I wanted to share this premium piece to all Automaters because I believe so strongly in the idea and its ramifications.

I hope it offers some thoughts, though not particularly sanguine, for a Friday that you can contemplate throughout the weekend.

As always, I welcome feedback and pushback on my thoughts and ideas.

Let’s dive in. 🚀

Last week, the United States quietly dropped one of the most consequential documents of the decade - the new National Security Strategy (NSS).

Most people will never read it. But as a geo-political geek of course I have. And people will live in the world it creates.

Washington is now telling us, bluntly and publicly, what has been felt, but not actualized:
Europe is no longer a strategic pillar of U.S. grand strategy.

The NSS essentially reframes the world as a two-player game: The U.S. and China.
And everyone else are supporting actors, regional buffers, or economic satellites.

And yes — that includes Europe.

Below I’ll talk through some of my working thoughts:

Let’s get into it.

The core message of the NSS is that America’s future is defined by China. The document frames China as a peer-competitor, with the economic and military might that can compete toe-to-toe.

Everything else is noise relative to that main arc.

What was surprising to many Europeans, many of which are friends since I used to work there, is the dismissiveness of the language.

In some ways, that’s even worse.

It signals that Europe is no longer considered a meaningful strategic variable in the U.S. calculus. And for that matter, in global multi-polar geopolitics.

Why? Because Washington has concluded something Europeans still refuse to believe, or is overly optimistic that it can ameliorate.

In essence, Europe is structurally incapable of shaping the 21st century. Because of:

Not enough industry.
Not enough defense capacity.
Not enough population.
Not enough will.

This is the quiet part said out loud that sadly, Western Europe won’t be able to fix.

We need to be clear.

This isn’t a temporary dip. This isn’t a rough patch. This isn’t a “Europe just needs to get its act together” moment.

The decline is and has been systemic.

Here are the structural reasons why Washington has moved on:

This point is the most obvious one, but even now, two years into the Ukraine war, Europe cannot accept.

Europe simply cannot do the following:

The U.S. knows this. The Pentagon knows this.

And Western Europe knows this, but it cannot turn on a dime. That’s why they wanted the US to be involved as long as possible.

But it didn’t count on the fact that at some point, the music stops, and reality hits.

Demographics are destiny, and Europe’s demographic curve is a cliff.

I know the word replacement theory brings up negative connotations from my work with Kedoom, but its undoubtedly true that a shrinking workforce leads to a shrinking economy, which is linked to both innovation capacity and military size.

There is only so much that technology can do to multiply the efforts of a population; however, if the base is only so much, a multiplier can help, but not surmount the disadvantaged conferred with one peer competitor that has a greater population and bigger innovation capacity, and another peer competitor that has a far greater population size and almost as good of innovation capacity.

In other words, a continent of retirees cannot be a great power.

Washington no longer believes Europe has the political will to get things done.

And honestly? They would not be wrong.

All the above problems with aging and defense have not been addressed, even after so many years. It’s difficult to get consensus in Europe.

The things that Europe is good at - diversity in thought, rigorous in thinking - is not primed for action in a new age.

It’s just what it is.

More on this below — but simply put:

Europe is entering the AI era with no compute, no chips, no frontier models, no scaling culture, and no political alignment.

Because of this, the power gap will widen exponentially.

If you strip away the reality of the NSS, here’s the blunt reality:

Europe is no longer treated as a strategic pillar. It’s a buffer.

A territorial buffer. A political buffer. An economic buffer. A deterrence buffer.

That means:

This is the same role Europe played for the U.S. in the Cold War.

And to put Eastern Europe in context, I remember when I was at Techstars London more than 10 years ago I would hunt investments there. A lot of founders would ask me why go there? What was so interesting there?

I couldn’t quite annunciate why Eastern Europe was more appealing.

I used the words - the founders are more hungry. More raw.

It could be because the valuations are lower than Western Europe. But valuations are a lagging indicator of something, not a leading.

It could be because I’m contrarian. But that’s because I notice patterns before they exist.

Ultimately, when I think back why Eastern Europe - I felt they were at the cusp of things, not at the tail-end of things. What I mean by that is Western Europe is great for vacations, but not so great for going out there and building something.

And if I back off from my micro-experience, I think from a macro perspective Eastern Europe is now the strategically relevant part of the continent.

Eastern Europe is the buffer between Russia and NATO. That space, that frontier, is where the rubber hits the road.

And that frontier is where interesting things happen.

For example, the forefront of drone defense startups are in Ukraine. Why? Because they had to defend themselves from Russian aggression, and the best brains were working on the problem.

Logical, isn’t it?

The Poles and Finns actually take defense seriously, with no relativism in terms of military strategy and higher than average defense spending.

They have what Western Europe lacks - seriousness.

This is the part few people talk about yet, but it might be the single most important piece.

AI isn’t just a technology wave. It’s a power reshuffling mechanism.

If you take a look at the Internet and the social changes post its introduction, we are still reeling from its effects (see just this week Australia just banned social media for children). AI will cause the same societal effects, if not far greater.

And Europe is on the wrong side of all the leverage points.

Here’s how in the AI age Europe will be weaker:

The U.S. and China control the world’s top AI labs, GPU supply chains, cloud platforms, and AI chips.

Meanwhile, Europe controls… regulations.

That’s not a foundation for global power.

AI-native factories, robotics, and automation will:

Thus ushering Europe’s current advantages down to the ground.

Europe’s aging societies mean fewer engineers, researchers, and founders.

And hopefully what we’ve learned so far is that AI won’t replace humans, but rather amplify the humans that we have.

In other words, AI amplifies the places with young, ambitious, scaling cultures.

Ultimately, this is the brutal truth:

AI removes Europe’s last remaining advantages — education, bureaucracy — because AI makes those replicable everywhere and faster.

What remains in Europe industrial weakness, demographic collapse, energy and AI dependence, and geographical incoherence.

The gap will accelerate and widen every year, not shrink.

So let’s play out this scenario, unless something extraordinary intervenes:

These are the baseline conditions that the NSS is espousing and forecasting.

And my point is that this only accelerates and exacerbates in an AI world.

The world is changing faster than ever before. Events and conclusions, like the NSS.

Some of the reasons why I’m so keen on prediction markets is because of the ability to forecast some of the issues that’s happening today.

Geopolitics and AI is making the world go faster than ever before. And to have an understanding of what’s going, you need all the help in the world.

Cheers,
Tak
Editor at The Automated

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