# Chamath, Belsky and O'Shaughnessy point readers to Will Manidis's "The Commanding Heights" *By Recommended Reading from Tech Founders β€’ October 30, 2026* Three investors shared Will Manidis's new long-form outlook on capital and sovereignty. Martin Casado called one agent-harness talk a must-watch, and other picks covered an AI-native company playbook, a factory-tour series and strength training. ## Will Manidis's *The Commanding Heights* Will Manidis released [*The Commanding Heights*](https://Commanding-Heights.com), the result of what he calls a year of "writing about capital, sovereignty, and the coming reordering of economic power." His framing line is that "the benefits of abundant intelligence will accrue far outside of San Fransisco." [^1] Three investors shared it: - **Chamath Palihapitiya**: "I like Will's writings - I always learn something that helps me refine my mental models." [^2] - **Scott Belsky**: "A lot of ideas backed by observations and data in this outlook, beautifully written as always." [^3] - **Patrick O'Shaughnessy** replied with a list of companies, "Stripe, Meta, ICE, Shopify, Coinbase, Ramp, Cloudflare, WorkOS, Circle, Hyperliquid?", and then "Or, just Meta". It reads as a joking guess at the work's thesis. [^4] ## Martin Casado: a systems talk on agent harnesses **Martin Casado** admits he is "a tad biased." Still, he calls [this YouTube talk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jglgg0m8EIs) "the best systems talk on agent harnesses," covering "what it means to be self improving and bitter lesson aligned." His verdict: "a must watch." [^5] In replies to @SeizeEndowments, he said the talk "shamelessly cribbed many of the ideas and the naming from your Exo Kernel work." He also pointed to the main section at [20:13](https://youtu.be/Jglgg0m8EIs?t=1213). [^6][^7] ## Vinod Khosla: "How I Built the Most AI-Pilled Company in the World" **Vinod Khosla** called @jsnnsa's X article "Impressive." [^8] The author says Spawn is ten people who "spend 30x payroll on AI tokens." The company reports shipping 77,000 substantial changes in 30 days and spending $3.1 million on tokens in a month. [^9] Its "fleet" is a set of permanent agents. Each has a name, a memory and real system permissions, and each owns one area, such as the engine, finance or bug triage. [^9] The author says they wrote it down because other founders wanted to know how Spawn thinks about this. [^9] ## Shorter picks - **Sarah Guo** called Mike Schroepfer's new [*Field Trips*](https://www.youtube.com/@watchfieldtrips) series a "super fun format with an uber-engineer." [^10] Schroepfer says touring factories and labs is one of his favorite parts of his job. The series opens with RhodaAI, Arbor Energy and Harbinger Motors. [^11] - **Tim Ferriss** shared Pavel Tsatsouline's "Basic Tenets for Strength," such as "Lift heavy, not hard" and keeping reps at five or fewer. [^12] He singled out "Training is something that should be enjoyed" as literal advice: after a maximal-strength workout you should feel better than when you walked in, because "there is a huge neural component." [^12] - **Garry Tan** shared Nancy Rommelmann's monograph [*The Gloss of Good Intentions: How Portland Blew a Chance to Become the Next Great American City*](https://nancyrommelmann.substack.com/p/the-gloss-of-good-intentions-how). She re-posted it after Portland's Royal Sonesta Hotel reportedly sold for $6.83M, down 93% from its 2016 price. [^13] Tan called Portland "a cautionary tale" of what happens when no one pushes back on people "using national politics as a reason to destroy your local government." [^14] - **Chamath** promoted his firm Social Capital's deep dive, [*Memory chip profits are exploding, so why are stocks below their highs?*](https://research.socialcapital.com/p/memory). [^15] It notes that big memory stocks are still down roughly 22–65% from their highs while profits climb. The question it asks is whether memory is becoming a franchise or heading into another boom-and-bust cycle. [^15] - **Tobi LΓΌtke** said he "Really enjoyed" his conversation with Alex Heath. [^16] Last edition covered his *Cryptonomicon* comment from this episode. Topics include why Amazon blocked Meta's Muse while Shopify welcomed it, who pays when agents make purchases, and his GPU wine cellar. [^17] It's on [YouTube](https://youtu.be/r9SHzCW9zxo) and [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/71xOycjYFjWEVSqhTpYPv8?si=rtVJne2kSr6L6QnAZWRGYw). [^17] --- ### Sources [^1]: [𝕏 post by @WillManidis](https://x.com/WillManidis/status/2115794572131651953) [^2]: [𝕏 post by @chamath](https://x.com/chamath/status/2115816336400200026) [^3]: [𝕏 post by @scottbelsky](https://x.com/scottbelsky/status/2115968246864335348) [^4]: [𝕏 post by @patrick_oshag](https://x.com/patrick_oshag/status/2115822955959828848) [^5]: [𝕏 post by @martin_casado](https://x.com/martin_casado/status/2115866431665647720) [^6]: [𝕏 post by @martin_casado](https://x.com/martin_casado/status/2115871097967243657) [^7]: [𝕏 post by @martin_casado](https://x.com/martin_casado/status/2115871838878470300) [^8]: [𝕏 post by @vkhosla](https://x.com/vkhosla/status/2115849278967124058) [^9]: [𝕏 article by @jsnnsa](https://x.com/i/article/2115540320373104640) [^10]: [𝕏 post by @saranormous](https://x.com/saranormous/status/2115917841866293734) [^11]: [𝕏 post by @schrep](https://x.com/schrep/status/2115827744621883519) [^12]: [𝕏 post by @tferriss](https://x.com/tferriss/status/2115925075954184361) [^13]: [𝕏 post by @NancyRomm](https://x.com/NancyRomm/status/2115458038064677085) [^14]: [𝕏 post by @garrytan](https://x.com/garrytan/status/2115886944198815907) [^15]: [𝕏 article by @chamath](https://x.com/i/article/2115915181561937920) [^16]: [𝕏 post by @tobi](https://x.com/tobi/status/2115965870401048774) [^17]: [𝕏 post by @alexeheath](https://x.com/alexeheath/status/2115480771737854005)