Welcome back to This Week in Stratechery!

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On that note, here were a few of our favorites this week.

1. Who Invests and Why? As Mark Zuckerberg and Meta inflame the already raging talent wars, I wanted to explore if there was a way to understand who was willing to invest to win, and who was not. I came up with two scales: how big is the business opportunity for a given company, and whether or not that company’s philosophy is about helping users, or doing things for them. Not only does this intersection of Tech Philosophy and AI Opportunity explain the actions of Meta and Apple, it also helped me fully rectify some of my long-standing confusion about Google. — Ben Thompson
2. Apple Searches for an AI Partner. If Apple isn’t going to pay for AI talent, then they need a partner, which is why Apple is considering a partnership with either Anthropic or OpenAI to power a new version of Siri. For one, thinking about what OpenAI and Anthropic would want from a deal with Apple provides a window into the goals distinguishing two of the leading AI labs in the world. As for Apple, the news highlights the corner that they’ve backed themselves into after several years of failed AI efforts internally and one prolonged and very public failure with last year’s Apple Intelligence rollout. The choices now? Either surrender control and branding to OpenAI, or pay big money to Anthropic (a far cry from collecting $20 billion a year from Google for default search placement). In either case, Apple management will have to leave its comfort zone, and looking at the past few years, perhaps that comfort zone was the problem. — Andrew Sharp
3. Is Xi Jinping on His Way Out? Every week I survey the news to prep for Sharp China, and for about two months now, there’s been a steady thrum of rumors concerning the political fate of Xi Jinping. Connecting the dots between Xi’s unexplained absences from public view, a spate of dismissals of powerful generals from the People’s Liberation Army, and a surprise absence at the BRICS summit in Brazil a few weeks ago, various internet sleuths and commentators are wondering whether Xi’s long-unshakeable hold on power may be waning. For the second half of this week’s episode, Sinocism’s Bill Bishop, who’s been studying the CCP for 30 years, explained why he finds the public evidence unconvincing and the rumor ecosystem increasingly frustrating. It was a rollicking conversation, and one that I caveated with my own note: what’s most remarkable to me about this rumor cycle is that because of the CCP’s unbelievable opacity, there is a hard limit on what any expert can conclusively say about the future of anyone in power—even the big man, himself. — AS

Stratechery Articles and Updates

Dithering with Ben Thompson and Daring Fireball’s John Gruber

Asianometry with Jon Yu

Sharp China with Andrew Sharp and Sinocism’s Bill Bishop

Greatest of All Talk with Andrew Sharp and WaPo’s Ben Golliver

Sharp Tech with Andrew Sharp and Ben Thompson

This week’s Stratechery video is on Checking In on AI and the Big Five.