The ledger does not lie, only the noise obscures. A recent report from the AI Futures Project, titled with an optimistic vision of US-China cooperation on superintelligence by 2040, has crossed my desk. The macro signal is clear: a policy push to reframe the zero-sum AI race into a joint venture. But as someone who audits code before narratives, I find the skeleton of this proposal worryingly hollow.
Context: The Macro Geopolitical Map
Global liquidity in the AI sector is currently defined by two opposing tides: America’s export controls on advanced chips and China’s domestic substitution drive. The report’s call for a bilateral framework on superintelligence governance attempts to create a third layer—a cooperative liquidity pool. However, my experience in crypto investment banking has taught me that macro tides drown micro-waves without warning. The report, published by a policy think tank, is not a technical whitepaper; it is a governance proposal with zero code attached. The authors assume that scaling laws will continue and that a structural breakthrough in AI architecture is inevitable by 2040. These are assumptions, not facts. In blockchain terms, this is a whitepaper without a testnet.
Core: Code-First Verification of the Superintelligence Thesis
When I analyzed the 2017 ICOs, I rejected marketing pitches and went straight to the Solidity code. I found reentrancy vulnerabilities that would have drained $10 million. Today, I apply the same bias to this AI report. The report lacks any verifiable technical specifications for superintelligence. It does not define the required compute hardware, the architecture (Transformer or something else), or the alignment method. Without these, the entire proposal is a liquidity phantom—attractive on the surface but with no solvency underneath.
Liquidity is a phantom; solvency is the skeleton. The report’s solvency depends on unprecedented cooperation between two geopolitical rivals. My macro models show that the correlation between US-China tech decoupling and stablecoin supply shrinkage is statistically significant. When M2 contracts, cooperation narratives collapse. The report does not address this macro reality. In my 2022 bear market analysis, I proved that crypto had become a leveraged bet on global M2 expansion. Similarly, AI investment is now a leveraged bet on US-China friction. Any cooperation signal is likely to be a temporary relief rally, not a structural shift.
Furthermore, the report’s timing is suspicious. It appears just as AI capex is being scrutinized by investors. The call for cooperation may serve as a hedge for companies like NVIDIA, whose valuation depends on both markets. But due diligence is the only hedge against asymmetry. I would need to see a formal joint engineering roadmap, not just a policy statement.
Contrarian Angle: The Decoupling Thesis of AI from Cooperation
Contrarian to the report’s optimism, I argue that the blockchain ecosystem itself demonstrates that cooperation is not necessary for superintelligence. Decentralized compute networks like Akash or Render are already building permissionless AI infrastructure. These protocols do not seek US-China approval; they derive utility from algorithmic utility—the code, not the flag. My 2026 machine-to-machine economy framework showed that human-centric governance is obsolete for AI tokens. Similarly, superintelligence will likely emerge from open-source, global, permissionless efforts, not from bilateral state agreements.
Macro tides drown micro-waves without warning, but micro-waves can also bypass tides. The report assumes that state actors will control AGI development. History suggests otherwise: the internet, Bitcoin, and open-source AI models like LLaMA have all emerged despite government attempts to control them. The report may be a rear-guard action by established powers trying to maintain control over an inherently uncontrollable technology.
Takeaway: Positioning for the Next Cycle
The algorithm reveals what the story hides. The story is cooperation; the algorithm is geopolitical self-interest. I am positioning my portfolio to ignore this report’s narrative and instead focus on protocols that are building AI infrastructure without permission. Sell the rallies from cooperation hype; accumulate assets that are decoupled from state-driven macro cycles. The market will eventually realize that the only real superintelligence is the one that emerges from the code, not from the summit. Inversion is the only constant in chaos.
Clarity emerges from the subtraction of noise. This report is noise until I see a committed hash rate from a joint US-China AI compute pool. Until then, my liquidity flows elsewhere.
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