - FT

• In Defense of Trillionaires - WSJ

• Who Wants to Be a Trillionaire? - WSJ

Frontier AI Labs & Models

• Anthropic Releases Fable 5, a ‘Mythos-Class’ AI Model With Guardrails - WSJ

• Anthropic Releases ‘Safe’ Version of Its Mythos A.I. Technology - NYT

• Anthropic Walks Back Policy That Could Have ‘Sabotaged’ AI Researchers Using Claude - WIRED

• Google’s latest DiffusionGemma open AI model comes with a 4x speed boost - Ars Technica

• Jeff Bezos Wants to Build an ‘Artificial General Engineer’ - NYT

• Bezos Bats Down AI Job Loss Fears While Launching New Venture - WSJ

• Jeff Bezos says AI will bring ‘golden ages’ not mass job losses - FT

AI, Jobs & the Economy

• The Job That AI Was Supposed to Kill Needs More Humans Than Ever - NYT

• Where Is the AI Jobs Crisis? - Apollo

• The Great American Job-Creation Machine Comes Back to Life - WSJ

• Walmart tells workers that AI will improve their jobs, not steal them - FT

• San Francisco Is Making an AI-Powered Comeback - Bloomberg

Data Centers & the Compute Buildout

• The Teachers Getting $50,000 Bonuses Thanks to a Massive Meta Data Center - WSJ

• Meta Launches ‘Workforce Academy’ to Train Workers to Build Data Centers - WSJ

• SpaceX signs $30bn deal to lease computing capacity to Google - FT

• Why most politicians are not calling for data center bans despite voters’ anger - The Washington Post

Energy: Fusion, Nuclear & the Grid

• Commonwealth Fusion makes the physics case for its 400 MW reactor - Ars Technica

• DOE approval of Xcimer fusion power plant preconceptual design - World Nuclear News

• DOE approval milestone for Oklo reactor - World Nuclear News

• Small modular nuclear reactor reaches criticality in first test - Ars Technica

• Build It and They Will Come Around - Heatmap News

• Opinion | Geothermal permitting reform bill is a win for energy development - The Washington Post

Frontier Tech: Robots, Qubits, Superintelligence & Mobility

• House Robots Are Coming—and They Will Be Dangerously Cute - WSJ

• The quantum computing revolution is closer than you think - FT

• Superintelligent machines may well need us after all - New Scientist

• Rivian Did It - Heatmap News

• 7 advanced aircraft designs that could transform aviation - Interesting Engineering

Health, Longevity & Biotech

• At 92, she’s as fit as someone half her age - The Washington Post

• Huge Psilocybin Dose Has Incredible Effect on Elderly Dementia Patient - ScienceAlert

• The most hopeful cancer news in years - Vox

• Opinion | AI-powered genomes can help save endangered species - The Washington Post

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⤵ Down Wing Things

SpaceX & the New Space Economy

• The value of SpaceX rockets on its stock-market debut - Economist

• SpaceX is cheap on a price-to-cosmos ratio - FT

• SpaceX signs $30bn deal to lease computing capacity to Google - FT

• SpaceX Is the New East India Company - Project Syndicate

• New Glenn Explosion Just Gave NASA a Headache It Doesn’t Have Time For - Gizmodo

The Anti-AI Backlash & Influence Operations

• The Hottest Gen-Z Tech Trend? Anti-AI - Bloomberg

• The coming rise of anti-AI populism - FT

• NEW POLL: 25% of voters think AI could end humanity and don’t care - The Argument Mag

• Congress wants in on the data center backlash - Axios

• OpenAI Says China-Linked Accounts Aim to Fuel US Data Center Pushback - Bloomberg

• China-linked operatives used ChatGPT to influence data centers debate: OpenAI - Axios

AI Politics, Regulation & Legal Fights

• U.S. Bars Foreigners From Using Anthropic’s Most Advanced A.I. Models - NYT

• Anthropic shuts down Fable, Mythos models following Trump admin directive - Ars Technica

• Democrats Unveil Flood of AI Proposals in Potential Challenge to Tech Giants - WSJ

• Trump’s AI meeting looks iffy — but the fight over tech profits is very much on - Politico

• Trump’s AI fund idea is good politics, but bad economics - FT

• The Road to AI State Socialism - WSJ

• The lawsuits that could give AI its ‘Big Tobacco’ moment - POLITICO

• Anthropic CEO says government should block dangerous AI - Axios

• Anthropic’s New Fable AI Model Is Met With User Backlash Over Restrictions - WSJ

The Economics & Business of AI

• The business of AI is facing 4 harsh realities - Axios

• 4 surprising ways AI is making your life more expensive - The Washington Post

• AI Will Rip Off Consumers Unless They Fight Back - Bloomberg

• KPMG report contained AI hallucinations on benefits of . . . AI - FT

Big Ideas: Accelerationism & the Limits of AI

• What is Nick Land’s philosophy of accelerationism really? - Aeon Essays

• Cognition for Sale by Sami Mahroum - Project Syndicate

Demographics: Fertility & Dating

• Making Sense of America’s Low Fertility Rate - WSJ

• Smartphones broke dating. AI might finish the job. - Vox

Growth, Science Policy & Permitting

• Why Is Europe’s Economy Falling Short? by Philippe Aghion & Simon Johnson - Project Syndicate

• Putting American Science on a MAGA Leash by Stephen Holmes - ProSyn

• Debate over preservation law tripping up permitting talks - E&E News by POLITICO

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↕️ Which Wing Things?

SpaceX & the IPO

• Skeptics Question Whether SpaceX Is Worth $1.77 Trillion - NYT

• SpaceX’s IPO is a display of Musk’s dominance - FT

• SpaceX’s $1.78tn IPO asks investors to buy Musk’s moonshots - FT

• How SpaceX’s IPO ambitions ride on Starship’s path to Mars - FT

• SpaceX Owns a Real Business That Makes Big Money: Starlink - Bloomberg

• What the SpaceX IPO Means for This Texas Border Town - WSJ

• How SpaceX Became Embedded in America’s War Machine - WSJ

Sharing the AI Windfall

• The unlikely alliance pushing an AI sovereign wealth fund - FT

• How to share AI riches - The Economist

• AI is revolutionising the stock market - FT

• For a Second Time, Trump Muses About Americans Sharing in A.I. Wealth - NYT

The Value & Economics of AI

• How much value is AI really creating? - FT

• Here’s How Long It Will Take for AI to Reach Its Potential - WSJ

• Why are we still arguing about the industrial revolution? - FT

• Is this the dawn of the Tokenpocalypse? - TechCrunch

AI Governance, Safety & Superintelligence

• Anthropic CEO says government should block dangerous AI - Axios

• Why the world must agree to regulate AI - FT

• Anthropic: You don’t need to worry about recursive-self-improving AI – yet - New Scientist

• Will artificial intelligence soon escape human control? - The Economist

AI Consciousness, Philosophy & Theology

• Will the Pope Owe an Apology to AI? - WSJ

• The Rival Theologies of Artificial Intelligence - Palladium

• Tyler Cowen: AI Isn’t Conscious. Neither Are We. - The Free Press

AI in Everyday Life — Work, Love & Companionship

• In the Hybrid A.I.-Human Work Force, Who Will Actually Thrive? - NYT

• The couples using ChatGPT as their therapist - Vox

• Want a Friend in the AI Age? Get a Dog - Bloomberg

New AI Products & IPOs

• OpenAI Files to Go Public in Test of Investor Appetite for Top AI Startups - WSJ

• Apple Reveals New A.I.-Powered Version of Its Siri Digital Assistant - NYT

• Anthropic Offers Mythos Upgrade for Cyber Partners and a ‘Safe’ Version for the Rest of You - WIRED

Other Frontiers — Gene Editing & Energy

• Are we getting to the point where it’s safe to gene-edit babies? - New Scientist

• Designer babies. Self-improving AI. Are we ready for either? - Vox

• EPA won’t set nationwide standards for data centers - POLITICO

• The Public Backs Nuclear Energy Now - WSJ

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Essays and Q&As

🛗 How to finance a space elevator

The space elevator is having a pop culture moment, anchoring storylines in streaming show For All Mankind and Foundation. The basic case: It turns space access from spectacular one-off launches into permanent off-planet infrastructure—a space bridge instead of space boats.

Going up: High-volume, continuous access to space enables space solar power, orbital data centers, asteroid mining, and lunar logistics.

Can we build it? A physicist told the Faster, Please! podcast the basic science is done—material with the required strength-to-weight ratio has existed since the mid-1990s. Carbon nanotubes and graphene just need refinement. No radical breakthrough required.

The real bottleneck is finance, not feasibility:

• Conventional math punishes it. Standard discounting penalizes anything that pays off far in the future and looks risky up front—exactly what a space elevator is.

• A new lens. Papazian and Swan’s “Space Value of Money” framework factors the project’s impact on society forward over time, so benefits spilling to non-investors carry financial weight.

• The Starship problem. Cheaper launch undercuts the cost-per-kilogram case—but that was always the wrong metric. Judge the elevator as permanent logistics infrastructure, a port or railway.

Yes, but: That dang cable still must be manufactured at enormous length and survive the orbital environment. Until proven, all economic narratives remain conditional.

Up Wing Up Shot: “Conditional” beats “impossible.”

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✨🧚 What story is Fable telling about the state of AI?

Anthropic just released Claude Fable 5, a constrained version of its Mythos system deemed too potent a hacking tool for public release. It outperforms every other publicly available AI, scoring roughly 5 percent higher than Opus 4.8, per benchmark tracker Vals AI.