Christian Sterner

RED, GRAY, AND BLUE The biggest mistake most commentators make today is talking about "the United States of America" as if it still exists as a unitary entity. In reality, it's the Disunited Tribes of North America. Different American tribes now have their own preferred influencers, foreign policies, genders, companies, counties, and even currencies. The only thing they don't yet fully have are their own countries. But the mass migration is already here between blue states and red, and the digital secession into separate social networks is already here too. It's blindingly obvious that the endless cloud strife is going to be printed out onto the land; all that awaits is formal American Partition. Until then, we are stuck in this bizarre twilight zone where people keep talking about "American policy." However, we know you can't talk about "Korean policy" without immediately clarifying whether you mean North Korea or South Korea. And so too you can't talk about "American policy" without clarifying whether you mean Blue America, Red America, Tech America, or one of their increasingly numerous sub-tribes. SILICON VALLEY VS PENTAGON Which brings us to the ongoing conflict between Silicon Valley AI companies and the Pentagon. This is just one of many conflicts between Network and State, and just one of several lose/lose scenarios between blue, red, and gray/tech that are playing out across the chessboard. But you can't understand what's going on without the tribal lens. Briefly: the center-left tech guys at Anthropic (along with many at OpenAI and Google) say they don't want their software to be used for autonomous weapons and domestic surveillance. They see themselves as protecting civil liberties. Meanwhile, the center-right tech guys in the US government do want AI to be used to defend their land, and resent the idea that every (potentially sensitive) military plan can be vetoed at will by a mere tech company. They see themselves as protecting national security. THE TRIBAL LENS This argument about principles breaks down because it's not really about principles, but about root control. The Anthropic employees trust their CEO to make judgments about what happens to user data. They don't trust these Pentagon MAGAs. And the Pentagon has exactly the opposite set of intuitions: they don't want these squishy wokes to be upstream of their military and their President. Fundamentally, the tech left doesn't want the tech right (let alone the full Republicans) to have root control over them, to be able to seize their companies or surveil them. And the tech right doesn't want the tech left (let alone the full Democrats) to have root control over them, to be able to veto their military plans or impede their presidency. All this is against the backdrop of many other raging conflicts, including Democrats vs Tech (via the wealth tax) and Tech vs Democrats (via AI disrupting blue jobs). The tech right thinks the tech left is dumb for not seeing that they're the one thing protecting them from getting taxed to death by Democrats, not to mention distilled by China. The tech left thinks the tech right is dumb for wanting to power up a surveillance state that may get handed over to Democrats...and thereby turned into China. Which brings us to China. THE CHINESE CHALLENGE Both tribes constantly invoke China as the outgroup. Obviously, China is building autonomous weapons. So if the American state doesn’t match what China is doing, it won't be militarily better than China! On the other hand, China is also doing domestic surveillance. So if the American state does match what China is doing, it’ll be no better than China! Both also have internal divisions on China. The tech left, including Anthropic, has used the China-vs-America framing to argue for AI funding. They're also mad about China distilling their models. So the tech left actually does have some real anti-China sentiment. Conversely, the tech right, including many in the administration, has used the China-surveilling-their-citizens argument to argue against censorship. They're also mad about Democrats abusing the state against them. So the tech right actually does have some real internal libertarian sentiment. (Note: the far left & far right oppose both tech and all military involvement abroad, for different reasons, so they aren't directly participating in this argument.) TAKING THE L Ultimately, however, none of this matters. On the present trajectory, the American state is simply not going to outcompete the Chinese state, because the American people are unable to cooperate for the greater good, and therefore a "United" States of America does not exist. The modern American is all about liberty (red), or protest (blue), or techno-capitalism (gray). That's all great stuff, but each is about individual rights, as opposed to the collective responsibility felt by the 1950s American. Meanwhile the Chinese are about harmony, the party, and techno-communism. They've developed a social contract where they're fine with fusing their nation, state, and network together into a giant Voltron. For China: their nationalists are their Republicans, their statists are their Democrats, and the technologists are their Silicon Valley. Of course they have their internal conflicts, but for now all of that has been quashed by the party. The result is that the Chinese have collectively built perhaps the most powerful manufacturing goliath that's ever existed on earth. And that Chinese nation/state/network fusion challenges the Republican belief in liberty, the Democrat faith in democracy, and the Technologist faith in founder-led capitalism. No mere appeal to principle is going to work against Chinese Voltron. It's like praying to Zeus against a nuke. You need a set of principles that actually generates collective power, power comparable to China. Or you need to capitulate. CAPITULATE, OR COOPERATE The Democrats (and the Western left more broadly) are actually the first to realize this, which is why Carney/Mamdani/Newsom/Walz and the like are just capitulating to the Chinese state. The Biden Democrats threw the kitchen sink at China, but the Chinese state won, and proved itself the stronger horse. So blues are now (implicitly) auditioning for a position as overseas bureaucrats in Xi's empire, as apparatchiks in Communist Canada and Chinese California. Tech and Reds haven't fully caught on to this. The Republicans still claim their military is stronger than the Chinese military, and Silicon Valley still thinks their tech is better than Chinese tech. They point to the few areas where they still have an edge, while trying to ignore the enormous scale and speed advantages China has (especially in the physical world). You might think the mass-produced, back-flipping Unitree kung-fu Chinese humanoids would be enough to disabuse both red and tech of their illusions here. But a demo is probably not enough; we may all actually need to see the Chinese drone armada in action to mark the world to market. Perhaps it gets debuted in Ukraine, Iran, or some other proxy war. As Orwell put it, "sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield.” I do hope my friends on left and right learn to cooperate before that happens. I am extremely skeptical that they will.

Stunning drone show time lapse

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Remote controlled life jacket