The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 1,273 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 18 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
The US military has deployed autonomous weapons since the 1970s
“We've had autonomous weapons since the seventies and eighties. You know, you think about, like, the Aegis system that defends a carrier when it senses an incoming threat coming at the speed of a missile, it's firing off to protect the ship, and you don't have …”
The Pentagon issued an RFI for space-based missile interceptors
“We just did a RFI for space-based interceptors, which is how do you put something in space that could take something down in space.”
Palantir, Anduril, and SpaceX sued the government for initial major contracts
“And one of the examples I use Palantir and Roland, SpaceX, all had to sue the government for their first big contract, because the primes were sophisticated at selling, sophisticated at protecting their interests.”
Scott Wu: Agent-forward engineers see 5x to 10x productivity gains
“I think right now, you know, you have this core group of, we'll call it like agent forward engineers, right? Or agent forward companies that understand how to use this and they are seeing these, you know, five X, 10 X productivity games as a result.”
Bevirt: Joby's chief aerodynamicist is 10x faster using AI
“He's now able to build in an afternoon
What would have previously taken him weeks or months?
he's like, I'm 10 X per 10 X as productive as I was just a few months ago.”
Bevirt: Joby's research team designed aircraft 10x better than current planes
“These are the folks that have a book of a dozen new aircraft designs that not just are like, 10% better than aircraft that we have today, but, you know, five and 10 times better.”
Hughes: Critical Race Theory Emerged to Reject the Civil Rights Movement
“Critical race theory emerges in the 19 seventies as an explicit rejection of The civil rights movement.”
Hughes: Universal Abolitionist Principle First Originated in 18th-Century West
“But where do you get the first abolitionist sentiment? In other words, the first principle of slavery is wrong for all time, no matter who you are. You get that in the West. You get that in America and in Britain in the 18th century. You know, from Quakers and…”
Hughes: Nikole Hannah-Jones Claimed Black Americans Fought Alone for Civil Rights
“In Nicole Hannah-Jones's flagship essay was also that black Americans essentially fought alone in order to secure our civil rights. That was, that's the exact wording. Yeah, that we fought back alone.”
Hughes: US, Russian, and Brazilian Economies Grew Faster After Freeing Slaves
“United States had had a mass emancipation in Russia had a slower mass emancipation between 18 63 and around 1900. Brazil had a mass emancipation of slaves in the 18 eighties. In every single one of those cases, the economy grew faster after slaves were freed t…”
Scott: Mega-funds neglect hundreds of startups growing 50% to 150% annually
“And there are hundreds of companies out there that are working on big, super important problems with great teams. They have high product market fit. They have growth rates that are 50 to 150% year over year. But they might not be a trillion dollar company. Tho…”
Scott: VCs rarely choose their hottest startups for personal net worth bets
“We would ask them, if you had to put all of your net worth, liquid net worth into one company, which company would it be? And that company was rarely the hottest company in their portfolio, in part because they already had massive e-liquid exposure to that com…”
Helberg: China is actively decoupling from the US and de-risking failure points
“China is on a path to decoupling from us and de-risking all of its single points of failure.”
Helberg: Pax Silica Countries Are Growing 4% YoY Versus 1% for G7
“The Paxilica countries are growing roughly around four percent year on year compared to G seven countries that are growing somewhere in the zone of one percent.”
Lonsdale: Europe Is Poorer Than All US States Due to Slower Growth
“Which is what happened to Europe, by the way, is they don't realize they're the poorest relative to all of our states because we've just been growing so much faster for the generation.”
Helberg: China Criminalized Due Diligence on Official Economic Indicators
“You know, their data is really falsified, and they actually tried to hide their books so much so that they've made it illegal for people within China to ask too many questions or do due diligence on their economic indicators.”
Sankar: US expended 10 years of munitions production in 10 weeks in Ukraine
“The lesson of Ukraine is that we went through 10 years of production and 10 weeks of fighting.”
Sandler: Drexel's settlement forced Milken's firing and barred employee contact
“Part of the deal with the government was they had to get rid of Michael Milken Not only did they have to get rid of Michael Milken, but under the deal they made with the government, no employee of Drexel was allowed to discuss any business matter with Mike.”
Sandler: Sentencing judge found zero economic impact for four Milken pleas
“When the judge who sentenced Mike did an analysis of the economic effect of everything Mike led to, put to five different things. She found that the economic effect of four of the things he led to was zero. And the economic effect of the fifth was about 280,00…”
Bevirt: Chinese aerospace facilities are scaling for thousands of aircraft yearly
“A few weeks ago, I was in China, and I saw firsthand how fast they're moving... They are, in China, I saw production facilities that are scaling for thousands of aircraft per year.”
Wu: AI autonomous work capacity doubles 4-5 times per year
“And I think for the last few years, it's doubled about four or five times every year, you know, which is insane, which means, you know, you wait two or three months and it's already doing twice as much work.”
Loeffler: SBA Uncovered $9B in COVID Fraud in California, $430M in Minnesota
“Turns out, four hundred and thirty million dollars of fraud in Minnesota. Then we go to California, nine billion dollars of COVID era fraud.”
Loeffler: IG Report Found Overseas IP Addresses Obtained PPP Loans
“So we had an Inspector General report that said there were hundreds of people from overseas IP addresses that were getting PPP loans.”
Loeffler: SBA Removed 150 D.C.-Based Businesses from 8(a) Program
“We just removed a 150 Washington D.C. Based So-called small disadvantaged businesses from the program, because they were neither small nor disadvantaged, but they were Washington cronies.”
Loeffler: Biden administration policies led to 80% no-bid government contracts
“I mean, they moved it up from a five percent statutory target to 15% of all government contracting. That's why the program almost doubled under Biden, and it went to about 80% no-bid contracts.”
Loeffler: SBA Launches First 8(a) Audit in 45 Years, Expels 1,000 Firms
“That's why we're doing the first audit of this program in 45 years. It's never been looked at. We've already kicked a thousand people out of the program.”
Ross: Zero WithCoverage engineers write code manually, relying completely on AI
“Not a single one of our full-time engineers right now, writes code anymore. They do everything through codex, cloud code, or cursor.”
Lonsdale: Autonomous AI Agents Are Now Much Better Hackers Than Humans
“The new agents, actually, it turns out, are now much better hackers than people. They manage other agents. They do it.”
Kolicich: AI Capital Expenditures Currently Represent Only 3% to 4% of GDP
“Now in AI we're investing, like, three percent or four percent. It's like, it's not even yet on the scale of the industrial revolution.”
Lonsdale: Facebook asked Peter Thiel to be openly gay for diversity
“I remember they had to ask Peter Thiel if you, if he could be openly gay for the Facebook board because it was important to count for the number of people.”
Michael: US military has caught up and surpassed China in many areas
“I think we're already caught up in so many areas and surpass them, but they've made a lot of ground.”
Pentagon deployed Google Gemini to four million personnel in two months
“Which is why in two months of owning, being the chief AI, having the chief AI office run in my world, which was a new move, we were able to launch gen AI, which is Google's Gemini for four million, every, every employee, military and civilian in the department…”
Palantir and SpaceX sued the US government for first defense contracts
“Palantir and Roland, SpaceX, all had to sue the government for the first big contract, because the primes were sophisticated at selling, sophisticated protecting their interests.”
Kupor: 70-80% of Federal Employees Receive Top Ratings, Only 0.2% Fail
“In the government, if you look across, you know, government for long periods of time, about, like, you know, 70, 80% of people get ranked a four or five, meaning, like, 70, 80% of the people are well above, like, average, basically, and Literally, like, 0.2% o…”
Kupor: OPM successfully dissolved 42-year federal hiring test consent decree
“And literally that consent decree existed until about three months ago when we kind of went back to the original plaintiff in that case, actually, who was still alive. And we were able to actually get to a resolution where we got ourselves out of that consent …”
Kupor: Federal government relied on self-attestation without skill tests for 42 years
“Literally for like 42 years basically the government did away with any form of test, not just like that pace test, which was kind of a, an aptitude test and a leadership test, but also any kind of like Functional tests... We literally relied on self-attestatio…”
Ridley: UK has the developed world's highest industrial power prices
“The highest industrial electricity prices in the developed world, bar none, second highest domestic electricity prices second to Germany.”
Ridley: Norway drilled 40 North Sea wells last year; UK drilled zero
“Norway has drilled something like 40 new gas and oil wells just in the past 12 months, I think, Britain has drilled zero, but it's the same field.”
Lonsdale: Mississippi has a higher GDP per capita than the UK
“And in Mississippi, I think, is our poorest state right nearby, and you think of Mississippi, and you don't think of wealthy people, and it's wealthier now than the UK, obviously.”
Ridley: Chinese entrepreneurs are being absorbed by state-owned enterprises
“You've seen what's happened to a lot of Chinese entrepreneurs, they've been swallowed up by state owned enterprises or partnerships with them.”
Lonsdale: Tech startup formations in China have collapsed over four years
“You've seen the number of tech starts have collapsed over the last four years in China.”
Lonsdale: Chinese models now dominate global open-source AI
“Their open source models in the world, for example, are now dominated by the Chinese.”
Liemandt: Alpha Moves Bottom-Quartile Students to Top 25% in Two Years
“We can take kids from the bottom 25% and get them to the top 25% in two years.”
Liemandt: 1,000+ Ukrainian refugees learn as fast as $40k private school kids
“We have over a thousand Ukrainian refugees right on this system. And you're learning as fast as our 40,000 dollar private school.”
Stitt claims there is no evidence needle exchanges curb drug use
“We don't see any evidence that that's gonna curb drug use by, you know, giving them more, more needles.”
Lonsdale claims over 48 district attorneys funded the Wren Collective
“More than 48 DAs were caught specifically funding the Wren collective around this.”
Levi: Studios Fed 150,000 Scripts into an AI Model
“And the studios have already fed a 150,000 of the best scripts ever written into an AI model.”
Schmitt: 18 to 24 Year Olds Vote Republican More Than Past Generations
“And I also think you'd look at younger voters right now, especially, you know, 18 to 24 year olds who live through these dark, crazy times. They're, I mean, they're the most conservative, or they vote Republican more than any generation previous to them, becau…”