Sci-Fi AI Is Here & What No Deal w/Iran Means for You & The Economy – Top 3 Takeaways – April 13th, 2026
Takeaway #1: Last week was the week AI changed the world forever
That’s a strong statement. I’m not making it flippantly. We all knew the day was going to come when AI would take that next step where fundamental shifts in society would begin to take place due to the power and prowess of artificial intelligence. Last week appears to have been that week that set in motion the “day” that is coming. While most people at this point are familiar with consumer facing AI names like ChatGPT, Grok, CoPilot, Gemini, etc... It’s Anthropic’s Claude Mythos Coding agent that appears to have lapped the competition. During a reveal of the latest agents at last week’s HumanX event with over 6,500 worldwide tech leaders in San Fran, the feedback was unlike anything we’ve seen in the AI age yet. Here’s a quote from a rival AI CEO at the event: Claude “has become a religion”, yikes – for multiple reasons including those of the Biblical variety. Here’s a quote from another tech CEO: The things that I could not do last year and I needed to hire 10 people, I can actually build over a weekend and deploy for myself and for the company. So how exactly powerful is this thing? An emergency meeting of the top U.S. bank executives, called by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent with bank executives and their cyber security teams to game plan how to proceed in a world where AI in the wrong hands could potentially identify and penetrate all current security vulnerabilities almost immediately. It was a meeting that led to the federal government talking with Anthropic, a company that only about a month ago it identified as a “supply chain risk”, due to Anthropic’s refusal to allow the U.S. military to use their existing AI’s full capabilities. And out of that meeting came an agreement that Claude Mythos would be a tiered release to top U.S. companies and cyber security firms first. Apple, Crowdstrike and Amazon Web Services were first up. What’s being attempted here is a controlled release of an AI technology that appears to be so great that the Sci-Fi movies you’ve seen about these things could become a reality without attempting to highly regulate the rollout of this thing. Something to keep in mind is that China’s trying just as hard (and countless U.S. companies too) and there’s no guarantee that if similarly powered AI is developed it could be controlled the same way. Last week was the week that AI changed the world forever...now we’ll see how it makes its way in an attempted measured way into society.
Takeaway #2: Now what?
This weekend’s high stakes negotiations seeking a permanent peace plan for Iran were long – 21 hours – and were called “productive” but evidentially were fruitless. Maybe VP JD Vance who led the U.S. delegation for this weekend’s negotiations was playing coy as he said this exiting the talks...The bad news is that we have not reached an agreement. And I think that's bad news for Iran much more than it's bad news for the United States of America. But if he wasn’t playing coy – well, you know what that sounds like. Technically there’s nine days of the originally agreed to ceasefire left. But of course, ceasefires can be broken and the question remains...now what? As in what would change between now and then if the two parties couldn’t bridge the gap this past weekend? At issue currently is the Strait of Hormuz which remains a highly strained point of navigation. The peak day of navigation through the strait since the onset of the war was last Thursday when 9 ships carrying about 12% of the normal load of cargo made it through the strait. For example, yesterday, only 3 ships carrying about 5% of the daily cargo made it through the strait. This is due to the IRGC having operational control of the strait which includes advanced notice by ships to the IRGC of an intent to pass through with tolls ranging from $1 to $2 million per ship to pass through (what many shipping companies believe to be extortion). Something else worth watching is this. On Friday, the insurance premium charged by insurers for tankers traveling through the strait was about 5x the usual price. As of today, it’s up to 7x the usual rate. The price to ensure a ship traveling through the strait indicates a sentiment shift suggesting...
Takeaway #3: It’s riskier to take a ship through the strait today than it was on Friday.
That’s a suboptimal trend to be sure. And that’s preceding the blockade that kicks in at ten this morning. The risk is high as we see what the reaction will be in the financial markets – with oil especially. And while I’ve far, far from removed being a military strategist – if the standoff persists like this it would seem that the only way to ensure normal operations through the strait would be for American boots on the ground with an invasion of Kharg Island which includes the terminal from which almost all of Iran’s oil is processed and shipped and is a fortified staging ground for Iran’s military control of the strait. Stay tuned; it’s a critical week for whatever will be. That’s true of AI, that’s true for putting fuel into whatever it is that you drive.