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You do have a good core point, which is that foreign assets can often just be taken from you in a crisis (even if you're a state actor-- see Russia for a recent example).

But things are not as simple as you portrait them. Lets assume that all of Norway suddenly became a country full of completely useless rent-seekers living off of their wealth fund. Just nationalizing their US assets does not just mean that you are unlikely to see any assets that you hold in Norway ever again (or any exports of value, as you correctly identified).

It also means that every other nation is gonna become very "careful" in dealing with you, by reducing trade/cooperation/investments, because holding any US asset has suddenly become a liability (because it could be seized).

But you don't have to take my word-- just look at which nations do this kind of "nationalizing foreign-held assets on a whim", and note where you would put them on a "failed-state-cleptocracy" leaderboard-- you will note that the correlation is quite high, and getting the US high on that leaderboard seems not very desirable to me.

You ommitted the part where the US becomes self-sufficient via AI (no more need for foreign labour) and does not care whether other nations become "careful" in dealing with them.

In this scenario domestic non-oligarch population is equally obsolete. Oligarchs from definition are permille of total population.

On what time horizon does this happen? Because this sounds like a wishful utopia to me.

I would expect current progress in AI to deliver the equivalent of a veritable army of consultants for very cheap, available to basically everyone within a decade or so. But that is not gonna make foreign labor worthless (or labor in general-- maybe a lot of whitecollar/creative work, we'll see). But trade is always gonna have value until the earth is perfectly homogenous, simply because it allows you to get value from both being better at things than other nations (=> export) AND from being worse (=> import).

If you are gonna go full autarky, you are going to be left behind by countries that don't, because all the spread-out efforts will struggle to compete with nations that put actual focus on things, and in-housing everything will drive up costs and prices tremendously.

    On what time horizon does this happen?

My estimation is that it is one or two generations away.

Ray Kurzweil thinks about the timing more than me, has a pretty good track record in terms of his predictions, and estimates it to happen around 2045.

    trade is always gonna have value

We don't trade much with apes and birds, do we? And we don't let them invest in our stock markets. We also don't pay them dividends for the land we took from them.

As soon as one country achieves way higher intelligence than the rest of the world, things might change in a fundamental way.

I personally don't buy the whole singularity argument at all; I see no good examples for interesting intellectual tasks that scale well with number of people thrown at it, and I see the whole AI thing developing exactly the same way-- exponentially increasing demands on ressources for smaller and smaller gains in utility, without any run-away self improvement at all.

> We don't trade much with apes and birds, do we? And we don't let them invest in our stock markets. We also don't pay them dividends for the land we took from them.

This sounds immensely misanthropic to me; if we hit a scenario like that, where a majority of US "entities" (?) share this kind of outlook on other humans, I strongly doubt that you (or I) are gonna be part of the "we" in that world, and I'd consider this more of a "may god have mercy" worstcase for our species than anything to be helped along.

    smaller and smaller gains in utility

What type of work do you think will still require humans in 50 years?

    sounds immensely misanthropic

I don't think closing our eyes will prevent technological progress.

The "United States of AI" cannot produce everything themselves. The USA is the biggest importer in the world. Your 100% independence scenario is a fantasy.

Also, when you disown property owners and default on debt, this doesn't lead to just less investments, it means a total collapse of the dollar.

The US will not have absolute AI dominance in a case of full self-isolation because then their current ways to suppress rivals (sanctions, trade blocks) will fall apart. And when that happens, China wins.

    The "United States of AI" cannot produce everything themselves.

Name something that is impossible to produce in the USA.

Good idea.

If the US voids foreign property rights, then the rest of the world will have no problem with voiding US property rights in retaliation.

Including, for example, the cash that a lot of US companies hold in Ireland to avoid US taxes? :)

And ... any claim to ASML shares? ASML is a Dutch company in case your LLM forgot...

The cash held in foreign countries is only worth something if those countries produce something of value. If the US keeps outpacing Europe in terms of production of real stuff, there is nothing to get in Europe for the US:

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.CD?location...

As for ASML, read up on the ownership structure and why ASML for example cannot sell up-to-date tech to China. ASML is actively expanding and operating production and R&D facilities in the United States. So the USA will not be dependent on the Netherlands for photolithography.

> read up on the ownership structure

The ownership structure only holds if the US respects other ownership structures, eh?

> If the US keeps outpacing Europe in terms of production of real stuff

What real stuff, social networking?

    The ownership structure only holds if the US
    respects other ownership structures, eh?

No, because ASML is building production facilities on US soil.

    What real stuff, social networking?

Name a thing that the USA will not be able to produce themselves. The USA is pushing hard for complete production independence.

> Name a thing that the USA will not be able to produce themselves

Smartphones. Computers. Servers, switches. Anything that relies on an advanced chip. Anything that needs cobalt or lithium or coffee or cocoa or any other material not found in sufficient numbers or quality in the US. Ships. Hell, planes while we're at it (Boeing suck ass). Anything that needs to be affordable (like clothing).

> No, because ASML is building production facilities on US soil.

You mean there are news about ASML trying to build production facilities on US soil?

> Name a thing that the USA will not be able to produce themselves

Coffee and planes that stay in the air.

But to be more serious, the US (and Europe maybe to a slightly lesser extent) wealth is propped up on cheap labour overseas like the Roman empire was on slaves. It is absolutely possible to change that, but it's not as painless as you seem to think.

The concept of "labour" will be a thing of the past. Probably within one or two generations. Everything will be done by intelligent machines.

Again with people of limited knowledge and intellectual assuming GDP means anything relevant to the point they're making, but it doesn't.

Exhibit A, almost 9% of GDP is tourism. Not only is that not productive in any sense of the word, that will crater thanks to Trump and ICE Gestapo wannabes arresting random people for minor administrative errors. Nobody sane wants to visit the US now.

Exhibit B, you assume higher GDP means something good. In the US, a good coffee, with tip and tax, can cost you $10. In France, it's 1.50-2€. GDP numbers would make you believe the US is 5-10 betters, but in reality, there's no difference other than Americans being scammed out of their money with very high prices.

Exhibit C, anything that happens in any of the US health insurance companies. Record profits, high market caps, etc. but you'd struggle to find anything of any value happening there.

There IS a big difference: The USA is able to make the most advanced AI. And that is the one thing that will count.

Out of the 4 neccessary ingredients (photolithography, wafers, LLMs, energy) the USA already has LLMs and energy. And is pushing hard to bring photolithography and wafer production inhouse too.

No other country currently has a good shot at it.

You probably missed Mistal and DeepSeek.

And of course you're making the assumption that AI will be a revolution on par with the industrial one, which is still to be proven.

Neither Mistral's nor DeepSeek's AI are on par with what US companies like Google, OpenAI and Grok have.

Plus, both rely on US GPUs.

So far, it seems like there is no possible future in which the US can be overtaken in AI matters. The USA is already leading and investing the most into the future.

> Plus, both rely on US GPUs.

... american components, russian components ... all are made in Taiwan.

> The USA is already leading and investing the most into the future.

Wasting resources on the current investment hysteria. You already forgot about blockchain.

    You already forgot about blockchain

It sounds like you lost sight of it. Bitcoin has become one of the top 10 assets in the world.

money is only routed via Ireland, not kept there :)

jeez...lay off the toilet bowl crack

>Wouldn't the USA just make their companies stop paying dividends to Norway or flat out void Norway's shares?

What are you on about?

that's not exactly how public companies work :)

You seem to be under the Trumpic-delusion that the US exists in a bubble and all of it's successes are it's own.

If the US decides to do that, the US dollar will be removed as the global standard and the entire planet will flock to China who will, in very short measure, annihilate the Americans.

Annihilate how?

Economically, militarily, whatever is necessary in this new world where the US becomes a pariah state.

As soon as one country reaches AI superiority, no other country can compete in these areas.

We humans are not afraid that apes might annihilate us, right? Even though we have became a pariah species that puts the others into zoos.

I like that you think AI superiority is some binary moment in time

AI tastes like crap.

Using AI instead of lithium inside batteries shows disappointing energy generation.

Other examples easily generated via AI if you want to spend the time.

Sounds like communism to me

... wat