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Notes -
Must it?
What, exactly, is India supposed to achieve in this alliance?
I posit that geopolitical aims of the US are already misaligned with economic ones, at least for the foreseeable future; it wouldn't make much of a difference to sacrifice a bit more growth for geopolitical aims. In fact I believe, based on the unquestionable consensus regarding irredeemability of China* and widespread comments about small businesses withdrawing from China for basically ideological reasons, that Americans could be convinced to starve for collective greatness in prevailing over other civilizations. But there's no need for such extremes here.
What Americans take much harder than economic hits is dying for their collective greatness. While any conventional war between China and the US would probably be light on personnel, Americans would still much rather not participate directly, and certainly not be aggressors. What to do, then, if PRC never decides to initiate the Taiwan operation, and neither does it implode on its own thanks to demographics or debt or some other pedestrian reason? How will the future of the light cone be secured for freedom and justice, if there is no pretext to eliminate the Chinese state?
It could be convenient to befriend and prop up another immense, increasingly nationalist regional nuclear power that has a bone to pick with them, to the point that any eventual large-scale conflict would go as poorly for China as the current war is going for Russia. This suggests they must be subsidized. It's doable, and it's not even clear if the elite human capital moving in from both prospective parties wouldn't entirely offset the cost of doing so. It is also eminently doable to pretend that this propping-up has RoI above 1 for the necessary duration.
American economy is accelerating, capex is growing quarter by quarter (I won't cite anything, it's easy to find sources); and American innovation, in AI and robotics, promises the possibility of running industry on friendly shores with very limited high-skill labor, maybe only with Western expats, maybe with a few natives – which are trivial to recruit from that upper crust of India, 100-250 million strong.
If bullishness on AI is warranted, and furthermore AI is primarily compute-bound (with compute wholly monopolized by the US), then human capital is rapidly becoming obsolete, except in its capacity as warm bodies and tokens for political computation. The Chinese can keep priding themselves on their futile industriousness, like they've been doing throughout every historical humiliation: Indians will let robots do robotic jobs, and wisely play to their strength – in numbers.
To me this is the key point in geopolitical considerations that is largely being ignored by most pundits. If America and the West generally can actually develop and leverage seriously useful AI systems a la ChatGPT, the economic gains will be literally unfathomable.
Now I don't think it will happen immediately, but even in the next 5-10 years as the current transformer models get developed into more narrow domains, I see the US being the major adopter. If they can do it right, correct implementation of AI technology will give a massive boost to geopolitical/economic power, and should quell fears about the fertility crisis, lowering IQ, etc etc.
A while back I saw someone tell an AI optimist they're repeating verbatim the promises of the internet, and while all the tech around it made life quite a bit more convenient I have not seen any massive boosts to geopolitical or economic power.
Unless your fears about the fertility crisis are "how do I cause a fertility crisis without triggering an economic collapse" this just plainly is not going to happen.
And if this is what you're aiming for, you're still in for a surprise. AI is a lot more likely to replace upper class managers and paper pushers than it is middle class grunts, and it's the latter you'll be running out of due to fertility.
The Web is eating the world and it being produced in California contributes massively to continued American growth on the backdrop of European stagnation, for instance.
But it can't run robots.
I don't buy it. If the web never happened, do you think we wouldn't have continued American growth on the backdrop of European stagnation?
Computers had the power to automate countless manhours of tedious unproductive work, and all that happened is that we invented even more tedious unproductive work. Even if we get AI-controlled robots, I doubt things are going to be much different.
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With every paper like this, I grow more AI-pilled. (or specifically LLM-pilled)
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It's times like this I read one of your posts, see two possible readings from connotation/insinuation, and then wonder which of them was intended as both can make sense with what follows. In this case it's 'what is India supposed to achieve (for the US interest)' or 'what is India supposed to achieve (for its own interest)', either of which would fit fine in what follows.
(This isn't a critique, just a note that it's something that causes me to regularly re-read your posts to try and understand your intent.)
In this case, I don't disagree with your general thrust. I doubt the Americans pushing for Indian ties think of it in those terms / to those exact effects- I'm not sure the American establishment is as bullish on the economics of computing as much as the military-competition sense- but the point of 'what if China doesn't invade Taiwan?' is valid. More than valid, even, as the question can also be framed outside of the context of Taiwain entirely. Win Taiwan, lose Taiwan, the American logic for wanting to leverage India against China exists regardless.
And, of course, the desire to leverage the US against China can equally exist from their perspective. Never do for free what someone else is willing to pay you, so to speak. If India believes itself already in competition with China, why not seek to profit from the Americans?
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