{"text":[[{"start":8.25,"text":"The writer is the author of ‘The Net Delusion’ and ‘To Save Everything, Click Here’"}],[{"start":13.95,"text":"A growing number of Americans dislike AI so Washington is trying to change their minds the old-fashioned way, with a stick and a carrot. The stick was on full display on Tuesday. President Donald Trump, with tech executives at his back, told voters that if they refuse data centres, companies will “be forced to go overseas” — and, as he put it, “whoever wins superintelligence wins . . . you’re probably not gonna have a second place” implying that detractors would be handing China victory in the AI race. "}],[{"start":45,"text":"The carrot comes in the form of a dividend. In July, Sam Altman proposed that leading US AI labs each hand 5 per cent of their equity to a public fund. And Senator Bernie Sanders has introduced a bill for a national fund with 50 per cent ownership of the AI giants, with citizens entitled to a stake in their profits. "}],[{"start":64.95,"text":"The stick, on inspection, is flimsy. The two are perfectly compatible: US-aligned data centres can go overseas while AI profits still accrue to Americans. Most of AI’s power goes into training models. This can happen wherever electricity is cheap; only the systems answering users in real time must stay near them. That means data centres can leave US soil and US companies still gain, while citizens with a stake in them are paid no matter where the machines run. For shareholders, it’s the best of both worlds: no data centre next door and a cheque in the mail. "}],[{"start":97.6,"text":"But the machines still stand somewhere, on someone’s land, guzzling someone’s water, straining someone’s grid. Income at home from land and power abroad has an old name: empire. What’s new is the idea, shared by Altman and Sanders, of enrolling every US citizen. The result would be a new form of social and technological imperialism."}],[{"start":120.35,"text":"Pax Silica, the state department’s AI supply-chain club, has barely concealed its aim: to lock members into America’s compute and out of China’s. The Pentagon’s new Economic Defense Unit has even invoked the East India Company — a firm whose shareholders drew dividends from conquest — as its model. Pax Silica’s first outpost is a 4,000-acre “economic security zone” in the Philippines. Washington reportedly sought US jurisdiction and immunity for its personnel there; Manila said no twice and insists the zone will stay under Philippine law (the project is proceeding). Just as Detroit in its heyday ran on Liberian rubber and Chilean copper, San Francisco’s AI glory could run on Philippine land and other people’s megawatts."}],[{"start":169.35,"text":"The imperial ambition behind such initiatives has provoked discontent in host nations. In Kenya, a $1bn data centre stalled after Microsoft and its Emirati partner asked the government to guarantee purchases of its computing capacity. Mexico’s president said her country need not become the data centre of the world. What other countries cannot stop is America’s use of sanctions to lock out China by rationing advanced chips. With the US’s chips and open markets, China would crush Silicon Valley’s valuations. Shutting Beijing out allows US AI companies to capture enough profits that a public fund would be able to redistribute them. Such a fund would be no custodian of collective intelligence but a collector of geopolitical rent: the yield on keeping China’s AI down and the world’s AI bills up."}],[{"start":218.89999999999998,"text":"The US left seems not to have noticed. Gavin Newsom waxes lyrical about “universal basic capital”, Sanders about a Norwegian-style sovereign wealth fund. Yet, there’s a difference. Norway’s wealth comes from its own seabed, while America’s would come from a chokehold on chips and bullying weaker countries for resources. Sanders’s bill lets this slip: it traces AI’s value to humanity’s “collective intelligence”, then pays out only to Americans."}],[{"start":246.24999999999997,"text":"For Maga, local tribute flowing to the all-powerful centre is a cause for celebration. Not so for the left. When Edwardian social imperialists promised to fund welfare out of Pax Britannica, old socialists, from Engels to Lenin, derided workers who took the money as the labour aristocracy. Their point stands: a public that lives off the rent acquires a stake in whatever protects it. "}],[{"start":270.95,"text":"For now, AI’s expansion abroad is a freelance affair, as individual companies cut deals that host nations can still refuse. However, once the US state clears the ground and the American public draws a dividend from it, a refusing government will find itself up against not only Washington but every American with a payout to lose."}],[{"start":290.4,"text":"Critics from Sanders to Steve Bannon are right about the disease: AI breeds oligarchy. But a dividend funded by flexing American muscle while underdeveloping the rest of the globe would not cure it. It would solve one injustice by hiding another, and give oligarchs what they’ve never had: a public with a stake in looking away."}],[{"start":320.9,"text":""}]],"url":"https://audio.ftcn.net.cn/album/a_1790894803_5411.mp3"}