Manufacturing Is a War Now

The synthetic revolution that began in the 1940s had rewritten the rules of geopolitics. Secure access to raw materials—one of the chief benefits of colonization—no longer mattered that much. One could procure the necessary goods through trade, and if, as in the thirties and forties, the markets closed down, well, that wasn’t the end of the world.

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At the heart of the deterioration of the relationship has been American frustration over trade, especially Chinese theft and forced transfer of American intellectual property as well as Chinese barriers to American exports. There is also concern that China is forging ahead (in no small part because of large government subsidies) in the competition

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On AI policy : Lately, lots of powerful people have been balking about the idea of AI safety. At the woefully misnomered AI Action Summit in Paris, Vice President JD Vance dismissed the idea of AI safety and suggested that as long as America beat everyone else in creating superintelligence, the rest would all take care of itself.

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Thus it is not clear whether the absence of wars involving the great powers is an enduring trend or something of an aberration. Some judge this trend as likely to last, arguing wars between countries have become less common because actual or potential costs have gone up, especially in those instances in which nuclear weapons could be introduced. Ot

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