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Graham Allison Profile picture
@GrahamTAllison
Feb 13 • 4 tweets • 1 min read • Read on X
1/ Kick-Ass Robots
2/ Whose robots are kicking whose ass in the rivalry between US and Chinese technology companies? According to America’s leading promoter of humanoid robots, Elon Musk: “China is an ass-kicker, next level. We don’t see any significant humanoid robot competitors outside of China.”
3/ More inconvenient for Musk: his robot, Optimus, relies on Chinese suppliers for essential parts, such as the roller screws and motors behind the robot’s lifelike movements, according to a recent WSJ article in which Musk is quoted.

wsj.com/tech/china-is-…
4/ As a video in the article suggests, you may soon have a robot making your bed. And if you do, much of it will have been Made in China.

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More from @GrahamTAllison

Graham Allison Profile picture
Dec 23, 2025
1/ In the Trump administration’s effort to negotiate a sustainable peace/ceasefire in Ukraine, the dispute about territory has proved to be one of two final sticking points. Putin has continued to demand that Ukraine leave the last chunk of Donbas his troops have yet to seize. Zelenskyy has continued to insist that Ukraine would not give up at the negotiating table what its troops have successfully denied Russia on the battlefield.
2/ So: after nearly four years of war in which Ukraine has lost 12 percent of its territory, more than a fifth of its economy, and two thirds of its electrical infrastructure; suffered hundreds of thousands of casualties; and seen about a quarter of its citizens displaced, why the fuss about a piece of land the size of the state of Delaware?
3/ Major news outlets have continued to misreport the issue. For example, again last week the New York Times reported that Ukraine still controls “14 percent or so of the Donbas.” Similarly, Axios repeated the same mistake, referencing “the roughly 14% of the Donbas region which [Ukraine] controls.”

nytimes.com/2025/12/16/wor…

axios.com/2025/12/15/ukr…
Read 11 tweets
Graham Allison Profile picture
Dec 22, 2025
1/ If you are having trouble sleeping at night, see attached three podcasts from the past month in which I offer my current best answers to a range of questions on US-China relations, Trump’s second term, and the international security order.
2/ The hosts of Bloomberg’s Odd Lots podcast asked a number of uncomfortable questions:

- Whether the current discombobulation between the US and China comes down to the Thucydidean dynamics of a rapidly rising power seriously challenging a major ruling power? (My central proposition: Yes, much of the tension does arise from Thucydidean dynamics. Thus, if history is our best guide, war is likely—but not inevitable).

- What have I learned in 2025? (My answer: that the world is even more uncertain than I recognized this time last year. But in relations between the US and China, if we’re stretching for silver linings, mine include that Trump is decidedly not a China hawk and that he is serious about being remembered as a great peacemaker, including with China and Xi Jinping).

bloomberg.com/news/audio/202…
3/ With The Straits Times's (@straits_times) Asian Insider podcast, I responded to a similar set of questions, including:

- What do Trump and Xi want from each other? (A clue: A mutually beneficial economic relationship, which is what Trump’s advisors proposed in his National Security Strategy.

- Will China be the world’s sole superpower? (My bottom line: No. But I expect it to keep rising and thus that as Lee Kuan Yew advised, the US and China will have to find ways to coexist and share the Pacific in the 21st century).

youtube.com/watch?v=ZOb3Pn…
Read 4 tweets
Graham Allison Profile picture
Dec 5, 2025
1/ Eric Schmidt, Henry Kissinger and AI.
2/ This week, @ericschmidt returned to the @Kennedy_School @JFKJrForum for the third year in a row to help us remember our colleague, mentor, and friend Henry Kissinger and check where we stand in the AI race.
3/ First, Eric described the enduring wisdom of Henry’s insights into the “epochal change” that AI presents. “We are today grappling with the question that he foresaw 20 years ago when we first started working on this—What does it mean to be human in the age of AI?” Eric urged today’s graduate and undergraduate students and the rest of us to continue searching for better answers.
Read 6 tweets
Graham Allison Profile picture
Nov 24, 2025
1/ As each of us makes our list of things for which to give thanks this week, let me encourage you to include three more items that are explained in my @ForeignAffairs piece published today: 80, 80, and 9. foreignaffairs.com/united-states/…
2/ If you can identify the questions to which each of these numbers is an answer, you will have the big picture of what we should be thankful for in the international security arena, not just in the past year, but during our entire lifetimes.
3/ The first 80 reminds us that since Japan surrendered in September 1945, the world has lived in the Longest Peace—the longest period without Great Power war—since Rome. Had it been otherwise, everything about our lives would be profoundly different.
Read 7 tweets
Graham Allison Profile picture
Nov 14, 2025
1/ Life Lessons from the Sage of Omaha
2/ At the ripe young age of 95, Warren Buffett is handing over the leadership of his legendary investment company to his chosen successor, though he will remain Chairman of the Board.
3/ In what he hints may be his final letter to shareholders (though many of us are hoping that it is only his final letter as CEO and not Chairman) he offers many pearls of wisdom. berkshirehathaway.com/news/nov1025.p…
Read 6 tweets
Graham Allison Profile picture
Nov 7, 2025
1/ Betting on the November 2026 Midterm Election: Clues from Applied History.
2/ The November 2026 midterm elections are shaping up to be one of the most consequential in memory. If Democrats take the House, President Trump will find his superpowers constrained. If on top of that there were also a recession, he could find himself fighting to escape impeachment.
3/ As observers have noted, the highest objective on President Trump’s current agenda is to win next November in order to continue pursuing his vision to Make America Great. Maintaining his power is a prerequisite to pursuing other initiatives.
Read 9 tweets

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