Re: <nettime> Stealing the spotlight

[Felix Stalder via nettime-l <nettime-l@lists.nettime.org>]

On 3/4/25 20:52, Brian Holmes wrote:

> Suddenly it hit me: If it takes Russia and China acting together to 
> push the US out of its hegemonic position, then an alliance with 
> Russia could be conceived as a strategy for retaining global 
> hegemony in the face of the challenge from China.

That seems to be conclusion. Not the least because this is pretty much 
the thinking on the right now. The unipolar moment (what I called, not 
particularly well, "unilateral neoliberalism") is over. Now we are back 
to great power politics.

People like John Mearsheimer said this all along. His article from 2014
(!) "Why the Ukraine Crisis Is the West’s Fault" turned out depressingly
accurate. Just read the final paragraph.

https://www.mearsheimer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Why-the-Ukraine-
Crisis-Is.pdf

Three years into the war, the situation as become untenable. What's the 
objective? Defeat Russia? A nuclear war, the right argues, is more likely.

Trump is cutting the US's losses. Ukraine can accept a subordinate 
position as US commodity source, at best. But, to be fair, it wasn't 
Trump that threw Ukraine under the bus. He just tries to stick the blame 
on them.

This also what Jeffry Sachs argues. If you haven't done yet, watch his
speech at the EU parliament 10 days ago. He sounds like the 
anti-imperialists far-left: the US meddles everywhere, Europe is singing 
America's tune, and now continues even after America stopped singing it.

You have to go to an Indian newspaper to find a recording, though. Which 
kind of makes his point.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=hA9qmOIUYJA

Now, John Mearsheimer and the like see the war in Ukraine primarily as a
subordinate problem to the real conflict coming up with China.

In a recent interview he argued (in a Chinese publication!)

> GT: Could you share your predictions for the future of China-US 
> relations?
>
> Mearsheimer: We already have an intense security competition. It has 
> been somewhat dampened by the fact that the US is pinned down in 
> Ukraine and pinned down in the Middle East. If the US was not pinned 
> down in Ukraine and in the Middle East, the security competition in 
> East Asia would be more intense.

https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202410/1322018.shtml

Is the US pivot to Russia as a pivot against Asia delusional? Looks like 
on the face of it and considering the last 20 years of Russia-China 
relations. But what do I know? Is it more stupid and cynical than Biden 
and the Europeans were in allowing this war to start?

On 3/4/25 20:52, Brian Holmes wrote:

> What's more, I also think that the attempted Elon Musk takeover of 
> the US administrative apparatus is part of a strategy conceived for 
> the advent of General Artificial Intelligence on the global stage. 
> The belief in Silicon Valley seems to be that an imminent 
> qualitative leap in the capacity of AI systems will make traditional 
> bureaucracies obsolete, unable to respond at the speed of AI-driven 
> social change.

This, personally, I doubt. Not that there are people who believe this,
but that this is driving the strategy. I think there is a deep hatred
against the state and regulation, from the old right (say, fossil
industries that hate the EPA, the Christian right that hates the
department of education) and the new right that hates taxes and any form 
of regulation because they live already in a fully privatized world.

Besides, Silicon Valley might be high on their its supply, but they also
realize they have no path to profitability with GenAI. Not only do not
have enough paying customers, but they lose money on each of them,
because each and every inference cost them money. Double the number of
users, double the costs. This is not the easily scalable networks of 
social media.

Here's a pretty good breakdown of the not very transparent accounting
around AGI.

https://www.wheresyoured.at/longcon


I think they see the take-over of the state more as a way to insert
their products into the infrastructure and then charge exorbitant rates
to captured and dependent institutions. They probably also see it as a 
source of new data, now that the Internet has been strip-mined.

So, one fraction wants to break the institutions so they can no longer
enforce their own rules, the other wants to break them to insert their 
own (mediocre?) products. A great feat of coalition-building!

But, frankly, my guess is as good as anyone's. But we have to be very 
attentive, since there are so many moving parts at the moment, some is 
improvised and opportunistic, while others are a consequence of real, 
deep historical shifts.

We're off the map, for sure.



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