Samo Burja on Growth, Energy, and AI
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So I actually think a big macro story that we've been exploring at Bismarck Analysis and Bismarck Brief is that the demands of AI are so massive that for the first time in decades, the economies of scale necessary to supply them require industrial revolutions in everything. So this demand shock, and we could almost call it a demand shock arriving from the future in AI is going through silicon, but eventually it's going to reach things like mirrors and steel and natural gas. And once you're doing those things, oh buddy, you've reignited the industrial revolution.
Most conversations about AI focus on software. Samo Bouria thinks the bigger story may be physical. As AI systems become more powerful, the demand for energy, compute, data centers, chips, and industrial capacity is growing at an extraordinary pace. That demand could reshape not just the technology sector, but manufacturing, construction, energy production, and the broader global economy. Theo Jaffe speaks with Samo Bourya about AI, industrial revolutions, demographic decline, state capacity, and the institutions that determine whether societies can successfully adapt to technological change.
We're live with Samo Bouria. Welcome back to the Situation Room. Happy to be here. So we just finished our last segment talking with Ray Ma from China Buzz about was it I don't wanna get that wrong. It was Tech Buzz China. That's what it was. And Sofia made the point that The US has these sort of, like, grand apocalyptic, eschatological narratives around AI because we're a Christian society, and China doesn't because they're a secular society. Do you have any takes on this?
I'm not convinced. Well, I think that people over index on long civilizational narratives and under index on just the concrete material conditions in a country. To give an example, there was the so called Yellow Turban Rebellion in China in the third century. You could easily make the case that China has eschatological thinking and has end of the world cults, right? The so called Yellow Turban rebellion was basically a Taoist cult. And it was a bunch of brothers that wanted to overthrow an imperial dynasty. They believed the end of the world would come, that you know, the heavens themselves wo
I mean, certainly the, you know, religious landscape of The US has changed enormously in the last fifty years or so.
I think that The United States is still innovating in its practical religious sense. You know, you could say that the rise of this kind of non denominational Christian derived ethic, where basically, know, just be a hecking good person, whatever that means, right? That vibe, that ethic seems to be the actual religious belief of most people. And then some sort of vague belief in karma, some sort of vague belief in, like, an inactive god that doesn't interfere in the world. I think that actually probably describes most people who are nominally Christian in The United States today.
How do you think, like, the Puritanism of the early US manifests today? You know, Puritanism is Calvinist. They were very sort of against the pleasures of the flesh. They believed in predestination. So you were born predestined to go to either heaven or hell.
Well, there's a straightforward interpretation where, you know, simply because you're doing well, that doesn't mean your salvation is guaranteed. It's not clear that you were one of the elect. But it is a hint. It is something of a possibility. So I think the classic arguments about the Protestant work ethic endure. However, I think they endure because there was first a religious belief that
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