Richard D. Wolff and Michael Hudson: The U.S. just lost everything – End of American Power

With Nima on Dialogue Works, plus notes from Michael Hudson.

Michael added a note as the transcript for this video will take some time.  Enjoy!

US Monopoly in AI strategy 2025

Any country’s trade with the United States can be weaponized by turning it into a dependency relationship.

For many years this is how U.S. strategists used its dominance of grain exports and the world oil trade as a weapon, by threatening to starve China out in its attempt to prevent Mao’s revolution (the sanctions were broken by Canada) and oil exports (by blocking other countries’ option of having an alternative in Russian oil or Iraqi and Syrian oil not controlled by U.S. puppet regimes

In the more technological arena, the United States used arms exports as a similar lever to impose dependency relationships. Purchases of U.S. aircraft, submarines, ships, and other weaponry require almost constant repairs and replacement parts. The United States can turn off the tap to countries using U.S. arms for military purposes not approved by the United States.

The key arena in establishing U.S. technological advantage has become AI. Europe realizes that if Trump succeeds in blocking Europe’s ability to regulate AI, it will lock Europe into reliance on America’s AI and internet platform leaders – and chip makers, and hence U.S. computers and other products in which U.S. national security strategists can assert geo-locators and kill switches.

China recognizes this threat and has recently decided against relying on Nvidia chips in fear of such kill switches being installed.

China’s counter-strategy – and that of Asia and the BRICS as a whole – is to make its AI and related informational technology open source. That prevents (so I’m told) the opportunity to impose backdoors such as geo-locators, kill switches, and spycraft.

Europe recognizes this strategy and is trying to prevent becoming locked into U.S. high-technology sources. This was clearly spelled out in an op-ed by Marietje Schaake in “Beware America’s AI colonialism,” Financial Times (August 21, 2025):

Pres­id­ent Don­ald Trump’s trade wars are teach­ing the world a harsh les­son: depend­en­cies get weapon­ised. In the White House’s view, inter­na­tional trade is zero-sum. With his AI Action Plan prom­ising “unchal­lenged” tech­no­lo­gical dom­in­ance, a fur­ther ambi­tion is clear. Will the rest of the world recog­nise that embra­cing US arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence offers Trump an even more potent tool for coer­cion?

Since his “lib­er­a­tion day” tar­iffs, the Trump admin­is­tra­tion has under­taken an aggress­ive cam­paign to exact con­ces­sions from Amer­ica’s trad­ing part­ners. Dec­ades of trade integ­ra­tion mean there is no easy path back to square one. Depend­en­cies run deep and altern­at­ive mar­kets, sup­ply chains and flows of goods and ser­vices take time to develop.

With AI, there is not yet such global entan­gle­ment. So why would any coun­try vol­un­tar­ily hand more lever­age to the White House?

AI is an ideo­lo­gical project for the Trump admin­is­tra­tion and the AI Action Plan lays out a clear blue­print for US tech­no­lo­gical hege­mony. Its pil­lars focus on super­char­ging domestic AI devel­op­ment and adop­tion, aim­ing to yield eco­nomic bene­fits and pre­vent “woke” model use. This is the archi­tec­ture it hopes the world will embrace.

More than pre­vi­ous tech­no­lo­gies, AI sys­tems cre­ate uniquely vul­ner­able depend­en­cies. Algorithms are not trans­par­ent and can be manip­u­lated to bias out­puts — whether chal­len­ging anti­trust rules or sup­port­ing pro­tec­tion­ism. With a sig­ni­fic­ant set of US tech chief exec­ut­ives pledging alle­gi­ance to this admin­is­tra­tion, the syn­ergy between polit­ical and cor­por­ate agen­das is clear. AI com­pan­ies have even deployed team mem­bers in the US armed forces.

The weapon­isa­tion pos­sib­il­it­ies are extens­ive. Take the Cloud Act, which forces the dis­clos­ure of for­eign data by domestic cloud pro­viders, whose ser­vices dom­in­ate world­wide.

It is easy to see how tech can become an even greater bar­gain­ing chip in US for­eign policy. As with steel or phar­ma­ceut­ic­als, Trump’s White House can simply impose a tar­iff on AI ser­vices or crit­ical ele­ments of the sup­ply chain.

The admin­is­tra­tion is already push­ing the EU to weaken its Digital Ser­vices Act and con­sidered lever­aging tar­iffs to force a change to the UK’s online safety laws earlier this year.

What makes AI depend­ency par­tic­u­larly dan­ger­ous is its opa­city. Unlike trade in phys­ical goods, AI decision­mak­ing pro­cesses are often black boxes, mak­ing subtle manip­u­la­tion nearly impossible to detect. These sys­tems become deeply embed­ded in crit­ical pro­cesses, with high replace­ment costs. Many coun­tries already have sig­ni­fic­ant depend­en­cies on US tech com­pan­ies. Add AI and power­ful lock-in effects would intensify. The rapid pace of its evol­u­tion makes it dif­fi­cult for altern­at­ive sup­pli­ers to main­tain com­pet­it­ive altern­at­ives, adding choke­point effects. With the integ­ra­tion of such tech­no­lo­gies in infra­struc­ture, defence and secur­ity sys­tems, the stakes are high.

The Trump admin­is­tra­tion frames the AI race as a com­pet­i­tion between democratic and author­it­arian mod­els. Yet this obscures a troub­ling real­ity: the gap between US and Chinese approaches to tech­no­lo­gical con­trol is nar­row­ing. Gov­ernance grows more author­it­arian by the day in Trump’s Amer­ica, with polit­ical inter­ven­tions reach­ing indi­vidual com­pany levels.

The win­dow for con­vin­cing Amer­ican part­ners to embrace “full stack” AI exports (where US com­pan­ies sell access to plat­forms instead of products) is clos­ing. Gov­ern­ments are learn­ing from their trade war mis­takes and invest­ing in sov­er­eign altern­at­ives in the hope of avoid­ing crit­ical dependencies. Ensur­ing trans­par­ency and security require­ments and build­ing in con­trac­tual pro­tec­tions against ser­vice termin­a­tion might help in the short term, but coali­tions with like-minded democracies to foster altern­at­ive AI eco­systems free from uni­lat­eral US policy change will be more sus­tain­able.

The choice facing world lead­ers is not between US or Chinese AI dom­in­ance but between tech­no­lo­gical sov­er­eignty and digital colo­ni­al­ism. Each trade confront­a­tion should teach poten­tial partners that today’s com­mer­cial rela­tionships can become tomor­row’s coer­cive lever­age.

Trade wars show how far the Trump admin­is­tra­tion is will­ing to go. The AI Action Plan offers the pres­id­ent the means to make that vis­ion more vast and more per­man­ent.

The rest of the world should think twice before volunteer­ing to take part.