imagine the chief scientist for an agricultural chemical company announced one day: "in the next decade we will release a new fertilizer. it will increase crop yields in many regions by 50% and create new abundance, potentially saving many millions from starvation. however, we calculate that it has a 10% chance of creating a massive wave of cancers in populations exposed to it. despite this, we are proceeding with our plan, and raising capital in order to finalize the synthesis of this fertilizer. we are confident that the risk is worth it, because we have a side effect team dedicated to getting this risk as low as possible. we are not going to stop our progress, because if we stop, someone else will develop the fertilizer, and they may pay even less attention to the side effects. it would be better if we were the main seller of the fertilizer. also, we are going to build 10,000 massive silos housing this chemical, and put them inside all of your cities. these silos will create traffic, construction noise, and be unsightly and annoying. they will also be ever-present reminders of the fact that we are actively developing a chemical which we believe has a good chance of killing most of you." the chemical company does not acknowledge the existence of rip-off versions of the product that are potentially even more carcinogenic, or competing Chinese chemical manufacturers working towards the same goal with totally unknown safety characteristics. the chemical company has no stated plan for the rip-offs or competitors, despite acknowledging this 10% risk. their only real plan is to "hopefully solve the side effects as fast as possible, and then offer that chemical solution to our competitors". they have offered no explanation for why their competitors, the Chinese firms, or the rip offs would adopt their solution, even if it existed. their main explanation as to why they should continue developing the fertilizer is that as the most safety-minded firm, they should have as much market share as possible. they have publicly mused about getting the government to ban all of their competitors such that only they, and maybe one other manufacturer, have the exclusive license to distribute this fertilizer. they have offered no explanation as to how they would get the Chinese – or any other – government to cooperate with this plan. how would you react?

after a century of uninterrupted growth, for 15 years, between 2005 and 2020, America did not grow electrical generation. we completely forgot what it meant to grow industrial capacity. politicians constantly talked about "reindustrializing" and "bringing back high-paying blue collar jobs". then AI actually did it. for the first time in 20 years we started reindustrializing America's heartland. creating a massive boom of skilled, high-paying blue collar labor. an enormous construction boom. a new industry emerged to finance the expansion of our aging grid. a grid that needed to grow anyway, if we were going to become a modern, highly electrified economy. and all of a sudden the tech companies and hyperscalers showed up with wads of cash, completely willing to pay for a massive grid expansion. and all the politicians that talked so tough about "bringing back industry and blue collar jobs" panicked when the rubber hit the road. because the NIMBYists had become used to stagnation and freaked out when it came time to build a couple transmission lines. all that tough talk down the drain, because some boomers have AI anxiety and think a warehouse full of computers is unsightly next to a mattress warehouse and a vape shop. probably the most pathetic political episode I've ever witnessed. the only question that really matters is: is it still possible to build anything at all in this country? or have we completely lost the political will?