alt Hacker NewsI feel like we're dancing on the razor's edge.
On the one hand: high inflation, tariffs, layoffs, unemployment, high interest rate, energy crisis. Tons of economic red flags flashing.
On the other hand: AI is showing signs of being the next industrial revolution, we're re-industrializing, onshoring/friendshoring, and have a clear lead on chips and space tech at a time when it matters the most.
It's absolutely insane that Claude Code can spit out a week's worth of business automation tasks in half a day. And do it at relatively high quality in low-defect rate languages like Rust.
Europe won't be able to catch that. They're too busy regulating ahead of the tech. They're going to be a decade behind if they keep it up.
If we cut the chip supply right as things take off, China might not either. In a runaway takeoff scenario, they replace all their factory workers with robots and quickly scale and cost optimize. If America is smart, we might be able to do that too.
Our growth could accelerate or crater. These are wild times. More exciting than the last 20.
America needs to start pumping out new energy projects. It needs to make friends with all of its former allies. And it needs to import PhD students.
And we do need factories and raw inputs. The robots will take over for humans within a decade. If we stick the landing, we could be the new China right here at home.
Edit: rate limited on replies, so updating my comment instead.
Edit 2: Europe supplies the EUV lithography, but intelligence manifests higher up the stack. If we're talking rate limits, lots of countries supply critical inputs. I'm saying that Europe hasn't made strides towards developing their own models and infra, and it doesn't look like it's even close to starting to attack this problem. I want it to.
Edit 3: What I'm saying is that these tailwinds might put America back into the position it was in post-WWII. Manufacturing, tech, and science powerhouse in all the places that matter. Peers a generation or two behind. That's literally where America was after the war, and it looks like we could be teeing up for a repeat if it all doesn't unravel first.
America needs to double down on investing in energy and factories now. It looks like it will pay off in a big way.
Edit 4:
> You think Europe won't be able to use Claude Code
I would be extremely geopolitically anxious to rely on another country's tech in a take off scenario. Those tokens might be diverted to US businesses and factories. Or the US might strong arm concessions out of Europe. Europe needs domestic capability for this now.
It's not just Europe and sovereign nations. Workers and labor capital will be effectively frozen out of participation if there aren't open source equivalents.
> This is an downright evil take on the current situation.
It's just reality. Multipolarity means we're going to see a lot more of this type of framing, because it's what's happening on the ground.
Replies
> They're going to be a decade behind if they keep it up.
42 European here.
I've heard my whole adult life that Europe is ten years behind USA.
That doesn't feel that bad though. Being bleeding edge comes with the thrill of the avant garde prestige. But it does also mean you take the downsides of navigating the unexplored unknown in your face with no one to help with turn key solution when it happens.
If it means 10 years buffer on big social seismic troubles, that doesn't sound too bad if there is indeed an efficient shelve. That's not necessarily the case on every matter though, like global climate change is going to impact everyone, no matter the political isolation, and if a direct military aggression happens, it can be hurtful no matter how prepared is the society.
> It's absolutely insane that Claude Code can spit out a week's worth of business automation tasks in half a day. And do it at relatively high quality in low-defect rate languages like Rust.
> Europe won't be able to catch that.
You think Europe won't be able to use Claude Code? If Claude Code is the one reaping the majority of the benefits of "spit[ing] out a week's worth of business automation tasks", then it's not worth much to the business. If Claude Code isn't the one reaping the majority of those benefits, then...Europe can use Claude Code too and reap the benefits for their business as well.
You really do not understand how interdependent everyone is. The chip machines Taiwan uses come from Europe, for example.
The US kneecapped itself for no reason.
I'm not a fan of this "us vs. them" framing.
Arguably the greatest threats to the US's future is ourselves. If we fundamentally corrupt who we are as a nation we've already lost before the competition with rivals has even begun.
Our significant tech advances could become tools of our own downfall if they violate our values or undermine the social mobility of the American dream.
Frankly I think the people pushing this competitive mindset (particularly against the EU) are trying to mislead otherwise intelligent builder-sorts to not pay attention to the looting & destruction of American values.
>Europe won't be able to catch that. If we cut the chip supply right as things take off, China might not either.
I have been a nay sayer on LLMs/GPTs in general having tried many, but recently Ive been shepherding a fairly complex code build through the latest opus model and its quite impressive.
It still gets things wrong occasionally but the time its saved me has been substantial. Im starting to enjoy it.
>>Europe won't be able to catch that. If we cut the chip supply right as things take off, China might not either.
My immediate thought is - why is it a race. Like holy shit imagine if we could actually work together instead of having this mentality of "if we work hard the other countries won't catch that". As someone who grew up in the golden age of globalization and rise of the information superhighway, the way countries are just siloing themselves and treating everything as a zero sum game is both sad and scary - that's exactly how you lead the world on a path to another world war - telling yourself that you don't need anyone else and in fact you need to beat them to the punch and everyone else is your opponent. If an alien race was looking at us right now they'd be shaking their heads.
> America [...] needs to make friends with all of its former allies. And it needs to import PhD students.
America, in the form of the Trump administration and a Trump-subservient Congress, just spent the last year completely destroying trust on these issues and it would take decades of sustained effort to rebuild it.
This is an downright evil take on the current situation. The supply chains are so complex that no single country is capable of replicating them entirely. It starts with the fact that the required natural resources are distributed around the globe in a way that no country has access to all of them. The production chains from resources to finished machines are downright byzantine. And this becomes recursive with the need for specialized tools and their own production chains along the way. You need trains amd trucks and ships to be able to build semiconductors, for example. Except for maybe China pr India, there is no country that has the manpower to cover all of this domestically. The supply of workers and training falls far too short.
Any Western strategy that sees this as both "us vs. them" and also pursues reduced international collaboration is bound to lose bitterly in the long run.
The result is either a silent collapse of that country's economy or the start of an ill-conceived war of conquest to gain by force what the country cannot supply itself.