U.S. optimism about AI trails China by a wide margin

Transcript

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

1. 11:27

   are your thoughts on jd's posts and the other reactions and just why did this turn out to be a tsunami i don't know if it's as much of a positioning and marketing issue as it was sort of fundamental i'll go back to the clip from the prediction show right after trump was elected okay we pull that up nick i think that the the party line is that socialism was defeated in this election cycle and that there was a resounding kind of vote But...

2. 12:00

   from the american populace against socialism and i actually think my contrarian belief is that we'll see a rise a dramatic rise in socialist movements in 2025 in the united states okay and i think that we are going to see as gavin pointed out an acceleration of progress we're going to see an unleashing of economic growth because of deregulation and ai but i do think that some industries and some companies are going to be huge winners and some companies are going to be huge the losers. There's going to be some parts of the economy that are going to be big winners and some parts of the economy that are going to be big losers. So I just want to nail it there, Freeberg.

3. 12:35

   I was very accurate for the first year of the presidency. And so if you just zoom out a little bit, the macro condition was there was a moment after the election when there was this idea of this idea that government spending would be reduced, which I believe fundamentally would have affected the cost of living. And we can argue about that. People disagree. They wash that point away, I do think it is the fundamental driver on the cost of living is government spending. The more the government spends, the more expensive things get. I believe that.

4. 13:03

   And we can go through the analysis on what happened in France. You know, government spending as a percent of GDP is one metric. How many people are employed or depend on government checks is another metric. But as the government's involved in more of the economy, things get more expensive. So when Doge was coming around, the idea of Doge, the idea of government efficiency, the idea of making sure that every dollar spent by the government has a positive ROI for the people was a great idea. We visited DC in March of 2025 and we visited Elon and we talked about Doge and he was struggling. It was pretty clear he was struggling, not just internally, but with Congress and with the public perception of what was being done there. And I came away from that visit in March of 2025, where I also met with multiple members of Congress on that visit, Republicans

5. 13:48

   and Democrats who did not give a shit about improving government spending efficiency, did not care about the total government spending as a percent of GDP. It was not a priority. And on June 5th of 2025, Elon left, and it was the end of Doge. The idea that Doge was going to continue was over. And I said China just won because to me, at that moment, the day that this ended, that this administration ended that effort is the day that it was clear that we were going to have a runaway cost of living and a challenge for progress for the majority of Americans. And the end result of that is voting in more of these kind of socialist principles, socialist policies, socialist politicians. So for me, my tweet on June 5th was China has just won with the day that it was announced that Doge was basically coming to an end. And then the one big beautiful bill passed

6. 14:40

   in July of 2025, which had some entitlement cost reductions, but all of the fundamental spending of the government has not been reduced. And we're still running a $7 trillion a year government budget with a $2 trillion a year deficit. So I don't think Congress was ever on board. It is a structural fundamental problem. And no one's on board with it. And I think that was key to what happened here. For the majority of Americans, they don't feel like they're getting ahead.

7. 15:05

   They don't feel like they can afford things. they don't feel like healthcare is accessible and they are struggling and it wasn't addressed my view was it wasn't addressed in the way it should be and we can all disagree on policy matters but that's my view and as a result people still felt that way and that's what drove the vote but i do think on ai it's this idea of this oligarchy if i'm not getting ahead someone else is because quote the economy is growing quote the stock market is growing who is getting all of that growth because i'm not getting it the ai guys are the tech oligarchs are and so on and i think that that's why AI was poised for this. But I do think that there was some external influence that happened on AI. And I'll pull up this chart here real quick, which I shared around on the group

8. 15:46

   chat yesterday, which is an incredible Gallup study that shows AI optimism and pessimism in countries around the world. The most optimistic country for AI is China. 93% of Chinese citizens think AI will mostly help people in the country. And 93% of people think AI will make their daily lives better in China. And we can believe or not believe how Gallup does their surveys in China. The US is fourth last.

9. 16:13

   We are worse than Afghanistan. And we're just slightly better than Malawi and Bangladesh. We're fourth on the list of countries at 36% of Americans believing that. And so I think that in addition to the priming of the pump, which is if I'm not getting ahead, someone's getting ahead and the AI guys, because we create the AI in this country, are getting ahead, made it really easy to attack with this oligarch narrative, that there is a group of people that are benefiting and making a lot of money. And then there's a large percentage of people that aren't. And so I think it's pretty clear that this this vector was a really effective one, whether it persists or not is tbd and i think we should talk a little bit about what's next later in the show because i do think ai is going to play a major role in how the politics are going to play out over the next year