Welcome back to This Week in Stratechery!

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

1. If an Apple falls in the forest... Now that I’ve moved back to America, I watched the iPhone event live for the first time in a long time — and I seemed to be the only one! I exaggerate slightly, but not entirely: iPhone launches used to capture the attention of the entire industry, but this week not many people seemed to care, and those that did were unimpressed. I had the opposite reaction: I think the new iPhones are really good, and big jump forward; the reason people are disappointed is because, as the industry focuses on AI, Apple’s willing abdication of entire product categories speaks much larger than their continued excellence in past paradigms. — Ben Thompson
   
   

2. Why Is SpaceX Buying Spectrum? SpaceX is paying $17 billion for the rights to use EchoStar spectrum, in a move to improve its ability to deliver Starlink broadband to cell phones in remote areas, beyond the reach of cell towers. Tuesday’s Daily Update examines the logic of that news, including a helpful explainer of the different bands of spectrum required to serve Starlink customers, and why SpaceX will still rely on partnerships as it pushes further into the direct-to-cell market. As for the broader direction? The spectrum deal comes as SpaceX peers are floundering and facing delays on new satellite deployments. This week’s move appears to be a bet that SpaceX can offer service that’s so superior that companies like Apple, Verizon, and AT&T will have no choice but to partner with Starlink going forward, positioning SpaceX to be the only entity making money on satellite cellphone service. — Andrew Sharp
   
   
3. Five Questions After China’s Victory Day Parade. One week after China hosted Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un for a military parade celebrating the 80th anniversary of the end of World War, Bill Bishop and I discussed the scene in Beijing and what it signals for geopolitics in 2025. Though the pageantry did not necessarily signal any shift that would be new to anyone who’s been paying attention, the images of China partnering with authoritarian states while displaying next generation military hardware and unprecedented nuclear capabilities seemed to strike a chord with international audiences. Come for questions about the EU’s response (or lack thereof) and a Russian natural gas partnership that may reshape global energy markets, and stay for discussion of China’s relationship to North Korea and a hot mic moment in which Xi and Putin mull immortality.  — AS

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Stratechery Articles and Updates

• Atlassian Buys The Browser Company, Browser Wars, Why Atlassian — Atlassian bought The Browser Company, seeking to deliver an AI-enabled browser for work. It’s a reasonable bet, but I’m skeptical that browsers are the future.
• SpaceX Buys Spectrum, Spectrum Specifics, SpaceX’s Big Bet — SpaceX just made a huge deal for spectrum, but they will still need partners; the real goal is knocking competition out of the game.
• iPhones 17 and the Sugar Water Trap — Apple’s iPhone announcement was impressive, but no one was impressed, because Apple is increasingly peripheral to what is changing the world.
• An Interview with Dan Kim About Intel, Nvidia, and the U.S. Government — An interview with Dan Kim about the CHIPS program, why the U.S. took a stake in Intel, and the fraught dispute about Nvidia and China.

Dithering with Ben Thompson and Daring Fireball’s John Gruber

• The iPhone Event

Asianometry with Jon Yu

• A Good Old-Fashioned American Nuclear Energy Debacle
• Silicon Valley’s Doing Hard Things Again

Sharp China with Andrew Sharp and Sinocism’s Bill Bishop

• Five Questions After the 9.3 Parade; A Flurry of US-China Updates; Sports Consumption and the NBA’s Return to China

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

• Ballmergate: Week Two, Dybansta, Peterson and 2026 Draft Prep, Should the NBA Raise the Age Limit?

Sharp Tech with Andrew Sharp and Ben Thompson

• New iPhones and an Absence of Awe, How Oracle Wins in the AI Era, Questions on MidJourney, Meta, and Armageddon

This week’s Sharp Tech video is on KPop Demon Hunters, Netflix and the Modern Movie Business.