Lugh

joined 2 years ago
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The US change in sides to ally with Russia has left Europe scrambling. Suddenly the continent's decades-long intertwining dependence on American military tech has become a vast liability, and one that needs to be urgently corrected.

Former Airbus CEO Tom Enders says the way to do this is to ditch American military tech, and quickly rearm having learned lessons from the conflict in Ukraine. He says a key insight from that war is that cheap drones can consistently destroy Russian systems that are orders of magnitude more expensive.

Coordinated by OneWeb, the euro version of Starlink, the continent's military should place tens of thousands of intelligent robotic drones along its border, and do this in a matter of months, not years.

The German government passed its €1 trillion ($1.1 trillion) rearmament budget yesterday, which also allows for unlimited future borrowing to fund further German military buildup. It seems vast robotic drone army battalions may be a thing of the future, and arriving soon.

Interview - Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ). In German, use Google translate to read.

 

Article with overview.

OpenAI & Anthropic have both made calls for Chinese AI models to be banned in the US on national security grounds. While it is true countries have reason to distrust other countries' tech, I doubt this is the real reason they are upset.

Their big problem is that Open-Source AI annihilates their chances of succeeding as businesses. Silicon Valley's model of VC funding is to bet on many small start-ups, hoping one becomes a 'unicorn' - a multi-billion dollar company (like Google, Meta, etc) able to dominate an industry and rake in hundreds of billions of dollars.

Even if they succeed in banning Chinese Open-Source - does this mean they'll become unicorns? I doubt it. The Chinese Open-Source AI models are superior to theirs. Most of the rest of the world will use them, and the real AI innovation will happen in the rest of the world. Meanwhile Americans will make do with the second-best AI, that can only survive when it gets the best banned.

 

China has long favored this strategy. It realises how vulnerable its fossil fuel supply is to US naval blockade should it decide to invade Taiwan. Now it seems you don't have to invade anyone for the 'blockade' of tariffs. Hence, this report argues that more nations will follow China's strategy.

Although I'm sure it will have an effect, I'd guess the biggest drivers are still the cheapness of renewables and countries' net zero goals. In particular home solar/microgrids and cheap Chinese vehicles which I imagine will blanket every corner of the world in the 2030s.

Download Report - PDF 27 pages

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submitted 3 weeks ago by Lugh to c/avs
[–] Lugh 1 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

Yes, I think that is what the problem is here. Some people used to have the idea that more scaling would be enough for reasoning to appear, but that hasn't happened.

[–] Lugh 6 points 1 month ago

More bad news for investors pouring hundreds of billions into AI companies like OpenAI, and wishing and hoping for moats.

[–] Lugh 1 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Global banks will cut as many as 200,000 jobs in the next three to five years as artificial intelligence encroaches on tasks currently carried out by human workers, according to Bloomberg Intelligence.

I wonder when all this will become a major issue for voters in developed countries?

[–] Lugh 1 points 1 month ago

Chinese space technology tends to get very under reported in western media, but this guy is an excellent source.

[–] Lugh 1 points 1 month ago

30% of global electricity was from renewables in 2024. It's already cheaper than most other sources, and keeps getting cheaper.

[–] Lugh 9 points 1 month ago (6 children)

I've always wondered, if decades in the future, a terrorist attack might occur by somebody nudging an asteroid towards Earth. I'm not the only person thinking this, it was a major plot point in the TV show 'The Expanse'.

[–] Lugh 2 points 1 month ago (6 children)

I wonder if fusion powers true usefulness will be when humans are in space? Because you are correct in saying renewables will probably be enough to supply all our needs and more by the 2030s.

[–] Lugh 3 points 1 month ago

We are used to the idea of drugs being recreationally misused, I wonder will that ever happen to tech like this?

[–] Lugh 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

That behavior among "advanced" species has always been forward as one solution to the Fermi Paradox.

[–] Lugh 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I am no expert in any of this, but why do you think it couldn't work at scale? This company says their tech has advantages in cheapness and efficiency over existing solutions. What is it about what they are doing that will not scale?

[–] Lugh 11 points 1 month ago

The 'Dark Enlightenment' is a popular concept among some of America's technology elite, such as Peter Thiel and Elon Musk. It thinks democracy is a failure, and should be replaced by right-wing authoritarianism, preferably led by a dictator or monarch. For obvious reasons, it's enjoying an ascendancy.

A key idea in Dark Enlightenment thinking is the establishment of hundreds or even thousands of city-state enclaves, the equal of sovereign nations, that could then outnumber the old countries and predominate in a new world order of governance.

Prospera in Honduras is one of the first attempts at making this dream/nightmare (pick according to your political persuasion) come true. Now that the people behind Dark Enlightenment thinking have their hands on the levers of power in the US, it won't be surprising if there are expanded attempts to set up new libertarian city-states around the world.

[–] Lugh 1 points 1 month ago

Reminds me of Westworld too.

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