Frankly, the US government should be doing more at this point. All departments, not just legislative or executive. Defense, intelligence, state, education, energy..

It is not unbelievable for the race to AGI (or whatever close enough approximation of it is necessary for dominance) to possibly be a "first to the posts wins forever" sort of race.

We can't even secure our key technologies. Security at TSMC being a consideration, but not just them.

The US is allowing NVIDIA to keep selling strategic assets to whoever can afford them, like they're selling mining picks in a gold rush.

The legislation to restrict their sales to China was almost laughable. NVIDIA actively worked to do the bare minimum to comply with it. China is still a key market for them. I've seen projections of $12bn in sales of AI chips to China (though this is hearsay from financial news sites).

Is that really a long term profit motive, pissing off the US government who will inevitably investigate their monopoly in the space one day. Good monopolies, like the cable companies that enable mass surveillance on the population, get to entrench to the point that no level of incompetence can unseat them. I'm sure they could use a little "AI safety" legislation that only their graphics cards can provide.

Or is NVIDIA's motive political neutrality? Hedge their bets and hope they can balance on the tightrope long enough for a few political cycles to make the US forget, while avoiding alienating China due to the possibility China will eventually win the race?

There are constant reports of industrial espionage, both within the US and all along our critical supply chain internationally. Admittedly, it's a lot easier to steal from an open society than a closed, homogeneous one. But where are the armies of advisors to assess critical infrastructure or even help assess threats on an ongoing basis. We should _almost_ be treating our and our allies high tech industrial infrastructure like they are weapon and munitions factories in a wartime environment.

But assuming we're still at the start of the race, and not quite at that level yet -- there doesn't seem much fostering of future development going on to properly position the US for success. Specifically, development of companies and of future talent.

There's no industrial knowledge-share program (think, 'open source initiative for critical algorithms and tech, but only for allies, and only for those who can meet security criteria'). There's no equivalent of anything like the Manhattan Project. AGI _will_ have the same, if not higher, social and political impact than the Manhattan Project.

Instead we've got... DARPA, running years behind the curve as always. They're not an organization to win a race.

As far as future talent goes.. There are no special schools or training programs to develop talented youth into important contributors in the space. We can't even get autistic savants through school or into those places they'll potentially thrive or work magic in. Particularly if they happen to have been born poor or can't properly navigate a social system.

Even above-average, over-achieving kids aren't being incentivized to focus their development into areas of strategic interest. We're leaving our talent pool to the market, which operates way too late to properly foster early development, and leaving too much early development up to broken or ineffective educational institutions.

China has a much larger pool of talent to develop. They have a more directive government with long term planning capacity. They have a much stronger industrial base that is only lacking some key technologies. They've got enough electrical power, or at least capacity to develop it, to run all the hardware. They have much better industrial espionage and cyber capabilities.

We have.. a short lead in knowledge. Industrial deals with key allies that are dependent on a dollar that is frankly at risk of collapse any year now with no plan in sight for getting national debt to where we could conceivably be able to pay off _the interest_ on it. A few individual talents pushing forward the technology. The willingness of billionaires to open their wallets for a ton of useless things in hope of striking a rich vein of something salable. A political system which will reward said billionaires for that investment by not taxing their profits towards a social safety net for those who will inevitably be displaced by more productive technologies.

To simplify that, almost the only thing we have driving the bus at this point is corporate greed. What kind of AGI will come out of that?

Will it be better than an over-controlling one which is personally and politically manipulative, that is feared will come out of China?

Anyway. That's my not-so-crazy rant for the day.