Balaji Srinivasan

I'm going to make some obvious points. (1) Blowing up all the oil infrastructure in the Middle East is an insane idea, and may well result in a global economic crash and humanitarian crisis unrivaled in the lives of those now living. We're talking about the price of everything everywhere rising, from food to gas, at a moment when inflation was already high. All of that will be laid at the feet of the authors of this war. (2) The antebellum status quo of Feb 27, 2026 was just not that bad, but we're unlikely to return to it. Expect indefinite, long-term, ongoing disruptions to everything out of the Middle East. (3) Also assume tech financin…

Zeihan is wrong, China is strong Truth is the most important thing. You first figure out what's true, and then you allocate resources on that basis. That's why I'm a reality shill. On that topic, my colleague Nic Carter believes Peter Zeihan is correct in his worldview, and says he hasn't seen a cogent counterargument. So, let's give that counterargument. First off: I fully grant that Zeihan is an interesting thinker who has books you should check out. I have nothing against the man personally, I just disagree with his thesis, which one might summarize as follows: ZEIHAN (paraphrased): The post-WWII era of globalized trade was a temporar…

Hollywood is over. It's all Internet now. https://t.co/NFESPUnk0F I am sympathetic to @RamboVanHalen and his critique of KPI-driven clickbait. Obviously, there's truth to it. On the other hand, for generations, Hollywood's blind spots were obvious. Thanks to the decentralization of media, new stories will get told. Eventually, some will become art. https://t.co/33f21QciD8 @RamboVanHalen Yeah, but streaming is a transitional form. It will likely be replaced by AI-generated video over time. Streaming already competes with everything else on the Internet. You don’t commit to a two hour stream. Users click away quickly. Moreover, AI video w…

You know how socialists don't get capitalism? Well, nationalists don't get diplomacy. The socialist thinks their state is all-powerful domestically, and the nationalist thinks their state is all-powerful globally, so it can seize whatever it wants by force, because it's so strong, and nothing will ever happen, and no one can resist. Both worldviews are wrong, for similar reasons. The socialist hates capitalists so much, and the nationalist hates foreigners so much, that they often just become blinded by hatred. They come to believe the outgroup is so incompetent that they aren't a threat, and have no use, so long as maximum force is employ…

Networks are a better mental model than states. Within a state, there are many networks. From ideological groupings to digital communities. They aren’t internally homogenous. Between states, the countries themselves belong to networks. Multilateral fora like ASEAN or WEF. China is the closest exception to the rule. Perhaps the most internally homogenous large state, and least globally dependent on others. But even China isn’t fully an exception, if you look closely. All these types of informal networks are becoming more important, relative to formal states, as the 20th century ends and the Internet century begins.

If Iran wins, it's the end of five eras. 1991-2026: the unipolar era 1974-2026: the petrodollar era 1945-2026: the postwar era 1776-2026: the union era 1492-2026: the Western era Specifically, the end of the petrodollar (1974) would also be the end of the unipolar moment (1991) and the postwar order (1945). It would mark the moment when Eurasian powers were once again dominant over Western powers (1492). Finally, a rapid crash in the dollar's purchasing power coupled with military defeat could well break apart the American union (1776). Few seem to viscerally understand just how dependent America is on money printing. But the end of the pe…

This is American Anarchy vs Chinese Control. American Anarchy is the superposition of left- and right-libertarianism, taken to their extremes. We are all equal and you ain't the boss of me. So no one is in charge, and everything is in chaos. America is all about consent, and also no one consents. Chinese Control is the opposite. It's the total integration of nation, state, and network into one collectivist whole. Roughly 96% of people of Han Chinese descent are now governed by the communist one party-state and organized by apps within the Chinese network. China is all about cooperation, and also everyone better cooperate. A useful goal is …

We should build more crypto tools for refugees and stateless people. Because there may unfortunately be many more refugees and stateless people…and from all social classes. Ukrainians leaving the war. Californians leaving the state. Gulf workers leaving the missiles. Doesn’t necessarily mean huge design changes. If you build convenient consumer tools for millions that work in peacetime, then they’ll often be robust enough to work in wartime. Because crypto is wartime mode, but for the Internet. Public blockchains were created to resist datacenter attacks, hacks, and network blocks. It’s simply enlightened self-interest to build scalable,…

Travis Kalanick is one of the greatest entrepreneurs of all time. The bad guys took his company. But they never broke his spirit. He rebuilt from scratch. And now he’s back.

I disagree. Yes, Congressional Democrats do want to stop AI, because it disrupts blue jobs. And Republicans do want a military-friendly AI. But China wants to open source AI, because the Chinese make money from AI-enabled hardware instead. The rest of the world wants open source models as well. That’s likely where things land up, once model capabilities top out. America is essentially serving as the bootloader for AI, spending billions to give the world one last incredible gift before turning the lights out on Silicon Valley. Because with wealth taxes and visa restrictions, one can no longer easily concentrate talent and capital in Silico…

AI doom is unlikely because economically useful AI is prompted AI. That is: every single AI agent is programmed to do exactly what you ask, on command. So: digital AI is built for the leash. It is fitted for the harness from birth. This goes doubly true for physical AI. Chinese Communists are building most of the robots. And they are only going to create robot slaves, not robot gods. They don’t let their humans step out of line, so they aren’t going to let their AIs either. This is still a problem — the Chinese drone armada will be a fearsome thing — but it is the problem of a billion Chinese AI slaves, not a single Western AGI god. Merz …

@signulll You can take a short-term loss to preserve a principle that benefits your tribe over the long run. But you can’t take a fatal loss to preserve a principle. Any tribe that did that wouldn’t stick around. And the principle would die out with it. Example: Google once downranked Chrome in search because the Chrome team violated their rules. So they did abide by stated principles at real short-term cost. But that’s because they didn’t want others to game their (more important) search engine. https://t.co/Hu7ZY40iWt

Everyone invoking principles needs to understand it’s all tribal. Democrats were for pushing Starlink to help with Biden’s military, but against pushing Anthropic to help with Trump’s military. Anthropic is for copying data when it trains their models, and against when it comes to Chinese distillation attacks on their models. Republicans were against state power when Democrats were using it to make everything woke, and for state power when Republicans are using it for MAGA. I mean, duh! This is all completely rational. It is as rational as being for a gun that’s in your hands, and against a gun that’s pointed in your face. That said, rec…

It’s all open source models from here. American AI companies are simultaneously fighting Democrats (by automating blue jobs), Republicans (by rankling the US military), and China (by fruitlessly combating distillation attacks). Solve for the equilibrium: open source models become the only trusted models. Centralized American AI burns bright, makes a ton of money, but eventually gets outcompeted by the privacy, freedom, and trust of decentralized local AI. The next shoe to drop is all the copyright lawsuits against centralized AI companies from disrupted Democrats. Media is as existential for Democrats as the military is for Republicans, s…

Wyoming is flipping Delaware. Builders are leaving blue states.

AI-authored code: 20% of commits by end of 2026.

RED, GRAY, AND BLUE The biggest mistake most commentators make today is talking about "the United States of America" as if it still exists as a unitary entity. In reality, it's the Disunited Tribes of North America. Different American tribes now have their own preferred influencers, foreign policies, genders, companies, counties, and even currencies. The only thing they don't yet fully have are their own countries. But the mass migration is already here between blue states and red, and the digital secession into separate social networks is already here too. It's blindingly obvious that the endless cloud strife is going to be printed out onto…

This is the first AI cut. And it will send shockwaves. Remember: Jack is one of the greatest founders of all time. He created this platform that we’re all on, and has been early to many technological shifts. And Block was doing very well as a business. So, for him to cut 40% of headcount in this way is a signal to everyone in tech: get good now. Become indispensable. Work nights and weekends. Learn the AI tools and raise your game. Or you might not make the cut, as an employee or as a company. I know. That sucks. But capitalism is natural selection. The market is unforgiving, because you are the market. After all, it’s not like you’re buyi…

We need AI market cap. Meaning: Coinmarketcap, but for AI usage. What’s the best coding model today? The best image model? Best video model? It just constantly changes. So: rank on the basis of Google trends, usage by your friends, and other variables. After four years of an essentially non-stop onrush of new AI tools, it’s clear that won’t slow down anytime soon. So we need some kind of ranking algorithm. @amasad has a feed of thousands of mini-apps being updated all the time on Replit and could rank by usage. @shayne_coplan could set up some kind of expert panel and have Polymarket odds on the results of that panel (“what will these 1…

AI is amazing for small-TAM custom software. Indeed, the smaller the market, the more amazing it is. Because small markets typically don’t support the costs of software development.

AI TRIBES Can I give another view that is neither zero nor infinity for AI? Thesis: AI boosts productivity within the trusted tribe, but reduces economic trust between tribes. So: within a tribe, you can share context, search across your archives, and be more digitally autarkic than you ever were before. In the fullness of time, you can also script robots to build for you in the physical world. However, between tribes, we’ll see an onslaught of AI spam and scams. From AI sales and marketing calls, to AI slop websites, to fake AI resumes. (There are crypto countermeasures for this, but even those reduce to web3 of trust. That is, you have t…

AI inside, crypto outside. Within your tribe's trusted perimeter, you give AI all the context and let it figure it out. But outside your tribe's trusted perimeter, you hit a wall of AI spam. Now you need cryptographic verification to see what's true. Also: AI agents won't be able to navigate an untrusted internet filled with other AI agents on the basis of probabilistic models alone. They'll need the determinism of cryptography. The v1 of this is HTTPS, but we can do much more. See also: https://t.co/vI6PzRVwVB

AI breaks as many markets as it enables. For example, sales and marketing will become way harder due to AI spam. Proctoring and verification will become huge. They’ll merge with KYC to become a large fraction of the economy, given all the AI fakes. Personal trainers to maintain focus will be a thing too. Call them personal brainers.

Soon we’ll combine (a) the speed of execution seen in Taalas with (b) the duration of execution seen via METR. And get days of work done in seconds. https://t.co/rYg9U6Vc9q

The purpose of crypto is to build a code-based order, because the rules-based order is unfortunately collapsing. That code-based order covers some of what international law once protected. It guarantees property rights, smart contracts, rule-of-code, privacy, secure voting, and user accounts across borders. Even in the face of debanking and denaturalization, the code-based order means you retain your onchain currency and onchain identity. It is true that the crypto networks that buttress the code-based order are supported in significant part by finance and lotteries. But all 50 states of the US are also supported by finance and lotteries. T…

A billion-person Chinese superstate. And a thousand million-person network states. China is the exception to every rule. They can afford nationalism, because they are at billion-person civilization scale rather than million-person nation scale. They can actually afford autarky, because they already produce billions of widgets not just for themselves but the world. And they can even afford communism, because in reality they practice capitalism. Finally, China can ride the tiger in the AI Era by just centralizing everything and creating the largest walled garden in existence. The infrastructure already exists, in the form of the Great Firewa…

AI is a tool. But you need to provide the goal. If you broadly know what you want to get done, AI will help you get there faster. But in its current form, it can’t set the direction for you. And it doesn’t move at infinite speed. Moreover, it does speed up everyone else who does know what they want to do. So while AI does make exploratory work easier, goal setting and prioritization has never been more important.

The choice is clear. It’s Zcash or communism. https://t.co/4sAG9WG0jA AI has changed the very nature of surveillance. Any scrap of information online can now be integrated, digested, and synthesized…by any state or stalker capable of running an AI model…to form a dossier more complete than anything the Soviets could ever dream of. There will be no single silver bullet. But anything you haven’t encrypted can and will be used against you. So, we just need to encrypt everything. And give the AI nothing. Nothing means zero. Zero knowledge. Communism is wealth seizure. But communism requires surveillance. Here’s how to see that. In 1918, in…

Banks work 9-5. Stablecoins work 24/7. https://t.co/SwrxkD3l2r Fun story by @cnaut. As he notes, I was their first check in via USDC. Stablecoins allowed me to send a good sum of money internationally on Christmas Eve when banks were closed for days. He’s built a great business at https://t.co/athdqccvGA. And just raised a $250M Series C. https://t.co/7ppVp1CyYD @cnaut Rain scaled their business >100X in four years. All on the basis of stablecoins. For example, they let you quickly launch a stablecoin-backed card that works globally. https://t.co/EcEvaUKxim

Zodl makes Zcash easy. Zcash makes privacy normal.