"From Deepfakes to Arms Races, AI Politics Is Here." Eight political and geopolitical questions about Artificial Intelligence: 1/9bloomberg.com/opinion/articl… 1. Will AI have an adverse impact on the 2024 election? Even when voters are primed to be aware of deepfakes, they do not get better at identifying them—but they do lose trust in real videos. This probably means that the election will generate additional public pressure for regulation, especially if one campaign is seen to be using AI in a nefarious way. 2/9

We used to imagine humanity populating the galaxy. No longer. The end is now in sight for the great human population explosion: 1/9bloomberg.com/opinion/articl… The UN Population Division’s median estimate is that the global population will reach 10.4 billion by the mid 2080s. According to the @IHME_UW, it will peak at a lower level and earlier, at 9.7 billion in 2064. 2/9

Two years ago, Russia invaded Ukraine. Most experts underestimated the probability of that event mainly because they just didn't understand Putin. But I'd seen the "Time of Troublemaking" coming. Here's my essay, "The Godfather," from @TIME, Feb. 15, 2007. Quote: "When I saw him speak at the recent @MunSecConf, the Russian President gave a striking impersonation of Michael Corleone in The Godfather--the embodiment of implicit menace." 1/4 Ten years later, Don Corleone had morphed into "Peter the Great" in his own imagination. And that was why I was so sure at the beginning of 2022 that war was coming: 2/4bloomberg.com/opinion/articl…

Are we unable to imagine defeat? It seems clear to me that, if the US allows Ukraine, Israel and/or Taiwan to be overrun by their adversaries, there will be dire consequences for Americans, too. But few people agree. 1/8bloomberg.com/opinion/articl… Re-reading Len Deighton’s novel "SS-GB" made me wish someone would write or film "CCP-US." Because imagining defeat can focus the mind on the burning imperative not to lose. 2/8

It's not easy to found a new university, as Thomas Jefferson discovered — though it is easier than founding a new republic. The two enterprises have certain things in common. In particular, success depends on constitutional design. 1/22nationalaffairs.com/publications/d… Modern universities have demonstrated considerable variety in institutional structure. And yet, despite these founding ambitions and diverse designs, a striking convergence in campus cultures has taken place in recent years: the dis-invitation campaigns; the cancellations of dissident voices; the denunciations of heterodox scholars; and the violations of academic freedom by an unholy combination of "woke" students, progressive faculty, and inquisitor-administrators. 2/22

Writing in 2003, I was not in principle against a pax americana in succession to the pax britannica of the 19th and early 20th centuries. I took (and still hold) the now heretical position that most history is the history of empires; that no empire is without its injustices and cruelties; but that the English-speaking empires were, in net terms, preferable for the world to the plausible alternatives, then and now. 1/10bloomberg.com/opinion/articl… However, I was skeptical about the neoconservative project to reorder the “Greater Middle East” under the cover of a “Global War on Terror” in retaliation for 9/11. I particularly doubted that the United States would be able to achieve its goals of transforming the governments of Afghanistan and Iraq into its allies — or at least satellites. Had Britain’s imperialists succeeded in taming the wild lands north of the Khyber Pass — much less ancient Mesopotamia? 2/10

The striking thing about last week's Biden-Xi summit was the thinness of the agenda. Today’s superpower leaders might productively have discussed nuclear arms control or peace in the Middle East, as their predecessors did half a century ago. But no. 1/10bloomberg.com/opinion/articl… The really significant thing about the Xi-Biden meeting was what wasn’t discussed, not what was. The summit thus left Cold War II pretty much where it found it. This was détente lite. 2/10

She was a Muslim, then an atheist. Now she is a Christian. This is an extraordinary article by @Ayaan. 1/4unherd.com/2023/11/why-i-… Part of her reason is that atheism is not equal to the geopolitical and ideological threats the free world currently faces. 2/4

The War on Hamas Spells Trouble for the War on Inflation. The clash in Israel and Gaza should bring a reminder from the 1970s: Central bankers and investors must beware of false dawns. 1/7 bloomberg.com/opinion/articl… The economic story of the war so far is no big deal. 2/7

As with London buses, you can wait ages for one war and then several come along. I've spent a lot of time in the past year and a half warning of a cascade of conflict and its likely consequences. A quick review: Exhibit A: "America, China, Russia and the Avalanche of History" (May 2022) bloomberg.com/opinion/articl…

It is mutually assured financial destruction that constrains today’s superpowers and most clearly distinguishes Cold War II from Cold War I. 1/10bloomberg.com/opinion/articl… Decoupling is happening, and fast. Yet both sides have economic weaknesses that undercut these drives to reduce interdependence. On the Chinese side, recovery from the regime of “zero Covid” has been lackluster. 2/10

The Biden administration's strategy of aligning democracies against autocracies could have an American Achilles’ heel: 1/10bloomberg.com/opinion/articl… In Vilnius, Biden depicted the world in Manichean terms, divided starkly between the democracies, united in “the defense of freedom,” and their benighted foes, who would prefer “a world defined by coercion and exploitation, where might makes right.” 2/10

Two weeks ago, I warned that the geopolitics of Cold War II seemed to be pitting Halford J. Mackinder’s Eurasian “Heartland” against Nicholas J. Spykman’s “Rimland.” I worried that the Rimland was showing signs of division. But maybe it’s the Heartland that’s cracking up. 1/8 The striking point about the past year is that all three members of the new Heartland Axis are afflicted with internal problems -- the usual pathologies of unrepresentative government. 2/8bloomberg.com/opinion/articl…

Mahatma Gandhi supposedly replied, when he was asked for his view of Western civilization, that it would be a very good idea. I feel the same way about American leadership: It would be a very good idea. bloomberg.com/opinion/articl… 1/11 Many Europeans have the unpleasant feeling of being caught between two superpowers in a new cold war. They know China is partly to blame for this. But they see the US as equally culpable. 2/11

How did the steam engine change the world? A lot. How did the internal combustion engine change the world? A lot. So how will battery-powered electric vehicles change the world? Probably a lot — but not necessarily in the ways we now anticipate. 1/9 bloomberg.com/opinion/articl… First, this is clearly a chance for China to leapfrog the European manufacturers who perfected the internal-combustion engine. Around 31% of Chinese auto exports are of EVs or hybrids. And more than a third — 35% — of all the world’s EV exports are Chinese. 2/9

"When You're in a Cold War, Play for Time." "De-risking" is Washington's new word for detente. It's the right strategy as China's economy slows and its social problems grow. bloomberg.com/opinion/articl… 1/8 Detente is in the air, with the shift from "decoupling" to the less drastic "de-risking." Detente didn’t end Cold War I in the 1970s; it just made it less fractious, reducing the risk of World War III. The same is true in today’s cold war. 2/8

Being fed up with the dominance of the mighty dollar is such a recurrent theme of financial journalism that one can identify cycles in the use of the phrases "exorbitant privilege" and "de-dollarization." But here we go again. 1/10 The principal shift that has occurred since the 1990s is that the euro has become the world’s second-favorite reserve currency. The same goes for international debt issuance, international loans, foreign exchange turnover and global payments through Swift. 2/10

"If somebody builds a too-powerful AI, under present conditions, I expect that every single member of the human species and all biological life on Earth dies shortly thereafter." Must-read by @ESYudkowsky. This is why I prefer to call it "Inhuman Intelligence." "If we held anything in the nascent field of Artificial General Intelligence to the lesser standards of engineering rigor that apply to a bridge meant to carry a couple of thousand cars, the entire field would be shut down tomorrow." time.com/6266923/ai-eli…

This time last year, I predicted that Russia would invade Ukraine. The question one year later is whether there is a way to end this war, or whether it is destined to grow into something much larger. 1/7 bloomberg.com/opinion/articl… There are two obvious problems with US strategy. The first is that if algorithmic weapons systems are the equivalent of tactical nuclear weapons, Putin may eventually be driven to using the latter, as he clearly lacks the former. 2/7 bloomberg.com/opinion/articl…

Two smart commentaries offering a refresher on Cold War deterrence by @GrahamTAllison and @wrmead: bostonglobe.com/2022/10/03/opi… and wsj.com/articles/would… I strongly agree with @wrmead's point that the Biden administration's record on deterrence has been dismal thus far. @ZelenskyyUa has evidently decided to deal with Putin's version of madman theory quite differently. He's essentially saying, "Nuke us. We defy you to do it."

There are plenty of reasons to be concerned about demographic trends in the United States, as I learned last week at the @econstrategygrp. But the Chinese outlook is far worse: see the latest United Nations Population Prospects. population.un.org/wpp/ 1/5 U.S. population growth is way down because of rising mortality, declining fertility and falling immigration. Check out the new paper by @kearney_melissa and Phillip Levine: economicstrategygroup.org/publication/Ke… 2/5