alt Hacker NewsAn economy “reliant on Neoliberal trade” just describes the entire global economy. Your quality of life goes back centuries in any other scenario.
The fact you’ve used the trendy populist boogieman word “neoliberal” and complained about a generational startup not being profitable during the growth phase tells me you watch a lot of internet content from people who don’t understand the topics they cover (breaking points perhaps?)
I would recommend re-evaluating who you borrow your opinions from. Global trade is not a boogieman, and OpenAI will have zero trouble building a profitable consumer advertising business, regardless of whether their IPO flops in the short term.
Ah, the current global economy. What about Russia? The goal was to liberalize post-USSR Russia... until they lost access to certain markets due to sanctions. Same for China, Iran, North Korea, they're all a shadow of what's to come.
I didn't make a mistake, or reach into the buzzword hat for that; Nvidia's trillion-dollar GPGPU products are wholly dependent on TSMC. Every single Blackwell die ever made came out of a Taiwanese factory, and the US leadership is inviting rapprochement with the CPP on the eve of Taiwan's invasion. TSMC will destroy their machines before China gets them, and then there are no more Blackwell products. US fabs do not ship a comparable fabrication node and likely won't for another ~5 years, optimistically speaking. This is not a "war will make the stocks tumble" argument, we are describing a scenario where American economic growth could slow or stop entirely if AI dominance is jeopardized. The US economy can't have an Achilles heel like that.
It gets worse! There is currently a global DRAM, SRAM, HBM and flash memory shortage that has already encouraged Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron to start fucking over their most loyal customers like Apple and Google, who have absolutely no alternative vendors. If you're packaging SOCs, neoliberalism already fucked you over! South Korea is counting beaucoup bucks for every iPhone sold at eye-watering prices. Taiwan is gouging US OEMs, making Apple and Nvidia engage in humiliating bidding contests to secure access to a single factory line. If global conflict expands, the AI economy will be chronically dependent on government (read: taxpayer) money. US taxpayers don't have trillions of apology dollars for this type of mistake.
China's got the edge on open models. Free trade does their heavy lifting, US labs are scrambling to put up defenses and beg for pathetic regulatory efforts that pull up the ladder. Yes, neoliberalism keeps them up at night, and apparently it keeps you up too.