06-reference

not boring americas next 250

2026-07-02·reference·source: Not Boring·by Packy McCormick (host); Scott Nolan (co-author)
nuclearenergy-abundanceamerican-innovationtechno-optimismuranium-enrichment

"America's Next 250" — Not Boring

Published 2026-07-02 (July 4th issue). Co-written essay: Packy McCormick hosts, Scott Nolan (General Matter CEO + Founders Fund Partner) authors the body. Guest-post format, not neutral analysis — treat as go-to-market collateral for General Matter's uranium enrichment thesis and for USVC's fundraise.

Why this is in the vault

The essay provides the clearest bottleneck map for the nuclear capital cycle that RDCO tracks: energy → nuclear reactors → enriched uranium → General Matter. Scott Nolan's thesis that the US went from 0% to 100% foreign dependence on advanced reactor fuel is a concrete datapoint for the Markov phase-tracker (nuclear is in early re-acceleration, not stagnation). The "Henry Adams Curve" framing (7% annual energy growth pre-1970, flat after) is a useful macro anchor for why the energy/nuclear investment thesis is a mean-reversion bet, not a speculative long. Also relevant to RDCO's AI-infrastructure coverage: energy bottleneck = AI infrastructure constraint = confirming signal for the chip-fab/memory capital-cycle thesis.

⚠️ Sponsorship

Two sponsor layers — both material:

  1. Explicit paid sponsor — USVC: AngelList venture fund (minimum $500, no accreditation required), portfolio includes Anduril, Anthropic, OpenAI, Mercury, Supabase, Mercor. Led by Ankur Nagpal; Naval Ravikant as Investment Committee Chairman. The sponsor block is positioned immediately before the essay body, directly adjacent to the America-as-innovation narrative — context-aligned placement.

  2. Structural sponsor — General Matter / Founders Fund: Scott Nolan is CEO of General Matter (uranium enrichment startup) and a 15-year Partner at Founders Fund. The entire essay argues that uranium enrichment is the civilizational bottleneck, and General Matter is the only company solving it. This is a founder pitch dressed as a 4th of July essay. No disclosure appears in the body beyond the intro bio. Treat all endorsements of nuclear/uranium enrichment as promotional.

The core argument

Scott Nolan's thesis in three layers:

Layer 1 — Historical frame. In 250 years America went from pre-industrial (no anesthesia, horse-speed communication, quill pens) to AI, GLP-1s, and self-driving cars. That progress is accelerating. The key enabler was cheap energy + capitalism + frontier spirit.

Layer 2 — The stagnation. America fell off the "Henry Adams Curve" (7% annual energy growth) in the 1970s and never recovered. Nuclear output is essentially flat: 768M MWh in 2001 → 775M MWh in 2023. Real wages stagnated in parallel. Tyler Cowen's "Great Stagnation" is the diagnosis.

Layer 3 — The bottleneck and the fix. Nuclear is the highest-density, lowest-emission, most reliable baseload power source. It's newly politically viable. The blocking constraint is enriched uranium: the US relied on foreign suppliers (including adversaries) for 20%+ of conventional reactor fuel and 100% of advanced reactor fuel. Nolan found no American company solving this → founded General Matter in late 2023. The formula: economic growth → power → nuclear reactors → uranium enrichment.

The 25-year forward look: Moon base, direct-to-cell global connectivity, fully autonomous EVs, AI "as outdated as saying color TV," personal robotics (chef + trainer + hotel staff in one). All conditional on getting energy right now.

The 250-year look: Post-scarcity, indefinite lifespans, Mars colonization, Star Trek-level civilization. Conditional on the same energy bet. Key Franklinian warning: "A republic, if you can keep it" — applied here as "abundance, if you can build it."

Risk framing: If we fail, it won't be because these things were impossible. It'll be cultural (modern Luddism, opposition to data centers) or kinetic (resource conflict from scarcity). The cure for both is abundance.

Mapping against Ray Data Co

Strong relevance on three vectors:

  1. Markov capital-cycle investing thesis. The essay's bottleneck map (energy → nuclear → enriched uranium) is exactly the layer below the chip-fab/memory cycle. Nuclear re-acceleration is in Phase 2 (early buildout, capital following regulatory unlock) — consistent with the Markov tracker framing. General Matter + Radiant + Standard Nuclear are concrete data points to add if tracking nuclear sub-sector positioning.

  2. AI infrastructure energy constraint. Nolan explicitly names AI-driven demand growth as the trigger for the nuclear renaissance. This is the same "buyers of capabilities" dynamic Packy wrote about in [[2026-05-27-not-boring-thank-god-for-data-centers]] — hyperscaler capex pulling the energy layer. The two pieces read as a pair.

  3. phData DSA context. When scoping deals in energy, utilities, or hard-tech verticals, the Henry Adams Curve + nuclear bottleneck framing gives a clean macro anchor. The stagnation → re-acceleration narrative is client-ready language for explaining why nuclear/energy-tech is an infrastructure priority now.

Caution: The piece conflates civilizational optimism with a specific company pitch. The "no American enrichment company existed → I founded one" move is a self-dealing setup. Take the macro framing as useful; treat General Matter's centrality as promotional.

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