My post about Palantir yesterday certainly sparked a conversation or two, as I hoped it would. One thing to understand about me is that I don’t write here for clickbait or to spread conspiracy theories. I’m here to share my thoughts and hopefully spark some critical thinking. I view my role as the guy looking beyond the headlines to highlight the things that might not be getting the coverage they deserve.
My intention yesterday was not to be alarmist, although, in retrospect, I can see how it might have been perceived that way. My intent is to raise awareness of those pulling the strings of Trump to use the immense power of AI to build the tech framework for a surveillance state. I understand that the broader implications of AI are a mystery to many beyond ChatGPT. We live in a world where technology creeps up on us. I remember my love of my life saying to me, when I suggested some years ago that she might find it helpful to own an iPad. ‘What do I need an iPad for? I don’t want to become a slave to technology. She resisted for around 6 months, then said she’d like to give it a go, and I could always use it if she couldn’t get on with it. Today, I would have to prise it from her cold, dead hands; it has become an integral part of her daily life. Without it, she would be lost.
Historically, we are resistant to change; it’s a natural part of the human condition. We tend to fold when it can be proven that it can make life easier. From the motorcar to the fridge to the TV, once we see the benefits technology can bring, we tend to embrace it, perhaps with scepticism at the outset, but once we feel the benefits in our lives, we are all in. AI is no different. The problem with technology is that humans are never far away from wanting to use it to take something from someone, and so what was intended for good becomes militarised, or used to steal from people, and the rest is history. The only constant is the pursuit of profit. No matter what the good intent was at the outset of a vision for a better tomorrow, it will inevitably succumb to monetisation. We are nothing if not predictable as a species.
Video streaming would have taken years to arrive in every home had it not been for pornography and the opportunity for profit it presented. From the Industrial Revolution to the development of the atomic bomb and the desktop computer, all are part of a journey that has generated immense wealth. Each has been an incremental step towards this new technology revolution. You would think we would have learned from the lessons of the past. Alas, whether it’s industrial advancement, technology, or the pursuit of power, it seems we are destined to repeat the same mistakes over and over again. There’s no limit to our ability to justify our insatiable appetite for greed. We consistently arrive at the same justification: ‘If we didn’t exploit you, someone else would’
OpenAI did not begin life as the apex predator of Artificial Intelligence. This was the company’s initial mission statement:
‘OpenAI is a non-profit artificial intelligence research company. Our goal is to advance digital intelligence in the way that is most likely to benefit humanity as a whole, unconstrained by a need to generate financial return. Since our research is free from financial obligations, we can better focus on a positive human impact.’
Their current mission statement:
OpenAI is an AI research and deployment company. Our mission is to ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity.
When it comes to profit, there’s nothing that an edit can’t fix. They go on to say of the future:
Our vision for the future of AGI
Our mission is to ensure that artificial general intelligence—AI systems that are generally smarter than humans—benefits all of humanity.
I’m not here to judge, merely to observe how once you introduce market forces, everything changes. Let me be clear, I have no problem with profit and free markets. It seems to me that Capitalism is the only system with the potential to deliver prosperity to all citizens in the society in which it operates. On paper it looks great, but when the rubber hits the road, base human instincts kick in and it all goes to shit. Why? Because we are all inherently greedy and obsessed with self-preservation. The only real-life way to compare the approach to market-driven economies is to compare the US approach with China, which we will attempt to do in my next post.
Let’s begin, though, by examining an intermediate fiscal and societal model before considering China, which is unique. Europe is what I consider capitalism with a conscience. This is not so much evident in the UK, which is slowly creeping towards the US dog-eat-dog model. In 2016, the right in Britain, under the guise of BREXIT, voted to leave behind its social conscience under the false premise of ‘taking back control’. Those pesky foreigners have so much to answer for.
If you want to examine a prime example of isolationist ideology versus sound fiscal management, look no further than the UK. BREXIT is currently costing Britain around 4% of GDP. The Conservative government at the time, along with Trump’s best English buddy, Nigel Farage, were wedded to the Republican ideology of isolationism. They lied. and lied just as Trump does, and they won the argument, which took the UK out of the European Union. By 2019, just 3 years into their wet dream, it had cost the UK economy £140 billion. Estimates indicate that it is currently costing £37 billion every year. Isolationist policies DO NOT work; they make a country poorer, and here in Britain, we are a living example that it does not work.
I could write a whole post just on BREXIT. Still, the point I’m making is that if you combine isolationism with unfunded tax cuts for the rich as implemented by Liz Truss, a Prime Minister who failed to outlast a rotting lettuce, the economic result is catastrophic. The hard right hailed her mini-budget in September 2022 as a fiscal masterstroke. Oh, it was a stroke alright, one that led to a £30 billion economic heart attack that placed the UK economy on life support. To my American friends, I ask: which part of the UK's economic destruction are you struggling with as an example of what not to do?
Hopping across the English Channel to Europe, we find a capitalist system with what I like to describe as an embedded social conscience. Unlike the US model, it places regulations on businesses to be responsible for their actions and accept responsibility for the welfare of their employees. While services throughout Europe vary, affordable healthcare and childcare are widely available, as is family leave and paid holiday for all employees. All EU member states are required to provide a minimum of four weeks' paid holiday allowance per year. Still, many go beyond the mandated requirement, 34 days in Spain and Germany, and 31 days in France. Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, while encouraged by the EU, is not mandated. For an insight into DEI in Europe, I'd like you to please take a look at this piece, a conversation with a Filipina-American DEI consultant based in Spain.
The reason I pursued this topic during our conversation today is that I want to lay the groundwork for the very different approaches the US and the EU are adopting regarding AI. Also, I'd like to clarify the connection between Trump and the EU, which is crucial to the US economy. Trump may well portray Europe as a subservient partner in the context of his imperial global economic ambitions, but he is beyond delusional. American tech hates the EU because it can't divide and conquer the markets of a trading bloc. It can’t, for example, impose Starlink within trade negotiations. This also applies to agricultural and other export items that fail EU regulatory standards. This truly irks Trump, and he’s not shy about mentioning it at every opportunity, along with a bonus lecture on the free speech he’s now denying his own citizens.
The European Union (EU) is the world's largest trading bloc. It’s the second-largest economy in the world in nominal terms, after the United States, and the third-largest at purchasing power parity (PPP), after China and the US. China has long viewed the EU as a significant opportunity, and sales of its electric vehicles are a prime example of what is considered a win-win for both trade relations and EU consumers. Trump’s imbecilic approach to trade, along with his withdrawal from the soft power stage, represents the biggest threat to the US's future economic prosperity in decades. Canada’s new alignment with the EU and the reimagining of trading relations with China should be at the forefront of the minds of US economic policymakers. As we move forward with this conversation, I’d like you to bear in mind what I’ve discussed above, because it will play a role in the conversation moving forward.
If I were an American business leader in this moment, I would be deeply concerned for several reasons, not least of which is the bond market's low appetite for investing in U.S. debt, even before considering the escalating trade conflict with China. It doesn’t matter what Trump is dealing with; everything is viewed through a ‘personal’ lens. Data drives none of his tariff or economic moves; they are driven by how he feels in the moment and who has upset him that day. Everything is about personal vendettas and vengeance. The problem he now has is that everyone has seen it before, to the point where the markets have started to factor in his lunacy. I would highly recommend watching the clip below and taking on board every word because she’s absolutely on the money(pun intended)
Why is this important in the context of our conversation? Because Trump has gone all in on AI, and that decision faces some significant challenges ahead, which is at the centre of this series of posts.
This is a good point for me to extend a big shout-out to the paid subscribers of the Truth Matters publication. You, my friends, are what enable me to invest in in-depth research to produce series like this, which 60,000 subscribers now have access to regularly. I have committed to my readers that I will never place my work behind a paywall or accept sponsorship for any content I post. It is only with the generous support of my paid subscribers that I am able to do this. No reader should have to pay to read the truth, and you make that possible, so thank you from the bottom of my heart.
Back to the matter at hand. Trump is like the gambling addict sweating at the poker table, having bet his house on an average hand, where the bond market is the dealer. He’s willing to throw in Federal Lands and the family silver too if need be. After all he’s the master of spending other people’s money. It’s not for nothing that the phrase ‘the bank always wins’ was born. The US shipped all its manufacturing jobs to China of its own free will. This fallacy that ‘China stole our manufacturing’ is a farce. US corporations just saw profit in cheap Chinese labour and have gorged themselves on it for decades. All this talk of ‘bringing manufacturing back to America’ aside from being expensive and unrealistic, is frankly hypocritical beyond measure. Corporations created the Rust Belt, and the desperation of a generation who were sacrificed at the altar of shareholder greed.
Trump has been convinced by the tech bros that AI is a surefire winner, and if he goes all in, his legacy will make him the living embodiment of Captain America. At face value, it’s a good bet. Who’d bet against AI right now? I certainly wouldn’t, but the burning question is not whether you would bet your house on AI, but rather whether you would bet your house on the US AI tech stack. For me, on this question, the jury is still out.
For the US to truly dominate the AI revolution, it needs power, not Trump power, but electricity, and this is where it gets really interesting. GPUs are essential for AI due to their parallel processing capabilities, which allow them to handle the computationally intensive tasks required for training and deploying AI models. If this sounds like gobbledygook, don’t worry, it’s not important in the context of this conversation. All you need to know is that AI consumes power far beyond most people’s imagination, and as AI advances, this consumption will only increase. The US power infrastructure has long been the victim of underinvestment, as has most infrastructure in the country. Had Biden not passed the bipartisan Infrastructure Bill(which many Republicans voted against), the problem would be even worse.
The largest output that America can currently generate at any one time is one terawatt (one trillion watts). Meanwhile, China is currently capable of generating three times that amount. The United States is presently at one terawatt and is projected to reach two terawatts over the next fifteen years. In contrast, China is currently at three terawatts and scaling up to deliver eight terawatts. Cast your mind back to the 5G technology race and consider who ultimately won it. I would remind you that Huawei won that race. What was America’s reaction? To strip out all 5G infrastructure in the US and Western Europe supplied by Huawei, citing security concerns? These were very legitimate concerns, but that wasn’t the sole reason. The reality is that China has participated in these races before and has won.
Time and time again, the West’s reaction to any perceived Chinese technology threat is to ban it and restrict access to technology that may pose a commercial threat to US tech dominance. Deepseek changed all that, and China’s AI models were born despite, not because of, US technology. They are a direct result of having to innovate in response to the restrictions imposed by US sanctions.
Similarly, Huawei has been compelled to respond to China’s inability to access Nvidia’s latest GPU chips for use in AI development. As a result, they are doing what they do best, looking at the competition and simply using it as a benchmark to beat. They recognise that, in this moment, due to US sanctions, they can’t access the latest Nvidia chips. So while they play catch-up, they are leveraging innovation in cloud infrastructure to compensate for the lower upstream performance.
The bottom line is that Western sanctions are merely a leash poorly attached to a post, and it’s only a matter of time before China breaks free. China might be playing catch-up right now, but they are laser-focused and, as ever, playing the long game. They can do this because of state support. They are not slaves to shareholders, and that represents a substantial commercial advantage.
America is staring down the barrel of a debt crisis at a time when it desperately needs access to capital. With $9 trillion of debt to refinance this year alone, along with spiking bond yields, the window dressing is becoming increasingly important to present a ‘nothing to see here’ image to the world. Meanwhile, the Fed is being forced to buy up treasuries in the dark to prevent the markets from panicking. There has never been a more critical time to have competent leadership in the White House. Instead, the US has a poor taste, thin-skinned global economic village idiot in charge. What could possibly go wrong?
This week may be a long journey as I walk you through the big picture, but take heart from the fact that this administration WILL ultimately fail. My only concerns are:
How much irreparable damage Trump will have done at the collapse of his imperial rein.
It won’t fail because of Democrats; it will fail because Trump will likely metaphorically trip over his own feet.
I must tell you that the worst possible outcome in 2026 is if Trump loses the midterms, rather than Democrats winning them. The last thing America needs right now is a party in charge that Americans voted for, not because they believed in them, but because they hated the other guy.
Tragically, history tells us that any victory will be hailed as a significant win, regardless of the truth, and that is of deep concern to me.
I’m reminded of an episode from the West Wing where Joey Lucas is sitting in the Oval Office and says of the team assessing polling that it’s time to dial things up:
……you're like the French radical, watching the crowd run by and saying, "There go my people. I must find out where they're going so I can lead them."
Great post. Thank you for continuing to educate on the long game . It's scary. It's our responsibility to educate ourselves on the deeper challenges we are facing.✌️
It's also laws that are passed for the so called good of the public that are often abused. Be aware that if the people this, as the best thing in the world for you, are a bunch of money grubbing sleezebags, chances are it's not going to be so great for you.