Space Power, Greenland Metals: Building the Resource Stack for AI Beyond Earth
Energy, compute, and the next phase of sovereign industrial power
Volatility is back in the driver’s seat.
This week, the VIX pushed toward the 20 level as markets digested something rare: an institutional shock rather than a data surprise. The trigger wasn’t CPI or jobs—it was governance risk.
An unprecedented DOJ investigation into Federal Reserve Chair Jay Powell has injected political uncertainty directly into monetary credibility. Powell’s public acknowledgment of subpoenas—framed as a pretext to force rate cuts—sparked a reflexive “Sell America” trade. U.S. equities slid toward ~6,830 on the S&P 500. Treasuries sold off alongside them. When stocks and bonds fall together, markets aren’t pricing growth—they’re repricing trust.
At the same time, Davos became a geopolitical accelerant. Greenland re-entered the global chessboard as the administration floated 10% tariffs on NATO allies over territory and security posture. The EU response—quietly framed as a push toward “strategic independence”—introduced a nonlinear risk markets don’t yet know how to model. The Trump approach was typical: outrage triggering an extreme position from which a deal is struck.
The clearest signal wasn’t equities.
It was metals.
Gold broke decisively above $4,700. Silver surged over 6% in a single session, testing $95/oz. Bitcoin, notably, failed to catch a safe-haven bid—continuing to trade like a high-beta risk asset rather than monetary insurance.
Credit markets, meanwhile, remained eerily calm. Spreads stayed tight despite the institutional chaos. Either credit investors see resilience that macro traders don’t—or complacency hasn’t cracked yet.
This divergence matters, because it frames the deeper question of this cycle:
What happens when AI demand collides with physical limits—energy, cooling, land, water, and permitting—on a planet already running hot?
This week’s MacroMashup goes beyond Earth to explore why power generation and compute are starting to detach from geography altogether—and why capital is now seriously evaluating space-based solutions as a pressure valve for terrestrial constraints.
Deep Dive for Members Begins Below
In the rest of this issue, we explore:
Why precious metals are behaving like balance-sheet hedges, not inflation trades
How Greenland fits into the AI resource stack
Why space-based solar flips the capacity-factor equation
How orbital compute arbitrages energy, cooling, and geography
Where latency actually matters—and where it doesn’t
The real investable layers of the “space stack”
What this means for portfolio construction over the next decade
Neil’s Notes
Continue reading here →
