Samo Burja on Growth, Energy, and AI

**Samo Burja** (0:05)
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 gonna reach things like mirrors and steel and natural gas. And once you're doing those things, oh buddy, you've reignited the industrial revolution.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:41)
Most conversations about AI focus on software. Samo Burja 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 Jaffee speaks with Samo Burja about AI, industrial revolutions, demographic decline, state capacity, and the institutions that determine whether societies can successfully adapt to technological change.

**Theo Jaffee** (1:23)
We're live with Samo Burja. Welcome back to the Situation Room.

**Samo Burja** (1:27)
Happy to be here.

**Theo Jaffee** (1:29)
So, we just finished our last segment talking with Ray Ma from China Buzz about... I don't want to get that wrong. It was Tech Buzz China. That's what it was.
And Sophia 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.

**Samo Burja** (1:58)
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 Daoist 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 the heavens themselves would change, and that there would be a massive transformation into an unprecedented utopia. This was actually believed by many, many people, and it was a very bloody civil war, and likely one that ended up destroying the Han Dynasty.
I think that people wanted to equate deep religious traditions with basically the beliefs that a society holds, but they underrate how much those religious beliefs change on the century time scale or the millennial time scale.

**Theo Jaffee** (3:16)
I mean, certainly the religious landscape of the US has changed enormously in the last 50 years or so.

**Samo Burja** (3:23)
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, you 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.

**Theo Jaffee** (4:04)
How do you think like the Puritanism of the early US manifest 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.

**Samo Burja** (4:21)
Well, there's a straightforward interpretation where 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 it was first a religious belief that, okay, it's important to do your work well. It's a vocation from God. If you're doing really well materially while doing the vocation that, you know, God selected for you, that might be a sign that you are elect. You're very much nervous about whether you are one of the elect, so one of the people that are predestined, you know, to be saved.
But then, even as society secularized, the material rewards of working very hard started compounding. So I sort of think that in a way, the fact that, you know, America was started as a more Protestant, almost Calvinist country, or a Puritan country to, you know, take a slightly different strain, that was reinforced, it was important for the emergence of capitalism, but I think capitalism itself prolonged it, right, and developed it further. I think today people work hard on the vague assumption that, you know, it's going to work out for you, right? The whole land of opportunity mythos, which was also true for most of the 20th century, arguably still true in the 21st century here in San Francisco, you know, I think that has long ago secularized and it's sustained by, you know, the facts of economic growth.