2010s climate discourse is over, and it isn’t coming back Some of the old leaders are still there. As with Covid holdouts, you still find them from time to time. Like doing archaeology in real life. Someone always has to be the last Japanese soldier in the jungle What’s next?

Online remains this uniquely hostile environment Only the very worst real-life neighborhoods are anything like it. But everyone lives in the ghetto online It’s very strange that we willingly subject ourselves to this In the real world, you move out as soon as possible

“No evidence” Chinese AI agents escaped to the open internet Of course they did. They just haven’t been discovered yet “Wild” AI is a permanent part of the internet ecosystem now. It’s like old style malware, except it adapts in real time

Increasingly US industrial strategy is just “let Musk handle it” Which makes sense. He has genuine convening power. People organize towards his interests. The system *wants* him to succeed It’s a lot for any one person But the future is basically China + the Semi-Autonomous Quasi-Sovereign Musk Zaibatsu

My reaction to Dan Wang’s “Breakneck” relates to this Rather than his lawyer versus engineer dichotomy, I see China and US post 1980 having aligned themselves along techno-industrial versus cultural revolution Each civilization found itself on the opposite side of the equation in the early to mid-20th century. The US was firmly focused on economic reform, while China was fighting this war for its civilizational soul. That culminated in the madness of the late 60s and 70s and they reversed course in short order (within a decade) Since the 60s, US politics has revolved around *our* cultural revolution, which has never resolved You see an echo of this below: Americans imagined massive technological progress, but socio-cultural stasis, whereas now we imagine ever-expanding cultural innovation but material stagnation