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2025 Letter

• kaonwarb 9mo ago
  I recommend Dan’s book (https://danwang.co/breakneck/ https://danwang.co/breakneck/) to those wanting to better understand China - and the United States.
  • libraryofbabel 9mo ago
    One of the best books I read this year. I think a lot of HN readers will like it. A really balanced take on China that also digs deep into the perennial question of “why can’t we build big infrastructure projects in the US?” that comes up here quite often.
    • veritascap 9mo ago
      We used to build those infrastructure projects.
      • libraryofbabel 9mo ago
        Well of course, and the book digs a little into the history as well, and what changed around the 1960s/70s. There is a long section on Robert Moses, for example. He draws a lot of parallels between modern China and the US in the 19th and early 20th centuries - totally different political systems, but similar “breakneck” ability to build.
  • decimalenough 9mo ago
    +1, it's a great read. It also defies easy summaries, but my biggest takeaways were that 1) the CCP really doesn't care about the costs any of its policies (one-child, zero COVID, etc) impose on its citizenry, and 2) that the CCP is actively preparing China for a world where it's entirely cut off from the West, because it realizes that's the price to pay for invading Taiwan.
    • ehfeng 9mo ago
      I'd agree that China is preparing to be cut off, but it's not because of Taiwan. Dan specifically mentions this: "In vain do I protest that there are historical and geopolitical reasons motivating the desire, that chip fabs cannot be violently seized, and anyway that Beijing has coveted Taiwan for approximately seven decades before people were talking about AI." Consider the historical timeline: "Fortress China" policies coincide with the rise of American protectionism on both sides of the aisle and the introduction of chip restrictions and punishing tariffs. Taiwan is an emotional/nationalist issue for China, but it's only one part of their policy, not the lynchpin as your comment suggests.
  • mattding 9mo ago
    +1 biggest takeaway from me was that China / Asian societies emphasize process knowledge, which does not seem to be the case for U.S. tech in my working experience.
• url00 9mo ago
  As often the case with Dan's letters, a well balanced take on many issues. I particularly appreciated the thoughts on AI and (what I read) the undertone of infrastructure being the real differentiator between the US effort and China. We'll see how it plays out this year. "May you live in exciting times" etc.
• bix6 9mo ago
  Dam Wang, good read!
• pityJuke 9mo ago
  As someone unfamiliar with the author, I had a deep amount of cynicism for the length of this piece... but damn, it's good, top to bottom.
  • nozzlegear 9mo ago
    I agree. At first I briefly skimmed it and thought it was going to be a puff piece on China's AI efforts (unfair of me), but a couple paragraphs caught me and I read the whole thing. I'm glad I did.
  • andrepd 9mo ago
    Hard disagree. How many paragraphs of fawning over the unique culture of the Bay Area must I endure before he arrives at the point? Such gems as > I like SF house parties, where people take off their shoes at the entrance and enter a space in which speech can be heard over music, which feels so much more civilized than descending into a loud bar in New York. It’s easy to fall into a nerdy conversation almost immediately with someone young and earnest.
    • senordevnyc 9mo ago
      Just quoting a paragraph means nothing, what’s the actual problem you have here? I’ve lived in both SF and now NYC, and that characterization is painting with a broad brush, but isn’t ridiculous.
    • strange_quark 9mo ago
      The next sentence is “The Bay Area has converged on Asian-American modes of socializing” As if there is a single Asian-American culture and no Asian-Americans like going out to bars… The whole piece is littered with weird over generalizations over huge and diverse groups of people.
      • exceptione 9mo ago
        It happens with more authors. Blogging and self-promotion on social media easily leads to fast and sensational "insights". It is fast food: feels good, easily digestible, way better than a thorough study involving the required ifs-and-buts and the hard work of trying to find blind spots in one's own perspective. The latter profile isn't suitable for short content bites and doesn't sell to a large audience. The former does, but comes with a cost only the uninformed aren't aware of. I can sympathize with that though. Non-fiction in general is a hard sell.
• 152334H 9mo ago
  > Beijing has been preparing for Cold War without eagerness for waging it, while the US wants to wage a Cold War without preparing for it. great line
  • apples_oranges 9mo ago
    It's not clear what the US plan even is. Move all manufacturing back home and compete with China ASAP?
    • anon7000 9mo ago
      Even if it’s a goal, it’s not a plan. The article talks about it, but Biden’s push for manufacturing wasn’t very aggressive, and Trump has basically stopped it. We’ve seen a loss in manufacturing jobs from tariffs and Trump idiotically deported Korean engineers working in local battery production plants. Simply protecting our existing companies (which are not very efficient, see shipbuilders) is not even close to enough to competing
    • jaapz 9mo ago
      With trump at the helm, do you think there is much of a plan?
    • dfxm12 9mo ago
      The US plan is to enrich oligarchs who are friendly with Trump and to enact white nationalist policies. Anything beyond that is just like a kid playing an arcade game without putting any quarters in.
    • lawn 9mo ago
      Plan? They don't even have a concept of a plan.
    • glitchc 9mo ago
      The US doesn't have a plan, it has a framework. The framework allows it to be nimble in a way that centralized economies (like China) can never match. My money's on the US out-competing everyone else in the long run.
• coderatlarge 9mo ago
  from the piece: “ the median age of the latest Y Combinator cohort is only 24, down from 30 just three years ago “ does yc publish stats to validate?
  • et1337 9mo ago
    Didn’t we just have a front page article about the average founder age increasing well beyond 30 this year? Is it a non-normal distribution or what?
    • InitialLastName 9mo ago
      Lots of explanations with power here: - There's a hard edge to the distribution that isn't far from 24 (I'd expect relatively few sub-18-year-old YC founders, but more 31+-year-olds) - Older founders (with more experience, larger networks and less life flexibility) aren't a good fit for incubators.
    • bix6 9mo ago
      Tunguz shows early 40s as the median https://tomtunguz.com/founder-age-median-trend/ https://tomtunguz.com/founder-age-median-trend/ YC trends younger given what they’re looking for
  • bix6 9mo ago
    Quoted as 24 vs 30 in 2022 from one of the partners here: https://www.businessinsider.com/yc-founders-younger-under-more-pressure-beacause-ai-2025-8 https://www.businessinsider.com/yc-founders-younger-under-mo...
• jstummbillig 9mo ago
  Wait, how funny is this guy. That's an easy top 10 funny person out of nowhere in my life.
• pr337h4m 9mo ago
  > Which of the tech titans are funny? In public, they tend to speak in one of two registers. The first is the blandly corporate tone we’ve come to expect when we see them dragged before Congressional hearings or fireside chats. The second leans philosophical, as they compose their features into the sort of reverie appropriate for issuing apocalyptic prophecies on AI. This is just not accurate though? For example, this post from a tech titan might not necessarily be that funny but it's neither blandly corporate nor philosophical: https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2006548935372902751 https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2006548935372902751
  • thundergolfer 9mo ago
    1. Elon is not funny. He’s deeply unfunny. 2. “Tend to” is the key bit you’re missing. It “tends to” be true that titans speak in those registers, even if it is true that Elon, a titan, a does not.
• strange_quark 9mo ago
  > I believe that Silicon Valley possesses plenty of virtues. To start, it is the most meritocratic part of America. Oh come on, this is so untrue. Silicon Valley loves credentialism and networking, probably more than anywhere else. Except the credentials are the companies you’ve worked for or whether you know some founder or VC, instead of what school you went to or which degrees you have. I went to a smaller college that the big tech firms didn’t really recruit from. I spent the first ~5 years of my career working for a couple smaller companies without much SV presence. Somehow I lucked into landing a role at a big company that almost everyone has definitely heard of. I didn’t find my coworkers to necessarily be any smarter or harder working than the people I worked with previously. But when I decided it was time to move on, companies that never gave me the time of day before were responding to my cold applies or even reaching out to _me_ to beg me to interview. And don’t get me started on the senior leadership and execs I’ve seen absolutely run an entire business units into the ground and lose millions of dollars and cost people their jobs, only to “part ways” with the company, then immediately turn around and raise millions of dollars from the same guys whose money they just lost.
  • fastball 9mo ago
    Judging you based on the work you've done seems... very meritocratic to me?
    • flumpcakes 9mo ago
      I think the OP was making the point that it isn't meritocratic, at least that is how it read to me: they thought people where not meaningfully different in skill level (the people at the exclusive company being comparable to everywhere else) and that where you worked was the new way to find the 'in' people, rather than what university you graduated from (saying they had job offers based purely on getting the job at the exclusive company). You could argue that getting a job at X or Y company by itself conveys some level of skill - but if we are honest, that is just version of saying you went to Harvard. There's lots of cliques everywhere in life, and various ways to show status, SV is definitely not immune to that.
• ossa-ma 9mo ago
  The beginning perfectly embodies the culture in Silicon Valley and touches on a crucial part that I notice when I visit: the complete lack of self expression or as I would put it ZERO drip. Remove the tech, what does SF contribute to the world wrt culture? Especially when compared to other metropolitan cities: NY, London, LA, Tokyo.
  • dpark 9mo ago
    Maybe I’m missing some nuance but are you just saying that folks in Silicon Valley aren’t cool?
    • mjmsmith 9mo ago
      The only problem with Silicon Valley is they just have no taste.
      • dpark 9mo ago
        I think most people in general have no taste. But taste is also so subjective that it’s hard to meaningfully discuss. Everyone probably thinks they have great taste. Part of the Silicon Valley ethos (and techie ethos in general) is the rejection of fashion. Comfort over style. Casual over classy. Even the “stealth wealth” thing that trended for a while seemed to be an expression of this. Casual wear, but really expensive.
        • mopsi 9mo ago
          Rejection of fashion has always seemed like a fear of failure to me. Trying to dress well means exposing yourself to evaluation, comparison and the possibility of getting it wrong. The traditions and standards of fashion have accumulated over centuries and are fairly resistant to being redefined (especially by rookies), which makes success depend on external criteria and not on personal rules. Rejecting fashion altogether removes the risk of failure. I think this is reflected in how techies are drawn to the safety of techwear, where fit and color matter less and clothing can be chosen and justified through objective criteria like weather resistance parameters.
• teiferer 9mo ago
  > One way that Silicon Valley and the Communist Party resemble each other is that both are serious, self-serious, and indeed, completely humorless. There is a commedy show literally called Silicon Valley making fun of what's going on in the valley and everybody I know in tech loves it and appreciates the humor.
  • otterley 9mo ago
    Right, but it’s written and produced in Hollywood, not in Silicon Valley. The Valley, so the argument goes, could not produce “Silicon Valley” the show. It provides the topic to be skewered, but it can’t skewer itself.
  • skeeter2020 9mo ago
    More accurate: There WAS a comedy called Silicon Valley that wrapped more than 5 years ago ABOUT the valley made in Hollywood by a guy with a science background who grew up in NEW MEXICO and SAN DIEGO, featuring ACTORs, none of them actual techies from the bay area.
• websiteapi 9mo ago
  USA is cooked sadly, that being said being Britain 2.0 ain't too bad. pretty much all the YC companies in the past few cohorts just are desperately rent seeking, sad but true - go look urself
• scubbo 9mo ago
  A fascinating and eye-opening read. One of my intentions for this coming year is to critically examine and (if appropriate) alter or dispel some preconceptions I have. To that end, I'm curious about this part: > You don’t have to convince the elites or the populace that growth is good or that entrepreneurs could be celebrated. Meanwhile in Europe, perhaps 15 percent of the electorate actively believes in degrowth. I feel it’s impossible to convince Europeans to act in their self interest. Can someone elaborate on how growth is aligned with the general interest? To my mind, although growth could _theoretically_ lead to a "lifting all boats" improvement across the board, in practice it inevitably leads to greater concentration of wealth for the elite while the populace deals with negative externalities like pollution, congestion, and advertizing. Degrowth, on the other hand, would directly reduce those externalities; and, if imposed via progressive taxation, would have further societal benefits via funded programs. I'd very much like to hear the counter-argument. It would be pleasant and convenient to believe that growth and industry are Good, Actually, so that I needn't feel guilty for contributing to them or for furthering my own position - but (sadly!) I can't just make myself believe something without justification.
  • brokencode 9mo ago
    Wealth inevitably concentrates in the hands of the elite no matter the economic conditions. There are plenty of failed states where all the wealth ended up in the hands of warlords and dictators. It’s something that regularly has to be dealt with in societies separately from the economic situation.
    • typeofhuman 9mo ago
      Exactly _how_ should society deal with it, and exactly _when_ should society deal with it?
      • brokencode 9mo ago
        Opinions vary. There are those who think massive concentration of wealth is not a problem at all and is just a product of healthy capitalism. Tax is theft, and individual property rights are above all else. There are others who want some kind of communist revolution, where the entire structure of society and property ownership is changed. The workers should benefit from their work as much as the managers. Personally, I feel like there's a middle ground to hit. We should be able to make changes to our current system in the US without needing anything too radical. We have some good examples from the last century, such as trust busting, the New Deal, and the Great Society. These programs made major improvements without changing the country's fundamental economic system or growth trajectory.
• paulpauper 9mo ago
  This is such a long letter it would take me probably 3 months to write it. I would have to end my year by September and spend the rest of the year writing the letter.
• nullorempty 9mo ago
  >Lack of action due to the expectation of long timelines is one of the sins of the lawyerly society. >But American problems seem more fixable to me than Chinese problems. China has stayed on trajectory of improving life of its society for a long time. USA has been in decline all that time and decent accelerated after Cold War with Russia ended. All of China's growth comes from its internal resource. Growth in the USA had been driven by exploiting other countries. >I made clear in my book that I am drawn to pluralism as well as a broader conception of human flourishing than one that could be delivered by the Communist Party. Pluralism had been eradicated in the western society. I can't speak freely in Canada. People get cancelled or jailed for speaking their mind in UK. US is not too far behind in that. There is no meaningful pluralism in the West. They never make a long term plan they can follow for many years. China has monolithic ( more so ) society with shared culture, language(s) and national identity that runs deep to the gene level. They don't don't allow foreign influence to erode it. It's much easier to make progress when people share the same long term vision and goals. CPC is doing just fine leading the country into the future. Sure, it has a monopoly on power, but it also owns its mistakes and fixes them. Multiparty systems of the USA and the rest of the West are just two curtains on the stage, and when you draw the curtains you see the same people attending the same party. Elected officials aim to earn as much as they can in their short stay in power. After all, they only have a few years before they get replaced, better make use of the short time you got. China IMO has a much brighter outlook for the future
  • dpark 9mo ago
    > USA has been in decline all that time and decent accelerated after Cold War with Russia ended. Exactly when do you believe this decline started? I have some major concerns about the current trajectory of the USA, but it seems like nonsense to say that the US has been in decline since well before the Cold War ended. > I can't speak freely in Canada I wonder what it is that you want to say but can’t. Comparing China positively against western nations and then griping about limits on freedom of speech in western nations seems suspect regardless. > Elected officials aim to earn as much as they can in their short stay in power. That’s true. Unelected officials can stay in power and accrue wealth for much longer than elected officials.
• mxschumacher 9mo ago
  My copy of Breakneck arrived a few days ago and I'm rushing through the book, hard to put down, highly recommended
• timzaman 9mo ago
  [flagged]
• Anton_Ingachev 9mo ago
  Happy New year
• stackbutterflow 9mo ago
  > Narrowness of mind is something that makes me uneasy about the tech world. > The Bay Area has all sorts of autistic tendencies. Though Silicon Valley values the ability to move fast, the rest of society has paid more attention to instances in which tech wants to break things. > There’s a general lack of cultural awareness in the Bay Area. It’s easy to hear at these parties that a person’s favorite nonfiction book is Seeing Like a State while their aspirationally favorite novel is Middlemarch. It's refreshing to read someone addressing this aspect of the Mecca of the tech word. For the reasons above the tech elites are the ones I trust the less and fear the most when they are involved in national and international politics. And I think the current state of the US is directly caused by the rise of post dot com Silicon Valley.
• pallar 9mo ago
  [flagged]
  • decimalenough 9mo ago
    He was born in China but his family migrated to Canada when he was 7 years old or so. Said family was also very much on the Communist shit list as former merchant/landowner types.
• dzonga 9mo ago
  London has the house prices of California and the income levels of Mississippi. the UK is seriously broken, I always reflect on the energy generation statistics of the UK per capita while in the US you see automated car washes, in the uk most car washes are Albanians n other immigrants etc
  • klysm 9mo ago
    Income and wealth inequality! I don’t see a way out for the UK
    • turbonaut 9mo ago
      Median wealth per adult in the UK is 176k. In the US it is only 124k. Source: UBS Global Wealth Report 2025 Of course US does has a much higher mean wealth…
      • deleted 9mo ago
        [deleted]
      • hdgvhicv 9mo ago
        The wealth inequality in the U.K. is very genratioanly skewed, mainly from the source of that wealth (housing and final salary pensions) which is no longer available to younger people.
    • specproc 9mo ago
      [flagged]
      • lithocarpus 9mo ago
        Not disagreeing but also I wonder how it compares to inequality in Britain before the US was a thing.
        • specproc 9mo ago
          The core issue is that most major businesses are ultimately owned directly or indirectly abroad, largely in America, with some tapping by London-based intermediaries. Supermarkets and shopping centres, national assets (e.g., water) the story is the same. Then there's Amazon et al. Profit generated in this country is by and large not spent here, and is certainly not taxed adequately. This causes inequality by short-circuiting redistributive measures, either local economic multipliers or government spending. What gains are felt are concentrated in service sectors which facilitate global capital, concentrated in London. See OP's thoughts on legalistic societies. It compares to inequality in England before the US was a thing, in the same way. Small elite benefiting from global plunder, vast inequality internally. The British Empire didn't actually end. There was a hostile takeover by Washington at the end of WW2.
• ksec 9mo ago
  In the thread "Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges" [1], I wrote about China'a hardware capability now going far beyond what US can imagine. In Dan's article; >A rule of thumb is that it takes five years from an American, German, or Japanese automaker to dream up a new car design and launch that model on the roads; in China, it’s closer to 18 months. Not only is China 3 - 5 times faster in terms of product launches, they would have launch it with a production scale that is at least double the output of other auto marker. If you were to put capacity into the equation as well, China is an order of magnitude faster than any competing countries, at half the cost if not even lower. Every single year since 2022 China has added more solar power capacity than the entire US solar capacity. And they are still accelerating, with the current roadmap and trend they could install double the entire US solar power capacity in a single year by 2030. CATL's Sodium Ion Battery is already in production and will be used by EVs and large scale energy storage by end of this year. The cost advantage of these new EV would mean there is partially zero chance EU can compete. And if EU are moaning about it now, they cant even imagine what is coming. Thanks to AI pushing up memory and NAND price. YMTC and CXMT now have enough breathing room to catch up. If they play this right, I wont be surprised by 2035 30 - 40% of DRAM and NAND will be made by the two Chinese firms. Although judging from their past execution record I highly doubt this will happen, but expect may be 10-15% maximum. Beyond tech, there are also other part of manufacturing that China has matched or exceeded rest of the world without being noticed by many. Lab Grown Diamond, Cosmetic Production, Agricultural Machinery, Reinforced glass etc. Their 10 years plan on agricultural improvement also come to fruition especially in terms of fruit and veg. I wont be surprised if they no long need US soy bean within 10 years time. All in all a lot of things in China has passed escape velocity and there is no turning back. China understand US better than US understand themselves, and US doesn't even have any idea about China. I think the quote from the article sums this up pretty well. "Beijing has been preparing for Cold War without eagerness for waging it, while the US wants to wage a Cold War without preparing for it.". [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46273326 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46273326
  • nradov 9mo ago
    China doesn't particularly need US soybeans but they're going to have to continue importing soybeans from somewhere (like Brazil or Canada) indefinitely. Like any commodity, soybeans are (somewhat) fungible. China doesn't have the right combination of arable land and cheap fertilizer necessary to be self-sufficient in soy at an economically viable cost. Of course, China's population is now declining so ironically that could increase their food security in a few decades.
• ceuk 9mo ago
  As a Brit, I struggled to get much interesting out of this considering how many times he mentions "Europe" (in that condescendingly general way that only US folks seem to manage). He talks about "European" prospects and his trip to Denmark but then cites London as a representative example? This almost broke my brain it felt so incoherent. Never mind that (despite my personal wishes) we're not even part of the EU (which I assume is what he means by "Europe"). Surely he knows what an anomaly London is? It's not representative of anything except itself. Referencing the extreme wage dispersion and severe housing pressure of London in a rant about Europe in general is a completely pointless endeavour. He did say one thing I agree with. If you like good food, rich culture and great surroundings, "Europe" is indeed a lovely place to be for the most part. Maybe I'll just keep that as my takeaway. It's too early in the year for doom and gloom anyway
  • yunnpp 9mo ago
    "Africa"
  • xixixao 9mo ago
    He’s writing about China and US. Sure, you can call Europe more diverse, but still it makes sense to draw some generalizations, and I don’t think he’s far from the mark (having myself lived in EU, UK and US).
  • BrokenCogs 9mo ago
    It's pretty clear he meant Europe as the continent, which London is a part of. It's very similar to "Europeans" broadly generalizing the US as one homogenous country, assuming everyone and everything in Chicago is the same as New York or Dallas. Source: me, a brit, who has lived and worked in UK and US.
  • npalli 9mo ago
    Just like San Francisco and Dallas/Texas (from his article) are very different in the US, we should expect lot of differences in Europe (as others mentioned, he clubs UK with EU). Housing is a general problem for all major cities though, not sure why you think it is unique to London in the whole continent. Stockholm, Paris, Dublin, Lisbon to name a few, are pretty bad for housing in their own unique ways. Certainly shouldn't be "breaking your brain".
• siavosh 9mo ago
  I read the whole post. Really revealing - so much analysis but not a single mention of a global system that is reaching a singularity in wealth concentration, and maybe how that might be an important dimension to reflect on. Its like using so many words to deeply analyze the speed differentials in a car race, but not looking up to see that all the drivers are racing towards a brick wall.
  • Uhhrrr 9mo ago
    A wealth singularity is not obvious at all to me, perhaps you should write an essay about it.
  • ineedaj0b 9mo ago
    those articles were written a plenty about the Davos Elite - even precovid. It’s a tad lazy now. Sure there was some evidence of wealth concentration mattering. But there was also evidence against it (like Jack Ma). Power is still the ring to kiss. And hopefully it’s very understood to the parent comment and agreers, wealth creation is not zero sum. When something new is created the pie gets bigger. All wealth inequality discourse is driven by that misunderstanding and a lack of building more homes https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0014292125002922 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S001429212... Maybe your brick wall is the singularity instead and I misread you but I don’t think so.
    • exceptione 9mo ago
      > wealth creation is not zero sum. Entirely not the point. We know that monopolies and wealth _concentration_ reinforce each other, at the cost of wealth creation. Every time a monopoly buys a company, a chance of competition gets eliminated. As monopolist have enough money to buy the government by regulatory capture or even state capture, competition cannot grow, stifling innovation and growth. Parasitism is the most apt way to understand, because the host will wither away from it.
      • ineedaj0b 9mo ago
        I agree we should be busting more monopolies in the vein of Teddy Roosevelt, but you are forgetting the monopolies and capture political parties have on the states themselves. I know its a hot issue and I apologize, but if you look at Minnesota with its likely fraud: would their social welfare program numbers look better without the fraud? Could California be run better without its (also likely) welfare fraud? You might really want this but the leadership doesn't want to root it out. So you're left with voting for the opposition but how many want to do that? Nothing happens. There's no competition in politics. It's two parties or nothing right now. There's Californian billionaires who loudly hate the Government but can't get anything to change. I feel you are overestimating wealth's influence too some degree as well.
• kalkin 9mo ago
  I have nonspecific positive associations with Dan Wang's name, so I rolled my eyes a bit but kept going when "If the Bay Area once had an impish side, it has gone the way of most hardware tinkerers and hippie communes" was followed up by "People aren’t reminiscing over some lost golden age..." But I stopped at this: > “AI will be either the best or the worst thing ever.” It’s a Pascal’s Wager That's not what Pascal's wager is! Apocalyptic religion dates back more than two thousand years and Blaise Pascal lived in the 17th century! When Rosa Luxemburg said to expect "socialism or barbarism", she was not doing a Pascal's Wager! Pascal's Wager doesn't just involve infinite stakes, but also infinitesimal probabilities! The phrase has become a thought-terminating cliche for the sort of person who wants to dismiss any claim that stakes around AI are very high, but has too many intellectual aspirations to just stop with "nothing ever happens." It's no wonder that the author finds it "hard to know what to make of" AI 2027 and says that "why they put that year in their title remains beyond me." It's one thing to notice the commonalities between some AI doom discourse and apocalyptic religion. It's another to make this into such a thoughtless reflex that you also completely muddle your understanding of the Christian apologetics you're referencing. There's a sort of determined refusal to even grasp the arguments that an AI doomer might make, even while writing an extended meditation on AI, for which I've grown increasingly intolerant. It's 2026. Let's advance the discourse.
  • anthuswilliams 9mo ago
    I'm not sure I understand your complaint. Is it that he misuses the term Pascal's Wager? Or more generally that he doesn't extend enough credibility to the ideas in AI 2027?
    • NooneAtAll3 9mo ago
      seems to be yes and yes Pascal's wager isn't about "all or nothing", it is about "small chance of infinite outcome" which makes narrow-minded strategizing wack and commenter is much more pro-ai2027 than article author (and I have no idea what it even is)
    • kalkin 9mo ago
      More the former. Re the latter, it's not so much that I'm annoyed he doesn't agree with the AI2027 people, it's that (he spends a few paragraphs talking about them while) he doesn't appear to have bothered trying to even understand them.
• almostdeadguy 9mo ago
  > I believe that Silicon Valley possesses plenty of virtues. To start, it is the most meritocratic part of America. Tech is so open towards immigrants that it has driven populists into a froth of rage. It remains male-heavy and practices plenty of gatekeeping. But San Francisco better embodies an ethos of openness relative to the rest of the country. Industries on the east coast — finance, media, universities, policy — tend to more carefully weigh name and pedigree. I believe I read that 27% of the founders in the YC Spring 25 class went to an Ivy League school and 40% previously worked at a magnificent 7 company. I'm not saying this is any worse than the east coast, but so much for name and pedigree not mattering. Northern California is what it always has been: the barrier wall of manifest destiny, where instead of crossing the ocean the pioneers and all subsequent generations stayed to incubate the same incentives, and have been relentlessly in pursuit of the next gold rush. Gold, yellow journalism, semiconductors, personal computing, SaaS, crypto, AI, etc. It's the sink drain attractor of people looking to improve their fortunes in one way or another, but almost always around some kind of bonanza of concentrated opportunity. The concept of it being "meritocratic" is a rephrasing of ideology that's always existed about the region: you too could get rich here. But I don't really see any difference in the networks of power that exist in SV as do the rest of the country. I grew up in the bay area and am far happier living outside it. I'm happier to be in a place where art and the humanities are valued instead of cast aside as immaterial or silly or a distraction. I'm happier to live in a place where people have varied interests instead of orienting their life around whatever the prevailing Big Thing is. > So the 20-year-olds who accompanied Mr. Musk into the Department of Government Efficiency did not, I would say, distinguish themselves with their judiciousness. The Bay Area has all sorts of autistic tendencies. Though Silicon Valley values the ability to move fast, the rest of society has paid more attention to instances in which tech wants to break things. It is not surprising that hardcore contingents on both the left and the right have developed hostility to most everything that emerges from Silicon Valley. I see some positive aspects as to more inclusive definitions of autism and neurodivergence, but I hate that we're at the point where "trying to get rich at all costs" is now perceived as autistic (and let's be clear: using mobile gas turbines that get people sick to generate power for AI is not "autistic"). Greed is not autistic, but of course the ideology of SV is that nobody actually cares about money there. Why else would they have apartments without furniture and piles of pizza boxes. It must be the autism. > While critics of AI cite the spread of slop and rising power bills, AI’s architects are more focused on its potential to produce surging job losses. Anthropic chief Dario Amodei takes pains to point out that AI could push the unemployment rate to 20 percent by eviscerating white-collar work. I wonder whether this message is helping to endear his product to the public. The animating concern of developing AI since 2015 has basically been "MAD" applied to the technology. The Bostrom book mentioned later in this article was clearly instrumental in creating this language to think about AI, as you can see many tech CEOs began getting "concerned" about AI around this time, prior to many of the big developments in AI like transformers. One of the seminal emails of OpenAI between Musk and Altman talks about starting a "Manhattan Project for AI". This was a useful concept to graft the development of these companies onto: 1. Firstly, it's a threat to investors. Get in on the ground floor or you will get left behind. We are building tomorrow's winners and losers and there are a lot of losers in the future. 2. Secondly, it leads to a natural source of government support. This is a national security concern. Fund this, guarantee the success of this, or America will lose. On both counts, this framing seems to be working pretty well.
• RagnarD 9mo ago
  To my surprise I found myself reading the entire rather long piece. His thoughts on AI, San Francisco, China, and other topics, are well worth the time.
  • dalyons 9mo ago
    Agreed! He’s a great writer stylistically and w.r.t information density.
• constantcrying 9mo ago
  As a European, the commentary felt very biting and accurate. An entire continent defined by being smug about not being the USA. Where not competing is seen as a great virtue and where significant parts of the electorate are actively voting against fixing the glaringly obvious problems. The supposed niceness of the cities also is just not true. Many European cities are awful places. Where, maybe with the exception of a few tourist areas, you will only find dirty streets, rows of old apartment building regularly smeared with graffiti, shops selling used phones and vapes and food stores competing over who can sell the cheapest, still edible Kebab.
  • xandrius 9mo ago
    You haven't been much around outside of Europe then. And given what is currently coming out of the US in terms of worldwide cultural impact, I'm ok to be anti-whatever that is.
    • constantcrying 9mo ago
      Looking down on the US is just masking the enormous dysfunction in the EU and many European countries. I have been to some countries outside of Europe. Some were much worse some were much better, but I do not particularly care. So many cities in Europe are awful places to live.
• performative 9mo ago
  he makes enough odd claims about cities and countries in the beginning that i can only assume aren't really meant to be taken seriously, so i'm at a bit of a loss for how i should be reading this
• maxglute 9mo ago
  >But American problems seem more fixable to me than Chinese problems Dan still one of the sharper PRC writers, but like all analysts who moves from PRC to stateside, he used to be Canadian in China writing about China to US, now Canadian writing in US about China, Dan starts peddling Murican dynamism cope, maybe something in the water. i.e. see his his post breakneck Chinatalk interview: Humorless engineering governance can't beat very funny Trump/US governance is... certainly a take. Maybe he should do his audience a favor and elucidate why boring competent engineer government is less dynamic/resilient than lawyers other than elections can pivot fast to reduce lawyers (kek) and something something and see see pee can't pivot fast to make productive innovative libtards, since seeseepee STEM can't innovate. Because as we know fast 4 year election cycles work better than slow 5 year plans. CCP certain needs 50% more lawyers... to slow it down.
• gaaz 9mo ago
  0
• AJRF 9mo ago
  Great read. I listened to Dan on Tyler Cowen’s podcast and found him to be a very interesting thinker. He has the air of someone who is a lot more intellectually honest than a lot of our pundits (Tyler is pretty good though, he’s not that target of this comment)
• OGEnthusiast 9mo ago
  Spot on by Dan as always, especially about the decline of Europe and the rise of China.
• ralph84 9mo ago
  The Europe of today is the result of 400 years of brain drain. It would take generations to reverse the effects, if anyone even wanted to.
  • jimnotgym 9mo ago
    Where were the brains draining to 350 years ago?
    • senordevnyc 9mo ago
      America
      • jimnotgym 9mo ago
        So brains were leaving Europe for European colonies then? Hardly a brain drain if they were still in your country.
        • senordevnyc 9mo ago
          Yeah, and how’d that work out?
          • jimnotgym 9mo ago
            After 200 years France fought for their independence to spite the British?
• blurbleblurble 9mo ago
  All, please keep the discussion civil and free of humor
  • chr15m 9mo ago
    lol
• ChrisMarshallNY 9mo ago
  > If the Bay Area once had an impish side, it has gone the way of most hardware tinkerers and hippie communes. Woz had that (still does). He was smart enough to take his winnings and bail. I think that many in SV can't fathom why, but I suspect I know exactly why. I do remember the tech community as being full of humor and whimsy. I miss that.
• NooneAtAll3 9mo ago
  > For tragedies too widely experienced in modern times to be censored — the Cultural Revolution, the one-child policy, Zero Covid ... this part has me confused can someone explain to me why Zero Covid - the most successful program that minimized Covid deaths - is a tragedy? imo it was better than whatever clusterfuck was happening pretty much everywhere else
  • whoevercares 9mo ago
    Zero-COVID was an absolute disaster. It involved severe human rights violations and caused immense social and economic damage, including unnecessary displacement, homelessness, and even deaths. The number is lower sure, but China had the capacity to do much better
    • NooneAtAll3 9mo ago
      again, how is it a disaster if nobody else managed to do better? and it's kinda stupid to say "even deaths" on the background of Italy, India and even million dead in the US
      • whoevercares 9mo ago
        many people especially those with chronic illnesses died because Zero-COVID blocked access to basic medical care and food. Those deaths were policy-driven and avoidable.
        • jjcc 9mo ago
          You watch too much anti government media and mixed narratives with solid facts. You need to read both sides of stories
          • lostmsu 9mo ago
            Stories maybe not. Trustworthy data is the only thing that could possibly resolve this question.
• keiferski 9mo ago
  The insights on American and Chinese industry / tech are undercut by the generic stereotypical “Europeans are smug and backward-looking” comments. A bit disappointing that someone who spends a ton of time analyzing two complex societies (China and the US) falls into Reddit-tier caricature on a third.
  • snake_doc 9mo ago
    Would you be able provide some evidence to the contrary when it comes to the topics discussed in the letter? On industrial infrastructure On technology innovation On internet regulation On central planning Otherwise, your comment becomes an anecdote supporting the common stereotypes (assuming you’re from Europe).
    • keiferski 9mo ago
      I’m responding to comments like this in the article: So I am betting that the US and China are more compelling forces for change. Stalin was fond of telling a story from his experience in Leipzig in 1907, when, to his astonishment, 200 German workers failed to turn up to a socialist meeting because no ticket controller was on the platform to punch their train tickets, citing this experience as proof of the hopelessness of Germanic obedience. Could anyone imagine Chinese or Americans being so obedient? This isn’t a serious analysis of German culture. It’s perfectly fine to argue that certain countries are economically or industrially problematic, but when you throw in comments like this, it really doesn’t help your argument. And I’m not from Europe, but I have lived here for years. The constant clueless comments by my fellow North Americans about the somehow monolithic entity of “Europe” are irritating.
      • snake_doc 9mo ago
        [flagged]
        • UncleMeat 9mo ago
          This is sealioning.
• deaux 9mo ago
  I've been convinced for years now of 90% of what Dan Wang wrote here about China, though I don't even have 20% of his talent in writing it up in a coherent way. Nor do I have enough on-the-ground experience in the country, nor the surname, to make me credible. During all this time I've tried to think of a way to invest in this belief in a monetary way, but I've failed to come up with anything. Chinese stocks? Foreigners' holdings will likely be worthless when the slightest crisis happens. Then what is left? Without going and living there, I'm not sure. Has anyone thought about this?
• ryukoposting 9mo ago
  I've lived in Silicon Valley for exactly 3 days now. Recently moved from the Midwest. There are two kinds of people in San Jose: locals who are normal folks you'd find anywhere, and techies with the AI brainworm. People who are astonished by the natural beauty of this place, and people who are astonished by an office park because there are Apple and Nvidia logos on it. It's all incredibly weird and I don't like it much.
  • keiferski 9mo ago
    It is really quite unfortunate that one of the most naturally beautiful places in the world is full of jobs that require sitting inside in front of a computer all day long.
    • ryukoposting 9mo ago
      It is peculiar, isn't it. SV also seems hell-bent on expanding outward rather than upward, which runs against the staggering cost of land here. That approach is also rather anti-urbanist, which is unexpected for a place that's otherwise pretty progressive. I've known people who are walking contradictions (I'm one of them), but SV is a place of contradictions. I've never seen that before.
  • saagarjha 9mo ago
    Some people are both, I assure you
• kayo_20211030 9mo ago
  A very good read, with some provocative and thought-provoking content. I just wonder if his aversion to AI as a panacea merely failed to displace his adherence to competition as a panacea. In the long run he's probably betting on a better horse, at least on one with better history and staying power; and we all need gods to believe in. However, it does feel like articles of faith still, but with a broader church. His focus on capacity and planning is the golden nugget. I loved the book recommendations. Generally the political and military history of the late Austro-Hungarian empire is incredibly interesting, and remains good signage on navigating current central- and eastern- Europe's situations.
• fragmede 9mo ago
  That's a lot of words to analyze the world, but no mention of drugs. Which, if you don't do them, you'd never realize. But we all have heard the rumors by now, that Elon's on Ketamine, the Republicans are all on coke, Hunter S Thompson is worth mentioning, Betty Ford put her names on those clinics for a reason. Rob Ford. Boris Yeltsin was an alcoholic. Margaret Thatcher was on stimulants. I'll avoid Godwin-ing this thread. The stereotype about German engineering is bolstered by the fact that everyone there is on speed and has 4 extra hours in the day to do nothing but clean and tidy up.
• cassepipe 9mo ago
  > One of the startling geopolitical moves of the year was how quickly Donald Trump withdrew his ~150 percent tariffs on China. Trump folded not out of beneficence, but because Xi Jinping denied rare earth magnets to most of the world, threatening many types of manufacturing operations. And yet I’m struck by Beijing’s relative restraint. And it makes sense they would do so. Isn't US isolationism their best ally ? Making up a Sun Tzu quote for this occasion: "If your enemy is about to step in poop, show him how beautiful the sky is"
• thomasjudge 9mo ago
  "..for all of Trump’s ills, I see him as a sign of the underlying dynamism of the US. Who else would have elected so whimsical a leader to this high office?" "Whimsical"