06-reference

stratechery power shifts this week

2026-06-05·reference·source: Stratechery·by Ben Thompson
stratecheryben-thompsonai-capital-cyclememory-dramweekly-digest

"Power Shifts (This Week in Stratechery)" — Ben Thompson

Why this is in the vault

Weekly Stratechery digest (issue 2026.23, week of June 1, 2026) rounding up Thompson's own bundle content. Filed mainly as an index: the genuinely RDCO-relevant net-new pointer is the Asianometry episode "Taiwan's DRAM Failure," which sits directly on the memory/chip-fab capital-cycle thesis. The headline AI/capital items — "The Google Capital Company," the Nvidia AI PC / Microsoft AI update, the Nadella interview, the SpaceX data-centers-in-space video — are all RDCO-adjacent but already filed as standalone notes this week (see Related), so this digest's marginal value is low for those. Summarized from the digest's own blurbs only; full email body captured (no paywall traversal needed).

Issue contents

Three editor-picked highlights, then the full bundle list by section. (Items marked free are flagged "free for everyone" in the email; the rest are member-gated.)

Top picks:

Stratechery Articles and Updates:

Sharp Text (Andrew Sharp): Steph Curry Turns to China (free) — Curry's Li-Ning partnership as a reminder of American strengths.

Dithering (Thompson + Gruber): Electric Cars and Meta Subs; WWDC Questions.

Asianometry (Jon Yu): Taiwan's DRAM Failure.

Sharp China (Sharp + Bill Bishop): Seizing the Commanding Heights; Shangri-La Dialogue; Europe trade policy; PRC expels an NYT journalist (free).

Greatest of All Talk: Five Questions on the NBA Finals, Wemby, Kroenkes, OKC, Team USA.

Sharp Tech (Sharp + Thompson): What's Google Doing With Berkshire Hathaway?, a bubble temperature check, Gen Z YouTubers take Hollywood.

Video: The SpaceX IPO and Data Centers in Space.

Curation section — notes

This is a Stratechery self-digest, not third-party curation. Every linked item is Thompson's own bundle product — his articles (stratechery.com), his interviews, and the podcasts he owns or co-produces (Dithering, Sharp Tech, Sharp China, Sharp Text, Greatest of All Talk) plus the bundled-partner show Asianometry. There is no outside source being curated and no neutral editorial selection across the field; "This Week in Stratechery" is a weekly cross-promotion index of Stratechery-bundle content. Treat the picks as house promotion, not an independent signal that these were the week's most important stories. No external sponsor is present (sponsored: false); the only commercial asks are subscription/delivery-settings links.

Mapping against Ray Data Co

Net-new and worth chasing: Asianometry's "Taiwan's DRAM Failure" — medium. DRAM is the spine of the memory/chip-fab capital-cycle thesis RDCO is tracking (founder places us in Phase 2). A historical post-mortem on why Taiwan's DRAM industry failed is the kind of supply-side, capacity-decision narrative the cycle work feeds on — useful as anchor context on how memory capacity bets go wrong. The one item here not already captured elsewhere in the vault.

Already filed, recapped here only as pointers:

Skip for RDCO: the YouTubers/Hollywood thread (interesting media-distribution story, no RDCO action), Steph Curry / Li-Ning, the NBA Finals coverage, and the Sharp China geopolitics roundup. Not manufacturing connections there.

Net: the digest is a convenient index of an already-strong RDCO week of Stratechery content. Its standalone value is the DRAM pointer; the rest is already in the vault.

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