Tech giants and a new American empire

I have a deep fascination with the big picture—history and the rise and fall of great empires. Two books, in particular, have profoundly influenced my thinking on this topic. The first is Tragedy and Hope, a dense and ambitious history book by Carroll Quigley, and the second is Ray Dalio’s Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order.

Dalio's book explores the recurring patterns in the rise and fall of empires throughout history. He identifies key drivers that create an empire—such as innovation, strong leadership, and economic productivity—and how those same drivers gradually give way to complacency and decline. Using this historical framework, he argues that the United States exhibits many signs of an empire transitioning into decline and that China appears to be ascending as the next global superpower.

From the perspective of Western civilization, this feels like a grim conclusion. However, this is where I find myself returning to Quigley's Tragedy and Hope and a key observation he makes about the uniqueness of Western empires. Quigley notes that while empires inevitably decline, Western empires are distinct in that their fall has consistently been accompanied by the rise of a new Western power that inherits and adapts the values and systems of its predecessor. The Dutch empire gave rise to the British, and the British to the United States.

The reason for this continuity lies in the parallel emergence of a new and more dynamic power structure as the old one stagnate and decay. Over time, this new structure becomes more productive and innovative, eventually reaching a tipping point where it overtakes the established order.

Applying this lens to the United States today, one could argue that we are witnessing not merely a normal political shift but a tipping point where a new power structure—driven by American technology companies—has surpassed the old framework of industrial and financial capitalism.

The emergence of this new power structure will necessitate a reordering of the internal structure and, externally, mark the beginning of a new age of expansion. Historically, such expansion is characterized by growth in four key areas: 1) population, 2) geographic area, 3) production, and 4) knowledge, where production and knowledge give rise to population which gives rise to geographic expansion. Just another way of saying robotics, AI and Mars.