Populist Rage And AI: National Surrender

There is a current tendency to blame free markets and technology for dyspepsia with the economy, as if there is a nefarious group of people destroying your way of life.

People are literally trying to attack data centers.

As David Friedberg noted on the “All-In Podcast”:

Most people in America are starting to really hate rich people. And there’s no physical space that better represents the wealth in America, the wealth creation that’s happened that a lot of people feel left behind from, than the data center. It is the temple of the wealthy. It is the way that the rich, elite, tech, kind of political, connected billionaires that we’re obviously all attached to are taking from the poor, getting themselves ahead, shooting themselves to space, leaving everyone else behind, and the data center, I think, is the representation of their progress. And it is a representation of the progress that others don’t feel.

For a consumer’s life to actually be altered in a meaningfully positive way, most people don’t feel that yet. The best thing they see is some medical advice they’re getting on ChatGPT or something, and that’s kind of the end of it for them. So I think there’s a lot of this populism that’s swollen and that’s taken over, not just the US, but probably a good chunk of the West. And the data center is the target.

David Friedberg’s explanation is exactly right. This is the way that economic populists have been pushing.

Let’s differentiate between moral and economic populism. Moral populism was exemplified by William F. Buckley back in the 1960s when he stated that he would trust the first 100 names in the Harvard phone book on matters of public policy more than he would trust 100 Harvard professors.

The idea was that the common man in the United States — shaped as he or she was by the institutions of church and family and community — had a better moral compass, on average, than the elites.

I totally agree with that, because elites very often believe that they have been freed from these systems of morality.

However, when it comes to the economy, economic populism is virtually the inverse. Economic populism assumes that there should be some sort of centralized control placed into the hands of that central power by “the people,” and centralized control should overwhelm the disseminated knowledge that is implicit in free markets and capital markets.

The basic principle of capitalism is that disparate views on things lead to better outcomes, that differential knowledge and the diffusion of knowledge are actually significantly more effective than one guy at the top with a stick beating people into submission.

But economic populism says that free markets are bad if the product of the free market is something I don’t like, therefore, we should take power away from the free market to destroy it.

Whenever there is economic unease, people tend to attack free market capitalism, or what they see as the symbols of free market capitalism, and they tend to blame people who are wealthy.

The great lie is that people in the United States are wealthy because they’re stealing from the poor. It is a full-scale lie. It is not true.

The only places in the world where people are rich because they steal from the poor are communist countries and other forms of tyranny. The reason people get rich in a free market economy is because they are providing products and services at a price people are willing to pay. People want that product or service.

But if you can somehow recast the economy of the United States as “rigged” on behalf of the wealthy and go after the means of production, you target data centers.

What you are going to end up doing, in this view, is overthrow the capitalist system.

The outcome of that will be quite dire.

There is a grievance-based, horseshoe-theory economic Right that is also wildly upset about artificial intelligence data centers because they’re big and ugly.

You know what else is big and ugly? Walmart — but it’s wonderful for the vast majority of consumers.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s home was allegedly targeted in the second attack in just two days; a shot was even fired. This is part and parcel of a broader movement that is targeting technology more generally, including technologies that are required for the United States to win wars.

City Journal reported there is a campaign against the military contractor Palantir — which generates extraordinary technologies in terms of intelligence gathering, capacity to target, and much of the actual technology that goes into the machines that we use.

This crosses paths with all of America’s enemies. America’s enemies are delighted to watch us destroy ourselves by taking down the technologies that allow us to win.

If you buy into this entire shtick — the idea that AI as a technology must be destroyed — it won’t be destroyed.

We’ll just lose.

If you think that China is going to forgo AI, you’re a fool. They won’t.

If the United States were to heavily restrict AI, not just in terms of preventing its gravest harms, but restricting the development of AI, or if there were to be a political party that attempts to prevent the building of data centers, not for any sort of understandable economic reason — like, for example, make the data centers pay their fair share of electricity production, which I think is a fair argument — if there’s a broad scale movement to destroy the AI industry out of either misplaced agrarianism or a deep and abiding hatred for capitalism or the generalized belief that capitalism rots the human soul, we will lose.

If the United States heavily restricts AI, not just by preventing its gravest harms but by restricting its development, we will lose. If a political party tries to stop the construction of data centers, we will lose. That is different from making data centers pay their fair share for electricity production, which I think is a fair argument. But if there is a broad-based movement to destroy the AI industry out of misplaced agrarianism, a deep and abiding hatred of capitalism, or a generalized belief that capitalism rots the human soul, we will lose.

China wins.

This is not a vacuum. It is not as though if the United States forgoes AI magically, we would continue to have a burgeoning, wealthy economy, and China goes weapons down.

When it comes to AI, indeed, there are problems, there are dangers — and we should all recognize those dangers, not whistling past the graveyard — but at the same time, it is a tremendous opportunity.

A China in a dominant AI position means a China in a dominant military position. The amount of AI that is being used right now by the United States military in the conflict in Iran and in the operation in Venezuela is tremendous and growing.

If China outpaces us in AI development, that means their military is now superior to ours. If their military is superior to ours, that means they can not only effectuate change in their region, it means they can also spread that technology throughout the world and make other countries dependent on the receipt of that technology.

It means that many, many other countries all over planet Earth would suddenly become dependent on China.

That is a huge problem, and it also leaves China in a dominant economic position, because AI means more productivity. If productivity goes up for China but remains stagnant for the United States, they will outcompete us. If they outcompete us, one of two things happens: Either we block off our economy and become backward and protectionist — meaning we don’t have any of the best goods and products and services at the best price, we’re all poorer and we slide into poverty and stagnation — or we have to be dependent on Chinese products, our kids work for Chinese companies, and China is able to spread its influence.

When it comes to the game of economics, you must win.

When it comes to the game of military dominance, you must win.

And when it comes to the technological game, you must win.

The economic populism that’s been rising says that we ought to tariff our way out of all our problems, that we ought to attack technological development, that it would be great to have an economy based on t-shirts — none of this is going to solve the bigger problem.

Attacking tech CEOs or healthcare CEOs or burning up Teslas and attacking Tesla showrooms or shooting Charlie Kirk or attempting to shoot President Trump — all of these are the most extreme manifestations of an ideology.

That ideology says that you are a victim of American society and therefore you get to do bad things. On a broader political level, you are a victim of American society, and therefore you ought to get together with the other victims, take over the government, and use centralized, tyrannical power r to cram down your view of the world.