You’re reading Dispatch Markets, a weekly dive into the forces driving economic growth—and those holding it back—featuring Scott Lincicome, Kyla Scanlon, Karl Smith, Marian Tupy, and Adam Ozimek.
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You → read → Lincicome
Last week the Pentagon’s chief technology officer tweeted out a photo of President Donald Trump pumping his fist, with overlaid text saying, “Americanism, Not Effective Altruism.”
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officer → tweet → Altruism
The post itself said, “The United States will NEVER be an effective altruist country.”
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States → say → ?
It’s safe to say that most of the 2.8 million viewers who saw it were left bewildered, a tiny fraction were outraged, and I was, as they say, shocked but not surprised.
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they → ’ → it
Let’s catch everyone up.
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’s → catch → everyone
Effective altruism is a community that began taking shape in the late 2000s around the premise that we not only have a duty to give to those in need but to do so in the most rationally effective way possible.
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we → begin → way
The community’s membership was, from the beginning, I think it’s fair to say, nerd-heavy and extremely online.
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it → think → beginning
Over time, it morphed into a label for a certain Silicon Valley-centric subculture and the particular values it held dear.
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it → morph → subculture
One of those values regarded the burgeoning field of artificial intelligence.
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One → regard → intelligence
This is where Trump comes in.
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Trump → come → ?
Effective altruists were the earliest and most vocal proponents of heavily regulating and even banning AI altogether.
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altruists → regulate → AI
These proposals are anathema to the Trump administration, which considers AI the central front in a growing cold war against China.
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AI → consider → China
Trump believes any attempt to restrict or slow the growth of U.S. AI capabilities plays into China’s hands.
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attempt → believe → hands
Hence, Trump’s Defense Department, and especially its Office of the Undersecretary for Research and Engineering, view effective altruists as thoroughly unpatriotic if not outright anti-American.
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Department → view → altruists
Last week’s tweet was a product of the increasing attention that AI safety has received in the media over the last few weeks, after a former employee of OpenAI and later Anthropic blew the whistle on what he considered the reckless safety policies of both companies.
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he → increase → companies
Beyond that, however, the undersecretary’s office was formalizing the ideological battle lines between Republicans, whom the president expects to support all things AI, and Democrats, who are increasingly vocal in their skepticism—and in certain cases outright opposition—to the AI industry.
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who → formalize → industry
As odd as all of this is—and it is odd—there is something predictable, even quixotically comforting, about watching the politics of AI play out like this.
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politics → be → this
In a real way, Republicans and Democrats are gravitating toward their roots.
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Republicans → gravitate → roots
This dichotomy, more than any other, has defined the two parties’ relative positions through thick and thin.
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dichotomy → define → thick
And it arises from foundational socioeconomic facts about the U.S. economy.
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it → arise → economy
Something strange started to happen around the turn of the millennium that softened this dichotomy.
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that → start → dichotomy
It didn’t break down completely, but it weakened to the point that most major corporations were siding with Democrats on the most controversial issues of the day and that the electoral power of the Republican Party was grounded in working-class voters.
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power → break → voters
It’s not entirely clear when this softening first began, but I think the last few years of the second Clinton administration are as good a place as any to mark the start.
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years → ’ → start
That administration presided over a record surge in stock prices thanks to the dot-com boom, and the stocks that surged most belonged to tech companies largely concentrated in the Bay Area, long a bastion of left-of-center politics.
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that → preside → politics
Notably, then-Vice President Al Gore, an early promoter of the internet, had a unique relationship with the very type of tech companies at the center of this boom.
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Gore → have → boom
Gore was also a famously early voice on the dangers of climate change, which he argued, even then, would require new green technology.
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he → argue → technology
This coziness between the fastest-growing business sector in the country and the soon-to-be Democratic nominee for president was more than a product of Gore’s eccentricities.
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coziness → grow → eccentricities
It reflected a deeper shift in the politics of profit: from an economy ruled by thermodynamically powered atoms to one dominated by electrically powered bits.
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It → reflect → bits
Since the mid-1800s, business—big business particularly—was associated with industrialization.
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business → associate → industrialization
By their very nature, industrial businesses attracted certain enemies.
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businesses → attract → enemies
As it turned out, the Republican Party emerged as the party protecting industrialists’ interests, while the Democratic Party evolved into the party advocating for their opponents.
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Party → turn → opponents
By the late 1800s, long before anyone ever heard of climate change, Americans were becoming increasingly alarmed by the quantities of smoke, soot, and sludge that industry poured into the air and water as a necessary byproduct of normal operations.
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industry → hear → operations
People varied in their level of alarm, with one end of the spectrum viewing pollution as a noxious but necessary evil and the other end as plain evil.
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end → vary → evil
The latter were the precursors of what we now think of as environmentalism.
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we → think → environmentalism
Environmentalism as a force to be reckoned with exploded in the mid-20th century, but the movement’s more storied institutions date back almost a century.
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institutions → reckon → century
And, as Breakthough Insitute founder and author Ted Nordhaus convincingly argues, the central organizing principle of core environmentalists has been, and remains to this day, opposition to the growth of heavy industry.
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principle → argue → industry
That made it structurally impossible, Nixon notwithstanding, for environmentalism as a political movement to build a home in the Republican Party.
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environmentalism → make → Party
And so, almost by default, it evolved into a core Democratic constituency.
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it → evolve → constituency
After environmentalists, the natural opponents of industry are readily identifiable core constituencies in the Democratic Party: labor unions, economic progressives, and what, for lack of a better word, might be called technocrats.
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opponents → call → word
Few people doubt the enduring animus between these groups and big business, or find their central position in the Democratic coalition surprising.
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position → doubt → coalition
…and 73 more, not listed.
The Aporia
