I absolutely agree that, whether it will be due to an AGI race or not, the American Empire is falling behind increasingly quickly, and I would bet that that's been apparent to backroom power for quite a long time. I remember writing about falling American capital asset prices and the potential for their acquisition by China in something like the early 2000s, and I don't think I was clairvoyant. The writing was on the wall. And of course, whenever you're number one you spend a lot of time being paranoid about your impending fall...
I think of the past 20 years and likely the next 10 or so (depending on the speed of the fall) as the French idiom "sauver les meubles". Saving the furniture, generally in the context of your house burning down. Every global actor whose power is founded on the American status quo will be under increasing pressure to get as much out of the arrangement as they can before it doesn't exist, which I think is the biggest reason that Israel is engaging in general omnidirectional violence. If you know you're going to slowly drown otherwise, now is the time to do everything you can, as aggressively as you can; the more you wait the less strength you'll have. Israel is just the lowest-lying Imperial island.
China wins in every scenario aside from some kind of divine inspiration striking an American genius I suppose ... since most technologies are actually built slowly and incrementally on decades of work, this seems almost impossible to me. 新中国已经到了...
Agree on all of the above, essentially, particularly this part:
> Every global actor whose power is founded on the American status quo will be under increasing pressure to get as much out of the arrangement as they can before it doesn't exist, which I think is the biggest reason that Israel is engaging in general omnidirectional violence. If you know you're going to slowly drown otherwise, now is the time to do everything you can, as aggressively as you can; the more you wait the less strength you'll have. Israel is just the lowest-lying Imperial island.
I absolutely agree that, whether it will be due to an AGI race or not, the American Empire is falling behind increasingly quickly, and I would bet that that's been apparent to backroom power for quite a long time. I remember writing about falling American capital asset prices and the potential for their acquisition by China in something like the early 2000s, and I don't think I was clairvoyant. The writing was on the wall. And of course, whenever you're number one you spend a lot of time being paranoid about your impending fall...
I think of the past 20 years and likely the next 10 or so (depending on the speed of the fall) as the French idiom "sauver les meubles". Saving the furniture, generally in the context of your house burning down. Every global actor whose power is founded on the American status quo will be under increasing pressure to get as much out of the arrangement as they can before it doesn't exist, which I think is the biggest reason that Israel is engaging in general omnidirectional violence. If you know you're going to slowly drown otherwise, now is the time to do everything you can, as aggressively as you can; the more you wait the less strength you'll have. Israel is just the lowest-lying Imperial island.
China wins in every scenario aside from some kind of divine inspiration striking an American genius I suppose ... since most technologies are actually built slowly and incrementally on decades of work, this seems almost impossible to me. 新中国已经到了...
Agree on all of the above, essentially, particularly this part:
> Every global actor whose power is founded on the American status quo will be under increasing pressure to get as much out of the arrangement as they can before it doesn't exist, which I think is the biggest reason that Israel is engaging in general omnidirectional violence. If you know you're going to slowly drown otherwise, now is the time to do everything you can, as aggressively as you can; the more you wait the less strength you'll have. Israel is just the lowest-lying Imperial island.
Very incisive comment - thank you!