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I don't see that happening. The US debt will hinder any big expense that could keep it in any game long term. Take AI for instance. The US grid is struggling t

I don't see that happening. The US debt will hinder any big expense that could keep it in any game long term. Take AI for instance. The US grid is struggling to keep up with demand, while Chinese one has a lot of headway [1]. Usually, this could be solved by an increase in spending lasting a few years which would make the debt tick up, but that would've been an absolutely fine use of debt since it buys some shiny new infra that will pay dividends for the next 20ish years. Now? Not possible. The US is already drowning in debt and the usual buyers are not showing up to buy it because of the Iran fiasco. With oil so expensive everyone was using their USD reserves to buy oil, not debt. Which mades interest rates go up considerably, and for a country with already ~130% of debt/gdp ratio these are terrible news. So, I don't think there will be a great power race. Europe is fucked by both high debt, and lack of innovation. Russia is struggling already to finance a war of conquest they started. China is the only one that can run if it comes down to it (unless of course the numbers coming out of China are mega bogus, but for that I don't know enough to have an opinion). [1] https://fortune.com/2025/08/14/data-centers-china-grid-us-infrastructure/ https://fortune.com/2025/08/14/data-centers-china-grid-us-in...

kranke155 4mo ago
It is absolutely a Chinese century. Even the comment above isn’t wrong per se - great power competition is normal during the interregnum, ie as Arrighi described it - one hegemon is rising while another is declining. But eventually one of them does rise and the world conforms to that - ie America in post WW2.
- bxk76 4mo ago
  Well China cant seem to make a single friend beyond North Korea and Russia. Everyone is a bit wary of them. I mean when the US replaced the Brits as Hegemon a large part of the world wasnt nervous about it.
  - wredcoll 4mo ago
    God, this is depressing. I think it's difficult, if you're a millenial/zoomer/whatever we're calling these things, to understand just how much of the world genuinely liked and respected and wanted america involved in their local affairs. America obviously wasn't perfect and many, many more people than trump were involved with squandering all of this goodwill, but we still had some left over before he showed up.
    - bxk76 4mo ago
      Its not a static system. Things will swing back and forth like a pendulum. And through those oscillation we move forward. Diff today is everyone is getting their heads filled 24x7 with a whole lot of info their grandparents never had to digest about how the system moves.
inigyou 4mo ago
The US can just hyperinflate to pay its debts.
- marcyb5st 4mo ago
  And kill the savings of what remains of the middle class. Probably they will do it though, as it is a slow thing and is not felt by the average Joe like a tax hike or loss of benefits. So the policians won't trigger an outrage by doing so.
  - inigyou 4mo ago
    hyperinflation is very fast, but I think they'll do it, by accident because they don't know how anything works, but I think it's impossible to accurately predict when.
  - lII1lIlI11ll 4mo ago
    > And kill the savings of what remains of the middle class. I would assume majority of US middle class' savings are in the real estate or securities. Why would hyperinflation kill these?
brnt 4mo ago
> Europe is fucked by both high debt, and lack of innovation Spoken like somebody who has no idea what they are talking about. Apart from the large share of fundamental science which Europe has always been bigger in and better at (I mean, there's a huge tunnel in Texas to show that Americans at some point understood this and tried to compete), Europe is funding the military tools of the next generation in Ukraine. Americans used to be excellent executors, then China took that role. What's left?
- mech998877 4mo ago
  Look at GDP growth in the US vs EU over the last 10 years or so if you want to talk about innovation. Europe has been stagnating economically and real productivity growth is critical to a modern economy. The large hadron collider does some impressive research, but it doesn't move the sort of innovation in practical machinery and infrastructure that powers a modern economy.
  - mrguyorama 4mo ago
    All that GDP growth in the US is advertising. Google isn't some sort of innovator. They sell advertisements. What practical machinery and infrastructure has the US innovated in that time frame?
    - mrDmrTmrJ 4mo ago
      Google's research team invented the Transformer Architecture at the center of LLM "AI". A huge invention. California has added roughly 17GW of grid-scale batteries in the last five years. Modern GPU (NVIDIA). Modern electric car (Tesla). Reusable Rockets (SpaceX). I agree that the US has an "Only Elon-led companies can get things done outside of computers" problem.
  - brnt 4mo ago
    Comparative GDP based on more current methods (well, decades too at this point) rather than the graphs you are probably seeing show a stable co-trend over the past quarter century. https://jacobin.com/2026/03/us-europe-comparative-productivity-statistics/ https://jacobin.com/2026/03/us-europe-comparative-productivi...
rimliu 4mo ago
Maybe AI is not a good example. It is extremely efficient as money burning machine, but for everything else...
elgertam 4mo ago
> Take AI for instance. The US grid is struggling to keep up with demand, while Chinese one has a lot of headway [1]. Usually, this could be solved by an increase in spending lasting a few years which would make the debt tick up, but that would've been an absolutely fine use of debt since it buys some shiny new infra that will pay dividends for the next 20ish years. I object. The CCP is much more deeply indebted than the US when taking into account provincial and local governments as well as state-owned enterprises.[0] And of course the US debt is financed in its own currency while Chinese foreign debt is financed in dollars or other currencies. The problem in the US is regulation. An environmental impact study takes 54 months in the US.[1] The CCP, which has no problem poisoning its people or even launching rockets over inhabited villages, doesn't delay itself at all.[2] I'm glad we don't poison our people or place dangerous industry in places that could harm populated areas, or even perform some prophylactic measures to protect nature, but I'm confident that we could do this in less then a year (less than six months?) and make much faster progress. Even for something like nuclear, the ten years (mostly caused by red tape) are really onerous. > China is the only one that can run if it comes down to it (unless of course the numbers coming out of China are mega bogus, but for that I don't know enough to have an opinion). Yes, the common opinion among China watchers is that any number the CCP touches is "mega bogus." They're actually in the midst of something of a financial crisis at the moment because of the high debt. [0]https://www.statista.com/topics/11662/debt-in-china/ https://www.statista.com/topics/11662/debt-in-china/ [1]https://www.rff.org/publications/reports/how-long-does-it-take-national-environmental-policy-act-timelines-and-outcomes-for-clean-energy-projects/ https://www.rff.org/publications/reports/how-long-does-it-ta... [2]https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/11/china-keeps-dropping-toxic-rocket-parts-on-its-villages/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/11/china-keeps-dropping...
- eunos 4mo ago
  > high debt > Use Total Debt I never seen that metric used anywhere else aside China
  - tick_tock_tick 4mo ago
    Almost no other country has it's government pretending to be so many different entities.
daedrdev 4mo ago
The US has DOUBLE its current power production in proposed expansions, mostly solar and batteries. In 2004 it had like 20%. The US grid is set to grow.

kranke155 4mo ago

It is absolutely a Chinese century. Even the comment above isn’t wrong per se - great power competition is normal during the interregnum, ie as Arrighi described it - one hegemon is rising while another is declining. But eventually one of them does rise and the world conforms to that - ie America in post WW2.

bxk76 4mo ago
Well China cant seem to make a single friend beyond North Korea and Russia. Everyone is a bit wary of them. I mean when the US replaced the Brits as Hegemon a large part of the world wasnt nervous about it.
- wredcoll 4mo ago
  God, this is depressing. I think it's difficult, if you're a millenial/zoomer/whatever we're calling these things, to understand just how much of the world genuinely liked and respected and wanted america involved in their local affairs. America obviously wasn't perfect and many, many more people than trump were involved with squandering all of this goodwill, but we still had some left over before he showed up.
  - bxk76 4mo ago
    Its not a static system. Things will swing back and forth like a pendulum. And through those oscillation we move forward. Diff today is everyone is getting their heads filled 24x7 with a whole lot of info their grandparents never had to digest about how the system moves.

inigyou 4mo ago

The US can just hyperinflate to pay its debts.

marcyb5st 4mo ago
And kill the savings of what remains of the middle class. Probably they will do it though, as it is a slow thing and is not felt by the average Joe like a tax hike or loss of benefits. So the policians won't trigger an outrage by doing so.
- inigyou 4mo ago
  hyperinflation is very fast, but I think they'll do it, by accident because they don't know how anything works, but I think it's impossible to accurately predict when.
- lII1lIlI11ll 4mo ago
  > And kill the savings of what remains of the middle class. I would assume majority of US middle class' savings are in the real estate or securities. Why would hyperinflation kill these?

brnt 4mo ago

> Europe is fucked by both high debt, and lack of innovation Spoken like somebody who has no idea what they are talking about. Apart from the large share of fundamental science which Europe has always been bigger in and better at (I mean, there's a huge tunnel in Texas to show that Americans at some point understood this and tried to compete), Europe is funding the military tools of the next generation in Ukraine. Americans used to be excellent executors, then China took that role. What's left?

mech998877 4mo ago
Look at GDP growth in the US vs EU over the last 10 years or so if you want to talk about innovation. Europe has been stagnating economically and real productivity growth is critical to a modern economy. The large hadron collider does some impressive research, but it doesn't move the sort of innovation in practical machinery and infrastructure that powers a modern economy.
- mrguyorama 4mo ago
  All that GDP growth in the US is advertising. Google isn't some sort of innovator. They sell advertisements. What practical machinery and infrastructure has the US innovated in that time frame?
  - mrDmrTmrJ 4mo ago
    Google's research team invented the Transformer Architecture at the center of LLM "AI". A huge invention. California has added roughly 17GW of grid-scale batteries in the last five years. Modern GPU (NVIDIA). Modern electric car (Tesla). Reusable Rockets (SpaceX). I agree that the US has an "Only Elon-led companies can get things done outside of computers" problem.
- brnt 4mo ago
  Comparative GDP based on more current methods (well, decades too at this point) rather than the graphs you are probably seeing show a stable co-trend over the past quarter century. https://jacobin.com/2026/03/us-europe-comparative-productivity-statistics/ https://jacobin.com/2026/03/us-europe-comparative-productivi...

rimliu 4mo ago

Maybe AI is not a good example. It is extremely efficient as money burning machine, but for everything else...

elgertam 4mo ago

> Take AI for instance. The US grid is struggling to keep up with demand, while Chinese one has a lot of headway [1]. Usually, this could be solved by an increase in spending lasting a few years which would make the debt tick up, but that would've been an absolutely fine use of debt since it buys some shiny new infra that will pay dividends for the next 20ish years. I object. The CCP is much more deeply indebted than the US when taking into account provincial and local governments as well as state-owned enterprises.[0] And of course the US debt is financed in its own currency while Chinese foreign debt is financed in dollars or other currencies. The problem in the US is regulation. An environmental impact study takes 54 months in the US.[1] The CCP, which has no problem poisoning its people or even launching rockets over inhabited villages, doesn't delay itself at all.[2] I'm glad we don't poison our people or place dangerous industry in places that could harm populated areas, or even perform some prophylactic measures to protect nature, but I'm confident that we could do this in less then a year (less than six months?) and make much faster progress. Even for something like nuclear, the ten years (mostly caused by red tape) are really onerous. > China is the only one that can run if it comes down to it (unless of course the numbers coming out of China are mega bogus, but for that I don't know enough to have an opinion). Yes, the common opinion among China watchers is that any number the CCP touches is "mega bogus." They're actually in the midst of something of a financial crisis at the moment because of the high debt. [0]https://www.statista.com/topics/11662/debt-in-china/ https://www.statista.com/topics/11662/debt-in-china/ [1]https://www.rff.org/publications/reports/how-long-does-it-take-national-environmental-policy-act-timelines-and-outcomes-for-clean-energy-projects/ https://www.rff.org/publications/reports/how-long-does-it-ta... [2]https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/11/china-keeps-dropping-toxic-rocket-parts-on-its-villages/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/11/china-keeps-dropping...

eunos 4mo ago
> high debt > Use Total Debt I never seen that metric used anywhere else aside China
- tick_tock_tick 4mo ago
  Almost no other country has it's government pretending to be so many different entities.

daedrdev 4mo ago

The US has DOUBLE its current power production in proposed expansions, mostly solar and batteries. In 2004 it had like 20%. The US grid is set to grow.