Gilder’s Guideposts Newsletters
The World Needs the U.S. and China as Partners in Creativity
U.S. technology protectionism and trade restrictions are forcing China to create its own largely independent chip industry, while being pushed to innovate in graphene, wafer fab, and wafer scale electronics. These measures are sundering a global “innovation ecosystem” that promised to usher in an astonishing era of global prosperity and human well-being with China and […]
China, America, and a Global Surge of Innovation Part I
Amidst the global economic cacophony of off-key men and nations, and despite the global COVID-19 overreaction, China’s economic trumpet still resonates. Across its economy, from coal and nuclear innovation to venture capital and artificial intelligence chips, China defies the Western themes of monetary obesity, “climate change” energy sabotage, “diversity” merit suppression, stultified political schooling, nationalist […]
Why ChatGPT is the Last Gasp of the Machine Age
Gabriel René, the visionary founder and CEO of Verses AI (VRSSF), offers a provocative critique of the current state of generative AI technologies, including ChatGPT. Far from being the latest development of an information economy for an information age, he characterizes these systems as “machine intelligence from the machine age”—a retrogression in the evolution of […]
Playing Catch-Up with Stalin, Mao, and Chairman Xi
It has been a long time coming, but we’re finally there. Ninety-eight years after Stalin’s first Five-Year Plan and a mere 71 years after Mao’s first Five-Year Plan, the United States of America finally has its own Five-Year Plan. According to the White House’s just issued National Strategy on Microelectronic Research, “over the next five […]
Live by the Fed, Die by the Fed
Attracting much merited attention is a recent paper from former U.S. Treasury Secretary and President of Harvard Larry Summers and several colleagues arguing consumers are right to be unhappy with the economy, even though unemployment is low and official inflation is back down to circa 3%. Nope, say Summers and colleagues, consumers are right because […]
Private Vices in Public Places
“For all that is secret will be revealed, and everything that is hidden will be brought to light.” — Luke 8:17 The fight over whether big internet platforms such as Facebook (NASDAQ: META) and X may censor content posted by users is alleged to be an argument over First Amendment freedom of speech and the […]
Was the Flushing of Agent 13 a Reichenbach Fall?
Remember Agent 13? He was Maxwell Smart’s unfortunate colleague assigned to do surveillance from the most awkward and uncomfortable places. Over two seasons, these included a U.S. mailbox, a barber shop towel warmer, a locker at Dulles International Airport, a trash bin, a laundromat washing machine, an ice machine, and a plant pot. When Max […]
Revisiting the Nvidia Cult; the Nvidia Conundrum
Editor’s Note: The rise of Nvidia is continuing as its market capitalization recently soared past $2 trillion. We are re-sharing our June 30 column from last year, since it highlights Nvidia’s meteoric growth and deals with the same questions that have resurfaced in the past week about how high the company’s share price can go. […]
Against the Dying of the Light
Cacophonous are the voices decrying the implosion of “the U.S. Innovation Ecosystem,” as the Harvard Business Review puts it. Do not hope, the voices warn, to see in our future anything like the miraculous progress of the last two centuries, or even the last 50 years. It’s done. Tighten your belts. Supporting the doomsters are […]
Will National Security be the Death of Us?
In his first State of the Union address, John Quincy Adams laid down the fundamental principle of strategy for a commercial republic: “let us not be unmindful that liberty is power; that the nation blessed with the largest portion of liberty must in proportion to its numbers be the most powerful nation upon earth…” This […]