The conclusion I’m increasingly resolving on is “China is cooked, the US is cooked for different reasons, and the competition is to see who crashes out first.”
This is not good: "Currently, China isn’t even a top priority for most American strategic thinkers." Combine that with recent reporting of what's happening at the NSC, and things don't look so great at the moment.
While only one of many examples, you can use AI as illustrative of some of the broader challenges the U.S. is facing with matching China's ability to scale while increasing productivity growth rates. AGI and ASI are wonderful research topics, but at this point we need -- as Rush and Jeff Ding continue to underscore -- faster diffusion and putting the technology to work in ways that optimize scaled manufacturing & leading-edge software integration. Both of which are and should remain American strengths.
I'm more pessimistic about "allied scale" than Rush and Kurt seem to be, at least for the time being. Breaking trust with allies & partners and treating them as targets for coercive strategies rather than as equals, is hardly conducive to long-term success. Humility is in short supply right now. Rush's diagnosis and prescription are excellent; the ability to execute them remains highly suspect. ("Instead, we have a unilateral, diminished American position with the entire world angry at us. I don’t believe that was the optimal approach." That's the biggest understatement of the conversation!)
I've seen few books on China's strategy with such deep primary sourcing as The Long Game. Remarkable reading. Can't wait to see what comes out of the Georgetown/CFR initiative.
Doshi: “We’re discussing the quality of life Americans enjoy, which stems from constituting just 5% of the world’s population yet achieving extraordinary wealth — a reality made possible by a system designed to sustain this quality of life.” So (a cynic might ask) is that what it all comes down to? Ensuring the sustainability of an environmentally unsustainable “system” which, drawing on the historical legacies of the British, Japanese, American and other empires and supported by post-WWII systems of neocolonial & neoliberal repression & exploitation, has made it possible for 5% of the world’s population to consume 25% of the world’s resources, including 18% of the world’s primary energy while producing 30% of the world’s waste, all under internal conditions which ensure that the top 0.1% control nearly 14% of the wealth—and are actively rigging the system to increase their share? Isn’t that kind of a hard sell?
Every diatribe about disproportionate resource consumption ever written employs circular logic. Resource provision follows technological capacity and consumer demand. There is literally no such thing as a country that “consumes 25% of the world’s resources,” because the denominator is not remotely fixed.
Energy is sufficiently cheap that processing and reprocessing of materials is a simple matter compared to any period of history earlier than 50 years ago. So long as we continue to progress towards making energy consumption sustainable we will be completely fine even as other societies grow to have American per capita demands for goods and services.
No one who is genuinely from a poor society buys this bullshit about the US consuming too much, they simply want to make it so their societies have the capacity and demand to do the same, which is the most difficult task in human history.
The conclusion I’m increasingly resolving on is “China is cooked, the US is cooked for different reasons, and the competition is to see who crashes out first.”
Terrific conversation.
This is not good: "Currently, China isn’t even a top priority for most American strategic thinkers." Combine that with recent reporting of what's happening at the NSC, and things don't look so great at the moment.
While only one of many examples, you can use AI as illustrative of some of the broader challenges the U.S. is facing with matching China's ability to scale while increasing productivity growth rates. AGI and ASI are wonderful research topics, but at this point we need -- as Rush and Jeff Ding continue to underscore -- faster diffusion and putting the technology to work in ways that optimize scaled manufacturing & leading-edge software integration. Both of which are and should remain American strengths.
I'm more pessimistic about "allied scale" than Rush and Kurt seem to be, at least for the time being. Breaking trust with allies & partners and treating them as targets for coercive strategies rather than as equals, is hardly conducive to long-term success. Humility is in short supply right now. Rush's diagnosis and prescription are excellent; the ability to execute them remains highly suspect. ("Instead, we have a unilateral, diminished American position with the entire world angry at us. I don’t believe that was the optimal approach." That's the biggest understatement of the conversation!)
I've seen few books on China's strategy with such deep primary sourcing as The Long Game. Remarkable reading. Can't wait to see what comes out of the Georgetown/CFR initiative.
Doshi: “We’re discussing the quality of life Americans enjoy, which stems from constituting just 5% of the world’s population yet achieving extraordinary wealth — a reality made possible by a system designed to sustain this quality of life.” So (a cynic might ask) is that what it all comes down to? Ensuring the sustainability of an environmentally unsustainable “system” which, drawing on the historical legacies of the British, Japanese, American and other empires and supported by post-WWII systems of neocolonial & neoliberal repression & exploitation, has made it possible for 5% of the world’s population to consume 25% of the world’s resources, including 18% of the world’s primary energy while producing 30% of the world’s waste, all under internal conditions which ensure that the top 0.1% control nearly 14% of the wealth—and are actively rigging the system to increase their share? Isn’t that kind of a hard sell?
Every diatribe about disproportionate resource consumption ever written employs circular logic. Resource provision follows technological capacity and consumer demand. There is literally no such thing as a country that “consumes 25% of the world’s resources,” because the denominator is not remotely fixed.
Energy is sufficiently cheap that processing and reprocessing of materials is a simple matter compared to any period of history earlier than 50 years ago. So long as we continue to progress towards making energy consumption sustainable we will be completely fine even as other societies grow to have American per capita demands for goods and services.
No one who is genuinely from a poor society buys this bullshit about the US consuming too much, they simply want to make it so their societies have the capacity and demand to do the same, which is the most difficult task in human history.