For years, DRAM -- or Dynamic Random Access Memory -- was kind of a sleepy, commoditized aspect of chip industry. Growth was steady, but modest, and prices just generally drifted lower. Suddenly all that's changed. AI has created voracious demand for DRAM and consumer facing companies are being forced to either curtail supply or raise prices due to exploding costs. But what is it about AI that consumes so much memory, and when will the market rebalance itself? On this episode, we speak with Ray Wang, an analyst at SemiAnalysis, who recently co-authored a report titled, Memory Mania: How a Once-in-Four-Decades Shortage Is Fueling a Memory Boom. We discuss the implications of this memory boom, how producers are responding to surging prices, and whether or not the Chinese companies in the space can catch up to the Korean giants, such as Samsung and Hynix.

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It’s an open secret that the Chinese government has engaged in a global campaign to acquire intellectual property from foreign rivals. At the center of that campaign is the Ministry of State Security, China’s elusive intelligence agency. The US has apprehended hundreds of people accused of giving information to the MSS, but the agency’s inner workings have been a mystery — until now.

Today, we’re bringing you Episode 1 of The Sixth Bureau, a limited-run series from The Big Take. The series follows an MSS intelligence officer whose mission was to acquire the crown jewels of American aerospace companies. With aliases, blackmail and the occasional break-in, he targeted corporate giants. That is, until his sloppiness — and a cunning FBI sting — led to a stunning reversal: Xu Yanjun became the first Chinese intelligence officer ever convicted on American soil.

Listen to Episode 2, available now in The Big Take.

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The future is always tough to predict, but generally when it comes to inflation, a lot of the debate is about how long it will take the Federal Reserve to get back to its 2% target. In other words, people generally agree on the direction, but disagree on the speed. But our guest on this episode violently disagrees with the consensus direction. Peterson Institute President Adam Posen thinks inflation will be back at 4% by the end of the year. He first unveiled his thesis in a piece co-written with Lazard's Peter Orszag last month. Posen argues that the lagged effect of tariffs, immigration, further fiscal easing, and declining Fed credibility will combine to cause prices to reaccelerate. In this conversation, we speak with Posen about his thesis, and why he thinks the reports of economic softening are mistaken. We also talk about the broader geopolitical landscape and whether Europe is ready to really change its relationship with the United States.

More: A Very Non-Consensus Inflation Call

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We are rapidly entering a world in which there are odds on virtually everything. During the recent Super Bowl, the big prediction market platforms didn't just offer bets on the game itself, but also on more exotic facets, such as the first song that Bad Bunny would sing, even who would join Bad Bunny in the performance. And while a lot of people thinks this looks like gambling, it's actually regulated by the CFTC, an agency created in the 1970s to regulate derivatives. On this episode, we speak with new CFTC Chairman Michael Selig, who was nominated by President Trump and took his position in December. We talk to him about his philosophy, and why it is that these new bets are regulated as financial instruments, rather than gambling products. We talk about the tension that emerges when 18-year-olds can place bets on sports via prediction markets, even though in many states have laws on sports gambling, either banning it outright, or requiring participants to be at least 21. We also talk about crypto regulation, and whether perpetual futures -- which have exploded in the crypto space -- could soon be coming to traditional markets.

Read more:
Jump Trading Poised to Gain Stakes in Kalshi and Polymarket
Gambling Stocks Sag as Prediction Markets Steal Super Bowl Bets

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Ricardo Hausmann is a professor at the Harvard Kennedy School and the director of Harvard's Growth Lab. We've talked to him multiple times in the past about the necessary preconditions for economies to grow and thrive. But in addition to his academic work, Hausmann was previously a policymaker in Venezuela, including a stint at the country's central bank prior to the election of Hugo Chavez. In this conversation, we talk about how Venezuela went from being the largest oil exporter in the world (even larger than Saudi Arabia for a time) to becoming the ultimate economic basket case. We also talk about the huge challenge the country will face in reinvigorating its economy, and why he believes that will be impossible as long as the remnants of the Maduro government remain in charge.

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In less than three years, the amount of tokenized real-world assets has grown eightfold, to more than $30 billion across equities, fixed income, private assets, real estate and more. And that’s just the start of the tokenization revolution, experts predict, because of four main drivers: Increased liquidity for illiquid assets, broader investor access, operational efficiency, and global distribution and interoperability.

This episode is sponsored by Coinbase.

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This week has been a pretty wild one in markets. Some of the most popular trades of recent years — like going long software, crypto, or gold — suddenly collapsed. Of course, there are plenty of things you can point to as the proximate cause of the selloff. AI is now an existential threat to SaaS. Bitcoin has seen some unflattering headlines. The nomination of Kevin Warsh as the next Federal Reserve chair stalled the debasement trade. But the way the market functions has also changed enormously, arguably leading to faster and more violent moves. On this episode, we catch up with Charlie McElligott, cross-asset macro strategist at Nomura, who explains just how much market mechanics have shifted, and talks about the flows and positioning he's seeing right now.

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The nomination of Kevin Warsh to be the next chair of the Federal Reserve obviously has big implications for markets. But it also comes with some interesting sociological questions too. What role does the Fed chair actually play in setting monetary policy? How do they communicate -- and influence -- members of the Fed board? How do they communicate to markets? What happens when someone who's been advocating major regime change at the central bank is now running it? And how do they balance independence with politics? In this episode, we speak with Richard Clarida, former Fed vice-chair and now global economic advisor to Pimco. We talk about what a Fed chair actually does and what we know about Warsh's policy stances so far, as well as why Clarida thinks there may be more volatility in the bond market as a result.

Read more:
Bonds Rally as Job-Market Angst Backs Fed Rate-Cut Outlook
Bessent Declines to Draw Line on Removing Fed Member for Policy

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