Forecast 2050

Apple didn't just build its iPhones in China. It taught China how to build them, and then how to build everything else. Now Apple says it's diversifying. But Patrick McGee thinks Apple is more dependent on China than ever before.

Journalist Patrick McGee, author of Apple in China: The Capture of the World’s Greatest Company, joined me on Forecast 2050 to explain how Apple’s bet on Chinese manufacturing helped create America’s only real tech rival, why Trump doesn’t have the cards with Xi, whether China takes Taiwan, why Nvidia would be useless in a war, and what the US-China relationship will look like by 2050.

Extended Show Notes: https://finnmurphyirl.substack.com/p/how-apple-made-china-into-a-superpower

00:00 Intro

02:54 Manufacturing Is Power

11:59 The CCP

16:56 Will China Take Taiwan by 2050?

25:11 Why Nvidia Would Be Useless in a War

27:06 The Case for Industrial Policy

32:04 How Xi Brought Apple to Heel

39:32 The End of Pax Americana

47:20 The Next Jony Ive is Chinese

01:00:20 China’s Next Leaders

01:07:47 Demographic Collapse & Automation

Patrick McGee is a technology journalist who covered Apple for the Financial Times from 2019 to 2023 and wrote for the FT from 2013 to 2025, reporting from Hong Kong, Frankfurt and San Francisco. His book Apple in China won the SABEW Award for Best Business Book and was named a top book of 2025 by The New York Times, Foreign Affairs and The New Yorker.

Patrick on X: https://x.com/PatrickMcGee_

Patrick on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/prmcgee/

Website: https://patrick-mcgee.com

Forecast 2050 is a series about the next 25 years—and the builders, thinkers, and leaders shaping what comes next.

Finn on X: https://x.com/FinnMurphy12

Finn on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/finn-murphy-16160465/

Nebular is a venture capital firm based in New York City.

Head to nebular.vc for more info.

Laura Kreidberg believes there is life out there in the universe.

An astrophysicist and director at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg, Germany, Laura is one of the youngest directors ever appointed to a Max Planck Institute. Her work uses the Hubble and James Webb space telescopes to explore the atmospheres of planets orbiting distant stars. I sat down with Laura to discuss how astronomers study worlds too far away to photograph, why intelligence may not be evolutionarily favorable, and why Laura thinks we'll discover life on other worlds in the next 30 years.

Extended Show Notes: https://finnmurphyirl.substack.com/p/the-hunt-for-alien-life-on-distant

Chapters:

00:00 Intro

03:10 The Atmospheres of Other Worlds

08:14 In Astronomy, Bigger is Better

10:50 Earth-like Planets

20:04 The Huge Variety of Exoplanets

26:03 Science Communication

27:30 Intelligence is Not Evolutionary Favorable

33:30 Signs of Life on Exoplanets

40:19 Discovering Aliens in 30 Years

45:44 Science as Soft Power

Laura Kreidberg is the Director at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, where she studies the atmospheres of exoplanets for signs of life.

Laura on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/laura-kreidberg-3a08581b7

Laura on X: https://x.com/lkreidberg

Max Planck Institute for Astronomy Profile: https://www.mpia.de/en/laura-kreidberg

Forecast 2050 is a series about the next 25 years—and the builders, thinkers, and leaders shaping what comes next.

Finn on X: https://x.com/FinnMurphy12

Finn on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/finn-murphy-16160465/

Nebular is a venture capital firm based in New York City.

Head to nebular.vc for more info.

Silicon Valley frames AI as a race against China to reach AGI. In China, almost nobody thinks that way.

Journalist Yi-Ling Liu, author of The Wall Dancers and journalist in residence at the Tarbell Center for AI Journalism, joined me on Forecast 2050 to explain how China actually sees AI, the “permanent underclass” that predates automation, demographic collapse and the Chinese silver economy, and the Christian origins of the transhumanist movement.

Extended Show Notes: https://finnmurphyirl.substack.com/p/why-is-silicon-valley-obsessed-with

Chapters:

00:00 Intro

02:58 Superintelligence Is Not China’s Goal

08:06 The Pre-AI Permanent Underclass

11:00 The Tech-Government Revolving Door

17:05 Lying Flat

19:57 Christian Singularity vs. Daoist AI

26:06 Overcoming Censorship

32:10 The TikTok Ban

36:58 Chinese Perceptions of the West

46:16 The Silver Economy

Yi-Ling Liu is a journalist in residence at the Tarbell Center for AI Journalism, former China editor at Rest of World, and author of The Wall Dancers: Searching for Freedom and Connection on the Chinese Internet.

Yi-Ling on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yi-ling-l-89799783/

Yi-Ling on X: https://x.com/yilingliu95

Website: https://www.yi-lingliu.com/

Forecast 2050 is a series about the next 25 years—and the builders, thinkers, and leaders shaping what comes next.

Finn on X: https://x.com/FinnMurphy12

Finn on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/finn-murphy-16160465/

Nebular is a venture capital firm based in New York City. Head to nebular.vc for more info.

General David Petraeus believes we need draconian change to prepare for the age of autonomous warfare.

A retired four-star general, Gen. Petraeus commanded U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan and led U.S. Central Command before serving as director of the CIA. I sat down with Gen. Petraeus to discuss the conflicts in Ukraine and Iran, how autonomous drones and weapons will fight the wars of the future, and the new big ideas we need to keep the world stable for the next 25 years.

Chapters:

00:00 Intro

01:57 Commanding Autonomous Systems

04:55 Revolution, Not Reform

11:21 Inside the Death Zone

19:17 America Is Unprepared for Future Wars

23:41 A New AI Military Service Branch

35:12 The UK Will Lead Military Innovation

42:02 The War for Truth

49:19 The Big Ideas for the Next 25 Years

54:15 The Leaders of the Future

David Petraeus is a former CIA Director who commanded U.S. and coalition forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, and is now a partner at KKR and the Chairman of its Global Institute.

General Petraeus on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidpetraeus/

Thanks to the Institute for the Study of War and AEI’s Critical Threats Project for the maps in the interview: www.understandingwar.org and www.criticalthreats.org.

Forecast 2050 is a series about the next 25 years—and the builders, thinkers, and leaders shaping what comes next.

Finn on X: https://x.com/FinnMurphy12

Finn on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/finn-murphy-16160465/

Nebular is a venture capital firm based in New York City. Head to nebular.vc for more info.

The real reason AI was given to humans is to communicate with animals, according to David Gruber. A marine biologist and National Geographic Explorer, he is the founder of Project CETI, a global effort of more than 50 scientists across eight disciplines working to decode the communication of sperm whales. In this episode of Forecast 2050, I sit down with David to discuss the prospect of an interspecies dialogue and the seismic implications it will have for all of us, whales included.

Extended Show Notes: https://finnmurphyirl.substack.com/p/can-ai-talk-to-whales-project-ceti

Chapters:

00:00 Intro

01:48 David's Journey

12:30 An Interspecies Dialogue

17:14 Sperm Whale Language & Culture

23:48 The Breakthroughs Yet to Come

27:49 The Whales Are Yappers

31:03 Sperm Whales Have Accents

39:47 Verifying a Whale Translation

42:13 What Success Looks Like

47:32 Saving the Whales

David Gruber is a marine biologist and National Geographic Explorer who founded Project CETI, a team of more than 50 scientists using AI to decode how sperm whales communicate.

David on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-gruber-b003871/

Project CETI on X: https://x.com/ProjectCETI

Project CETI on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/projectceti/

Project CETI Website: https://www.projectceti.org/

Forecast 2050 is a series about the next 25 years—and the builders, thinkers, and leaders shaping what comes next.

Finn on X: https://x.com/FinnMurphy12

Finn on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/finn-murphy-16160465/

Nebular is a venture capital firm based in New York City.

Head to nebular.vc for more info.

Fr. Brendan McGuire believes that we still have an opportunity to align AI for the common good, though time is running out. A Silicon Valley executive turned Catholic priest, Fr. Brendan has spent decades as a confidant to the people building frontier technology, and was one of the external contributors to Anthropic’s Claude Constitution.

In this episode of Forecast 2050, Nebular General Partner Finn Murphy sits down with Fr. Brendan to discuss Pope Leo XIV's encyclical about AI, Magnifica Humanitas, why AI needs to learn forgiveness, whether AIs have souls, and why we probably have less than a year before recursive self-improvement to ensure these models benefit humanity.

Extended Show Notes: https://finnmurphyirl.substack.com/p/father-brendan-mcguire-claudes-priest

Transcript: https://finnmurphyirl.substack.com/p/forecast-2050-episode-11-fr-brendan

Chapters:

00:00 Intro

01:45 Silicon Valley Tech Exec to Man of the Cloth

08:10 We Need Smart AI Regulation

11:46 The Pope's Warning: Don't Build a New AI Tower of Babel

19:10 Why AI Needs to Learn Forgiveness

27:26 What Hugging Face Shows About AI Morality

31:56 Do AIs Have Souls? Would We Baptise An Alien?

40:06 Watching Others Die Puts the AI Doomers In Perspective

44:20 Why Anthropic Asked the Church for Help 53:39 AI Doesn't Have to Be Winner-Takes-All

58:23 We Have Less Than a Year to Shape AI's Morality before RSI

01:02:23 Tolkien Morality vs Game of Thrones Brutality

Fr. Brendan McGuire is an engineer turned Silicon Valley executive turned Catholic priest at St. Simon Parish in Los Altos, CA. He is an external contributor to Anthropic's Claude Constitution.

Fr. Brendan on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/frbrendanmcguire/

St. Simon Parish: https://stsimon.church/

Forecast 2050 is a series about the next 25 years—and the builders, thinkers, and leaders shaping what comes next.

Finn on X: https://x.com/FinnMurphy12

Finn on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/finn-murphy-16160465/

Nebular is a venture capital firm based in New York City.

Head to nebular.vc for more info.

Forecast 2050 Season 2 has arrived with a brand new set of conversations with the thinkers, founders, and investors shaping the next 25 years.

Hosted by Nebular General Partner Finn Murphy.

Guests:

Fr. Brendan McGuire

David Gruber

Gen. David Petraeus

Walter Goodwin & Sir Robin Saxby

Yi-Ling Liu

Laura Kreidberg

Patrick McGee

Francesco Sciortino

Adrian Woolfson

Francis Fukuyama

Finn on X: https://x.com/FinnMurphy12

Finn on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/finn-murphy-16160465/

Forecast 2050 on X: https://x.com/forecast2050

Nebular is a venture capital firm based in New York City.

Head to nebular.vc for more info.

Enveda Founder and CEO Viswa Colluru believes we have been looking for new medicines in the wrong places for decades.

In the Season 1 finale of Forecast 2050, I sat down with Viswa and Pablo Lubroth, VP of Special Projects at Enveda, to discuss why 9 in 10 drugs fail in clinical trials despite Big Pharma spending $276 billion in annual R&D, how AI is finally unlocking 99% of nature's chemistry that we've haven't been able to read, why the incentive structure of biotech capital markets is actively bad for patients, why insisting on understanding how a drug works actually slows down drug discovery, why aging may not be inevitable, and why mental health is going to be the defining medical crisis of the next 25 years.

Extended Show Notes: https://finnmurphyirl.substack.com/p/3dc95f79-4a7e-4c80-9630-970c1e6e2117

Transcript (with helpful links!): https://finnmurphyirl.substack.com/p/beb7222d-efd1-472b-85be-09d7a7faf1a5

Chapters:

00:00 Intro

01:09 The Quintessential Problem With Drug Discovery

04:57 Pablo’s Journey to Enveda

06:29 Insisting on Understanding Biological Mechanisms Slows Down Drug Discovery

09:39 Science Has Been Divorced From Human Experience

12:22 Scientific Reductionism Has Not Led to Better Drugs

19:31 Lessons Learned From Big Pharma Missing Out On GLP-1s

22:11 Capital Markets Disinventivize Risk-Taking and Harm Patients

28:12 How to Prioritize Which Illnesses to Cure

33:38 Prediction and Prevention is a Better Strategy Than Treatment

38:27 Drugs to Make Us Limitless Like Bradley Cooper

42:53 Aging is Not Inevitable

43:34 Everyone Has a Chinese Peptide Guy

50:13 The Loon Shots for 2050

52:39 Mental Health Will be The Biggest Challenge for 2050

54:46 The AI Revolution in Medicine

Viswa Colluru is the Founder & CEO of Enveda, a clinical-stage biotech company using AI to discover new drugs from nature. He built Enveda from $55K of personal savings into a unicorn with over $500M raised and multiple assets in clinical trials. Before founding Enveda, Viswa was the first Innovation Scientist and Product Manager at Recursion Pharmaceuticals. He holds a PhD in immuno-oncology from UW-Madison.

Pablo Lubroth is a VP of Special Projects at Enveda and the Co-Founder & Editor of Decoding Bio. He previously built and led the biotech practice at Hummingbird Ventures and co-hosts the annual AI x Bio Summit at the NYSE. Pablo holds degrees in Neuropharmacology and Biochemical Engineering from UCL and an MPhil in Bioscience Enterprise from the University of Cambridge.

Viswa on X: https://x.com/viswacolluru

Pablo on X: https://x.com/pablolubroth

Enveda: https://enveda.com

Decoding Bio: https://www.decodingbio.com

Forecast 2050 is a series about the next 25 years—and the builders, thinkers, and leaders shaping what comes next.

Finn on X: https://x.com/FinnMurphy12

Finn on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/finn-murphy-16160465/

Nebular is a venture capital firm based in New York City.

Head to nebular.vc for more info.

Devon Zuegel believes America has been building cities wrong for decades. She grew up spending summers in Chautauqua, an intellectual community in western New York where four generations of her family shared a household and she knew her neighbors better than the ones at home in California. Now she's building a village called Esmeralda 90 minutes north of San Francisco to prove that formula can be replicated.

I sat down with Devon in San Francisco to talk about harnessing urban planning as a powerful technological force for good, age-segregation in America and the impending population crisis, and why we need more incredible cities popping up across the country over the next 25 years.

Extended Show Notes: https://finnmurphyirl.substack.com/p/8bcb1293-d2f5-4c6c-a133-8a6d0826b839

Transcript (with helpful links!): https://finnmurphyirl.substack.com/p/forecast-2050-episode-7-devon-zuegel?r=25ihqz&triedRedirect=true

Chapters:

00:00 Intro

01:07 Chautauqua Inspires Esmeralda

03:02 Cities Are A Technology

06:33 The Autonomous Vehicle Takeover

10:02 The New Multigenerational Society

13:29 American Colleges Make the Economy Dynamic, but Break Up Families

17:39 Remote Work and the Expansion of the Metropolis

19:55 A Real Alternative to the Suburb/City Dilemma

22:21 Real Life Is The Classroom

26:04 Esmeralda’s Open Door Policy

27:59 Making Cities Worth Living In

32:51 The NIMBY Problem

35:10 The Digital-Physical Divergence

38:29 The Cities That Have Gotten It Right Before

Devon Zuegel is the founder and president of the Esmeralda Institute, where she is building Esmeralda, a village of the future just 90 minutes north of San Francisco envisioned as a Chautauqua for Silicon Valley.

Devon on X: https://x.com/devonzuegel

Devon’s Personal Site: https://devonzuegel.com/

Esmeralda Institute: https://esmeralda.org/

Forecast 2050 is a series about the next 25 years—and the builders, thinkers, and leaders shaping what comes next.

Finn on X: https://x.com/FinnMurphy12

Finn on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/finn-murphy-16160465/

Nebular is a venture capital firm based in New York City.

Head to nebular.vc for more info.

Matt Clifford and Ian Hogarth believe Europe is roughly a decade behind the United States in building the technology companies that will define the next era. But they also believe that the gap can be closed, and that the UK and Europe could even leapfrog America, if political leaders and the public make fundamentally different choices.

I sat down with Matt, co-founder of Entrepreneurs First and architect of the UK Government's AI strategy, and Ian, co-founder of Plural and Chair of the UK's AI Foundation Model Taskforce, to talk about what Europe needs to do to save itself from stagnation. We get into why Europe's risk aversion is a bigger threat than American superiority, why career politicians won't survive in the new multipolar world, and why the pro-growth movement is losing the culture war — and how to win it back.

Extended Show Notes: https://finnmurphyirl.substack.com/p/2dc713af-826a-43dc-a2ad-91ad00ee6134

Transcript (with helpful links!): https://finnmurphyirl.substack.com/p/00092f0e-3f30-473f-a773-d560724b3dc5

Chapters:

00:00 Intro

01:01 The Compounding Effect: Why the US Is Winning

03:50 Jumpstarting European Growth

06:48 We Must Risk Failure to Succeed

09:30 Crisis as Catalyst

12:21 The Multipolar Moment

14:31 AI Nationalism

18:41 Career Politicians Won’t Survive the New Global Order

21:32 The Apollo Moonshot for the UK

25:26 The UK Has a De-Growth Cultural Problem

28:32 Growth ≠ Good

33:55 Prediction Markets as Gambling Companies

36:23 Political Leaders Should Not Be Neutral About the Good Life

37:41 UK and Europe: Geography as Destiny

39:33 The Next Pendulum Swings for Europe

Matt Clifford is the co-founder and Chair of Entrepreneurs First, the world's leading talent investor, and Chair of ARIA, the UK's Advanced Research and Invention Agency. He authored the UK Government's AI Opportunities Action Plan and served as the Prime Minister's Adviser on AI. He was named to the TIME100 list of most influential people in AI and was awarded a CBE for services to AI in 2024.

Ian Hogarth is co-founder and partner at Plural, an early-stage venture capital firm, and served as Chair of the UK Government's AI Foundation Model Taskforce. He co-founded Songkick and was named to the TIME100 list of most influential people in AI in 2023.

Matt on X: https://x.com/matthewclifford

Ian on X: https://x.com/soundboy

Matt's Website: https://www.matthewclifford.com/

Ian's Website: https://www.ianhogarth.com/

Forecast 2050 is a series about the next 25 years—and the builders, thinkers, and leaders shaping what comes next.

Finn on X: https://x.com/FinnMurphy12

Finn on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/finn-murphy-16160465/

Nebular is a venture capital firm based in New York City.

Head to nebular.vc for more info.

Yanai Yedvab thinks we need to completely overhaul the infrastructure of humanity to avoid a climate disaster, and we can't afford to wait the 70 years it’ll take to wean off fossil fuels. Before founding Stardust, Yanai spent nearly three decades in Israeli nuclear research, ending up as deputy chief scientist at the Israel Atomic Energy Commission.

Stardust is developing reflective particles to disperse into the upper atmosphere that will buy us the several decades we need to transition into a low-carbon economy. We sat down in New York to talk about how the technology works, the dangers at stake if we do nothing, and Yanai's radical optimism in spite of everything.

Stardust Publication on Safety: https://www.stardustsolutions.com/science

Stardust Publication on Ethics: https://www.stardustsolutions.com/guiding-principles

Extended Show Notes: https://finnmurphyirl.substack.com/p/191c8d8c-50a1-42d4-a44e-03e618b9d359

Transcript (with helpful links!): https://finnmurphyirl.substack.com/p/c04e6ebb-d1e8-4cbf-97d3-fee104f21536

Chapters:

00:00 Intro

01:10 From Nuclear Physics to The Climate Crisis

04:01 The Failure of Climate Activism

05:28 How Solar Reflective Technology Works

09:12 The 1991 Eruption of Mount Pinatubo

12:01 The Montreal Protocol and How to Negotiate in a World at War

16:03 Buying Time: Weaning off Fossil Fuels Will Take 50-70 Years

18:55 Data Centers, Fission, and Fusion

19:59 Preparing for Emergencies the Israeli Way

23:40 Radical Transparency: The Only Way To Gain Trust

27:05 Persuading the Policymakers

33:05 Unlimited Ambition is What Will Save the World

35:10 Stardust Will Unlock Quantum Leaps in Weather Prediction

36:54 Stardust in 2050

40:20 Why Stardust Has to Be a Private Company

45:32 Optimism for the Future is Rational

Yanai Yedvab is a nuclear physicist, former deputy chief scientist at the Israel Atomic Energy Commission, and the co-founder and CEO of Stardust, a solar geoengineering company.

Stardust: https://www.stardustsolutions.com/

Forecast 2050 is a series about the next 25 years—and the builders, thinkers, and leaders shaping what comes next.

Finn on X: https://x.com/FinnMurphy12

Finn on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/finn-murphy-16160465/

Nebular is a venture capital firm based in New York City.

Head to nebular.vc for more info.

Casey Handmer thinks we're living through the most consequential 25 years in human history, and that human civilization is just getting started.

I sat down with Casey in Los Angeles to discuss how China's dominance in solar energy deployment should be a wake-up call for the West, why antimatter is the only rocket fuel that makes interstellar travel possible, and how slowing down aging may be the best solution to plummeting birthrates across the planet. For Casey, the balrog in the deep isn’t demographic decline, but a climate catastrophe that swallows every coastline on Earth.

Extended Show Notes: https://finnmurphyirl.substack.com/p/6c52cb7a-572b-4f5f-8bf9-70fdaf14cf98

Transcript (with helpful links!): https://finnmurphyirl.substack.com/p/17c9604e-f38b-41a3-9068-eaf69d9f5575

Chapters:

00:00 Intro

00:53 The Solar Revolution

03:43 AI is a Supersonic Tsunami

06:00 Civilization Is Just Getting Started

08:46 Intelligent Life in the Universe

12:03 The $40 Trillion Ticket to Space: Antimatter

20:57 Space Exploration by 2050

22:09 Mitigating The Climate Catastrophe

27:53 Terraforming Mars vs Terraforming Venus

35:00 Solving the Birthrate Crisis: Humans Will Become Like The Elves in LOTR and Live Indefinitely

42:07 China Is Losing Sleep Over Their Problems As Much as We Are

44:46 Governments Are Lying About Their Population Sizes

46:11 The 2050 Moonshots That Will Save The World

52:45 Easter Egg :)

Casey Handmer is a physicist, entrepreneur, and the founder of Terraform Industries, working on making cheap natural gas from sunlight and air.

Casey on X: https://x.com/CJHandmer

Casey's Website: https://www.caseyhandmer.com/

Forecast 2050 is a series about the next 25 years—and the builders, thinkers, and leaders shaping what comes next.

Finn on X: https://x.com/FinnMurphy12

Finn on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/finn-murphy-16160465/

Nebular is a venture capital firm based in New York City.

Head to nebular.vc for more info.

Starcloud Founder and CEO Philip Johnston believes data centers in space are the first step to becoming a Kardashev level civilization. I caught up with Philip at Starcloud’s HQ to talk about his vision for the next 25 years. The conversation covers everything from luxury space tourism, whether Tesla’s Optimus robot will become a self-replicating galactic probe, the hard problem of consciousness, whether the world is a simulation, Mars becoming the next America, and Philip’s greatest concern for our long-term future.

Extended Show Notes: https://finnmurphyirl.substack.com/p/data-centers-in-space-moon-resorts

Transcript: https://finnmurphyirl.substack.com/p/forecast-2050-episode-iv-transcript

Chapters:

00:00 Intro

00:59 Why the Space GPU Skeptics are Wrong

03:12 Elon Will Bring Launch Costs Down with Starship

06:50 The 2050 Space Economy: Moon Hotels, Asteroid Mining and Manufacturing

16:37 The 2050 Martian Colony: A Stepping Stone for Exploring the Universe

26:32 The Kardashev Scale of Civilization

28:44 We Live in a Simulation: The Fermi Paradox & The Great Filter

34:52 Cracking the Hard Problem of Consciousness

37:46 There is a Calamitous Event Waiting for Us

39:04 Mars is the Next America

Philip Johnston is the co-founder and CEO of Starcloud, a space technology company building orbital data centers powered by solar energy to run AI and compute infrastructure in space.

Philip on X: https://x.com/PhilipJohnston

Philip on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/philip-johnston/

Forecast 2050 is a series about the next 25 years—and the builders, thinkers, and leaders shaping what comes next.

Finn on X: https://x.com/FinnMurphy12

Finn on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/finn-murphy-16160465/

Nebular is a venture capital firm based in New York City.

Head to nebular.vc for more info.

Sir Malcolm Rifkind served as Foreign Secretary of the United Kingdom from 1995 to 1997 and as Defence Secretary before that. He has sat across from Soviet ministers while a KGB double agent secretly briefed both sides, watched the Berlin Wall fall when nobody saw it coming, and has been banished from Russia by Putin personally for his criticism of the invasion of Crimea. I sat down with Sir Malcolm in London this January to talk about the next 25 years of conflict and diplomacy, and how to navigate a world where nobody cares about the old rules anymore.

Extended Show Notes: https://substack.com/home/post/p-192033568

Transcript: https://substack.com/home/post/p-192033862

Chapters:

00:00 Intro

01:05 Why Politicians Can’t Predict the Future

03:37 The Power of Double Agents in Spycraft

04:38 Social Media Diplomacy Was Inevitable

12:46 Soft Power is Dead

16:25 The Cult of Youth in Global Leadership

18:54 The West Must Think Long-Term to Survive

27:43 Technological Innovation Will Hurt Old People

30:58 The Chinese Will Eat Their Rich

38:11 Meeting Gorbachev and His Philosopher Wife

44:32 There Are No Good Guys and Bad Guys

46:46 Ukraine will Freeze Up like Korea, Kashmir, and Cyprus

47:55 Taiwan is More Important than Iran

53:23 How Smaller Countries Operate without Pax Americana

55:09 “The Chinese and the Russians Cannot Believe Their Luck” - on NATO Collapse

59:59 America May Not Be the Main Character in the Future

Sir Malcolm Rifkind is a British statesman who served as Defence Secretary and then Foreign Secretary under Prime Ministers Margaret Thatcher and John Major, and later chaired the UK Parliament's Intelligence and Security Committee.

Forecast 2050 is a series about the next 25 years—and the builders, thinkers, and leaders shaping what comes next.

Finn on X: https://x.com/FinnMurphy12

Finn on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/finn-murphy-16160465/

Nebular is venture capital firm based in New York City.

Head to nebular.vc for more info.

Noor Siddiqui is building a future free of inherited disease. As Founder & CEO of Orchid, she has developed embryo screening technology that reads 99% of an embryo's DNA - 100 times more information than legacy tools. In this episode of Forecast 2050, Nebular General Partner Finn Murphy sits down with Noor in San Francisco to discuss why embryo screening and artificial wombs may become the default way humans reproduce, what's really driving falling birth rates, the moonshot nobody is funding, and why a generation of young people with world-changing energy has been left with nowhere to put it.

Extended Show Notes: https://finnmurphyirl.substack.com/p/sex-is-for-fun-orchid-ivf-is-for

Transcript (with links): https://finnmurphyirl.substack.com/p/forecast-2050-transcript-episode

Chapters:

00:00 Intro

00:50 Rolling the Dice No More: The Embryo Screening Revolution

05:27 Artificial Wombs Are the Tech Challenge of Our Time

07:47 Why Aren't We Having Kids?

17:03 The Broken Generational Contract

18:56 Nature Beats Out Nurture

21:45 AI & Genetic Technology Could Give Us Superhuman Powers

30:54 Noor’s Plan for 2050

37:10 What We Lose When Old People Run Everything

Noor Siddiqui is the Founder & CEO of Orchid, the world's first whole genome embryo screening company.

Noor on X: https://x.com/noor_siddiqui_

Orchid: https://www.orchidhealth.com/

Forecast 2050 is a series about the next 25 years—and the builders, thinkers, and leaders shaping what comes next.

Finn on X: https://x.com/FinnMurphy12

Finn on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/finn-murphy-16160465/

Nebular is a venture capital firm based in New York City investing in early-stage companies.

Head to nebular.vc for more info.

Scott Aaronson thinks that the time to prepare for a post-quantum world isn’t years away - it was yesterday. In the second episode of Forecast 2050 with Nebular General Partner Finn Murphy and Entrepreneur in Residence Tom McCarthy, we explore whether classical AI might eclipse quantum computing, how post-quantum cryptography will upend global security, and why the rise of superintelligence both excites and deeply unsettles Scott.

We also debate whether a quantum teleporter would actually be a suicide machine, how advanced AI might help us uncover the fundamental nature of reality, and the disturbing possibility that future superintelligences may compete with one another for dominance, treating humans as collateral.

Extended Show Notes: https://finnmurphyirl.substack.com/p/breaking-the-internet-scott-aaronsons

Transcript (with links): https://finnmurphyirl.substack.com/p/forecast-2050-episode-ii-transcript

Chapters

00:00 Intro

02:04 How AI & Quantum Computing Interact Today

10:36 Why Scott Thinks Classical Computing Might Outdate Quantum

18:24 The Post-Quantum World of 2050

27:43 Quantum Computing & Biology

35:46 The Quantum Teleporter as a Suicide Machine

38:52 Superintelligence & The Ultimate Nature of Reality

45:00 The Battle Between Superintelligences

Scott Aaronson, the Schlumberger Centennial Chair of Computer Science at the University of Texas at Austin, is widely recognized as a top researcher in the fields of quantum computing and computational complexity.

Thank you to Matt Johnson of Q2B Sillicon Valley and QC Ware for helping us film at the conference!

https://q2b.qcware.com/

Scott’s blog, Shtetl-Optimized: https://scottaaronson.blog/

Forecast 2050 is a series about the next 25 years—and the builders, thinkers, and leaders shaping what comes next.

Finn on X: https://x.com/FinnMurphy12

Finn on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/finn-murphy-16160465/

Tom on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tom-mccarthy-41144779/

Nebular is an early-stage venture capital firm based in New York City.

Head to nebular.vc for more info.

Tyler Cowen believes we are woefully unprepared for the next 25 years.

In the first episode of Forecast 2050 with Nebular General Partner, Finn Murphy, we discuss the real reason behind falling birthrates, what the last human job might be in an AI-dominated economy, how conflict and war could evolve in the next 25 years, whether we will have a "viagra for the mind," why we are experiencing the fastest technological revolution in human history, why humans love stasis and hate change, and why we need faith in long-term thinking.

Extended Show Notes: https://finnmurphyirl.substack.com/p/humans-love-stasis-and-hate-change

Transcript (with helpful links!): https://substack.com/home/post/p-189726563

Chapters:

00:00 Intro

01:03 The real reason behind low birthrates

04:50 Transitioning to a majority-old society

07:49 The future of worldwide immigration

14:55 The 2050 economy will be healthcare dominated

19:23 Corporations have never been so powerful

26:25 There is life on the moons of Saturn

27:07 Elon is wrong: We won't settle other planets

30:00 AIs Will Take Over Society By Trick

30:58 We need faith for long term thinking

32:47 There will be many, many fake jobs

36:29 The future of the UN and global conflicts

40:56 The AIs will build their own superintelligent institutions

45:18 Tyler's greatest concern

47:50 The last profession standing in the AI era

Tyler Cowen is an economist, author, and professor known for his work on growth, innovation, and the future of technology.

Tyler on X: https://x.com/tylercowen

Tyler's Blog: https://marginalrevolution.com/

Forecast 2050 is a series about the next 25 years—and the builders, thinkers, and leaders shaping what comes next.

Finn on X: https://x.com/FinnMurphy12

Finn on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/finn-murphy-16160465/

Nebular is an early stage venture capital firm based in New York City.

Head to nebular.vc for more info.

Forecast 2050 is a series about the next 25 years, and the builders, thinkers, and leaders shaping what lies ahead. Hosted by Nebular General Partner Finn Murphy.