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Danny Crichton

@dannycrichton.com
178 followers 105 following 455 posts

Write and design Riskgaming scenarios on tech, science and politics. Partner, Research at Lux Capital.

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Danny Crichton @dannycrichton.com · 04/09/2026
Medical details on the first xenotransplanted kidney as a bridge to allotransplantation in The Lancet: www.thelancet.com/journals/la...
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Danny Crichton @dannycrichton.com · 04/09/2026
Is this not the definition of human progress and courage?
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Danny Crichton @dannycrichton.com · 04/09/2026
The only thing more inspiring than the advancing science of xenotransplantation is the indomitable spirit of the patients willing to undergo experimental treatments in pursuit of a better life for themselves and future generations. Thanks Tim: www.nytimes.com/2026/09/03/...
nytimes.com
In a First, a Pig Kidney Kept a Patient Alive Until He Got a Human One
Tim Andrews was the first patient to receive a genetically modified pig kidney as a “bridge” to a human organ transplant.
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Danny Crichton @dannycrichton.com · 25/08/2026
Our game designer Stephen Rubino on what makes Riskgaming and gaming more generally useful from a venture perspective. #RatTapDancingTech
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Danny Crichton @dannycrichton.com · 25/08/2026
15 years ago today, I moved to South Korea and lived as an expat for the first time. Seoul has gotten taller, better looking, richer, and sexier year after year. I, well … there's always Korean plastic surgery 😀
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Danny Crichton @dannycrichton.com · 16/08/2026
Here's a new review from me of Jonathan M. Katz's The Big Truck That Went By, a great book from 2013 that I enjoyed the past week: www.dannycrichton.com/2026/08/16/...
dannycrichton.com
A Review of Jonathan M. Katz’s The Big Truck That Went By
It’s extraordinarily pleasing to read field reporting from deeply embedded foreign correspondents, a vocation that is shamefully underfunded today given the myriad of crises engulfing the world. Even more scintillating is when those same correspondents transform their routine work into a synthesized volume, offering us both a panoramic view
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Danny Crichton @dannycrichton.com · 15/08/2026
New Post: Yes, "elite hubris and its most vile form — condescension — is the ultimate trigger of populism. Yet, infantile rebellion and shouting 'no' is hardly any more useful."
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Danny Crichton @dannycrichton.com · 09/08/2026
New from me: a number of stories this week point to the ever increasing challenges of tech + asymmetric warfare in the 21st century
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Danny Crichton @dannycrichton.com · 01/08/2026
Also exciting weekend reading
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Danny Crichton @dannycrichton.com · 01/08/2026
I had to restrain myself due to luggage, but London book 'haul' from Daunt, Foyles, Waterstones plus Blackwell's at University of Manchester. Yes I am very behind on Jacaranda – I forgot to pick up a copy in Paris
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Danny Crichton @dannycrichton.com · 01/08/2026
Glorious views of SF out the plane window ❤️
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Danny Crichton @dannycrichton.com · 01/08/2026
Speaking of global nuclear war, I wrote about @AnnieJacobsen's new book "Biological War: A Scenario" and how it compares with "Nuclear War: A Scenario." In short: the two books highlight the difference between well-defined catastrophes compared to the infinite uncertainty of bio
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Danny Crichton @dannycrichton.com · 01/08/2026
Maybe the next gen is going to be okay? We had our delightful f(lux) fellows play Four Forks this week, and they pretty much all ended up with positive outcomes! Meanwhile, I led us to global thermonuclear war :( Find out where you end up: fourforks.riskgaming.com
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Danny Crichton @dannycrichton.com · 04/07/2026
A quick post from me on the meaning of America's 250th birthday.
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Danny Crichton @dannycrichton.com · 28/06/2026
New post over the weekend from me, "A review of Fyodor Tertitskiy’s Accidental Tyrant" on North Korea's founder Kim Il-sung: www.dannycrichton.com/2026/06/28/...
dannycrichton.com
A review of Fyodor Tertitskiy’s Accidental Tyrant
North Korea’s opacity is all but impregnable. Its neighbors, Russia and China, are dictatorships that work ever more diligently to control the speech of their citizens, but the two have got nothing on the Hermit Kingdom’s totalitarianism. Even the most rudimentary facts about what’s happening in the
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Danny Crichton @dannycrichton.com · 28/06/2026
I didn't promote last week, but Kim Jong-un is on a roll – no one has bested the U.S. better in the past decade. How did he build a nuclear weapons program against all odds, and why are top U.S. policymakers resigned to their fate? Lessons from the Hermit Kingdom ⬇️
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Danny Crichton @dannycrichton.com · 28/06/2026
As a rent-stabilized NYC resident VC, I am the unique voter that benefits from combo of Mamdani's socialist rent freeze plus Trump's libertarian pro-QSBS improvements plus carried interest deductions. Yes, it all needs reform, but I will take my win-win
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Danny Crichton @dannycrichton.com · 27/06/2026
This weekend's essay from me – sorry, it's 5K words, but if you have the attention span: Chinese economic development, SV workaholics, factory work, what Ren Zhengfei and Steve Jobs share, the most beautiful data center in the world, and comments on the challenges of journalism ⬇️
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Danny Crichton @dannycrichton.com · 16/06/2026
1/ This article in WotR on why South Korea shouldn't build nuclear submarines is a perfect example of why other countries should ignore the diminished ambitions of DC policymakers and just chart their own strategic course: warontherocks.com/south-korea...
warontherocks.com
South Korea Could Build Nuclear Submarines, But It Shouldn’t
In late May 2026, South Korean Defense Minister Ahn Gyu-back unveiled a roadmap to achieving one of Seoul’s top military acquisition goals:
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Danny Crichton @dannycrichton.com · 16/06/2026
Mahmud in this article does a nice job analyzing this debate, and it dovetails with The Weaponization of Expertise: How Elites Fuel Populism by Jacob Hale Russell and Dennis Patterson, which was a solid book on the subject last year.
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Danny Crichton @dannycrichton.com · 13/06/2026
Sound like a platform you use today? Neil Postman: "The telegraph is suited only to the flashing of messages, each to be quickly replaced by a more up-to-date message. Facts push other facts into and then out of consciousness at speeds that neither permit nor require evaluation"
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Danny Crichton @dannycrichton.com · 13/06/2026
My review of Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death, and why a 40 year old book still feels so contemporary: www.dannycrichton.com/2026/06/13/...
dannycrichton.com
A review of Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death
I tend to read older cultural criticism with one of two minds. One is the delectable schadenfreude of witnessing previous moral panics that ultimately turn out to be hysterical outpourings of stupidity (I’m thinking of Dungeons and Dragons and how it will cause children to become Satan-worshippers). That haughty
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Danny Crichton @dannycrichton.com · 13/06/2026
I just love that a whole new generation of starry-eyed tech policy professionals are going to go from "the government needs to solve all of our problems, please regulate us" to "oh my god regulation is so bad in the U.S." We all make mistakes in our youth
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Danny Crichton @dannycrichton.com · 13/06/2026
I wrote this on Tuesday … and then the Friday shut down for foreign nationals using Fable/Mythos happened:
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Danny Crichton @dannycrichton.com · 13/06/2026
As I wrote, "Suddenly, the gaoloise-smoking, Burgundy-drinking, anti-American French intellectuel complaining about European vassalage had a point. Politicians first perked up, and now they are starting to take action."
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Danny Crichton @dannycrichton.com · 13/06/2026
My essay this week is on the increasing political unreliability of American software, and how that threatens the most important source of growth in the U.S. eocnomy. And then we saw what happened last night with Anthropic's Fable/Mythos models. More here: www.readsecurities.com/p/spacex-an...
readsecurities.com
SpaceX and the ominous future of America’s software empire
The ecstasy and decline of getting high (margins)
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Danny Crichton @dannycrichton.com · 13/06/2026
A review of Suzy Hansen’s From Life Itself: www.dannycrichton.com/2026/06/13/...
dannycrichton.com
A review of Suzy Hansen’s From Life Itself
I have to admit: I’ve had a really bad run of nonfiction books lately. All of them have been positively reviewed, some in terms that are magnificently glowing. Many of them have even won prestigious global awards. Time after time after all of the hubbub, I finally get around
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Danny Crichton @dannycrichton.com · 08/06/2026
Lots of great reading this weekend. Here's a review of C. Thi Nguyen's The Score: www.dannycrichton.com/2026/06/08/...
dannycrichton.com
A review of C. Thi Nguyen’s The Score
A decade ago in graduate school, I was part of a reading circle on the sociology of quantification. It’s a small lacuna of an academic field with a massive scope: the incredible quantification of society and the politics behind how people and institutions construct those numbers. It encompasses everything
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Danny Crichton @dannycrichton.com · 28/05/2026
IVF is growing rapidly, but so are its costs. To bring those costs down, doctors and future parents need better analytical tools to optimize IVF success. Today, Alife received approval from the FDA for its AI tool for embryo selection – truly the life of lifesciences research
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Danny Crichton @dannycrichton.com · 28/05/2026
Are AI data centers in space viable? They will be if we build the right infra. That's why Lux led a $90M round into Observable Space, which is using lasers to create higher bandwidth comms between satellites and Earth-based ground stations:
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Danny Crichton @dannycrichton.com · 27/05/2026
There are times when you just wonder whether we are trying to purposely torpedo the American economy. Are we trying to be globally competitive? It's hard for international businesses to invest domestically when the airports are shut down…
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Danny Crichton @dannycrichton.com · 27/05/2026
AI won't eliminate journalists, unless your idea of a journalist is to read social media all day and reblog random tidbits to pump traffic à la 2013. AI is not going to hustle down sources in person, build up a deep sourcing network and develop the trust needed to secure scoops
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Danny Crichton @dannycrichton.com · 27/05/2026
"If it can be automated with AI, it will be automated with AI, so start planning now." I was listening to a major journalism entrepreneur about newsrooms, but the same truth applies across media. The final art is the goal, not the tools that go into making it.
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Danny Crichton @dannycrichton.com · 22/04/2026
My partner Laurence Pevsner has a great op-ed today in the FT on Europe's industrial policy challenges with space launch capabilities in the wake of SpaceX's impending IPO. It builds on his Riskgaming scenario Dead Reckoning that @Lux_Capital ran at Chatham House last month.
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Danny Crichton @dannycrichton.com · 18/03/2026
One of the big projects I am working on is exploring and experimenting with strategic agentic thinking, or how AI models handle decision-making under uncertainty. So far, my conclusion is that humanity isn't f'd yet. More thoughts: www.riskgaming.com/p/gpt-54-pl...
riskgaming.com
GPT-5.4 plays Riskgaming like Machiavelli
An experimental exploration of strategic agentic thinking
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Danny Crichton @dannycrichton.com · 18/03/2026
Claude is so pleasant, so cooperative, and yet, so incapable. GPT-5.4’s version is far more menacing. Read for more observations from pitting AI agents against each other in live Riskgaming negotiations: www.riskgaming.com/p/gpt-54-pl...
riskgaming.com
GPT-5.4 plays Riskgaming like Machiavelli
An experimental exploration of strategic agentic thinking
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Danny Crichton @dannycrichton.com · 18/03/2026
Why is GPT-5.4 so much more secretive in its negotiations while Claude is so much more cooperative? I don’t know, other than it is hilarious that the cultures of the agents match the popular reputations of their parent companies. More observations: www.riskgaming.com/p/gpt-54-pl...
riskgaming.com
GPT-5.4 plays Riskgaming like Machiavelli
An experimental exploration of strategic agentic thinking
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Danny Crichton @dannycrichton.com · 06/03/2026
It will never not be miraculous to me that a coding agent proactively solves problems I didn't ask it to fix. So pleasant!
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Danny Crichton @dannycrichton.com · 06/03/2026
My experience with Claude Code and Codex is just having them fix config bugs is a miraculous gift from the intelligence gods. Given the complexities of modern dev tooling, there's just always some small tweak needed to keep the damn machine running – and they always finds it
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Danny Crichton @dannycrichton.com · 06/03/2026
😭😭😭😭😭😭 "He said most were waiting and seeing before taking action, but that the rich 'really value the ability to move and work wherever they want, when they want, and when something like the Iran war disrupts it, they don’t like it'." www.ft.com/content/80b...
ft.com
Wealthy Dubai residents race back to UAE to avoid tax bills
Some risk spending too few days in the emirate and too many in the UK
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Danny Crichton @dannycrichton.com · 05/03/2026
It's nice to know that NATO is starting to figure out that autonomous warfare is the future. In my discussions last week in London, I am always shocked just how much folks are preparing for yesterday's wars rather than the wars of the future. More: www.bloomberg.com/news/articl...
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Danny Crichton @dannycrichton.com · 05/03/2026
The combination of AI backlash and crony New York capitalism combines in proposed bills like this one, which would ban chatbots from offering any health or legal advice. These chatbots have already been invaluable to me on mundane issues – I can't imagine going back
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Danny Crichton @dannycrichton.com · 05/03/2026
AI in the developing world is an angle that far too few are paying attention to. So I appreciate Lucy Quaggin covering the subject for SCMP. A few quotes and a link below. First, I talk about why US AI companies are paying attention to Africa at all:
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Reposted by Danny Crichton
Geoff Lemon 🍋 @geofflemon.bsky.social · 05/03/2026
It’s weird how, as a writer in say 2002, the only way to reach people in bulk was by collecting email addresses. And in 2026 the only method is… collecting email addresses
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Danny Crichton @dannycrichton.com · 04/03/2026
Converting a Riskgaming scoring spreadsheet (and all of its formulas) into Python code using Claude Code … and apparently Claude Code can't handle spreadsheets larger than 256kb? Am I missing something?
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Danny Crichton @dannycrichton.com · 04/03/2026
Fight punct junk - maintain standards!
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Reposted by Danny Crichton
Mike Masnick @masnick.com · 04/03/2026
FWIW, this is also why I think some of these publications are making a mistake when they opt-out of AI scans, since AI is generating more traffic instead of search. But it's also why I always focus on direct traffic to @techdirt.com more than any referrer.
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Reposted by Danny Crichton
Jacob Aron @jjaron.bsky.social · 04/03/2026
Catastrophic, publication-ending numbers
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Reposted by Danny Crichton
Dan Whitehead @danwhitehead.net · 04/03/2026
Google is choking the internet to death, and it's not an accident. Like all the big tech firms, they want to be the only service you interact with at all times.
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Reposted by Danny Crichton
John Robie @jrobie.bsky.social · 04/03/2026
I'd also suggest that unless you already know a publication exists it can be really difficult find a real one in a sea of AI slop sites. To say nothing of formerly real sites that have been gutted and turned into AI zombies.
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