Asian Nerds vs. Jock Bros: Future of America

America has always had a ton of former jocks, fra boys trading stocks, buff military guys scrapple blocks, but right now it doesn't have enough nerdy guys that remind you of Spock. And I think when it comes to the AI race, America's lost the plot. Let me play this clip from Nvidia CEO Jensen Wong. Is your investment of $500 billion to the United States, what the president calls an investment, or are you just trying to produce $500 billion worth of In order to produce $500 billion worth of AI infrastructure requires enormous amounts of investment from a lot of different partners and so we've we've brought on shore uh many partners to help us do that and we're going to have to build our own factories in order to do that. I'm going to count on the fact that that uh the administration know has a good plan and um from our perspective uh we would like to have policies that support and help accelerate the development of artificial intelligence in this new industry. I'm not I'm not sure what the the new diffusion rule is going to be but whatever it happens to be it becomes it really has to recognize that the world has changed fundamentally since the previous diffusion rule was was uh was released. We need to accelerate the diffusion of American AI technology around the world. And so the policies and uh the encouragement from the administration, it really needs to be behind that. There's no question that Huawei is one of the most formidable technology companies in the world. And they're incredible in computing. They're incredible in networking technology and software capabilities. Uh all of the essential uh capabilities to advance AI and they have they've made enormous progress in the last several years. uh whatever whatever policy uh the administr administration puts together really should enable us to accelerate. This is a country with great will and they have great technical capabilities. 50% of the world's AI researchers are Chinese and and so this is a uh this is an industry that that we will have to compete for. Now listen guys, some people are going to say, "Oh, you're reading into it too much or you're I'm see it differently." Guys, let me tell you guys my opinion, man. It's a hot ass day in Bangkok right now and I got to do this in one take. Long story short, Nvidia CEO Jensen Wong is low-key expressing his skepticism that people even understand his skepticism. I think he's skeptical that people even understand how skeptical he is about developing AI infrastructure properly in America because he's talking about how difficult it is to deploy 500 billion, all the different partners you need to bring in. He's like, "Ah, this is not like sports, guys. There's no two-minute warning. There's no third quarter. I know all you Americans just only love sports ball, but uh this is just way different and I'm trying to explain it to you guys, but I kind of don't think you guys are even going to get what I'm trying to say. And long story short, guys, when it comes to developing hardcore STEM and AI infrastructure in America, like on a physical level, I'm not saying they can't import the best and brightest minds from around the world and convince them to take an American path for it, even though even that's becoming a little bit harder than it used to be. But just in terms of the physical centers like like for example, China just built a bunch of AI servers underneath the water off the shore of Hainan because that way you don't have to deal with the cooling system, right? I think that that stuff is essentially just not going to happen on American soil. And I'll tell you why. Intentions and rhetoric are very different from execution and systems alignment. Okay, so real quick guys, I'm not a subject matter expert, but I do believe there are some older white people that are probably what in the high up in the Department of Defense or National Security circles that are like, "Oh my gosh, China's developing internal AI infrastructure. They're going to start designing the microchips outside of the world flowing like they're going to have all eight steps internalized within their country. We need to do that." Which totally makes sense, right? America's the richest country in the world. Why shouldn't it develop some sort of internalized, you know, from the design? America's just doing the design of the microchips right now, but everything else is being executed in six to 10 different countries around the world. If China figures out how to internalize it completely within their society, then yeah, that's going to give them a huge advantage, right? And that's going to whoever controls the chips and the robots is going to determine the gist of the future, right? That's what some people think or some people fear, you know, that's what's causing the pressure, right? And the tension. And long story short, guys, I'll tell you why it's not actually going to work. Because basically, culture in America is interesting because there's such tension between how American culture actually is in American high schools and on the ground and what people care about every day. And it's that like a few technological aspirations of a few people in government. There's such a wide gap between that. And I'll tell you this, America sort of splits into four groups in my opinion when it comes to this subject. It splits into jock, Hollywood America, you know what I That's like your cool kids in high school and they're pretty much just watching UFC, NFL, you know, sort of rahrh cheering or or maybe they're just watching some, you know, some woke Hollywood movies or whatever. Anyway, I'm just saying that that's expressing all the people who grew up in an American high school, right? Then you've got nerd America. And so instead of jock America, it's Spock America, right? My dad is part of Spock America. He was brought here super high IQ, you know, top student out of like 5,000, full scholarship ride, etc., etc. That's what led him to America and then obviously give birth to me and etc. my siblings. Then you've also got governmental America, right, which is very slow, PR ccentric, a little theatrical. Obviously, to be fair, Trump is looks like he's moving trying to move really quick. You know what I mean? Other people would say erratically, some people would say recklessly, but it I will say the one thing that it looks like he is trying to solve is the fact that America is he kept the theatrical part, but the slow part, he's definitely trying to change that. And then you've got corporate America, guys. You've got corporate profitdriven America. And I'll tell you this, jock America, Spock America, governmental America, and corporate America all have to align incentive wise, systemwise, structure-wise, and some sort of piston Swiss watch gear optimization flow, or else this is not going to work. It's not going to reach the critical mass. It needs to tip the tipping point and actually develop actually any sort of significant AIA American infrastructure. And I just don't know if all these four parts are going to work in unison like they did during the USSR space race days. Point number two, guys, the Chinese need the Chinese to compete with the Chinese, but they don't trust the Chinese, especially the guys. So if you look at Jensen Hang in the interview, he says half of the world's AI researchers are in China. Most of them are men, right? But of course, there's still a significant portion of women. Shout out to what's her name? Lucy Gua. You know what I mean? I I I think she's the first like billionaire self-made female billionaire in America in history or something like that like I don't know or something like that like in a long time you know she's Chinese or whatever but I'm saying that basically it's like have you ever seen the French national soccer team or the American elite math team that beat team China for the world math championships basically all the deep tech AI researchers in the world come from China Taiwan South Korea and India and America and Canada and France and Germany are pretty high up there. But even most of the people in the US, Canada, France and Germany are either Chinese or Indian or South Korean that are doing the deep research for the AI. So basically, they need to figure out how they can recruit top level talent to have an American passport and work on American projects, but they don't trust the people and they're not making them very good offers. So, a lot of people are wondering, yeah, you know, for me, I could make like $80,000 in China, or I could make 300, but then my kids and stuff, we're going to be forced to live in like Arizona, or we're going to be forced to live in Ohio, and it's not going to be a fun life. What type of offer is that? So, basically, they're not really making a competitive offer because they don't trust the Chinese men. Yeah, maybe they trust like uh Elizabeth Holmes or Tiffany Fong or Kim Iverson, you know, hot conservativeleaning Asian women or ha women, but they do not trust the guys, but they need the guys to compete with a country full of Asian guys. So, I think that that's a really interesting situation and it's just like I don't know, man. I just think America needs to up the offer. Next up, point number three. America tends to overvalue consumerf facing products. So for example, no matter how much they're able to offer a pay bump to a Asian engineer that is working on AI in Asia right now, they're probably never going to offer them more than Airbnb or Facebook would be to like place ads. So because America is very profit driven, right? capitalism and some people are going to say, you know, for a while we were okay with the corportocracy happening because, you know, as long as corporate interests align with American interests or the interests of the vast majority of American citizens and we saw our quality of life going up, now it seems like there's a little bit of a rebellion against corportocracy or people are starting to feel like maybe letting the corporations run everything is not the best idea or maybe they don't have our best interests or play or maybe it's just been decoupled in terms of the quality of life of the average citizen and sort of the outcomes for corporate America and the shareholder payouts or the CEO payouts have started to become more disconnected, right? But be like America just really really values consumerf facing products like a lot more than they value hardcore hardware infrastructure or data centers. These things are very unsexy even though they're very important. If you actually want to have a self-contained internal infrastructure like workflow chart for anything, right? Especially something super complicated like semiconductors, microchips. And then not only that, you have the AI side. You know, you have a hardware and you have a software side of AI. So basically, is it cooked? Is it cooked? Guys, I just gave you a couple reasons why it could be cooked. I said there's no alignment between Doc America, Spock America, governmental America, and capitalistic corporate America. I talked about how, you know, America needs the Chinese, especially Chinese guys, but they kind of hate Chinese guys or mistrust them or dismiss them. So that's going to be like another sort of like cultural barrier to it happening because you need to recruit the top level free agents. But if you kind of like resent them their identity too or don't trust them then why would the top free agents want to sign with you? And then yeah just overvaluing consumerf facing tech. I understand that because like I could fall victim to that too. Like I'm like yeah you know it's just all about who drives the profit. If you drive profits to a consumerf facing brand then you should get more of those profits. But at some point I'm like, "Nah, man. We got to start valuing the guys doing the important work, the unsexy work." You know what I mean? Like trying to understand lithography or something that's just, you know, that's going to go over like 97% of the American population's heads, you know? And then ultimately, what I'm saying is this guys, all this stuff, the Chips Act, Trump going on and saying, "Yeah, we're going to get $500 billion." All this stuff has so many complex mechanisms and micro details behind it. And I just think that America of what it says its ambitions are in terms of like developing internalized AI infrastructure. Let's say for example 100 out of 100 is like man we got it right. I think America's like closer to 30 out of 100 right now. And I just don't see that number rising towards a critical mass of like let's say 75 or 85 out of 100 is finally like actually successful. I just don't see it happening. I think America would build five to 10 more sports stadiums and and launch 10 more pro sports. Like America cares more about pro pickle ball right now on a on a jock ball sports ball level than AI infrastructure. And I'll tell you this, pickle ball is not even 1,000 as important. And that's just where people's heads are at. You could say it's like a it's a function of uh good things too. Like you know what I mean? It's a function of success to not have to think about something as critical as like AI infrastructure and like underwater servers and then people would be like, "Oh, you're damaging the coral reef and you're like doing all this and that." I'm not saying that those concerns aren't legitimate to some extent. Maybe those servers would heat up the water and certain fish near that server would need, you know, they spawn better in a in a more different climate and it's going to heat it up too much. I'm not saying that those concerns are not legit. There's always signs behind a lot of things, but at the end of the day, I'm just saying that America lost the plot if it wants to build AI infrastructure. And you know, you could love it, you could hate it. You know, I'm American and I'm proud to be American, but it's just I always look at thing like sports teams. I'm just making the reads how I think they are. And I just don't think America got it. I don't think America values STEM. I think the nerds get treated poorly. And yes, America's always imported the best nerds. Bro, a lot of people think, "Oh, I'm just talking about like Chinese or Indian people." Albert Einstein was an import. Albert Einstein was an import. Like I have, you know what I mean? Like, yeah, I get it. You know, there's we got some great American tech CEOs, but in a way sometimes I wonder if they're more for profit than actually just like technological advancement. As you can see with this whole chat GPT thing, you know, they say they're for technological advancement. It ends up being bought up by Microsoft and sort of turned into a for-profit tool or something like that. So anyway guys, you know, some people are going to debate me and be like, "Oh, well, America's still the greatest." I'm not saying it's still not the best place to live. I'm just saying the corportocracy and the corporate interest running the governmental interest and the governmental interest paying lip service to something is all becoming just very jumbled up and very disconnected and just very not clean. The patterns aren't clean anymore. The relationship between different things is not clean anymore. I guess the cleanest thing would be that actually prophets rule over everything. So anyway guys, let me know what you think. Can America compete in AI infrastructure or not? Because it looks like China is, man. And they run a completely different system over there. It's got its own pros and cons. But I'm just saying when it comes to this issue, what do you guys think? [Music]