Rajesh Jain

FT: “‘Humanoid’ robot wave signals change on the production line…Manufacturing is already highly automated, with sensors, software and computer networks monitoring the output, data, pressure and temperature of factory machines and industrial processes. Such connectivity has become essential on sites that are sometimes square miles wide. “In a refinery or petrochemical plant, there can be thousands — if not tens of thousands — of instruments, equipment and valves [needed] to, for instance, manage 250,000 to 500,000 barrels of oil per day and process that into gasoline,” points out Jason Urso, chief technology officer in the software division of Honeywell, a US industrial conglomerate. Within 10 years, more than 80 per cent of manufacturing facilities could be using AI to help run these “control systems” and fix problems with them, he forecasts. If, for example, a machine emits an unusual sound, a factory worker can ask the AI software to analyse that sound, summarise the problems associated with it and recommend remedial action, Urso says.”

WSJ: “People with diabetes have long used devices to monitor their glucose fluctuations. In the past few years, a broader group of people have become interested in doing so to try to optimize their health, obtaining prescriptions for wearable monitors to see how their bodies react to different foods and activities. It’s part of a quest to live healthier for longer, in part by intensely monitoring health metrics, from sleep quality to heart rate. Soon, people without diabetes will be able to buy a monitor without needing to cajole a doctor into prescribing them one. The Food and Drug Administration recently approved the over-the-counter sale of a continuous glucose monitor, also known as a CGM. The devices allow people to continuously monitor their blood sugar levels…A CGM is a small device that you attach to your body, like your arm or stomach. It uses a little needle to measure glucose levels in fluid between the cells. Typically, it delivers readings every few minutes to an app so you can see how foods, exercise and other factors affect your levels. Foods that are high in carbs generally make your blood sugar rise.”

Mint: “Copper is a critical metal, and its consumption is closely associated with economic growth. Its importance has risen in recent years with the focus shifting to renewable energy, electric vehicles (EVs)—electric cars use four times more copper than those powered by petrol or diesel—and related infrastructure development. According to Government of India data, the country’s per capita copper consumption, at 0.6kg, pales in comparison with the world average of 3.2kg. If India has to become a developed nation by 2047, it needs to secure its copper supply…The writing on the wall is clear. If India wants to expand its economy rapidly, it needs to move quickly to fix its copper supply. History is replete with such examples: Europe in the 1700s, the US in the 1900s, Japan in the 1960s and China in the 2000s ensured self-sufficiency in copper as their economies grew at a rapid pace. India cannot become a developed nation any other way.”

FT: “China’s factories already account for about 28 per cent of GDP, compared with a global average of 16 per cent, according to World Bank data. Much of their output has historically been lower-value exports in electronics and machinery. But China is becoming increasingly competitive, and in some cases dominant, across numerous advanced technologies including wind turbines and battery materials. It is fast catching up in computer chips, artificial intelligence and autonomous vehicles and targeting nuclear fusion, quantum computing, hydrogen, spacecraft and biomanufacturing…Beyond China’s shores, many experts and government officials view the prospect of Beijing’s increased reliance on manufacturing for growth as an emerging threat. Comparisons of industrial policy are notoriously difficult. But the Center for Strategic and International Studies describes Chinese state support as “uniquely high”, estimating it at $406bn, or 1.73 per cent of GDP, in 2019. That compares to 0.39 per cent of GDP in the US and 0.5 per cent in Japan.”

Samuel Gregg: “If twenty-first-century classical liberals want to avoid being caricatured as narrow-minded technocrats or sophistic materialists, they could do worse than to follow their intellectual forebears, recasting classical liberalism as a truly civilizational endeavor that pursues the excellence that Smith has in mind. To the extent that classical liberalism today can show that love of the true, the good, and the beautiful can go hand-in-hand with the wealth, liberties, and complexities associated with markets, the power and attraction of its ideas will surely grow.”

FT: “The Age of Revolutions is breathtakingly ambitious. The book, in the author’s words, chronicles the “ceaseless action and reaction, progress and backlash” that has been endemic to the modern age. That [Fareed] Zakaria avoids pat remedies to populism today is a virtue; one of liberalism’s qualities is an aversion to sloganeering. Zakaria dates the birth of the liberal nation state to the 16th-century Netherlands, which is where his book begins. He ends 325 pages later with liberal democracy today facing mortal threats from within and without. From the inside, the system is threatened by those who see themselves to be its victims. From the outside, it faces challenges posed by the “rise of the rest” (another Zakaria coinage) — most potently from autocratic China and Russia.”

Stephan Gans of Pepsico: “In our business, the drivers of competitive advantage used to be related to physical scale. But those advantages have melted away—not entirely, of course, but competitive advantage no longer rests on physical scale the way it once did. Today, competitive advantage is about who has the most data, and who can leverage it the best for increased consumer understanding and better commercial decision-making. Likewise, marketing used to be a very linear, sequential set of processes. And in that world, consumer insights could afford to be both a testing and a measurement function—testing ads and getting feedback, measuring what’s working, and creating reports. Today, of course, marketing is far more digitalized and data-driven—a real-time sport. Therefore, consumer insights must become a real-time sport as well. We need to stop thinking about testing, and we need to start thinking about learning. We can’t afford a culture of going from one test to another; we need a continuous-learning loop—based on behavioral data—that’s part of the commercial decision-making process.”

Economist on The Trade Desk: “What could induce consumers to surrender their email addresses or phone numbers and invite a non-Google advertising onslaught? Mr Green says streaming platforms like Netflix and Spotify provide an answer. They offer ad-supported tiers in exchange for cheaper subscriptions, which many viewers have flocked to. The IDs used to sign in to those services promote the sort of personalisation for which advertisers pay high prices. That can mean the streamers show fewer, more targeted ads. He hopes that as such multi-tiered mixes of subscriptions and ads become more common, consumers will consent to having their anonymised identifiers distributed across the parts of the internet outside the tech giants’ domains. This, Mr Green adds with his missionary hat back on, could offer a lifeline to struggling web publishers whose business models currently rely on those giants’ whims.”

The Generalist has advice for founders: “Raise on story or metrics – not both. Focus your fundraise on either a galvanizing narrative or your strong numbers. If you try to tell both stories simultaneously, you may end up with a vaguer and less compelling pitch. Choose one or the other based on the state of your business. If you don’t have great numbers yet, focus on the story of the market opportunity. If there’s less conviction in the overall market, lean into your stellar metrics.” And: “You only need a few yeses. Rejection is an inevitable part of fundraising. Even the hottest companies are unlikely to be a fit for everyone. When you’re in the midst of a tough raise, it’s worth remembering that you only need a couple of yeses to close a round. The process is about finding those true believers as efficiently as you can.”

Martin Wolf: “Today’s fascism is different from that of the past. But this does not mean the notion is meaningless. In his essay, [Umberto] Eco describes a number of characteristics of “Ur-Fascism — or Eternal Fascism”. One feature is the cult of tradition. Fascists worship the past. The corollary is that they reject the modern. “The Enlightenment, the Age of Reason,” Eco writes, “is seen as the beginning of modern depravity. In this sense Ur-Fascism can be defined as irrationalism.” Another feature is the cult of action for action’s sake, from which flows a further one: hostility to analytical criticism. And it follows from this that “Ur-Fascism . . . seeks for consensus by exploiting and exacerbating the natural fear of difference . . . Thus Ur-Fascism is racist by definition.” Another aspect is that “Ur-Fascism derives from individual or social frustration. That is why one of the most typical features of the historical fascism was the appeal to a frustrated middle class”. Ur-Fascism binds the supporters it recruits from the ranks of the disaffected middle class through nationalism. Those followers, Eco adds, “must feel humiliated by the ostentatious wealth and force of their enemies”. For Ur-Fascism, moreover, “there is no struggle for life but, rather, life is lived for struggle”.”

Ruchir Sharma: “Emerging world powerhouses such as India and Indonesia weathered the turbulence of recent years in solid shape and are widely recognised for their success. Now many of the emerging world’s most troubled economies are reforming their way towards recovery as well, and markets are starting to reward them for it. They include most prominently Turkey, Argentina, Egypt, Nigeria and Kenya, and they carry some weight. All five of these reforming countries are in the 40 largest emerging economies, so their turn for the better is reinforcing the global economic recovery as well. Battered by high inflation, debt and deficits, their foreign exchange coffers were emptying when global interest rates rose sharply in 2022. As higher borrowing costs drove their debts deeper into distress, they had no choice but to change. Their leaders — who in Argentina, Kenya and Nigeria were newly elected with a mandate for reform — don’t quite say so out loud, but their plans came straight from the pages of the old and much-maligned Washington consensus. Budget discipline and heeding market forces are the only policy choices that work when a nation runs out of money. The five reforming nations are still widely under-appreciated.”

WaPo: “When our adult children face problems, parents usually know how to handle it. But inserting ourselves doesn’t always help. If you find yourself answering questions that haven’t been asked, consider this piece of wisdom from my youngest: “I don’t need you to fix this, Mom. I just need you to listen.” Isn’t that the goal? Kids should grow up and learn to fix their own problems. But isn’t it wonderful if, in addition to their autonomy, they still want to talk with us? That sounds like success to me.”

The Verge: “Bluesky…finds itself in the middle of one of the most chaotic moments in the history of social media. There are a lot of companies and ideas competing for space on the post-Twitter internet, and Jay makes a convincing argument that decentralization — the idea that you should be able to take your username and following to different servers as you wish — is the future. It’s a powerful concept that’s been kicking around for a long time, but now it feels closer to reality than ever before…Bluesky’s approach to this is something called the AT Protocol, which powers Bluesky’s own platform but which is also a technology that anyone can use right now to host their own servers and, eventually, interoperate with a bunch of other networks.” Jay Graber: “Federation is the future of social media.”

Akash Prakash: “Whatever may have happened in the past, these institutions, banks and funds now need to regain their risk appetite. Credit has to flow across the market capitalisation spectrum and at appropriate pricing. Today, we have the unfortunate situation where equity is available but not debt for many projects and groups. This has to change if we wish to see a surge in private capex. The big groups can self fund from cash flows but most others cannot. Many projects need debt to bring the cost of capital down. Overseas borrowings are also no longer an option, given the current high costs. If we wish to kickstart private capex, we need to ensure that debt is available to all actors at a reasonable risk-adjusted cost. Investors, regulators and the management teams of lenders, all have to play their part to ensure that risk is not a bad word for debt. Robust equity markets are on their own not enough. The debt markets have to also be open to all. The baggage of the last decade of poor credit decisions cannot be allowed to stifle a private capex cycle. Both bank investors and mutual fund unit-holders must cultivate tolerance for credit risk without assuming the worst in terms of motives. Our future growth depends on it.”

Arnold Kling: “The ultimate test of whether there has been progress is to ask the question of whether you would be willing to live in some earlier time. If you go back 50 years in terms of health care, you can certainly save a lot of money. But you probably would not make that choice.”

FT: “Artificial intelligence is the main driver for investor interest now, says Luciana Lixandru, a partner at US venture capital giant Sequoia Capital. “We’re seeing a lot of companies being created, thanks to everything that’s happening in AI, with products that couldn’t have existed three or four years ago,” she says. AI’s impact is expected to be felt beyond technology-focused sectors, too. “In every industry, there will be disruption through tech and especially with AI — even in the construction sector,” says Christian Meermann, an investor and founder of Berlin-based venture capital fund Cherry Ventures. AI technology has already been applied to sectors from agriculture to transport, and experts say its magnifying effects are only set to intensify.”

Mihir Sharma: “As Shankar Acharya pointed out recently on these pages, India needs to grow at least eight per cent quarter after quarter, year after year, for 25 years to become a high-income economy. This has been achieved by several countries in the past. But in each case, there were identifiable sources for this growth — expansion of the workforce by including women, increases in labour-intensive export, and rapid foreign investment-led industrialisation. India has none of these. It seems to be depending mainly at this point on domestic demand-led growth. Yet consumer demand is simply not reliable. Nor is it broad-based. And, finally, no country has grown to wealth simply by using domestic demand.”

Economist: “This is what a whole range of AIs are now doing in the world of biomedicine and, specifically, drug research: making suggestions about the way the world is that scientists could or would not come up with on their own. Trained to find patterns that extend across large bodies of disparate data, AI systems can discover relationships within those data that have implications for human biology and disease. Presented with new data they can use those patterns of implication to produce new hypotheses which can then be tested. The ability of AI to generate new ideas provides users with insights that can help to identify drug targets and to predict the behaviour of novel compounds, sometimes never previously imagined, that might act as drugs. It is also being used to find new applications for old drugs, to predict the side effects of new drugs, and to find ways of telling those patients whom a drug might help from those it might harm.” More: “Today’s health systems are heavily constrained by the scarcity of workers and knowledge. Artificial intelligence can provide significant support on both fronts; it may be the case that it can offer transformational amounts of it. Would such transformation mean that, by 2100, all diseases will be prevented, cured or managed? Not in itself. But it is making that apparently hubristic goal look more likely. Discussions of the impact of AI are larded with fear and unease, sometimes appropriately. What it offers for health all around the world represents a radical potential for good.”

FT: “Influencer marketing agencies in Europe are booming as brands shift their advertising spend from traditional media to social networks. And the financial impact is already apparent in their revenues, as the ‘creator economy’ responds to the way consumers use online platforms — such as Instagram, YouTube and TikTok — to inform their shopping choices. The whole content creator sector is now expected to roughly double in size by 2027, to be worth nearly half a trillion dollars, according to estimates from Goldman Sachs. “The market has evolved, we are way more professional as an industry, and the return on investment when influencer marketing is done right is incredible,” says Thomas Angerer, co-founder of BeInfluence.”

Indian Express: “Advertising in India is changing the way we think with a visible shift in the narrative from sales-driven messaging to stories around common people…Advertising is about talking to everybody from six to 60. As the guru David Ogilvy had said, “Golden rewards await the advertiser who has the brains to create a coherent image.” In the end, emotion is the only constant.”

ET: “Indian entrepreneurs who are hosting podcasts, video or audio shows in digital format…These shows feature in-depth discussions on industry topics or solo introspections, but they shy away from probing questions. Instead, these entrepreneur-led podcasts take many other forms such as personal branding exercise and indirect advertisements for their companies as well as for their talk show guests. A marketing expert, who has worked with a unicorn founder on their podcast, points to two factors behind this chat show zeal. “Capital is scarce. It goes to people with high visibility. Also, while it takes crores of rupees to pull off traditional advertising, podcasts are low-cost with a massive impact because they work as content,” he says, requesting anonymity.”

FT: “Central heating was the cornerstone of a wider transformation in British quality of life. Starting in the late 1960s, government funding in the form of “home improvement grants” also helped with bringing toilets indoors, installing hot water and, in more extreme cases of disrepair, refitting entire properties. Our appetite for heat kept growing: in 1970, the average internal temperature in Britain was 12C, according to UK government statistics; by 2010, it had reached 16.9C. This was more than a change in temperature — it was a wholesale redesign of the cultural and social life of the interior. Central heating, alongside insulation and double glazing, made it more practical to knock through walls and create open living areas. It made the kitchen the main social space, and meant that we could spend more time in bedrooms.”

Peter Coy: “Comparative advantage is real, but it won’t stop A.I. from taking over everything if it’s better at everything and computing keeps getting cheaper, Restrepo said. We can still work, but by working, we are at best saving the A.I. some computational resources. When we apply our puny brains to a problem for an hour, we’re sparing the A.I. from having to spend a split second on it, enabling the A.I. — like Martha Stewart — to spend that split second on what it does best, which is generating enormous amounts of value from things we can only distantly perceive today. The owners of A.I. will happily pay us for that service. The payment we get in terms of goods and services could look quite large by today’s standards. But it would be tiny compared with the overall wealth in society, most of which would be created by A.I., Restrepo said. So, people wouldn’t need jobs. Work would cease to be central to our lives. The bright side? If the gains are shared widely (not a certainty), we’re talking about a future of unimaginable luxury for all.”

WSJ: “AI is starting to lower farmers’ production costs and will in turn lower what consumers pay. Farmers have had to spread fertilizer almost indiscriminately across their land with large converted tractors. The result is that farmers waste 40% to 80% of the fertilizer they use, not being able to determine where exactly a plant can reach the nutrients or where on a field the next rain is likely to wash away fertilizer. With AI, that number will drop toward zero. Farmers will soon be able to use AI and satellite data to identify the exact fertilizer needs of their farms with a square-meter level of specificity. Farmers will be able to give crops only what they need and no more. That same sort of data analysis will let farmers save on other costs. Water is rapidly becoming a scarce resource, particularly in the American West, but AI can also tell farmers exactly when and where to water their crops so they don’t waste a drop, with those savings flowing to consumers.”