Ben Thompson Calls US AI Win Problematic
Discussing AI race dynamics with China on Patrick O'Shaughnessy's podcast.
TLDR
Ben Thompson told Patrick O'Shaughnessy that a US victory in the AI race would prove very problematic. He outlined a scenario in which American control of AI produces decisive military superiority. Thompson said China's game theory optimal response in that case would be to blow up TSMC. He pointed to a disconnect between such risks and much of the public rhetoric on the topic. The remarks surfaced in posts sharing clips and summaries from the interview.
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PO 
Patrick OShaughnessy@patrick_oshagMy conversation with @benthompson. Ben has been writing Stratechery for over a decade and remains one of my favorite business thinkers. We covered a lot. Every important company in the industry and the forces acting on all of them. - Why he thinks it would be problematic for…
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PO Patrick OShaughnessy@patrick_oshagBen Thompson: "I think it would be very problematic for the US to win the AI race." "Take the scenario, where if you control AI, your military is better than anyone else's. What is the game theory optimal response of China? To blow up TSMC. There's a fundamental disconnect…
- likes: 237
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WM Will Manidis@WillManidisa decent metaphor for all this stuff is nonproliferation research spent decades getting very good at “left of boom” while refusing to build coherent theories of “right of boom,” ie the world after deterrence fails we're roughly in the same place with "right of winning AGI"…
- likes: 116
- replies: 3
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JO Jim O'Shaughnessy@jposhaughnessy"I think we should be going the other direction. More openness, more innovation, less top-down control, less restrictions on speech and things along those lines. America succeeds by being on the leading edge and by leaning into that." ~@benthompson…
- likes: 39
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PO Patrick OShaughnessy@patrick_oshagBen Thompson says Nvidia is already cutting prices. The cut just doesn't show up in their margins: "Everyone's coming for them and they're still charging however much money for a chip. But they're not maintaining their margins, because who's buying? This circular financing…
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IL Invest Like the Best@InvestLikeBestBen Thompson's two laws of consumer tech: 1) Consumers do not want to pay for software 2) Consumers do not care about being productive. "We went through this in early SaaS. The canonical company for this is Dropbox. They had to rebuild the whole thing and realize the only…
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