As published in The Information
Thank you for sharing that article. It's certainly ambitious in scope—in many ways it reads like a modern-day equivalent of Ted Kaczynski's Industrial Society and Its Future (1995), the roughly 35,000-word manifesto that opposed virtually all forms of technology. The piece you sent is deliberately provocative, which makes sense—controversy drives engagement. But provocation is not analysis.
Let me offer a different lens.
The Apollo Precedent
The Apollo Program cost approximately $25.8 billion in its day, or roughly $257–$288 billion in today's dollars, depending on the inflation methodology used. Critics at the time dismissed the entire enterprise as an expensive exercise in bringing back "just rocks." What they failed to see—or refused to acknowledge—was that Apollo catalyzed an entire generation of technological advances we still benefit from today: satellite communications, water purification systems, integrated circuits, medical imaging, and materials science, to name just a few.
Meanwhile, we now have over 10,000 active satellites in orbit, and Elon Musk's compensation package approaches $1 trillion. The infrastructure that began with Apollo has become the invisible backbone of modern civilization.
Where the Money Actually Goes
Consider where America's GDP is actually allocated. These figures reflect the most recent available data and underscore just how dominant two sectors have become:
Sources: CMS National Health Expenditure Accounts (2024); CBO Federal Budget Data (FY 2024); BEA industry value-added estimates.
Healthcare and government together now consume over 40% of GDP. That is not a sustainable trajectory. And it's precisely the kind of structural inefficiency that transformative technology has historically disrupted.
AI as Gravitational Force
Artificial intelligence represents a gravitational force in our economy—one that is attracting massive capital regardless of current inefficiencies. This is how transformative technologies have always worked. The early railroad boom produced spectacular fraud and spectacular infrastructure in equal measure. The dot-com bubble wasted billions on Pets.com while quietly building the backbone of the modern internet.
The AI gold rush will certainly produce winners and losers. But the underlying infrastructure and capabilities being built today will enhance quality of life in ways we can't yet fully envision.
The Real Question
Perhaps AI is the only realistic path to reducing the cost of healthcare and government to levels where they no longer consume over a third of our GDP. The inefficiencies of AI today may simply be the messy process of creative destruction that precedes every major technological leap.
History suggests that transformative technologies always look like bubbles before they become necessities.
Your friend,
Brian
P.S. The next time, please send your message a bit earlier in the day. I keep hearing screams from the other room.