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Escape Velocity - by Anton Leicht - Threading the Needle

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A first look at the political economy of space compute

In 2026, AI policy is datacenter politics. When the public is dissatisfied about AI, they protest and disrupt the datacenter buildout. When policymakers try to tax or regulate, they don’t need to worry too much about company flight—a search engine can run to Ireland, but the datacenter stays here. When middle powers develop AI strategies, they start with compute: whether it’s hosting American datacenters in exchange for access or building sovereign datacenters for admittedly fuzzier reasons. And when we all have these late-night conversations on how we’d deal with runaway AGI, the answer is…

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