If there was one clip I would want every American to listen to today, it would be this one from Bernie Sanders. It’s a 10-minute essential message that is long overdue. This is the first of two shorter posts today, which I hope you will find thought-provoking. Then, I have a very important post tomorrow on the Save America Act and how it dovetails into the Iranian War.
This is not catastrophising, it’s a recognition of the societal threat AI represents. It’s not about using ChatGPT to write a report or an email; this is about the intersection between AI and robotics, the accelerant on the fire igniting this bloodless techno coup.
I have worked with it in detail and seen firsthand its capability to accelerate workflow and application development. It is formidable technology, and we are well past the point where the genie can be put back in the bottle, I’m afraid. So now it’s about adaptation and mitigating societal threat, and this is a complex and demanding task if we are to remain in control of the technology.
I wrote about it at length last year, and in the short intervening period since, AI has advanced beyond comprehension. Agentic AI is part of this new revolution, where specialist models are marshalled to work together like a team of human workers. This is precisely why AI is appealing to the wealthy elite. It represents an opportunity to streamline labour costs to achieve higher profitability. As Bernie points out here, the threat to jobs is existential, but what’s important to recognise is that the jobs most at risk are not at the bottom of the economic food chain, where robots can often struggle; they are middle and upper-middle-class jobs.
From accountants to bankers to research scientists to lawyers to programmers, a whole raft of middle and upper management roles are about to quickly become extinct. That is not to say that jobs performed by low-wage workers will not be affected, but because these jobs have less impact on the bottom line, they are less likely to be in the immediate crosshairs.
I honestly believe we face the potential threat of an economic extinction event. Just as in 1928, when the wealth gap was not dissimilar to what it is today, it took an economic depression and a World War to force an economic reset, which also had the unintended effect of resetting the wealth gap. This time, though, an economic collapse will, I fear, accelerate the use of AI in the recovery process at the expense of employment.
These are dangerous times, and unless we regulate this technology, society itself is facing an extinction event of its own. AI renders human labour acceptable collateral damage in this revolution. A declining population will shift from being a liability to becoming an asset.
The oligarchs believe they have insulated themselves against the human catastrophe that will follow. They believe they are on the right side of a winner-takes-all strategy, and they might be right, but I suspect they are more likely to be wrong because the fly in the ointment they are ignoring is CHINA.
Xi is just sitting back while the West sets itself on fire. They are approaching the AI revolution in a totally different way. They will win because they don’t have to worry about the shareholder class. They don’t plan based on 2-year election cycles; they plan in 10 and 25-year cycles, based on a society's first strategy. What you have to remember is that Chinese investment in infrastructure, technology and education puts them head and shoulders above the US. They are not struggling with a 21% illeracy rate, with 54% of the population having a literacy rate of sixth grade or below. China has a pipeline of highly educated, bilingual graduates from programs designed to dovetail with the country’s economic and technology strategy.
While the US was obsessed with large language models, China has invested time in integrating AI into manufacturing automation, which is central to its wealth engine. They don’t have to build infrastructure; they’ve already done it. They don’t need to invest in supply chain infrastructure because the Belt and Road initiative is already in place.
They own deep-port and road infrastructure across Europe, Africa, and Latin America and have a distribution pipeline ready to go. With an electrification strategy, they are consistently reducing reliance on fossil fuel imports. They are adding capacity to their energy grid faster than any nation on earth.
In 2025 alone, they added 543 GW, with solar accounting for almost 50%. They have now surpassed 1,000 GW of solar power. Given that they manufacture 92% of the world’s solar modules, they have ZERO supply chain issues as they march toward ever-cheaper energy, while the U.S. is running away from renewable energy toward a far more expensive fossil fuel option. In doing this, they are becoming geopolitical fossils themselves.
China also added a further 80 GW of wind power. If you’re looking for a broader energy comparison, the capacity added by China since the end of 2021 already exceeds the entire power system of the United States.
The critical point here is that the top two global powers are approaching the AI revolution from two opposite directions. The Chinese are seeking to integrate it into society, while the oligarchs are seeking to replace it. China is expanding opportunities beyond its borders by providing technology as open source. This is why China will win and become the number one global economy. I keep coming back to the idea that forward planning is part of the Chinese cultural DNA. The reason Trump could not force economic submission with tariffs is that they had already gamed Trump’s strategy and had developed a mitigation strategy.
China didn’t suddenly decide it wanted to be the leading processor of rare earth metals; it decided over a decade ago to focus on this critical process because it knew the world would become reliant on these minerals. It’s one of the reasons they invested in African infrastructure by building roads to expedite access to the resources they knew they would need.
Chinese robotics is way ahead of its US counterparts, and I shudder to think of how this technology and AI has been integrated into their Industrial-Military Complex. China is a legendary learner; they watch, and they learn, just as we have seen them shift from imitation to innovation in the past half-century. You only have to look at their AI Tech-Stack; they have slowly weaned themselves off US chips by being forced to innovate in response to sanctions designed by the US to slow down their ability to innovate. The chasm that once existed between frontier technologies is no more, and they appear to progress at a fraction of the cost.
The world is at an inflexion point, and I’m afraid greed will prove to be the downfall of American imperial ambition. Will the rich survive? Of course they will, they always do. As for everyone else, I’m afraid you’re on your own unless they are stopped. My advice is to learn to speak Chinese if I’m honest.
For those who would like to see the full press conference, which included AOC’s excellent contribution to the conversation, I have included the whole 30-minute event below. AOC’s excellent contribution begins at 15:,07.
Thank you for this post.
It’s not as if Americans have to compete in the same model that brought us to the brink of societal collapse, where fresh water will soon be in short supply around the world, where agricultural systems are collapsing across the planet, and where climate catastrophe will put the final nail in the coffin of our hubris-filled society with its myths of progress.