I guarantee you the Chinese are not having this type of discussion. In 2017 the Chinese government announced its intention to become the world leader in AI by 2025, and it has already opened joint commercial-military AI research centers.
A lot of American scientists scoffed at that claim, but Gregory Allen of the Center for New American Security warned, “The future will belong to countries that can surf the technological tidal wave of artificial intelligence, and while China’s efforts appear up to the challenge, the United States is swimming in the wrong direction.”
The Russians are just as serious. In 2017 Vladimir Putin summed up the stakes, saying flatly, “Whoever becomes the leader in this sphere will become the ruler of the world.”
Look, the one thing that is consistent is change. Americans have never been afraid of it. If I had tried to explain to an American who had never seen a cotton gin that within a century we would be carried around in large metal machines on roads that crisscrossed the nation from coast to coast, he would be overwhelmed—but he would adapt to it quickly. We’ve always done that; Americans have always embraced change. More than a century ago, for example, the Fisher Brothers Carriage Company became well known for the quality of its horse-drawn carriages. Then the newfangled horseless carriage became available. When they saw these metal carriages rolling off the assembly line, they decided, We’ll still make the suspension, but we’re putting an engine on it instead of a horse. Body by Fisher became the standard of the automotive industry.
When the Japanese attacked on December 7, 1941, our army and navy were badly outdated, while the Germans and Japanese had well-trained armies equipped with cutting-edge weapons. Within a year we were on the road to catching up, then surpassing them. The point is, we need to stop pissing around on stupid little things, because the world is about to change so dramatically that even our definitions of life and death will change.
We’d better figure out how to adapt or we’re going to be left behind in history—assuming we survive, that is. And if China or Russia beats us to a military application of AGI, there is no guarantee that we will survive as a great nation. We definitely will lose our place as the world leader. But right now we’re stuck here. We’re not progressing, we’re not talking and debating those things that will matter. I communicate on a regular basis with several senators, and honestly, at one point or another I’ve had to talk most of them down from just throwing up their arms in despair and walking out. “I can’t do this anymore,” they’ve told me. “Nobody is serious, Glenn, and there are some really serious issues.” One of them made a point of showing me a bill that would provide funding for transportation projects. In order to get the funding that is desperately needed to pay for repairs and improvements for transportation infrastructure, five different cabinet departments have to give approval. “This is not serious,” he told me, shaking his head in frustration. “This is not the way to run a government.”
I’ve been telling these guys, Hold on, hold on, we need you. When this same Republican senator started blaming the problem on Democratic obstructionists, I told him, “Stop; just stop talking about the Democrats. Start talking about your party and your problems. Stop pointing the finger at them and instead see if you can inspire somebody on that side to stand up with you and scream as loud as you can: ‘No one is serious!’ It isn’t the Democrats. It isn’t the Republicans. The truth is, neither party is serious about anything except getting power.”
I intended to start this paragraph with the phrase, “Please don’t misinterpret what I’m saying,” and as I did it occurred to me that that is exactly the problem. That’s what both parties want us to do. It’s precisely the way they are pushing and pulling us to ingest information. The fact—there’s that word again—the fact is that I’m not defending either party. Both are equally guilty. The Democrats aren’t any better. We’ve stumbled along like that for a long time now, but as we see here, the stakes are changing.
The home of TheBlaze is a movie-production complex just outside Dallas, Texas. As you walk through the door, the first thing you see is an old platen printing press, the type of press that brought all the news to early Americans. On the wall directly behind it we have painted the apt phrase, “Keep Calm and Carry On.” That’s what Americans are doing right now, maintaining a pleasantly calm attitude and carrying on.
But there’s more to that suggestion. Over that admonition, in bright bold letters, we’ve painted the plea, “Open Your Eyes!” That’s what I’m asking you to do: Please, please, open your eyes! That’s an artistic way of making my point: The reason we’re so calm is that we don’t have our eyes open. Most of us have no idea what’s coming—other than another season of The Walking Dead.
* * *
We’re running out of time to figure it out. “It” really has reached the edge of the city. The future is beginning to reverberate in the present. The first self-driving cars and trucks are already on our streets. Long-dead celebrities are being brought back to “life” to “appear” in concerts or “perform” in commercials. We’re implanting industrial-strength body parts to replace worn-out or damaged originals. Drones are delivering packages and conducting surveillance. “Smart” TVs now come equipped with listening devices that can transmit your private conversations to a third party. China is already introducing AI into its daily life. Russia claims to have tested hypersonic—five times faster than sound—missiles. The sad truth is that while our economic competitors and military enemies are preparing for the future, the Trump administration has decided to completely ignore the need for new advances in energy and AI security and instead has focused on deregulating the fracking industry. Frankly, we need to learn to walk and chew gum at the same time.
What is going to happen if we don’t give up the outrage that drives us apart and learn how to work together? Both Democrats and Republicans promise to hold your hand and walk with you gently into this future, although neither party has the slightest plan for how to meet the coming challenges, other than to raise more money than the other party and grind them into the ground. The Democrats believe the more power you hand over to them, the better off we are all going to be. We’re Mary Poppins: Vote for us and we’ll take care of all your needs. The Republicans believe we don’t need a strong central government to deal with these mammoth issues. We’re Davy Crockett: In the past, Americans have always risen heroically when we had to, and if it becomes necessary, we’ll do it again. Vote for us and we’ll let you take care of your own needs.
Maybe. Maybe we’ll get lucky and some benevolent computers will think we’re cute and take care of us. But that’s unlikely. Political scientist Jennifer McCoy, the former director of the Americas Program at the Carter Center, has suggested three possible outcomes: First, paralyzing legislative gridlock in which it becomes almost impossible to compromise or make any decisions. Second, essentially what we’re seeing now, with the balance of political power bouncing back and forth, creating a backlash. And third, “The leader can stay in power, can change rules such as election rules that will benefit them, and begin to isolate, divide, and repress their opponents. And you can see a growing authoritarian trend in those cases.”
Obviously, there are other possibilities, but all of them have this in common: None of them are good. None of them will make America stronger or make you and your children safer. When I was drinking, I deluded myself into believing that nothing bad was going to happen; that I’d gotten away with this behavior in the past, and there was no reason I couldn’t continue to do so. It reminds me of Steve McQueen’s story in the original Magnificent Seven: “A fella I knew back home fell off a ten-story building. . . . All the way down, people on each floor could hear, ‘So far so good . . . so far so good.’ ”
The reality is, we’re already experiencing both a breakdown of our traditional social structures and a loss of confidence in our institutions. The weakening of the universal principles that have held this country together like some kind of constitutional sup
erglue might easily lead to chaos. Basically, we’ve lost our unum. Our house of cards has been much more resilient than I thought it would be, but it can’t go on. If it does collapse, politicians from both parties are going to have to find a villain to blame it on. Maybe it’ll be Silicon Valley. Maybe it’ll be the media or social media. But more likely it will be one of those groups that we already have segmented and demonized. It’ll be “them.”
And we have seen what happens then: Inevitably, when people have lost hope, when they become desperate for order, some guy comes along, stands on a balcony, and says, “I can fix it. I can restore order and the pride you once felt in this country. I can make the trains run on time, vanquish all our enemies, and take care of all your economic fears. All you have to do is trust me!”
Well, we know it never turns out well. No one can fix it except us. This is of the people, by the people, for the people. In the past we’ve always been able to make the adjustments necessary to adapt to the changing circumstances. But I don’t think we’re as resilient now. I know there are people reading this and shaking their heads, convinced it can’t happen here.
* * *
Tell that to the Greeks and the Romans . . . and the Carthaginians, the Aztecs, the Mayans, the Indus Valley civilization . . .
* * *
It’s reached the edge of the city. If you want to know why it is time to break this addiction, pay attention to this unattributed Internet meme posted on Holocaust Remembrance Day: “Remember, it didn’t start with gas chambers. It started with politicians dividing the people with ‘us versus them.’ ” It started with intolerance and hate speech, and when people stopped caring, became desensitized, and turned a blind eye.
Benjamin Franklin said it best almost 250 years ago: “We must indeed all hang together or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately.”
18
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The Future State of the Future State
As I read the news, I feel that there are two Americas. But not the have/have not countries that everyone talks about. And not left and right, but rather asleep or wide awake and active.
I have said for years that the world is being redesigned right now, and it will happen with or without you. I choose to be in the group that is awake . . . sorry, woke!
How do you know which group you are in? I think it’s in the way you answer this question:
“Which party will do a better job of bringing jobs back from overseas?”
The answer is, clearly, neither. Those jobs are not coming back. And anyone who tells you different is lying to you, and this time it is a very dangerous lie. A lie that will end in riots, and possibly revolution, I believe between 2024 and 2034. It could be sooner, but I do not believe it will be later. This is the biggest problem our country has faced perhaps ever, and unless we as a people understand the economic realities that are currently in front of us, coupled with the dramatic, in fact breathtaking amount and pace of technological change, we will not make this next corner.
Politicians just need someone to blame and someone to point to as “the problem.” “You need me because I am the only one who can do X, Y, or Z. Right now China and Mexico are the problem. They are the reason your wages haven’t increased, you can’t find a job, and we no longer make anything here.”
When people begin to see the next actual bogeyman on the street, the target will be too easy for the politician, not to use, and, unfortunately, it will then be too late.
Let me explain.
As I write this book, Americans feel good about the latest job numbers. The lowest unemployment in fifty years. But there are a few other numbers that we should also look at. In mid-2018 Americans passed a milestone: the largest private debt in history. You, me, and all our friends now owe over $12.7 trillion. Student borrowers today owe $1.3 trillion, more than double the $611 billion owed nearly nine years ago. About one in ten student borrowers is behind on repaying their loans, the highest delinquency rate of any type of loan tracked by the New York Fed’s quarterly household debt report.
Auto loans totaled about $1.1 trillion, or 9 percent of all household debt, in the first quarter of 2017, up from 6 percent in the third quarter of 2008.
Defaults have crept up in auto loans, one of the few sectors in which lenders were willing to extend credit to subprime borrowers after the 2008 crisis.
Virtually half, or 49 percent, of all Americans are still living paycheck to paycheck. David Wessel of the Brookings Institution points out that the typical male worker actually saw his after-inflation pay fall between 1973 and 2014.
Something else the numbers do not tell you is how much you have lost due to inflation. Luckily, inflation has been low, but before inflation is factored in, wage increases hovered in the mid-2-percent range. But inflation picked up to 2.1 percent in 2016 and 2017, and that eroded much of the increase. You may have made more, but at the same time, your dollar was worth less, so things cost more. If the central banks of the world are wrong and this never-before-tested scheme of borrowing, printing, and pumping money into the system doesn’t work—and I should point out that it never has in all of history—the biggest losers will be those who played by the rules and saved. Think of inflation as a Federal Reserve tax. As the Fed prints more money, it dilutes the money you already have.
The idea is to borrow money to jump-start the economy. Give it to banks at low cost (interest) so people and businesses borrow money to expand and consume. But the trick is to only put enough money into the system so that, when the economy does begin to move, there isn’t too much in the system, which results in prices going up. Too many dollars trying to buy too few goods. The other side of the coin is devaluing the dollar, something we promised the world we would never do, as their “savings” in their treasury vaults or sovereign funds are, for the most part, held in dollars just like yours. This is the hidden tax that will destroy millions of lives all over the globe if our central bankers are wrong.
If we print too much and let’s say devalue our dollar by 10 percent, you lose $10 for every $100 you have in the bank. If you have $1 million, overnight you have lost $100,000, and you have nothing to show for it. Countries like to have a weaker currency if they are trying to sell to the rest of the world, because their goods are cheaper. We all have experienced this at times if we have ever traveled abroad. Your dollar is stronger, and therefore you have $1.25 for every American dollar you spend in Canada. I know this is very basic, but it is important to understand, as we are entering a dicey and possibly dangerous time with the repatriation of billions of dollars U.S. companies held abroad and the liquidation of the Fed’s balance sheet. (In other words, selling all of the worthless crap they bought at too high a price after the crash of ’07.) Inflation may be a real worry, and anyone—except, seemingly, those in Hollywood—who is watching the human tragedy in Venezuela can see what the devastation of spending, borrowing, and printing does to a country. The average doctor now makes about $3 a month, and a loaf of bread is, at the time of this writing, $2.38. The average citizen has lost twenty-five pounds in the first nine months of this year.
A recent survey shows that 41 percent of men and 56 percent of women say that they cannot cover the basic bills for more than two weeks if they should lose their job. And 22 percent of the one thousand people surveyed had less than $100 in savings to cover an emergency, while 46 percent had less than $800. After paying debts and taking care of housing, car, and childcare-related expenses, the respondents said there just wasn’t enough money left over for saving more.
Most of us cannot handle another crash like the one in 2007, and we are not alone; much of the world is in much worse shape than we are.
Yet American politicians have once again taken the easy path, which has given us short-term relief but will cause us long-term pain. We cut taxes, which always helps the economy to get moving—we have more so we spend more, buy a new house or car, take a vacation, hire more people if we are in business, or expand.
&n
bsp; But we followed that with two ticking time bombs: tariffs, and a refusal to cut spending in conjunction with tax cuts. We are spending more money at a faster clip than Barack Obama and the Democrats, and we have told other nations that we are going to tax their steel and aluminum so our U.S. steel and aluminum is competitive. This never works, and in fact is what economists almost universally say was the trigger that sent us into the deep Depression in 1933. This chicken will come home to roost, as it will cause the prices of the things we buy to go up. The country doesn’t pay the extra tax, it simply passes it on to the consumer. We have also just passed a 25 percent tariff on all technology made in China. I know what you’re thinking—good thing we don’t buy a lot of electronics that are made in China.
This one is very disturbing. I am currently hoping that this is only a short-term ploy to get China to help us with North Korea, but if it is not, China will have to retaliate, as they cannot afford it.
I know the media will tell you that the communist/free market hybrid that China is using is the future, but it is not. China is in real trouble. As I will point out later in the book, China is terrified of an uprising and is preparing for Mao-style clampdowns, which I believe we will see no later than 2020. But they know that if they have any kind of economic slowdown, the people will rise up, as people will starve.