Weekend Food for Thought WFFT
Menu of the week: AI Agents, Types of Thinking, US Dollar, Japan, and much more to explore!
Hello from Lisbon,
I hope you had an interesting and productive week.
G.K Chesterton stated that; “The real trouble with this world of ours is not that it is an unreasonable world, nor even that it is a reasonable one. The commonest kind of trouble is that it is nearly reasonable, but not quite. Life is not an illogicality; yet it is a trap for logicians. It looks just a little more mathematical and regular than it is; its exactitude is obvious, but its inexactitude is hidden; its wildness lies in wait.”
Below ‘waits some wildness’ for you to explore…
1 Getting Visual
2 If You Read One Thing Today - Make Sure it is This
3 Consequential Thinking about Consequential Matters
4 Big Ideas
5 Big thinking
6 Four Types of Thinking
1 Getting Visual
THE BIG BILL comes due with interest - “There is little comfort when considering the rising trend in debt-to-GDP, the increasing term premium, the falling dollar, and the $9 trillion that the US government needs to refinance over the next 12 months. In particular, debt-servicing costs are rising rapidly, and the US government currently pays a record-high $3.3 billion in interest payments every day, and for every dollar the US government collects in tax revenue, about 20 cents go to paying interest on debt. With debt levels growing much faster than GDP, the bottom line is that Treasury issuance will continue to grow faster than the economy, and the most likely outcome is that investors will demand compensation in the form of higher long-term interest rates. In sum, there is upside pressure on short rates from higher oil prices, higher tariffs, and restrictions on immigration, and there is upside pressure on long rates because of fiscal challenges. This is obviously very important for investors in both public and private markets.” - Apollo Research
DOLLAR DOWN…Rolling record levels of debt continuously with rising interest rates means the currency takes a hit, when you add policy and legal uncertainty to the mix it leads to major currency depreciation…
Demographics Spotlight: The Engineering Vs Financial Engineering bet: In 2022, the latest year for which data are available, 36% of Chinese undergraduate entrant students - about 1.6mln people - picked an engineering degree, up from 32% in 2010. In the US and UK, which have far fewer students to start with, the proportion hovers around 5%.
BIG Solar - China installed a record 93 GW of solar in May 2025 alone, more than any other country added in all of 2024…
To the Roof for some decentralized Power - “Bottom-up solar is reshaping geopolitics and empowering local prosperity.” - Azeem Azhar
The power of exponential innovation in General Purpose Technologies visual 1…The largest global public technology companies in 1995…
The power of exponential innovation in General Purpose Technologies visual 2…The largest global public technology companies in 2025…
The power of exponential innovation in General Purpose Technologies visual 3…The journey of the last 30 years…where will AI, the next leap in GPTs take us? And what companies and countries will harness it most effectively?
2 If You Read One Thing Today - Make Sure it is This
Jesper Koll AKA ‘The Japan Optimist’ shares that Japan has become an immigration superpower. Over the past 18 months, every day approximately 1,200 non-Japanese received a work or residence visa; the total number of non-Japanese residents have shot up from a little more than half-a-million when he arrived there in 1986 to 3.5 million now. Approximately one-third of the total and new arrivals are Chinese nationals, and the numbers have been accelerating since the Shanghai lockdown in 2022. That’s when the term 潤日 Run Ri became popular in China — Escape to Japan. Jesper collaborates with Professor Masutomo Takehiro, author of the best selling book ‘Run Ri’ to explore this trend and the impacts it brings to Japan - go explore it here in full:
Some Takeaways
The first character — 潤 Run — describes a global phenomenon. Tens of thousands of Chinese nationals are immigrating to countries like Singapore, Thailand, Canada, Australia and the US every year. According to the Henley Private Wealth Migration Report 2024, 15,200 High Net-worth Individuals (people with investable assets of more than US$1million) are estimated to leave China in 2024. This makes China the country with the largest out-flows of wealthy individuals in the world. The second character日 (Ri) of course means Japan. Putting the two characters together, the title Run Ri means new Chinese immigrants escaping to Japan.
Faced with worsening economic and political situations, these individuals seek to
secure their assets
obtain better educational opportunities for their children
enjoy freedom of speech/expression
In a turbulent world, Japan is increasingly becoming the country of choice for those seeking stability.”
“Before getting too excited, let’s do a reality check. The number of Chinese people living in Japan is projected to hit one million in 2026. And the new immigrants I focus on – the so-called Run- People – are estimated to be a bit less than100,000; i.e. approximately 10% of the total number of Chinese nationals resident in Japan. Still, their impact on society goes far beyond a mere number.”
Why Chinese are choosing JapanThere are several reasons for choosing Japan. Living costs are low.
Geographically, Japan is close to China.
Their first choice was the U,S, but the situation in the U,S, has worsened significantly, with anti-Chinese sentiment rising and anti-Asia hate crimes frequently in the news. In fact, some Chinese are now leaving the US for Japan, doing a so-called 二潤 (Er Run), or “second run”.
Importantly, it’s very easy to get a visa for Japan. While most other developed countries have been tightening investor visa programs, Japan has by contrast relaxed its visa requirements. For as little as Yen 5 million (less than US$40,000) foreigners can set up a Japanese company and then qualify for an investor or business manager residency. By visa category “Business Manager” or “Highly-Skilled Professional” are the most frequently used ones.
Language is also not a serious obstacle. The Japanese use Kanji, Chinese characters, so Chinese people don’t need to learn Japanese from scratch for daily life. Many of these newcomers are familiar with Japanese culture, having been to Japan as tourists or grown up reading manga or watching anime and Japanese TV shows or films.
More importantly, they very much appreciate Japan’s low-cost and very robust social welfare- and reliable healthcare systems, as well as Japan’s excellent, open and extremely cost-efficient education system.”
How are the new Run Ri people different from the old immigrants from China?Here is my hypothesis. The new Run Ri people typically have a more global perspective.
These new immigrants are often upper-middle class, by profession, they could be entrepreneurs, academics, media professionals, intellectuals and cultural figures. New immigrants often have a comfortable amount of assets at home, easily more than US$ 1 million. They enjoy a very good lifestyle here in Japan right from when they get here.
In sharp contrast, most of the older generation immigrants started out by living in “survival mode”. They came to Japan in their 20s to to study or to earn money through their hard labor. The new ones come having made their fortunes in China first, now escaping to Japan to grow their capital and to enjoy the cheap and non-intrusive Japan good lifestyle.
Importantly, unlike the older generations of immigrants, many new immigrants can’t speak Japanese. They are in their mid- to late 30s or older— perhaps a bit late for language acquisition. They also tend to come to Japan as a family, together with their kids, rather than the old generation where typically the man came first as an entry-level trainee or student.”
Tokyo first….Data suggests most new immigrants chose to live in Tokyo. My hunch is that more than 50% of new immigrants live in Tokyo. And the number of Chinese residents living in central, core districts is clearly on the upward trend. Bunkyo-ku is getting very popular. There are lots of high rise apartments in this area. This graph doesn’t show but actually the ward with most Chinese residents is no longer Shinjuku-ku, but Koto-ku. Toyosu — the re-claimed land area just outside Ginza hosts not just the new Tokyo Fishmarket but is full of new high-rise “tower mansion” condominiums extremely popular with Chinese buyers. Toyosu is part of Koto-ku.
We can observe a similar pattern in Osaka. But the total population is not growing as fast. By ward, Chuo-ku is accelerating. That’s also where many new high-rise apartments are located.
Under Japan’s National Strategic Special Zones system, short-term rentals — what they often call minpaku — can be operated year-round in Osaka. Interestingly, there is an estimate that over 40% of these units are managed by Chinese nationals. In practice, this has become a pathway for some to obtain a business manager visa.”
Social Impact – lop-sided internationalization of the education systemJapan now almost functions as a ‘second school district’ for Chinese people. This is because Japan faces a depopulation issue while in mainland China, exam wars are intensifying.
In Takadanobaba — between Shinjuku and Ikebukuro and close to the elite university Waseda —you can see many Chinese cram schools. In major prep schools, the ratio of Chinese students to the total is rising. Up to 25% in some SAPIX branches. In Bunkyo-ku, there are prestigious public elementary schools, called 3S1K, many Chinese immigrants move there so their kids can go to one of these schools. I learned in some grades over 10% of students were Chinese. Some locals now consider leaving the area because there are too many Chinese newcomers.
In Tokyo, Chinese parents queue for top international schools. If you open one, it will be 100% Chinese. For the established schools, the China percentage can now be as high as 30%.
Some Japanese universities started to offer classes in Chinese. Some private high schools in remote areas began to accept Chinese students — up to 50% in terms of the ratio. The number of Chinese students in top graduate schools like Waseda, University of Tokyo, nearly doubled over the past several years.
Diversity of non-Japan students is now a serious challenge, as not many Indian students chose to come to Japan (with U.S. and U.K. universities a clear preference).”
Economic impactOn the real estate front, again, the Tokyo Bay Area is hugely popular. But the super-rich prefer low-rise condominiums in the ‘3A’ area — Azabu, Akasaka & Aoyama.
There’s no doubt that Japanese developers have begun targeting foreign buyers. According to a recent private survey, 20% to 40% of newly built condominiums in central Tokyo are now being sold to foreigners.
But they are not necessarily satisfied with the size of Tokyo apartments. They think the flats are too small. As a result Chinese companies are now building their own apartments and houses in suburban areas or in regional cities. Japanese developers are also changing apartment design, like setting up more bathrooms for instance.
How do Chinese pay for luxury properties, when they are limited in theory to US$50,000 a year in remittances outside China? I visited a few underground banks. When they buy real estate, they often use these banks. The Chinese government has tightened regulations on international money transfers. But money laundering is a big concern. It’s already a headache for the Singaporean government. Underground banks and informal remittance networks are thriving, de-facto bypassing Japan’s banking and payments systems. Of course, Japanese financial institutions do want this business. In fact one of the mega banks recently contacted me after having read my book to get some more insights and advise on the financial services needs the Run Ri might have…
China money is also coming into Japan, including investments in Japanese stocks. Chinese buyers are also courting Japanese companies. They have their eyes on sectors like J-league teams, for instance, as well as sake breweries, whiskey distilleries, hospitals, cosmetic surgery clinics, educational institutions etc. – you name it, Chinese buyers are keen to invest.”
Political impactTokyo is increasingly becoming a hub for intellectual exchange among Chinese people. Now there are so many academic seminars, full of Chinese audience, almost every weekend. This is a natural consequence because free space is getting smaller and smaller, say, in Beijing and Hong Kong. Is Tokyo developing into a potential hotbed for China critics and dissidents.
Interestingly, the former Japanese Ambassador to Beijing, Tarumi Hideo, has been openly inviting Chinese intellectuals to Japan since 2010. So at least indirectly, the Japanese government helped form this community. Some say the situation is a bit similar to the late Qing period. Back then, prominent intellectuals like Sun Yat-Sen 孙中山 / 孫文 and Liang Qichao 梁启超 / 梁啓超 lived in Tokyo. (the former spent time in Tokyo in the years leading up to the 1911 revolution which he led to overthrow the Qing dynasty; the latter lived in Tokyo for over a decade since 1898 and also left after the Qing Empire was overthrown in 1911).
Sun Yat-sen argued that the Meiji Restoration could serve as a model for the Chinese revolution. Perhaps more fitting for today’s Run Ri realities, he also said: “Overseas Chinese are the mother of the revolution”.
Could there be a second Sun Yat-sen?Personally, I think here we need to watch for possible synergies between the rich Run Ri and the intellectual Run Ri. If they were to combine forces and find a common cause, it could get interesting. But I am certain that even the slightest movement in this direction would trigger a more serious response by Chinese authorities, in, one way or another, directly or, more likely indirectly, using others’ hands perhaps.
Meanwhile, on the frontiers of domestic politics here in Japan, there are now some Chinese-born people aspiring to become Japanese politicians. There appears to be a naturalized Chinese person in Kyushu who was elected to the local parliament, as well as some soon-to-be-naturalized already openly declaring rural political ambitions. Faced with depopulation in rural areas, this is a natural consequence.”
Japanese public responseTo put it bluntly, the survey result shows that most Japanese people are not welcoming towards more Chinese immigrants.
This is a survey from last year, so now with everyone noticing real estate prices skyrocketing and the University of Tokyo is crowded with Chinese students it is becoming more and more visible that there are deeper and more important problems bubbling up aside from the “over-tourism” debate. All indications are that the national sentiment has clearly worsened since the start of this year.
However, as the saying goes, one person's loss is another's gain. While some feel left behind, others see new opportunities. Developers, schools, and financial institutions are finding new demand, eyeing Run Ri money. Chinese people love buying things in Japan, whether modern art or luxury cars — Toyota’s Alphard luxury van is the transport of choice and a must-have status symbol at minimum. Some economists argue that Run Ri capital and business acumen will enhance Japanese competitiveness, and become a catalyst to revitalize the Japanese economy.
Due to poor working conditions in China, Chinese engineers have been flocking to Japan. Currently, around 10% of the jobs held by Chinese residents in Japan are in IT. In the startup community, Chinese talent is increasingly influential, and Chinese AI companies are quietly making inroads. This trend has been compared to the so-called ‘Singapore-washing’ phenomenon. Although it is hard to imagine Chinese executives taking top positions in Japan’s leading companies in the near term, it is likely only a matter of time before Chinese elites will emerge in Japan’s business world.”
3 Consequential Thinking about Consequential Matters
The Nature Index 2025 Research Leaders shows that the US is losing ground as China’s lead expands rapidly. Although the latest data predate the current Trump administration, observers warn that funding cuts will accelerate the rate of China’s gain. Here Benjamin Plackett explores the latest data in more detail - It provides insights on consequential matters worth pondering…do it here in full:
Some Takeaways
“China’s contribution to world-class science is advancing so quickly that its lead over the United States in the Nature Index database has multiplied by more than four times in the space of just one year, according to calendar-year data for 2024.
It was only in 2023 that the United States lost the top spot to China in the Research Leaders list, which ranks countries, territories and institutions based on their contributions to papers in 145 high-quality health-sciences and natural-sciences journals.
But the gap between the two countries threatens to become a chasm very quickly; China has topped the list with a Share (the main Nature Index metric that tracks author contribution to research articles in the database) of 32,122 in 2024. The United States’ Share was 22,083.
China’s adjusted Share — which takes account of annual fluctuations in the volume of articles in the database year-on-year — jumped by 17.4% in the year to 2023. At the same time, the United States’ adjusted Share plummeted by 10.1%.
The largest US reduction in adjusted Share, of 11.6%, was in chemistry, followed by the physical sciences (10.6%). In the health sciences, a field that the United States still leads, its decline was less steep, at 2.7%. The United States has also retained first place in the biological sciences, but its adjusted Share fell by 5.4%, while China’s rose by more than one-fifth (20.4%).”
The United States is not the only Western research system to be impacted by the rapid rise of China: Canada, France and the United Kingdom all suffered falls in their adjusted Share of at least 9%.
Although China’s rise and the West’s decline in Share has been a continuing pattern in the Nature Index for several years, the acceleration of this trend has prompted science-policy watchers to question how big the gap will grow.
Joanne Carney, the chief government relations officer at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), was stark in her warning that the United States had “clearly crossed a threshold into actively abdicating our position as a global leader in research and development and innovation”. She says the United States does “still have a window for stemming the tide, but we’ll need to act fast”.
That might not be an easy task, however. With a population roughly four times bigger than that of the United States, China has been outpacing the United States for science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) PhD graduates since the early 2000s, according to a 2021 report from the Center for Security and Emerging Technology (CSET) at Georgetown University in Washington DC. Data on the number of PhD graduates in 2025 is unlikely to be available for a few years, but the CSET report predicted that Chinese universities would produce about 77,000 STEM PhD graduates per year by 2025, compared with 40,000 per year from their US counterparts.
“China now employs more researchers than both America and the entire EU [European Union] combined,” says Stephen Ezell, vice-president for global innovation policy at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, a science-policy think tank in Washington DC. “If America is going to hold ground, we’re going to have to recognize that the race is real.”
Disrupter in chiefThese trends and data predate the January 2025 inauguration, of US president, Donald Trump. But his administration’s policies have already severely disrupted US higher education and research, says Caroline Wagner, a science policy and innovation researcher at Ohio State University in Columbus, which potentially makes it harder to keep pace with China. “We’re going through a national crisis,” she warns. “It’s more than a malaise.”
"Data from the Nature Index have previously suggested that China-based researchers are increasing their collaboration with scientists in other Asian countries while partnerships between China and the United States have been waning. This is helping to develop the research strengths of other Asian nations, something that that can be seen in the latest calendar-year data in the Nature Index.
South Korea, for example, moved up from eighth to seventh in Research Leaders 2025, and grew its adjusted Share in the biological sciences by more than 11%. The nation also jumped from sixth place to fourth place in the physical sciences.
Singapore also stands out for its recent performance. Its adjusted Share in Earth and environmental sciences papers grew by more than 19% from 2023 to 2024, and its adjusted Share in the health sciences rose by more than 23%.
The success of other Asian countries might also reflect a focus on green technology and materials, areas that are representing an increasing proportion of research articles in the database.
The jury is out, say Carney and Wagner, as to whether the United States can successfully ameliorate the growing sense of managed decline. It’s theoretically possible, they say, but the outlook is far from rosy, and it could very well be that we’re already in a transition of science and research leadership from the West to the East.
Organizations like AAAS are meanwhile lobbying the US government to rethink its funding cuts. The risk, they say, is that the United States and the West doesn’t get to define the rules and standards for emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence, which would have both economic and national security implications. “We have a short window. I think we only have this year and next year to turn it around,” says Carney.”
In 2024, only two non-Chinese institutions made it into the top 10, down from three in 2023. In 2015, by comparison, CAS was the only Chinese institution in the top 10.
As the Nature Index covers a limited set of journals, it tends to represent a zero-sum game: if one institution makes rapid gains, others must drop. Provided Chinese institutions continue to expand their authorship of articles tracked by the Index, other institutions might struggle to get a foothold. For 2023 data, China had 37 institutions in the top 100, up from 31 in 2022; in 2024, it had 43.
The decline of the Max Planck Society — Germany’s prestigious network of research institutes — in the rankings is unusually large. Over the past few years, it’s lost significant ground in chemistry-related output in the database. From 2015 to 2021, it consistently placed within the top 5 for the subject, before dropping to 10th place in 2022. It’s now placed 14th in the world for chemistry output.
It’s a similar story with Max Planck’s physical sciences output — the institution placed second in the subject from 2015 to 2022 before dropping to 4th in 2023, a position it retained in 2024. Max Planck and the CNRS are the only non-Chinese institutions in the top 10 for physical sciences in the Nature Index, and they were the only two in the top 10 to record a negative change in adjusted Share.
Max Planck’s ranking in biological sciences, meanwhile, has remained consistently high, being in the top five since 2015. It moved up in 2024, from 4th place in the subject to 3rd, overtaking the US National Institutes of Health (NIH).
US institutions continue to fall elsewhere, too, with Stanford University, in California — which tumbled from 6th place overall in 2022 to 15th place in 2023 — placing at 16th place in 2024. It has overtaken the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), in Cambridge, as the United States’s second-strongest institution in the Nature Index, however. MIT placed 17th in 2024, down from 14th in 2023.
The NIH has dropped out of the overall Nature Index top 20 for the first time, down to 24th place in 2024. It has lost 10 places in the Research Leaders ranking since 2022.
One institution that has made a massive leap is Jilin University, in Changchun, China, which moved from 42nd place in 2023 to 19th place in 2024, recording the second-biggest change in adjusted Share (38.3%) among the top 100 institutions. The institution is strong in chemistry, having increased its adjusted Share in the subject by 27.2% and moving from 14th place to 11th. A topic-level analysis shows that macromolecular and materials chemistry is a particularly strong area for Jilin University.”
4 Big Ideas
Lenny speaks with Nabeel Qureshi who is an entrepreneur, writer, researcher, and visiting scholar of AI policy at the Mercatus Center (alongside Tyler Cowen). Nabeel worked with Palantir for nearly eight years at Palantir, working as a forward-deployed engineer. His work at Palantir ranged from accelerating the Covid-19 response to applying AI to drug discovery to optimizing aircraft manufacturing at Airbus.
They explore why almost a third of all Palantir’s PMs go on to start companies. They take a deep-dive into the Palantir experience and unique model; How the “forward-deployed engineer” model works and why it creates exceptional product leaders. How Palantir transformed from a “sparkling Accenture” into a $200 billion data/software platform company with more than 80% margins. The unconventional hiring approach that screens for independent-minded, intellectually curious, and highly competitive people. Why the company intentionally avoids traditional titles and career ladders—and what they do instead. Why they built an ontology-first data platform that LLMs love. How Palantir’s controversial “bat signal” recruiting strategy filtered for specific talent types.
It’s an interesting listen full of insights on tech, entrepreneurship, innovation, and what Palantir actually does - Go listen and come to your own conclusions here:
5 Big thinking
Jasmine Sun shares some interesting perspectives into writing and the world of AI Agents - it’s a vulnerable and honest exploration of the confluence of the creative human spirit and technology. As a dedicated reader and believer in the power of writing as a process for understanding I wrestle with the amazing abilities of the Agents and what they will mean for our creativity and writing in particular - Jasmine drops 32 notes on this that are worth pondering - go do it here:
Some Takeaways
Most text is not creative. Emails, policy papers, reported news. It does not desire to surprise or delight. It aims to convey ideas and information as clearly as possible.
It is inevitable—given this reality and these incentives—that most people will soon use AI to write most things.
Writing is a small, simple word for a very expansive task. There’s coming up with ideas, conducting interviews and research, presenting it all in an engaging way.
What if the models were permitted to hallucinate more?
Many of our best artists hallucinated. Some even found chemical routes to do it.
“I thought AlphaGo was based on probability calculation, and that it was merely a machine,” said Lee Sedol after his loss. “But when I saw this move, I changed my mind. Surely, AlphaGo is creative. This move was really creative and beautiful.”
Implicit in his quote: The statistical and the beautiful cannot coexist.
I’m still not over the fact that I have 24 hour access to a machine that has memorized and synthesized the entire internet’s worth of information.
None of us know how to know this much.
LLMs help with writer’s block, even when its suggestions suck. Mediocre sentences are the best motivation to write inspired ones.
I prefer my human collaborators to my AI ones. But only one is consistently available at 3am.
Why do readers read? Sometimes, it’s to extract a particular piece of information. Other times, it’s to be entertained. Increasingly, it’s to borrow a particular author’s judgment and worldview.
Most internet culture criticism is bad. You can tell when a writer doesn’t go outside.
Artistic merit comes from that feeling of awe—at the distance between what the artist achieved versus what I could elicit from the same materials. You see past the tools and into a mind.
Writing purely for the AI has no stakes. It’s text without audience, motive, purpose.
How much of the world does language contain?
I start most essays not knowing how they will end.
6 Four Types of Thinking
Have a Great Weekend when you get to that stage,
Sune