It looks like you have a blind spot around rising authoritarianism in the world?
- Putin continues pushing Russia toward a militant, imperialist totalitarianism, and has bought large quantities of Iran and North Korea's military equipment.
- Thanks to Modi, India is no longer a proper democracy[1] and Modi's successor will likely be even worse[2]
- China has a soft but firm support of Russia's invasion of Ukraine[3] and continues supporting North Korea as the latter keeps getting more extreme.
- I'm bullish on Xi invading Taiwan; Metaculus gives 30% chance by 2035[4] (and the chance after 2035 might not be insignificant).
If Xi invades, or uses a military blockade against, Taiwan, the U.S. may or may not have a strong military response. Either way, the U.S. is likely to try to penalize China and undermine its power, by weakening economic dependence on China, and in part it will have to do this by strengthening trade with India ― which will strengthen Indian authoritarianism even more. By 2050, conditional on no AGI revolution, I expect a Taiwan offensive will lead to a clear cold or hot war situation with China, Russia, NK, and Iran on one side, the Free World on the other side, and with India as a wildcard that opportunistically allies with either or both sides.
I expect the free world will belatedly refocus on Containment of Authoritarianism, but authoritarian countries will likely have a population much higher than democracies do. Right now the Economist regards 45% of the world's population as living under "full" or "flawed" democracies including India, but other sources[1] already consider India a "hybrid" regime, which by itself would change that 45% figure to 28%.
If the free world is only 28% of the population, I'm worried about its overall stability. And this is before we have even considered the effects of the underlying forces that encourage Americans to elect a man like T***p as president.
Even with no AGI, AI warfare is quickly at hand. I haven't even tried to think yet about how war involving a swarm of one hundred million China-made AI-guided drones might play out, or how AGI might change the game.
[3] This is a video by Serpentza. His epistemics are normie, but he speaks Mandarin and lived in China for ~14 years so generally has a correct impression of China and the CCP. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxprOQuVamE&t=997s
In this post I just wanted to highlight the business as usual scenario without a new cold war or WW3. I plan to write about exactly this in a future post.
It looks like you have a blind spot around rising authoritarianism in the world?
- Putin continues pushing Russia toward a militant, imperialist totalitarianism, and has bought large quantities of Iran and North Korea's military equipment.
- Thanks to Modi, India is no longer a proper democracy[1] and Modi's successor will likely be even worse[2]
- China has a soft but firm support of Russia's invasion of Ukraine[3] and continues supporting North Korea as the latter keeps getting more extreme.
- I'm bullish on Xi invading Taiwan; Metaculus gives 30% chance by 2035[4] (and the chance after 2035 might not be insignificant).
If Xi invades, or uses a military blockade against, Taiwan, the U.S. may or may not have a strong military response. Either way, the U.S. is likely to try to penalize China and undermine its power, by weakening economic dependence on China, and in part it will have to do this by strengthening trade with India ― which will strengthen Indian authoritarianism even more. By 2050, conditional on no AGI revolution, I expect a Taiwan offensive will lead to a clear cold or hot war situation with China, Russia, NK, and Iran on one side, the Free World on the other side, and with India as a wildcard that opportunistically allies with either or both sides.
I expect the free world will belatedly refocus on Containment of Authoritarianism, but authoritarian countries will likely have a population much higher than democracies do. Right now the Economist regards 45% of the world's population as living under "full" or "flawed" democracies including India, but other sources[1] already consider India a "hybrid" regime, which by itself would change that 45% figure to 28%.
If the free world is only 28% of the population, I'm worried about its overall stability. And this is before we have even considered the effects of the underlying forces that encourage Americans to elect a man like T***p as president.
Even with no AGI, AI warfare is quickly at hand. I haven't even tried to think yet about how war involving a swarm of one hundred million China-made AI-guided drones might play out, or how AGI might change the game.
[1] https://www.journalofdemocracy.org/articles/why-indias-democracy-is-dying/
[2] https://www.theunpopulist.net/p/prime-minister-modi-is-disarming
[3] This is a video by Serpentza. His epistemics are normie, but he speaks Mandarin and lived in China for ~14 years so generally has a correct impression of China and the CCP. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxprOQuVamE&t=997s
[4] https://www.metaculus.com/questions/11480/china-launches-invasion-of-taiwan/
I basically agree. I did actually write about this here: https://hauke.substack.com/i/39260750/definition
In this post I just wanted to highlight the business as usual scenario without a new cold war or WW3. I plan to write about exactly this in a future post.