The conspiracy theory angle I would go with is a little different. Low interests rates fueled a startup boom into the 2010s, capturing that emerging industry w

The conspiracy theory angle I would go with is a little different. Low interests rates fueled a startup boom into the 2010s, capturing that emerging industry within the U.S. economy. AI looks promising, but the best is yet to come, so there’s a chance to reprise the earlier success that we saw into the early 2010s. High interest rates currently mean that failed startups (those established pre-LLMs) will more easily die off, and bad conditions for software engineering employment will re-align the tech workforce toward AI. If this is a strategy that is being enacted, then I’d expect to see favorable startup funding conditions again, such as low interest rates, within a few years, to make sure the U.S. captures the AI startup market. It’s just not time to do that yet, since we need to wait for a re-skilled workforce and for a better-developed picture of what a typical successful AI startup would look like in the late 2020s. An economist might say that no conspiracy is required, that this is simply the invisible hand at work.