There’s this very American mentality of “we need to build [bad thing] before someone else does” that’s seen as a necessary means of maintaining power, but we rarely consider using our power to create a world that doesn’t need [bad thing].

“America needs to create all-powerful AGI before China does.”

“America needs to build sci-fi level military drone fleets before our enemies do.”

“America needs to invent a nuclear bomb.”

You get the gist.

This isn’t to say that the “race to the bottom” is never necessary, but I wonder what a world would look like where it was truly viewed as the path of last resort.

Would be nice to accelerate defence // less offence