First Strike

The essay argues that electricity, not chips alone, will determine long-term AI and geopolitical power. It points to a trend suggesting China could have ten times the United States’ electricity supply within a decade, and says any strategy must account for that gap. A more constructive American response, in the writer’s view, would be to sell AI chips to China, use the proceeds to acquire solar-panel and battery factories, and rapidly expand domestic electricity generation. More abundant power and computing could create prosperity in both countries. Over a longer horizon, robotic labor, immigration, business culture, and available land could still leave the United States competitive.

Instead, the writer sees short-term, zero-sum thinking in the US AI race and worries that its logic points toward a catastrophic escape from competition: using artificial superintelligence for a decapitating first strike. The essay questions whether such an attack could succeed against the industrial capacity to produce steel and drones, but stresses that this uncertainty is itself alarming; if the strategy worked, the consequences could be terminal. The writer says the nationalization of NVIDIA has sharply increased their estimate of the risk of an imminent world war, treating it as a sign of escalating confrontation rather than a path toward shared growth.