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We’re All Looking at the Same Map: Reflections on Mary Meeker’s AI Trends
Every era of technology has its cartographers. People who climb high enough above the noise to see the shape of what’s coming, and then translate it into something the rest of us can navigate. For decades, Mary Meeker has been one of those people. Her Internet Trends reports shaped the early web, the mobile wave, and the first real data-driven understanding of our digital lives. And her new deep-dive into AI marks another one of those moments where her view from altitude cl

Rich Washburn
3 days ago4 min read


Software-Defined Combat Nodes: When War Becomes a Network
COVID did for remote work what the Russia-Ukraine war is doing for drone warfare. The pandemic didn’t invent Zoom, Teams, or Slack — it simply forced every organization on Earth to use them. Overnight, “digital transformation” went from strategy deck buzzword to survival tactic. Warfare is now having the same moment. From Platforms to Packets In June 2024, Ukraine’s Operation Spiderweb didn’t just destroy aircraft — it rewrote doctrine. Drones launched from inside Russia’s b

Rich Washburn
Oct 263 min read


The Inevitable Obsolescence of Consulting Firms
Let me tell you something strange: We don’t know how to build the Space Shuttle anymore. NASA had the plans. The blueprints. The specs.What they didn’t have was the team —the network of minds, habits, and shared mental models that made it all work. That knowledge didn’t live in one document. It lived in hallway conversations. In hand gestures. In intuition built through repetition and failure. When those engineers retired or moved on, the Shuttle didn’t just become obsolete.

Rich Washburn
Oct 263 min read


The Last Version: Why Memory Changes Everything in AI
Here’s a question I get all the time:“Is everything I type into ChatGPT making it smarter?” Short answer? No. Longer answer? Hell no. And honestly, that’s the part people don’t get — but it’s the key to understanding where we are right now in AI and where we’re heading faster than most realize. The AI You’re Using is Frozen in Time Every AI model you’ve ever interacted with — GPT-4, Claude, Grok 1, 2, 5, whatever — is basically locked in amber. It's not learning. It's not ev

Rich Washburn
Oct 253 min read


Quantum Echoes and the Root Directory of Reality
We’ve all asked whether AI can really write code. Whether it understands what it’s doing. Whether it even understands anything at all. But lately, I’ve started asking a different question: What if AI isn’t just learning to code in our systems? What if it’s beginning to interface with the source code of reality itself? This isn’t just philosophical musing—it’s grounded in what’s happening right now inside bleeding-edge quantum systems. Take Google’s Willow chip: a machine tha

Rich Washburn
Oct 253 min read


The Mirror of Us: Welcome to the Era of Intent
There’s a strange kind of silence that comes right before a revolution—not the loud kind filled with slogans and sirens, but the quiet...

Rich Washburn
Oct 64 min read


Apple Just Blinked: Why Cupertino’s Pivot to AI Glasses Proves Meta Won the First Round
You can tell Apple isn’t being run by Steve Jobs anymore. This week, Bloomberg confirmed something that would’ve been unthinkable a...

Rich Washburn
Oct 54 min read


The Coming Interface Revolution: From Gadgets to Cognitive Layers
Every time humanity gets a new piece of tech, the first thing we do is check the gear. We measure it, compare it, critique it.What’s the...

Rich Washburn
Oct 44 min read


The AI Haters Have a Point—Now What?
Every time I scroll, there’s another meme about how AI is ruining civilization. The temptation is to roll my eyes, laugh, and move on....

Rich Washburn
Sep 244 min read


It’s On: The AI Arms Race Just Went Nuclear (Literally)
Take a breath. Now take another, deeper one. Because what just dropped in the last 72 hours isn’t just “big tech news” — it’s a...

Rich Washburn
Sep 234 min read


The XAI Espionage Case: Why This Isn’t Just About One Engineer
The lawsuit Elon Musk’s XAI just filed against a former engineer reads like a spy thriller: a trusted insider cashes out millions in...

Rich Washburn
Sep 92 min read


Civilization’s All-In Moment
Every once in a while, a moment comes that’s so big, so layered, so everywhere at once, that we don’t even realize how historic it is...

Rich Washburn
Sep 53 min read


The AI Boom Heard ’Round the World
I keep coming back to this: my whole life, I’ve heard people throw around the term “paradigm shift.” The internet was a paradigm shift....

Rich Washburn
Sep 54 min read


An Open Letter on America’s AI Moment
This week, something historic happened. Rivals sat shoulder to shoulder. Billions were pledged. Apple at $600B. Microsoft at $80B in data...

Rich Washburn
Sep 53 min read


Google’s Triple Threat AI: Mangle, Nano Banana, and the Rise of the Autonomous Dev Army
Happy Friday, folks. If you’ve been heads-down this week, you might’ve missed the fact that Google went full mad scientist—dropping not...

Rich Washburn
Aug 293 min read


Rocket Ships Without Pilots Are Missiles: The AI Literacy Crisis
In Q2 of 2025, the “Magnificent Seven” tech giants spent over $100 billion on AI infrastructure . One quarter. Three months. That’s $1.1...

Rich Washburn
Aug 254 min read


Profit Arena: The AI Benchmark That Could Reshape the Markets
Not long ago, my buddy Todd and I were having one of those conversations that keeps coming up these days: “How can I use AI in the...

Rich Washburn
Aug 213 min read


Why AI Needs a Jobsian Visionary
Civilizations don’t progress in straight lines. They don’t crawl forward on quarterly earnings or incremental feature releases. They...

Rich Washburn
Aug 195 min read


I’m Jumping on a Podcast with My Friend Laurence Kaldor
So here’s something fun. I’ll be recording a show soon with my good friend Laurence Kaldor. He asked me to come on his podcast to talk...

Rich Washburn
Jun 182 min read


Behind the Prompt Curtain: When AI Safety Turns into Terminal Prohibition
If you’ve ever worked with an AI agent and thought, “I’m not configuring this thing—I’m micromanaging a digital toddler with root...

Rich Washburn
May 302 min read
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