@LukeGromen I can see the application story how decentralized open-source models are downloaded and customized for industrial productivity. I'm having a much harder time figuring out how centralized closed models end up doing this (and seems I'm not alone)
@Inhumansoflate1 "I'll do whatevah ya want guv'nor! I'll fookin' lolly yer knob! Ya' wont me to eat yer shite? I'll eat yer fookin' shite off the floor of a Tesco"
After the first counterinsurgency era, we got the Vietnam syndrome; with a brief American spring that reined in the imperial presidency for a few years. After the second counterinsurgency era, we got the Iraq war syndrome; generating the shiny if false dawn of the Obama presidency.
The strategic and operational defeat in the Ramadan War has demonstrated that US power projection is becoming prohibitively costly. In part, this is due to the diffusion of military technology. But there are other factors that have dramatically raised the cost of imperialism.
An overlooked factor is the modernization of large parts of the globe. This modernization is social, demographic, economic, industrial; the whole works. Importantly, there is also political modernization. Think of how the Houthis have ‘made power’ sensu Huntington. Or recall the political modernization or rationalization recently documented by Bajoghli and @vali_nasr in Iran: sophisticated statecraft, not revolutionary ideology, governs in Tehran.
In other words, what I want to suggest is that there is a much broader process of global depolarization that has matured, not just the precision-strike regime. This is a world of hard balls. A lot of folks have the means, the organization, the institutional structures, and above all, the will to confront the empire.
The question then is whether defeat in Iran will convince US elites to abandon the expansive project of American power and thereby close the gap between means and ends. Or whether we will get our ass kicked out of Asia, which will, of course, spell the definite coda of not just the empire but the Columbian era of Western primacy tout court.
The five-second epistemology of China Used AI to Build a Car. Silicon Valley Used AI to Invent a New Way to Bill You for Spam About the Future.
China built the car. AI in Shenzhen is the line that welds the BYD. AI in Hefei is the foundry. AI in Dongguan is the floor that ships. DeepSeek runs. Qwen runs. CATL runs. The Ascend stack runs. The thing lands. People trust the thing that lands. They trust the machine that hands them a car for nineteen thousand dollars and a warranty. Eighty-seven percent is not faith. Eighty-seven percent is a receipt.
The empire built the popup. AI in America is the box that darkens the screen before the sentence finishes. AI in America is the chatbot named Ashley who will not let you reach a human. AI in America is the funnel, the drip, the nurture flow, the ad chasing a sweater already bought. The conference circuit. The AIP Bootcamp. The LinkedIn migration. The keynote about compute, the Substack about the keynote, the panel about the Substack. Thirty-two percent is not ignorance. Thirty-two percent is also a receipt.
Nobody in America fears the intelligence. They fear the infestation. They have never once met the intelligence. They have only met the spam wearing its coat. You cannot poll against a mind you were never allowed to reach. You poll against Ashley. Ashley loses to immigration enforcement because Ashley will not transfer you to a human and enforcement, at least, sends one to the door.
Now the part that ends the argument. The empire owns the compute. The empire raised the 480 megawatt substation and drank the aquifer to cool it. The empire holds the cathedral. And the empire aimed all of it at the popup. China holds less compute and aimed it at the factory floor. Trust did not follow the silicon. Trust followed the dock. The country with the most compute trusts AI the least, because it spent the most compute on the thing that hovers instead of the thing that lands.
The center of the map is not Mountain View. The center is the Dongguan floor, where the machine makes a thing and the thing leaves on a truck. Mountain View keeps the keynote about the floor. The floor does not need the keynote. The floor has the truck.
Different things. Same fiscal year. Same Pentagon. Same Mountain View green room. No overlap. One country trusts the machine that builds the car. One country distrusts the machine that chases the sweater. The poll is the Venn diagram with a sample size.
Day 96. Still closed. People trust the thing that lands. Day 36.
ذكية، كاملة. هوشمند، کامل.
落地
@policytensor 1) Assuming the US government has not done so, that is unconscionable
2) "Pyrrhic victory" the US ruling elite still cannot contemplate actual defeat, this is very very bad