Explaining the world via techno-nationalism
How critical technologies like AI are rewriting the rules of global order
I don’t know about you, but I find myself pretty surprised by 2025. As an engineer and data scientist, I struggle to fit any function to the data. Too many anomalies to explain with any rational model of the world. Well, any rational model that I’m familiar with.
Luckily, I have a few non-engineer friends with different models of the world. Even better, one of them just wrote a 500-page book that explains a lot of what we’re seeing.
The author, Alex Capri, kindly invited me to participate in the Singapore Geoeconomics Forum. Not exactly my typical crowd, I’ll admit. But that’s a good thing. Thanks to the diverse representation of mostly academics, lawyers, and economists, I got lots of new vocabulary to understand the world better.
In this post, I’ll share those updates to my world model. The event was conducted under the Chatham House Rule, so I’ll only attribute specific points to either Alex’s book or my own interpretations.
The framework he’s applied is called techno-nationalism. Not new, but also not something that comes up on my Twitter feed regularly.
“Call it ‘techno-nationalism;’ a mindset that equates the technological prowess of a state’s chosen actors with the strength of its national security, its economic prosperity and its social stability.” — Alex Capri
What does “technological prowess” entail, exactly?
Critical Technologies
At the center of 21st-century techno-nationalism is technology. Specifically, critical technology that has strategic applications for nation states. Here’s the breakdown from the book, which consists of twelve core technologies.
As someone who also dabbles in investing, this maps very closely to how most VCs would define Deep Tech, Hard Tech, or Emerging Tech. In fact, all of the technologies listed are “dual use”, i.e., have civilian and military purposes. That’s valuable because you can grow a traditional business in the free market while contributing to the strategic capabilities of your host nation and their strategic alliances. Further, in many cases, you are eligible for various government schemes that include non-dilutive grants. So it can be a win-win as long as you don’t run into ethical challenges (read: autonomous weapons).
While many of these technologies are making news headlines, especially in Ukraine, I’m going to focus on two key technologies: AI and Semiconductors. Those are the key ingredients needed for AGI. First, here’s what’s been going on with semiconductors recently.
Strategic decoupling of semiconductors
The semiconductor industry has gradually become the foremost battleground in the techno-nationalist era. What was once a globally integrated supply chain built on comparative advantage and economic efficiency is now being forcibly restructured along geopolitical lines. This isn't just about chips—it's about who controls the foundation of the digital economy and, by extension, the future of military and economic power. In the context of the Race to AGI, this battle is for all the chips, pun intended.
The Legislative Arsenal and Export Controls
The opening salvo of this chip war was the U.S. CHIPS and Science Act of 2022, committing $280 billion to reverse decades of offshoring. Beyond subsidies, the U.S. has weaponized export controls, with the October 2022 restrictions targeting advanced chips to China and extending American jurisdiction globally through the Foreign Direct Product Rule (FDPR).
This legislative toolkit forces companies worldwide to choose sides in a tech cold war, transforming what was once a globally integrated supply chain built on economic efficiency into split into geopolitical silos. Obviously, Jensen Huang would love to keep selling his chips to all customers, China included. Short of China, another rising consumer of chips is the Gulf region, highlighted by the recent AI entourage Trump brought along. The export controls of GPUs specifically is an ongoing hot topic.
TSMC's Migration and Taiwan's Dilemma
Where the decoupling really comes to life is TSMC's expanding U.S. investment—from $40 billion to $165 billion for multiple Arizona fabs producing cutting-edge 4nm, 3nm, and eventually 2nm chips. For Taiwan, each new TSMC fab abroad erodes its "Silicon Shield"—the theory that the island's semiconductor dominance ensures Western protection.
Taiwanese politicians fear that once the West secures alternative chip supplies, Taiwan's strategic value and security guarantees might evaporate, creating a delicate balancing act where TSMC must appear cooperative while keeping its most advanced technology at home. I have to be honest, I visited Taiwan recently, pretty consciously thinking this may be the last time before I need a Chinese visa to enter. I hope that’s not true, but it seems clear that the deterrents keeping Xi out of Taiwan are weakening.
The New Semiconductor World Order
The decoupling is creating a bifurcated value chain: a U.S.-allied bloc (America, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, Europe) versus a Chinese bloc pursuing aggressive self-sufficiency. While cut off from advanced Western technology, China is pouring unprecedented resources into domestic capabilities, rapidly gaining ground in legacy nodes and mature processes.
This is uncut techno-nationalism—the subordination of economic efficiency to national security. Even if AI progress stopped in its tracks today, the chip wars would continue. If you truly believed AGI was around the corner, you would probably see a much hotter war over chips, sadly.
This decoupling has not happened quickly, but highlights a broader breakdown of the rules-based international order. The world as we’ve known it since globalization took off in the 90s is coming to an end.
Lawfare - the end of rules-based global cooperation
The most shocking thing about Trump 2.0 for me, and probably you too, is that we’re no longer seemingly playing by the rules. At least the rules that most of us have grown up with in terms of how global trade and sovereignty were supposed to work.
Policy in 2025 has little to do with existing agreements, institutions, and frameworks. It’s all about the art of the deal, and everything is on the table: exports, imports, people, territories, and entire countries.
Welcome to the world of “lawfare”. Cool new vocabulary.
Export controls, tariffs, and expansionism
While the decoupling of the semiconductor value chain started before Trump came back in office, he’s been pretty busy keeping the rest of the world guessing. His lawfare playbook has included renaming the Gulf of Mexico, slapping tariffs on the entire world, and not-so-subtle hints at adding Greenland and Canada as states to the union. While Trump certainly has stolen headlines nonstop in 2025, it’s not as if he’s the only player in the lawfare game. Let’s start with China.
MAGA vs. MIC
In his book, Alex focuses heavily on China, and for good reason. In many ways, China is taking techno-nationalism more seriously than any other player on the board.
We all know about MAGA, but have you heard of MIC? It simply stands for Made in China, and is part of the communist five-year planning cycle. The idea has been to move China away from a role as “the world’s factory” and up the value chain into high-tech manufacturing. Less sheet metal and plastic toys, more robots and electric cars.
“The CCP’s purpose for the BRI is clear: to tilt the world’s geopolitical axis away from a U.S.-centric world order and towards its own state-centric model.” — Alex Capri
More well-known in the West is the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), which extends Chinese control over infrastructure and resources all the way from India to South East Asia and Africa. The difference between American and Chinese techno-nationalism is that MAGA has been more marketing than execution (thus far).
“In 2024, China was dominating the world’s rare earths industry, with state-owned companies holding approximately 80% of market share in the global extraction and processing of critical oxides and metals.” — Alex Capri
The American dream is still very much about taking care of yourself, first and foremost. There is very little collective sense of purpose, ultimately, other than in armed conflicts. Contrast this to the Chinese, who have widely adopted the “9-9-6” working week, which is 9 am to 9 pm, 6 days a week. Obviously, this falls well short of Elon’s ideal 100+ hour week, but you have to factor in the scale here. There are millions of Chinese workers on this schedule. It’s easy to dismiss this kind of working culture as exploitative, which in some cases it surely is, but there’s also a deep sense of national purpose which is harder to come by in the West.
“The corporate culture at the Huawei Campus in Shenzhen was thick with a hardcore, military-style ethos, a hierarchy infused with a tireless 24/ 7 work ethic.” — Alex Capri
I haven’t worked for Chinese companies, but I have had some limited interactions with some of the bigger tech giants in Shenzen. There is a palpable sense of intensity and urgency in their conduct. They most certainly were not playing around, or just checking in for a paycheck. These are people on a mission.
As a proud EU citizen, it makes me wonder: what is our rallying call going to be? Certainly, Putin has done more for EU unity than any other leader in this millennium, with renewed defense and energy strategy in play across Europe. We just have to figure out AI — our final answer cannot be a handful of admittedly brilliant Frenchmen at Mistral.
A true European Union that is able to coordinate resources and make decisive moves toward a European techno-nationalist strategy is a formidable world power. Today, this is far from reality in the aftermath of Brexit and the war in Ukraine.
China is on the march with their global techno-nationalist agenda, while Europe is waking up from a half century of beauty sleep. What about America, then?
American Oligarchy: Elon, DOGE, and AGI
This inauguration of Trump into office felt different. Last time, Elon Musk was a democrat. Now, he was actively helping Trump win Pennsylvania. Nestled among Trump’s cabinet picks were the American Broligarchy: Musk, Bezos, Zuckerberg, Cook, and Pichai.
The real X factor here, pun intended, is Elon Musk. What was he actually doing at the White House? Sorry, but I don’t buy the DOGE facade. He lost more in Tesla market cap than he made up in government savings. Elon didn’t trash his reputation and tank Tesla’s stock to become a junior accountant, only to burn bridges in his wake.
“Washington must somehow bring to heel the world’s most dominant and wealthy non-state actors—American tech giants such as Apple, Intel, Qualcomm, Microsoft and IBM—who derive billions in revenue annually from China.” — Alex Capri
The only explanation that computes in my mind is that he’s playing the class clown with MAGA to embed himself near the big red button. That’s AGI. Elon plans to be in the room where it happens, and ideally keep Sam Altman out.
But why his recent tantrum over the spending bill? Does he really care about wasteful spending after all? Make it make sense.
If this is really about the race to AGI, one would think that overspending and stealing from the future would be a great idea. More resources to guarantee the win over China. Once you win, surely AGI wipes all that debt off the table in no time.
“It is wrong to say that data is the ‘new oil’. Data, in fact, is more valuable than oil because it is an essentially non-expendable commodity.” — Alex Capri
As Peter Thiel famously says, rule #1 is never bet against Elon. Right now, that seems a hard trade to stick with, but there is some kind of 4D chess going on to rival the schemes of Dune’s Bene Gesserit. Given that we know JD Vance is a known acolyte of Reverend Mother Peter Thiel, it seems there are still some cards left to play.
If these are the players, what is the game?
No country for old men
While Trump and Xi have advisors around them who are more than well-informed about AI progress and the race to AGI, it seems hard to believe these old men could genuinely be “AGI-pilled”. They have been in this game for so long that it’s easy to think the world never changes, and there are 11 other critical technologies that need attention.
In reality, AGI is the one critical technology to rule them all.
Yes, there has been mention of a Manhattan Project for AGI. We did see the $500B Project Stargate announced. But if you read Racing to the Trillion-Dollar Cluster, we are still very early. If you asked Sam Altman, billions are are rookie numbers.
Actually, I believe the whole race dynamics here are misguided. The way I see AGI playing out, there is no one winner. Not Trump. Not Elon. Not Sam. Also not China. The whole Deepseek threat narrative serves anti-regulation and GPU-hungry AI lab CEOs more than anything. Let’s face it, China is not catching up. They are producing cheaper versions of American frontier models. Impressive, but not a threat to America’s lead in AI any more than Mistral is. You don’t see much fearmongering about the French on Fox News.
Techno-nationalism gives us the vocabulary to understand 2025, and ultimately the race to AGI. This will absolutely usher in a new world, even a singularity, but it is also a technology, not a singular system like Skynet or HAL 9000. AGI, in many guises and shapes will spread like wildfire, probably beyond what current institutions can even control. I believe Sam is more than a little optimistic in calling a complete rewrite of the social contract “gentle”, but even a rougher transition allows for something better to emerge on the other side.
Whatever that new world order looks like, I hope it would at least be less divisive than the world of 2025.
You can buy the book on Kindle, but also a very lovely hardcover that would be my pick.