History as a guide: AI, security and the macro moment
At our executive breakfast in New York, Roger Ferguson and Zach He of Teragon Capital on macro, AI and leadership, with history as the guide.
On September 18, Pamir Ventures hosted an executive breakfast at The Langham in New York, convened by all three of our General Partners: Milad Alucozai, Anand Subramanian and Roger Ferguson. About 20 investors, operators, scientists and finance leaders gathered for a candid, off-the-record morning.
The centerpiece was a fireside chat between Roger and Zach He, Partner at Teragon Capital. Zach's questions covered three areas: macro and markets, AI and crisis management, and leadership. Roger answered them the same way throughout, using history to make sense of the present.
1. Macro, markets and capital allocation
The conversation opened with rising Treasury rates, persistent inflation and how the Fed has responded. Roger has served as Fed Vice Chair, and a key takeaway was that the Fed chair has limited room to maneuver: many of the forces driving inflation today sit outside the reach of monetary policy.
Roger also went back to 1913, when the federal income tax was introduced. He noted how easily and quickly it passed, and drew out what that precedent could mean for today's debates over wealth taxes.
Zach also pressed on what the AI infrastructure buildout means for investors. With so few names driving index returns, where is the better risk-adjusted opportunity, and does it pull capital earlier in the stack?
2. AI and crisis management
Zach described today as a period of parallel "mini-crises": the debate over AI risk, sticky inflation and geopolitical turbulence, all against a market that remains fundamentally sound. He asked how this compares with the full-blown crises of 9/11, the financial crisis and COVID.
On AI, Roger offered a historical contrast. Today's AI leaders are raising safety concerns early, before the technology is fully developed. Nuclear-age scientists confronted the risks of their work largely after the fact. For several in the room, that framing was a source of cautious optimism.
The security theme carried over to the tables. One conversation stood out: fraudsters can lift a person's voice from their personalized voicemail greeting, then use AI to clone it and impersonate them to banks. The simple fix is to switch to the system's default greeting. At least one attendee made the change before the day was out.
3. Leadership and the early stage
Zach closed by asking why someone who has spent decades leading major institutions now spends so much of his time on the earliest stages of company formation.
The takeaway
The AI era is moving fast, but the best guide to it may be the long view. The people who have navigated past cycles can best tell real risk from noise.
Thank you to everyone who joined us, to Goodwin for sponsoring the morning, and to Roger and Zach for a conversation that kept the room engaged well past the scheduled Q&A.
