The commanding heights - just read the whole thing.

Took me about an hour to read, is the talk of the AI and Wall St crowd and essentially argues.

- The US and China will be the two countries with AI, which creates a cold war condition.

- The US durable advantage is compute and capital, with 70% of compute compared to 5% in China meaning they can stay at the frontier.

- The US state will see this as a coming cold war, and look to own more of these companies, just as threatened states have historically in war conditions

- China will not monetize its models because it won’t let its currency float, meaning even Chinese models will be better monetized by the dollar.

- The most neutral dollar is a stablecoin, which while not always controlled by the US as tightly as the fiat dollar, will enable global debasement

- AI labs will make such a massive portion of the K shaped economy, the government needs them to continue to grow

- Therefore the capex must continue to go up and the US Government will backstop that, and potentially, put a limit on the yield from US Treasuries to ensure funding can continue into capex.

- Therefore the US government look to own these companies either via a golden share or gifted equity.

- AI will inextricably replace labor, causing developing economies to enter economic hardship, but the US will be partly insulated by government ownership enabling some level of redistribution

- The value of AI will not accrue to labs which will become government subsidized utilities, or the existing AI supply chain bottlenecks, but the other industries that emerge because AI exists.

Some thoughts.

🧠 This is dystopian as hell.

And while the chain of logic is rational, it's also not confidence-weighted. There are several thousand words devoted to Ravi, who works in India, who’s basically seeing all of his friends out of work and is ultimately laid off via WhatsApp.

The evidence is the gap between Tata Consulting Services Headcount and profitability. And *sure* there's a bit of this, but it doesn't have to end in riots on the street. Woof its dark.

🧠 They call the Wall St leveraged buy out firms of the 1980s “buyout artists.”

This is clearly a play to attract capital to raise a sort of permanent capita / hedge fund vehicle for buyouts. It also speaks to the viewpoints of the writers.

The piece regularly quotes scripture and is self-indulgent and elitist as hell, from the font to the tone, to the worship of Leopold. That creates its single biggest blindspot. Pragmatic realities.

It's a well studied, well reasoned piece but distorted.

🧠 The link for stablecoins is perhaps the best I've seen.

Person in Argentina wants to get paid and pay for AI, stablecoin linked cards are a great way to do that. China won't let its currency be debased and lacks the compute to serve even open-weight models. And yes, a person in Argentina is using stablecoin-linked cards today...

But.

China is building compute capacity. And stablecoins are so early - I think it's hard to credibly say this is an inevitability.

🧠 People are saying this is bullish for certain stocks, while hyperscaler share prices are cratering.

As I write this Amazon stock is down 15% over the week, Google 16.7%. That could be the essay’s thesis, that value is moving away from those who own the rails. But its more about these companies entering negative free cash flow and AI impacting their ads business.

I don't get how this is anything other than a play for investment dollars. If you're seeing something else here lmk, but convince me you read the whole thing first.

🧠 I don’t buy that existing incumbents are sitting ducks here.

Regulation exists, network effects exist. Someone like an Amazon or JP Morgan can block AI agents, and will do so, and will bring people to the negotiating table.