@chamath Great thinking as usual. One thought, hardware has been inflationary so far. So, the decent might not really take hold until hardware is mostly in place.
Peter Thiel just compressed forty years of American decline into one sentence.
Thiel: “Silicon Valley deals in the world of bits; most of the economy is the world of atoms.”
For four decades, the most talented engineers alive funneled into a single corridor.
Computers. Software. Mobile. Internet.
Not because the physical world ran out of problems.
Because solving them became illegal.
Thiel: “It was a bad idea to become an aerospace engineer. These were all industries that were sort of in structural decline because they were getting outlawed, they were getting regulated to death.”
Nuclear. Chemical. Mechanical. Aerospace.
Field after field, regulated into silence before a generation of builders ever arrived.
Thiel: “Computer science was the only sort of scientific, technical field that actually had a future in the 1980s.”
So the builders went where building was still allowed.
The physical world paid in decades.
Founders Fund: “We wanted flying cars. Instead we got 140 characters.”
That is not satire. That is the ledger.
Now AI is forcing the reckoning no one scheduled.
The intelligence being built inside data centers does not stay inside data centers.
It moves into manufacturing. Into energy. Into aerospace. Into every domain that was locked and left to decay.
That gap is closing. Faster than most institutions can process.
America fills it. Or cedes it.
The American people are being lied to about AI.
The Doomers offer apocalyptic prophesies of job loss and oppression; the Utopians promise a future without toil—a life without meaning or mission. They both neglect human agency.
The future of AI is not an inevitability to be endured by the American people—it is for us, the American people, to shape.
I’ve spent the past two decades alongside the men and women building the future of American AI. They include some of the best software engineers in the world, but also college dropouts, veterans, blue-collar autodidacts, and nurses.
They recognize AI is a tool for them to wield to make themselves more productive and our country safer and more prosperous.
Below are some principles and themes I’ve seen informing the people wielding AI effectively and in service of worthy ends.
I. AI is a tool for the American worker, not his replacement.
The promise of AI in the enterprise is to make the American worker 50x more productive—to unleash his taste and agency. Look no further than the maritime industrial base, where AI enabled the manufacturer to open a third shift. Or the ICU where a nurse learned to wield AI so she could spend more time bedside, where she’s needed most.
The future of AI is being built on frontlines and factory floors.
II. The American worker will wield AI to do more with less—and become more productive and valuable as a result.
For a century, American prosperity was underwritten by a simple bargain: when the worker produces more, the worker earns more. That bargain was broken in the 1970s by policy choices that stripped workers of power. We will not repeat that mistake. When AI doubles output, the worker who wields it should see that gain reflected in his paycheck, his equity stake, his share of the enterprise.
III. The American worker deserves world-class tools, not AI trinkets.
The electrical engineer in Georgia who enlisted in the Navy out of high school deserves the same capabilities as the Stanford CS grad in Silicon Valley. He deserves instruments of genuine productivity, not consumer toys.
AI is the printing press of our age. The same technology that serves Fortune 500 companies should serve the American worker.
IV. AI is an American birthright.
AI is the product of American grit, ingenuity, and culture. It is our birthright. Workers should have access to meaningful AI education that helps them bend AI to their will—not the other way around.
V. AI implementation should be shaped by and for frontline users.
The frontline worker understands what the C-suite cannot. Policy should be shaped by practitioners—the nurse, the manufacturing technician, the logistics coordinator. Push power to the tip of the spear and let the American worker do what he does best.
VI. AI should be used to slash bureaucracy and unleash human agency.
AI should eliminate bureaucracy, not add to it. Every layer of process that stands between the frontline worker and their ability to do their job is deadweight to be destroyed.
VII. The development and deployment of AI should prioritize American workers and American industry.
AI development and deployment should prioritize American workers and American industry. China's manufacturing productivity grows at 6% per year. Ours grows at 0.4%. The American worker with AI superpowers erodes China's competitive advantage.
I see these principles embodied every day by men and women who are not invited to speak on panels or record podcasts and publish op-eds. They are quietly leading by example, and proving what is possible when the most powerful technology ever created meets the most capable workforce ever assembled.
I’m proud to share the future they’re building with @FoxNews.
Link to the full piece below.
https://t.co/siwYSvlmat
@johnkonrad My dad had the same complaint about his service in Vietnam, always said we lost because they were not allowed to take the fight to the enemy. It's refreshing to see our leadership support the decision making of our service people 🙌 👏 🙏
Chamath: Fraud at this scale will end the American Empire if nothing is done
“It is a crucible moment for American society.”
“If nothing happens and we deem this kind of theft acceptable, it is the beginning of the end of the American Empire.”
“It's just a level of disrespect and lack of care for this country.”
“I will be waiting and observing how important it is to root this out, that's number one.”
“The second, which is more tactical political calculus, this is an enormous opportunity for the Republican Party if they take this and run with this.”
“Is there waste, fraud and abuse in every state? Absolutely. I don't think this is endemically a Democratic problem, but the scale of it is so gargantuan in these Democratic states that if the Republicans don't take advantage of it, I think it is a huge political miscalculation.”
“So there is this tactical opportunity, which I think if you want to have a chance in the midterms and if you generally wanna have a chance to level-set the country, you must take this and run with it.”
“And then separately, if as Friedberg says, it does die on the vine, it is the beginning of the end of the American Empire, unfortunately.”