China produces 20x+ as much solar as the U.S. (over 1 TW vs. just 50 GW). If solar is the only scalable way to meet the 100s of GWs of extra demand we'll have because of AI, what exactly is the story of how America wins AI? Is China privileged in the long timelines world? SMIC will probably *eventually* catch up to TSMC - export controls won't preserve the lead forever. Forget training - even just to deploy AIs through the economy, we'll need tons of tons of new data centers. In the long run, what matters is putting up more energy. And doing that requires massive industrial scale ups across the entire supply chain. This is what China excels at (and not so much the US). China adds the equivalent of the entire US electricity grid every 4 years. If AI deployment is just gonna be a matter churning out solar panels, batteries, transformers, switches, substations, etc etc, why doesn't China just dominate by default? I asked @CJHandmer. Full episode out.
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