RIP American AI Industry

You had a good run

There are two unspoken rules in international geopolitics that hegemonic powers must follow. First: when an adversary pushes, you push; when an adversary pulls, you pull. Second: no single power should dominate the global chessboard so completely that it can do as it pleases. It is ironic, then, that the US has spent the past 35 years exploiting the absence of the second rule but hasn’t had time to learn the first.

Yesterday, I woke up to this:

“Critical fields” means essentially anything that matters in geopolitics. Like AI.

Well, let me tell you, Mr. Rubio, that given that China is already pulling ahead in strategic areas — and continuously pulls top talent from its STEM-focused universities — you shouldn’t respond by pushing out talent you devoted time and resources to educate to work in those very critical fields in China.

Two experts on Chinese-US relations that I respect claim this policy may not be the win Rubio thinks it is but instead a disaster in the making.

One, Arnaud Bertrand, is a French entrepreneur who leans pro-China. The other, Kaiser Kuo, is a Chinese-American rock star who strives to “foster mutual understanding” from his podcast, Sinica. It is interesting that despite their disparate origins and unrelated backgrounds they both agree this is a terrible decision for the US.

Here’s Bertrand: