Con

“AI is just another bubble like crypto or dot-com?” Cute take. But there’s one massive difference nobody wants to talk about: Governments are all-in this time — and they’re not walking away when it pops. Dot-com 2000: Private mania. Pets.com raises $82M IPO, burns it on Super Bowl ads, collapses. Governments watched from the sidelines, laughed, cleaned up the mess later. Crypto 2017/2021: Again, mostly retail + VCs gambling. Governments reacted after the fact, banning here, taxing there, seizing wallets when things got messy. They weren’t the ones holding the bag early. AI 2025: Different animal, this is some of it: •US CHIPS Act: $52B+ straight into fabs and R&D •EU AI Act + billions in sovereign funds •China’s “New Generation AI Development Plan” — state-directed, trillion-yuan scale •UAE, Saudi, Singapore, France… every serious player is writing nine-figure (and ten-figure) checks into AI infrastructure, models, and energy buildout When the .com bubble burst, the world didn’t have $50B+ already committed to building more fiber optic cable and billions in SpaceX satellites. When crypto crashed, the Fed wasn’t busy propping up stablecoins or bailing out exchanges (okay, maybe a little in 2022, but not proactively). This time? Governments aren’t just regulating from the outside, they’re co-investors, customers, and in many cases the ones directing the capital flows. Energy policy, grid expansion, export controls, national security mandates… AI is now intertwined with state power. Just like the railroad, interstate highways and the atomic bomb. Bubbles can absolutely still pop. Over-investment, disappointment in consumer apps, energy bottlenecks all real risks. But when the music stops, the chairs aren’t just owned by Sequoia and retail bros. They’re owned by Washington, Beijing, Brussels, and Abu Dhabi. And governments don’t rug-pull themselves. This isn’t 1999.
This isn’t 2021. This is 1941 — and AI is the Manhattan Project with better cap tables. Place your bets accordingly.