Where is Intel on the smile curve?
Stan Shih’s smile curve is a decades-old concept, but it’s still relevant to investors who have been watching Intel’s share price (INTC, up 100% in the first four months of 2026). Shih’s theory, which has since been observed across multiple industries and geographies, holds that more
Sharif Sakr
Three things I didn’t expect to learn from Kenneth Rogoff
A short review of Our Dollar, Your Problem (2025) I listened to Rogoff being interviewed when his book launched last year and decided it was worth going straight to the source. I particularly wanted to understand the so-called “convenience premium” that podcasters kept asking him about. (In a nutshell, that’s
Sharif Sakr
Chip War and the consequences of not encouraging risk
I read Chip War alongside a very different sort of history book: Foundation by Peter Ackroyd. Whereas Chip War takes a deliberately slowed-down, linear approach to covering the logarithmic growth of the global semiconductor industry, Foundation is an almost psychedelic, million-year story of Britain and its few inhabitants (of which
Sharif Sakr
A late-1990s lens on how AI could transform state power
A short reflection on James Scott’s classic work, Seeing Like a State (1998), and how it might relate to the AI era In the mid-1700s, East Prussian demand for timber led to untidy German forests being cut down and replaced with monocultural rows of fast-growing Norway spruce. Provincial magistrates rewrote
Sharif Sakr