I have been a bit absent of late. I find writing like a drug. When you are writing, you write a lot. But when you come down off of it, it does not seem necessary. A lot has gone on in the world of tech in the past six months. A lot has gone on in the world of geopolitics. All things point toward our AI future. The marriage of tech and geopolitics. For whatever reason, the rapid pace of technological change faces challenges from the rapidly changing mind of the President. He can’t seem to make up his mind, let alone define a clear path forward. The mere statement Make America Great Again, looks to the past not to the future. The past provides fond memories and valuable lessons, but you cannot bring it back. Unfortunately there is a broader world and even more is happening out there. Much is driven by some of the weaker human emotions, such as fear and loathing (shout out to Hunter S). Decisions with far reaching consequences being driven by emotion rather than rational thought. It makes for a confusing present and an uncertain future. A lot is being driven by the rapid pace and change of technological advancement. A train that has left the station and has no brakes.
The past 6 months has seen me spend a lot of time reading up on AI. Everything from Ray Kurzweil “The Singularity is Nearer” and Karen Hao’s “Empire of AI” to Adam Beckers “More Everything Forever” and about a halt dozen other books. Learning about the personalities who will determine our fate. For all the brilliance of Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, Sam Altman, Jeff Bezos, Sergey Brin etc..they are billionaires and with that comes a lack of empathy for their fellow man. Looking at freedom as the ability to achieve even greater wealth. In the meantime we are receiving a daily diet of AI chatbots going rogue. The cries for regulation from the public and the cries from billionaires that we can self regulate….trust us. Trump assembled them all and came up with…we can self regulate. He can be rather easy to manipulate, We should be listening to Geoffrey Hinton, Demis Hassabis, Yann LeCun. and Yosuff Bengio. Ye stehy are academocs but ethy are also more humble.
The global order is being turned upside down as America goes into remission. Retreating from governing bodies claiming that the US is the only country capable of reason. Treating the rest of the world as it owes the US a debt of gratitude. Therefore it can do what it wants and if not granted it does a bunch of hit and run missions. Then we call ourselves strong. We see breakdowns all over the world. Ukraine and Russia War. Gaza and Israel where over 76,000 Palestinians have perished. Venezuela, where we deposed Maduro through a clever military exercise. We replaced with a new figure, but in short it is the same government. The difference being it will be expected to do Trumps bidding. The Venezuelan people will continue to suffer. Pakistan and India, always a concern because they are nuclear. Thailand and Cambodia seem to be on pins and needles. Will the US seize Greenland? Not based on current agreements. Iran is yet again front and center, as Israel convinces the US to go to war. Will it lead to regime change? Not likely. It turns out Iran has incredible strategic importance. When oil prices rise the planet suffers as inflation rears its ugly head. Putin could not be happier. As is usual in crisis people are quickly educated. I guess the good news is most people now are aware of where the Strait of Hormuz is and its significant strategic importance. All this happening while China watches.
On the technology front a different war rages. The race for Artificial Intelligence supremacy is in full throttle. Companies like Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Facebook are spending billions on adding new data centers. Seeking tax breaks from any state willing to give into them, Promising jobs, but delivering only in the short term. Failing to deliver hardly any jobs for the long term. The tech titans keep laying off people saying AI can do many of the jobs. They promise a new ecosystem of startups being created which will give new jobs. Though I agree there are a lot of new AI startups, will they create new jobs? I believe there are some new jobs. However, the new jobs are not enough to hire everyone being laid off from the big tech companies. In the end one has to ask what the goal is and here the path is fairly clear. From Artificial Intelligence we move to Artificial General Intelligence (AGI). The best definition of AGI comes from former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, “self determination”. A scary thought. It used to be widely stated this is at least 20 years away. In recent years that has widely dropped below five. After AGI comes Artificial Super Intelligence (ASI). Singularity, This is when AI achieves Apex status in intelligence, Humans will no longer be top of the pyramid, What these companies like Google, Open AI, Microsoft, Facebook etc..do not tell you is it was never about AI it was always about AGI and eventually ASI.
You take these two things and put them side by side. We have a world undergoing a massive technological and geopolitical shift. At the same time, the world is facing massive political turmoil. It can make it hard to get out of bed in the morning. Let alone get a good night of sleep to begin with. There is a lot on anxiety in America. Rightfully so. The world order which America so painstakingly crafted is now on the brink of collapse. NATO which has been a bedrock of American alliances is teetering and a fundamental tenant of alliances is being destroyed…trust This became even more clear when NATO allies would not come to the assistance of the US in the Strait of Hormuz. However if your allies are not informed of your intent, it does no good to weigh their interest after you have already committed. We are now over eight weeks in and have failed to define the mission or defined how we get out. As Bill Clinton said when contemplating the Balkan War, “It is not going in that concerns me, it’s getting out”.
Beyond American companies we have entered into a new AI arms race with China. China has proven creative in building new AI models. Though considered a little less than the US AI models they are making fast progress. There are areas where they hold the edge. Autonomous drones, as we learned from Ukraine are the immediate future of war. The ability to create and manufacture a massive swarm of drones is key to the future of war, This is where capitalism failed America. In the spirit of maximizing profits and reducing expensive labor we offshored our manufacturing base. Where did we offshore? Primarily China. If an arms race comes down to manufacturing drones we are in big trouble. China’s navy is now larger than ours. Though not as sophisticated it leap frogged us because we have limited capacity for ship building. The marriage of the private sector and public sector will be important in this race and the US has strong companies and minds to tackle this risk to US defense. A good read on this is Katrina Manson’s book “Project Maven”.
The future of work will be challenged. What will a work week look like? What skills will I need to place myself in a strong position? As AI makes us more efficient will it lead to less people being needed? The unemployment rate has ticked up the past few years. Only residents who are in the labor force are counted in the unemployment rate. Those who have given up looking for a job are not. A controversial position. As large multinationals lay off more people their CEO’s celebrate because they are becoming more efficient. Not to mention they will receive an even larger bonus package. To worry about the well being of citizens is considered too woke. We are creating our own American caste of untouchables. The middle class is being eroded, putting us into two camps: rich and poor. This is not new news, however our ability to do anything about it is seemingly crippled by an onslaught of noise via news outlets, social media platforms and the internet in general.
A big challenge is the tech universe is competition. A failure to innovate is equal to death. A fear of a smaller, nimbler company capturing early market share in a new field. In my youth Bill Gates hammered this point into his employees. A paranoia that if we were doing something wrong, what were we missing? How quickly can we pivot? If competition was emerging how can we defeat it? A prime example from the dotcom days was Netscape. Once in Microsoft’s cross hairs it was quickly determined they must be crushed. Competition and fear have always fueled the industry. However, now the industry is fueled and funded by companies with trillion dollar market caps. Thus you see a massive race in data center build out. There is concern that the cost of this massive capital investment will not see a quick rate of return. Which may be true, but in some ways this is like the massive infrastructure build out during the dotcom era. It will be harder for the new startup to become the next Google or Amazon. The next great company may be far off if ever.
Politics is always present whether at the local level or national level. In the US we have over time fallen into two camps. The democratic left or the MAGA right. Independents are too arrogant to participate. At a time when we need to come together on common goals we are splitting apart. We should come up with a energy strategy. We should have policies in place on climate change. We need a long term plan to address the deficit. We need to address our healthcare challenges. We need to take infectious diseases seriously. These all may be an area where AI can help guide us. It would be interesting if AI says you need to cut your defense budget by 25% or 50%? How would a politician argue with an entity that is not human? The challenge is and what I did not list is we do not have a cohesive strategy when it comes to AI. If you look at our congressional make up it is mostly old white guys.
What is curious here is not what we are watching. It is what are we not watching, China is moving fast and being both tactical and strategic in their plans. One of the key factors in leading the AI race visa vi China is energy. A lot of energy. Electric energy. While the US fixates on oil (a 20th Century fuels), China looks to the future. We need all of the energy we can get which means oil, coal, wind, solar, nuclear etc..No one energy can do it all. China has moved way ahead of the US in robotics. This is important as China faces a population challenge. By the end of the century based on current mortality rates China’s population will drop down to 750 million people, some our projecting lower. Some would say China will begin to lose its manufacturing dominance, enter the robot. China has invested heavily in this area of technology. It will pay big dividends in the manufacturing of iPhones as well as China’s rapidly emerging EV auto industry. The latter they have already taken the lead and have moved beyond what Elon Musk’s Tesla is delivering.
The future is murky. It is not clear. My fear is it will become clear but that clarity will not come from humanity. It will come from our replacement. If we go with AGI as being self determination, what will it determine? Will it set goals for itself? Will it be concerned with the state of the planet? If the earth is overpopulated what will it deem as a solution? Does it have any ethics when it comes to genocide? Can it feel? Can it care, will it care? We have a few people who are tech gods at top of the pyramid making decisions that will impact billions of people. If ASI is achieved will anything humanity thinks even matter? The silence of opposition to these questions is deafening, As stated earlier tech moves fast and it is now entering a phase where those who have built it will no longer control it. We will have to ask our replacement what our future is.
Good Night and Good Luck
Hans Henrik Hoffmann Oct 5, 2026
