2026 06 04 Reading List 05 30 26

Summary

Brian Potter's weekly reading list for May 30, 2026. Notable items relevant to stock-market thesis: Nvidia's $150B/yr Taiwan commitment (AI capex commitment signal), Huawei's 1.4nm claim by 2031 (China chip independence trajectory), Blue Origin rocket explosion (competitor setback in the space sector, SpaceX IPO timing), weapons-grade plutonium for SMR startups (nuclear fuel chain), and CATL's Portuguese factory (critical mineral/battery supply chain). Paywalled after the manufacturing section intro.

Article

Author: Brian Potter Publication: Construction Physics (Substack), May 30, 2026 Note: Partial — approximately two-thirds of content paywalled.

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War in Iran

• Iran ended an 88-day internet blackout
• Iran characterizes ship passage fees as "safety and environmental protection fees" (not tolls)

Housing

• Seattle/Portland considering vacancy taxes for empty commercial office space (DC/SF already have them)
• Denver developer Asher Luzzatto converting downtown office buildings into ~1,100 apartments + cultural amenities, buying properties "for pennies on the dollar"
• Historical piece on apartment living in ancient Rome

Manufacturing & Industrial

Chemical Safety:

• California methyl methacrylate tank damage triggered 50,000-person evacuation order (resolved without explosion)
• One fatality from chemical tank explosion at Washington paper mill

Technology & AI Capex:

• Nvidia planning ~$150 billion annual spending in Taiwan — commitment to TSMC supply chain at scale; relevant to picks-and-shovels-leading-edge-fab-buildout and tsmc-capacity-shortfall-and-pricing-power
• Huawei claims chip breakthrough targeting 1.4nm transistor density by 2031 — relevant to China-semiconductor-independence thesis and china-blackwell-offshore-compute-routing
• CATL building Portuguese factory producing ~4% of Portugal's GDP — battery supply chain diversification out of China; relevant to critical minerals / EV supply chain

Defense/Space:

• US missile manufacturing concentrated in ammonium perchlorate facilities — creates supply chain vulnerability in defense-industrial-base-magazine-depth thesis
• Ukraine manufacturing thousands of ground-based drones — drone warfare demand continuing

Nuclear:

• Weapons-grade plutonium for nuclear reactor startups — SMR fuel chain development; relevant to haleu-enrichment-bottleneck-centrus and nuclear-baseload-for-ai-data-centers

Aerospace:

• Blue Origin rocket explosion — competitor setback; positive for SpaceX market position in the context of SPCX IPO (peers already fading as noted in ipo-comp-anchor-repricing)

Paywall begins after this point — remaining items not available