For 30 years, China identified rare earths as a strategic industry. By massively subsidizing its own companies and dumping product to crash prices, it methodically drove US and global competitors out of business, successfully creating a coercive dependency for the rest of the world.
Viewing China as a "rising" power is incorrect; it's a "reascending" one. For 70% of the years since 1500, China had the world's largest GDP. Its current trajectory is a return to its historical dominance, a framing that fundamentally alters the understanding of its global ambitions.
Google, Microsoft, and Amazon have all recently canceled data center projects due to local resistance over rising electricity prices, water usage, and noise. This grassroots NIMBYism is an emerging, significant, and unforeseen obstacle to building the critical infrastructure required for AI's advancement.
San Francisco's non-profits are often paid based on the number of homeless individuals they serve. This creates a perverse financial incentive to maintain and manage the homeless population like a "flock" rather than pursuing solutions that would permanently reduce their numbers and, consequently, the NGO's funding.
AI excels at intermediate process steps but requires human guidance at the beginning (setting goals) and validation at the end. This 'middle-to-middle' function makes AI a powerful tool for augmenting human productivity, not a wholesale replacement for end-to-end human-led work.
To combat China's ability to dump products and destabilize markets, the US government should act as a buyer of last resort for critical materials like rare earths. This would create a strategic reserve, similar to the petroleum reserve, ensuring price stability for domestic investment and manufacturing.
The 1990s belief that economic liberalization would inevitably make China democratic provided ideological cover for policies that fueled its growth. This hubris, combined with corporate greed, allowed the US to facilitate the rise of its greatest geopolitical rival without achieving the expected political reforms.
China's government sets top-down priorities like dominating EVs. This directive then cascades to provinces and prefectures, which act as hundreds of competing, state-backed venture capital funds, allocating capital and talent to achieve the national strategic goal in a decentralized but aligned way.
A $5 million city program provides free beer to homeless alcoholics under the guise of treatment. This illustrates how well-intentioned "harm reduction" policies can devolve into state-funded enablement of addiction, becoming counterproductive and absurd without a clear path to recovery.
To overcome local opposition, tech giants should use their massive balance sheets to provide tangible economic benefits to host communities. Subsidizing local electricity bills or funding renewable energy projects can turn residents into supporters, clearing the path for essential AI infrastructure development.
When San Francisco's streets were magically cleaned in 48 hours for President Xi's visit, it demonstrated that persistent urban problems like homelessness and open-air drug markets are not intractable. Rather, they are the result of a lack of political will, which can be overcome when necessary.
Major tech shifts don't immediately destroy jobs. First, they create a "recruiting cycle" with high demand for labor to build the new infrastructure (e.g., car factories). These new, higher-paying jobs attract workers from old industries before those legacy sectors eventually decline.
While proclaiming AI will create jobs, tech giants like Google and Meta have seen profits soar while their employee counts have fallen from 2022 peaks. This data from AI's biggest adopters provides concrete evidence that fuels public skepticism and fears of widespread, technology-driven job losses.