![\"\"](\"https:\/\/substackcdn.com\/image\/fetch\/$s_!ww4v!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep\/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Faa9c60c7-d2c8-4413-a3c4-3ae9f7a329ce_800x448.gif\")
<\/a><\/p>\nThis weekend, the United States of America turned 250. I\u2019ve been waiting for this a long time.<\/p>\n
As a first-generation American \u2014 since I landed in Auburn Alabama<\/a> as a 17-year-old in 1977 \u2014 I want to step back this Sunday and offer a Bigger Picture<\/a> that\u2019s been on my mind for a while through this AI Tech Wave<\/a>. <\/p>\n It connects the \u2018Us vs Them\u2019 Enterprise AI wars I covered in Friday\u2019s ARD 111<\/a>, the US\/China AI race dominating our headlines \u2014 and a golden record flying through interstellar space.<\/p>\n It\u2019s remarkable how it all ties together.<\/p>\n 1977 \u2014 the year I landed in America , in the wonderfully warm campus at Auburn University in Alabama \u2014 the United States launched not one but two interplanetary probes, Voyager 1 and 2<\/a>. They are now the farthest human-made objects in existence \u2014 over 15 billion and 13 billion miles away, past the edge of our solar system, on their way through the cosmos for hundreds of thousands, even millions of years.<\/p>\n Each carries a Golden Record<\/a> \u2014 curated by a committee chaired by the great Carl Sagan<\/a> \u2014 the sounds, music, greetings and images of Earth. <\/p>\n A note in a bottle documenting who sent it: humans, more united than they think, from a small blue planet. (I\u2019ve kept a copy of the Golden Record for years \u2014 I showed it on Friday\u2019s show. Sagan has been a north star of mine for decades.)<\/p>\n Those probes were launched by a country and \u2018melting pot\u2019 culture punching far above its chronological age \u2014 a people inspired about what\u2019s possible out there by their tales of Star Trek, Star Wars, I, Robot and so many more. Dreaming of a Federation of Planets while striving \u2014 imperfectly, tumultuously, continuously \u2014 to build a better federation of states, nations and peoples here on Earth. A work in progress indeed. And here\u2019s the technical marvel that should humble every AI-era engineer: the Voyagers navigate the interstellar dark with less computing power than the key fob in your pocket.<\/p>\n Now the part of the story that\u2019s gone fuzzy for most of the 8 billion of us.<\/p>\n The US\/USSR Space Race \u2014 ignited by Sputnik in 1957 \u2014 was the defining \u2018Us vs Them\u2019 campaign of the 20th century. Duck-and-cover drills. Missile gaps. A Moon race run at existential pitch, until the 12th American walked last on the Moon in 1972. Over 50 years ago.<\/p>\n And then something happened that almost nobody talks about: the race ended in a handshake. In 1975 \u2014 just three years after the last moonwalk \u2014 an Apollo capsule docked with a Soyuz capsule, and American astronauts and Soviet cosmonauts shook hands in orbit<\/a>. <\/p>\n What followed was five decades of partnership: the Shuttle-Mir program<\/a> in the 1990s, and the International Space Station<\/a> \u2014 where Americans and Russians have lived and worked together continuously for over 25 years. Through sanctions, expulsions, wars and every geopolitical hiccup of the last half-century, the two \u2018mortal rivals\u2019 kept flying together. American astronauts rode Russian Soyuz capsules to orbit for a decade when the US had no ride of its own.<\/p>\n The \u2018Us vs Them\u2019 narrative did its job so well that we remember the race \u2014 and forgot the partnership.<\/p>\n I spent Friday\u2019s show on the \u2018Us vs Them\u2019 campaigns erupting in Enterprise AI \u2014 Microsoft and Palantir defining frontier labs as \u2018the Other,\u2019 with rhetoric reaching for Karl Marx. And the biggest \u2018Us vs Them\u2019 of all hangs over everything: the US\/China AI race, with its export controls, model gatings, and escalating narratives on both sides \u2014 what I\u2019ve called both countries strapping kryptonite trinkets to their own ambitions<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u2018Us vs Them\u2019 is the oldest coalition-building tool humanity has \u2014 it organized city-states, religions and Cold War blocs for thousands of years before it organized software markets. It\u2019s real, it\u2019s powerful, and in the early stakes-setting phase of every tech wave, it\u2019s profitable. But the space race teaches the longer lesson: the race is the headline; the cooperation is the history. The competition that terrified a generation produced, within three years of its finish line, the most durable peaceful partnership two adversaries have ever run \u2014 250 miles overhead, every single day, for over 50 years.<\/p>\n I\u2019m not naive about the differences \u2014 AI is a dual-use technology in ways space station modules are not, and the cybersecurity concerns behind \u2018The Blip 2.0\u2019<\/a> are genuine. But when I watch today\u2019s AI headlines \u2014 the races, the gatings, the trillion-dollar \u2018Us vs Them\u2019 campaigns \u2014 I think back to the almost forgotten Apollo-Soyuz handshake. We\u2019ve been more together than our memories admit. <\/p>\n It influences our language, thoughts and actions in the technology competitions of today. We can re-frame it all together. With more mutual respect than fears. <\/p>\n A Xi-Trump September meeting coming up at the White House, joint AI-safety tracks, research communities that already span both countries \u2014 the raw material is there, just as it was in 1975. <\/p>\n Fifty years ahead in AI could be very positively different than currently imagined.<\/p>\n Americans, too, have historically been more united than it has seemed at almost every point in this country\u2019s extraordinary, tumultuous 250 years. <\/p>\n I\u2019ve seen it up close since 1977<\/a> \u2014 through the lows and the highs, with far more in common than shows on the surface. <\/p>\n So that\u2019s what I\u2019m celebrating this weekend, in this fourth year since ChatGPT<\/a> moment, and second year since the DeepSeek one<\/a>.<\/p>\n In this AI Tech Wave<\/a> we\u2019re ALL in together, globally: a 250-year-old work in progress that mailed the cosmos a golden mixtape, raced its perceived and feared rival to the Moon \u2014 and then flew with them together for over fifty years. <\/p>\n A few hundred miles above eight billion human heads.<\/p>\n And 350+ million American heads.<\/p>\n That\u2019s my Bigger Picture<\/a> today. At this point in the AI Tech Wave<\/a>. <\/p>\n Happy 250th Birthday, USA. <\/p>\n And here\u2019s to remembering the handshakes, not just the races.<\/p>\n Want to wish you all a very happy 4th of July celebration and weekend. Stay tuned. <\/p>\n (P.S.: Here\u2019s a youtube video version of this Essay that\u2019s useful to consume and share: )<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n