Niall Ferguson 與 Balaji：大學該怎麼重做？

0:00開場

0:00大英帝國同好會。Niall 剛下飛機就到這裡。對。請說。我剛從倫敦搭機過來，在座有些人知道那趟。別指望我條理多清楚，我盡力。不，你是中央選角般的英國紳士。我根本不是紳士，我來自 Glasgow。好，好。你像 Sean Connery，我想他是蘇格蘭人，總之。好，我們這些年聊過，跟我和其他人聊的類似，但你有個有趣的轉折，因為……So, British Empire meetup. Niall just got off a plane and got here. Yeah, yeah. Go ahead. I just got off the flight from London, which some of you will know. So don't expect high levels of coherence from me. I'll do my best. No, you're the, you know, British gentleman from Central Casting. I'm not a gentleman at all. I'm from Glasgow. Okay, okay, fine. Well, you're like Sean Connery, who's, you know, I guess he's Scottish, but whatever. Okay, so we have had a conversation over the years, which is similar to one I've had with others, but you have an interesting twist on it because—

0:45身為英國人，你對美國制度的距離，比一些美國朋友稍遠，談它們會不會穩、撐不撐得住。我知道你把時間投在 UATX，不是投錢，是投時間，有點像我在 Network School 做的事。being a Brit, you're, you know, at a little bit more distance from America than some of my American friends on institutions, Western institutions, whether they're going to be stable, whether they're going to make it. And I know you've invested in the UATX—not invested, you've put your time into UATX and kind of rebooting, similar in some ways to what I'm doing at Network School.

1:08也許你想談那個。你和 Joe 等人在做。很高興來這裡。「網路國家」聽起來像矛盾，我們會談到。但我們很多交集，認識好幾年了：我們都在試著重新發明教育。Maybe you want to talk about that. You and Joe and others are working on that. Well, it's great to be here. The network state might seem like a contradiction in terms, and we'll get to that. But one of the many points of contact we have, and we've known one another for quite a few years, is that we're trying to reinvent education.

1:31這非常需要，因為既有教育制度有一種長期萎靡。從我大半輩子教書的頂尖大學，一路到最基層公立小學。問題可以簡化成：出於意識形態，教育制度不再把卓越當優先。And that's desperately needed because there's such a chronic malaise in the established educational institutions. And that extends all the way down from the elite universities, where I've spent most of my life teaching, to the most basic public primary school. The problem can be encapsulated simply: for ideological reasons, educational institutions stopped prioritizing excellence.

1:59不再用 meritocracy，改推崇所謂多元、公平、包容（DEI）。結果也開始削弱學術自由。這對任何教育機構其實有毒：決策一旦不是以卓越（潛在或已實現）為準，很快會滑向，我認為，湮沒。Stopped having meritocratic systems and instead favored ideas of so-called diversity, equity, and inclusion. And as a result, they also started to downgrade academic freedom. And this is actually toxic for any educational institution. As soon as you make decisions based on something other than excellence, potential or realized, then you are very quickly going to slip into, I think, oblivion.

2:31哈佛救不了，重辦大學

2:31我不認為你能修好 Harvard、Yale、Princeton 這類機構。問題其實橫跨整個英語世界，澳洲校園也有 woke 狂熱。我認為修不了，因為大學的設計，尤其終身職。I don't think you can fix an institution like Harvard or Yale or Princeton. I think the problem, by the way, extends right across the Anglosphere. You can find woke madness on Australian campuses too. I don't think you can fix this because of the way that universities are designed, particularly with the institution of tenure.

2:57你有解雇不掉的關鍵員工。所以我們五年前，Joe Lonsdale、我和 Bari Weiss，決定在 Austin 創新大學。有些人發明完全獨立、不打算成為大學的機構，我們決定核心仍要一所受認可、能發學位、被體系承認為大學的學校。You have unfireable key employees. So we decided, Joe Lonsdale and I and Bari Weiss, five years ago, to create a new university in Austin. And whereas some people are inventing completely separate institutions that don't seek to be universities, we decided we wanted to have, at core, a university that was accredited, that would award degrees, in other words, was recognized by the system as a university.

3:28但在那前提下，我們事事不同。我們試著重新發明大學，又不失去大學身分。最後一句：大學是非常長壽的機構，可追溯到 11 世紀，因此對科技相當無感。But with that proviso, we do everything differently. So we've tried to reinvent the university without losing the identity of a university. Last thing I'll say: universities are very long-lived institutions. They date back as far as the 11th century, and they're therefore quite technology-indifferent.

3:54儘管一波波科技創新，運作仍很像中世紀義大利。這種跨世代知識傳遞模式很韌， unlikely 滅絕。所以我們決定根上仍是傳統大學的結構、人們對它的想像、學生的核心經驗。They've continued to function much as they did in medieval Italy, despite waves of technological innovation. So there's something about this model of intergenerational transfer of knowledge which is very resilient and, it seems to me, is unlikely to go extinct. And that's why we decided it would be, at its root, a traditional university in its structure, in the way that people thought about it, in the core experience that students had.

4:24但我們能重新發明的組織與教學面向都盡量改。舉例：演講很糟。我現在就在演講，等一下會停。演講無聊，過一陣子聽眾會飄走。最好教育是蘇格拉底式對話，我們馬上示範，人就是這樣學。UATX 沒有演講，教室是動態的，你會被點名，跟教授對話。But we would reinvent as many different aspects of university organization and of pedagogy as we could. I'll just give you one example. Lectures are terrible. I'm giving one now. I'm going to stop in a second. Lectures are boring, and after a certain amount of time, the audience drifts off. The best education is a Socratic dialogue. We're about to illustrate that. That's how people learn. So at UATX, we don't have lectures. The classroom is a dynamic place where you can expect to be cold-called and engage in dialogue with the professor.

5:01網路才是上游原因

5:01好。我非常同情你們在做的事，也認為我們兩條路未來會有建設性交叉。但我不同意，我認為，對上游情況的診斷。我的濃縮版：DEI、woke 等，至少現今病態版本，並不是左派或自由主義以前不存在。Okay. So here is— I am very sympathetic to what you guys are doing, and I actually think that our streams will cross in a productive way in the future. But I disagree with, I think, the diagnosis of the upstream of the situation. Here's my capsule as to what's happening. I would argue that DEI and woke and so on are actually, at least in their current pathological versions—it's not like leftism or liberalism hasn't been around for some period of time.

5:33但我認為這些動盪、其實全部的上游原因是網路。網路在 2000 年代興起，基本上讓這些記者等失業。常見說法是「go woke go broke」，其實反過來：他們先破產，報紙收入蒸發 500 億美元，然後在經濟壓力下才 go woke。為什麼？But I think the upstream cause of a lot of this disruption, really all of it, is the internet. The internet's rise in the 2000s basically put all of these journalists and others out of work. And the normal phrase is, "Go woke, go broke," but it was actually in reverse. They went broke, $50 billion wiped out of newspaper revenue, and then, given that economic stress, they went woke. Why?

5:58他們得超級順從才能保工作，試過 Occupy Wall Street，不行，因為對共產主義有抗體。所以改走種族馬克思主義之類，那是 2010 年代初 woke 的起源，而不是經濟馬克思主義。They had to be super-conformist in order to keep their job, and they tried Occupy Wall Street, and that didn't work because there were antibodies to communism. So instead, they went to, like, a racial Marxism instead, or, you know—and so that was the origins of woke in the early 2010s, rather than the economic Marxism.

6:17為什麼那時從低調變極端？同樣，我會說對 woke 的反應 MAGA，也強調錯的東西，強調美國旗等。Why at that time did it become—did it go from a low-level kind of thing to an extreme thing? And similarly, I would say that the reaction to woke, which is MAGA, also stresses the wrong thing, which is it stresses the American flag and so on.

6:34在我看來幾乎像美國極大主義，到加拿大人是「次等人」，Greenland 該被入侵等。我知道 Greenland 有交易，但總之對美國強調太多、排除他人，是我看法。And it's become, in my view, almost like a, you know, an American maximalism or what have you, to the point that Canadians are Untermenschen and, you know. Like, Greenland should be invaded and so on. And I know there's a deal for Greenland, but let's say there's been too much stress on America to the exclusion of others, in my view.

6:57另一大顛覆因素：中國在軍事與製造上顛覆共和黨；網路在媒體與金錢上顛覆民主黨。UATX，我看法，先說我愛你們在做的事，但我會說 UATX 有點以為問題是沒把美國放中心，巨大美國旗等。And I think the other big disrupting factor is China disrupted the Republicans on military and manufacturing; internet disrupted Democrats on media and money. And so UATX, in my view—and to be clear, I'm saying this in a— way where I love what you guys are doing, but I'd argue UATX sort of thinks of the issue as a deficit of not putting America at the center of things, like it's got the giant American flag and so on and so forth.

7:26哈佛被史丹佛顛覆

7:26但我其實認為問題是沒把網路放中心。這些老制度都被網路顛覆。再舉一個：你在 Stanford、Hoover Institution，也是我念大學和 PhD 的地方。大學長壽沒錯，Harvard 比美國早成立，但成立方式很特定：一間教室，為 Massachusetts Bay Colony 培訓But I actually think the issue is not putting the internet at the center of things. Because all these old institutions were disrupted by the internet. I'll give one more, which is, you know, you're at Stanford, Hoover Institution. It's also, you know, where I went to undergrad and did my PhD. And if, as you know, you know, you're right, universities are long-lived. Harvard was founded before the United States, but it was founded in a very specific way, which is as a one-room schoolhouse to build the Massachusetts Bay Colony and train,

7:57傳道士，建起 Massachusetts，建起美國，贏內戰，建起 America，贏一戰、二戰、冷戰，所以 1991 年 Harvard 三百年輸出全世界 dominant 的組織典範。you know, preachers, which then built Massachusetts, which built the United States, which won the Civil War, which built America, which won World War I, World War II, the Cold War, and that's why in 1991, Harvard, over 300 years, had exported the dominant organizational paradigm for the whole world.

8:15它證明它產出的「濕件」是 dominant 形式，產出更多權力、金錢，你要什麼都行。但接下來 30 年 Harvard 被 Stanford 顛覆。為什麼？因為 20 世紀國家之上，網路興起。Stanford 是過渡形態，全 STEM、全網路，把 Bill Gates 從東岸拉到西岸，Zuckerberg 亦然，很多人離開學界進網路。It had proven whatever wetware it was generating was the dominant form of wetware. It just generated more power, more money, more whatever you want, right? But then over the next 30 years, Harvard was disrupted by Stanford. Why? Because of the rise of the network over the 20th-century state. Stanford is an intermediate form. It was all STEM. It was all internet. And that was pulling Bill Gates out from the East Coast to the West. That pulled Zuckerberg out from the East Coast to the West. That pulled a lot of people out of academia into the internet.

8:46Stanford 我視為過渡形態，一腳還在國家與舊法幣世界，一腳在網路。我們需要 3.0 純網路版。再一件事。請說。我本來要說，我們現在在很有趣的歷史討論，我要反駁你剛的歷史論點，我不認為 wokeism 是網路顛覆 legacy 媒體商業模式的後果。And so Stanford, though, I think of as a transitional form, because it's still got one foot in the state and the old world of fiat, and it's got one foot in the internet. And I think we need a version 3.0 that's pure internet. I'll give one more thing. Go, go. Say it. Go, say it. I was going to say, we're now having a really interesting discussion about history, and I'm going to disagree with the historical argument you just made, because I don't think it's true that wokeism, or whatever you want to call it, was a consequence of the internet disrupting legacy media business models.

9:21我認為那其實錯了。好，請說。Woke 起源不在失敗報紙雜誌的市場，在 campus，campus 是美國最不受市場力量影響的機構之一，也許除了美軍。不同的事發生了。給你另一套、我認為正確的歷史版本。I think that's actually wrong. Okay, go. Because where woke originated was not in the marketplace of failing newspapers and magazines. It originated on campuses, and campuses are the least exposed institutions to market forces of any institutions in the United States, except perhaps the U.S. military. I think something different happened. And let me give you the alternative and correct historical version of events.

9:521989 後的文化馬克思

9:52共產、社會主義、各種左派在 1989–91 慘敗，蘇聯模式失敗、自由主義革命掃過，在歐洲，當然不是東亞。左派知識分子有問題：社會主義整個計畫是明確的失敗。他們能做什麼？Communism, socialism, leftism in all its forms suffered a catastrophic defeat in 1989-91. It was entirely crushed with the failure of the Soviet model and the libertarian-liberal revolutions that swept it away. In Europe, not, of course, in East Asia. And that left left-wing intellectuals with a problem. The entire project of socialism had been an unmistakable failure. What could they do?

10:22答案是文化馬克思主義，從經濟「制高点」辯論，轉向受害者、受害身分、交叉性階層。全在大學，再從 campus 輸出到沒有抗性的機構。The answer was to come up with a cultural Marxism that moved away from debates about the commanding heights of the economy into debates about victims, victimhood, hierarchies of intersectionality. That all happened in universities and was then exported from the campuses into any institution that was not resistant.

10:47這裡我們同意：有較強抗體的機構沒淪陷，雖然華爾街過一陣也透過人資部被 occupy。Andrew Sullivan 十多年前最好的一篇：「我們現在都住在 campus 上」，因為從 campus 開始。Here, I think we do agree. Those institutions which had strongish antibodies did not succumb, although even Wall Street got occupied through the human resources department after a certain amount of time. But Andrew Sullivan wrote the best essay about this ten years or more ago when he said, "We all live on campus now," because it began on campus.

11:10代名詞狂熱不是從 New York Magazine 開始，是從 Stanford 等開始，不是經濟壓力。相反，他們錢滾錢。你不知道美國大學在 80、90 年代 endowment 當 hedge fund 管理變多富有。The pronouns thing did not begin in New York Magazine. The pronouns insanity began at places like Stanford, and it wasn't because they were under economic pressure. The opposite. They, they were rolling in money. You have no idea how rich the American universities became in the course of the '80s and '90s because their endowments were managed like hedge funds.

11:32沒錯。有那麼多錢，你可以雇一百個 DEI 官。Stanford、Harvard 雇了一百個，他們日常做什麼？迫害保守派學者。Totally. And with all that money, you can hire a hundred diversity, equity, inclusion officers. And when you hire a hundred of those people, as Stanford and Harvard did, what do they do? What are they going to do with their day? The answer is persecute conservative academics.

11:49就是這樣。所以我認為這序列說得通。我同意那些，但讓我延伸。Woke 可再追溯到 Foucault、解構。Martin Luther King 建構的是：舊秩序種族主義、性別歧視、恐同，好的是不要那樣。That's what they do. So that's, I think, the sequence of events that makes sense to me. So I'll agree with all of that, but let me expand. So I think you can pull back woke even further to, say, Foucault, deconstruction. And then Martin Luther King constructing, like, basically, the old order is racist and sexist and homophobic, and what is good is to not be that.

12:11像 Indiana Jones 把舊美德與新美德對調，60 年代的事。再往前，共產主義推崇工人、勞動階級。Stakhanov 是蘇聯英雄，但……So like an Indiana Jones swaperoo of the old virtues with the new, and that was like a '60s thing. And if you go further back, communism, it valorized the worker, the working class. You know, Stakhanov was the hero of the Soviet Union, but— By the '60s, late '60s, after the Hard Hat Riot and when the white working class was actually on the right in America, the left needed a new victim class.

12:34工人英雄變成 Archie Bunker

12:34Stakhanov 變成 Archie Bunker，種族主義、性別歧視、恐同者，那種人……他們曾歌頌勞動男子美德，突然勞動男子變成世界一切之惡。換掉，新無產階級是種族、文化少數。可再追溯到 60 年代。你完全對：蘇聯結束時，威權、集中式共產對許多左派不再吸引人。So Stakhanov became Archie Bunker, the racist, sexist homophobe, the guy who... They had celebrated the virtues of the working man. Suddenly, the working man became everything that was wrong with the world, right? So they swapped out, and they got a new proletariat, which was the racial and cultural minorities, you know, kind of base. So you can pull it back even earlier to the '60s when that started. And then I think you're absolutely right that, at the end of the Soviet Union, because the sort of capitalist-liberal arguments had won the day,

13:03CIA 做抽象表現主義等，分裂左派威權派與自由派，基本上奏效。左派需要分散式左派而非集中式，Stalin、Mao 的集中左派讓位 Gorbachev、Deng，至少部分妥協革命。共產在東亞沒崩，但大多資本化，也許除北韓。the authoritarian, centralized, communist thing was no longer appealing even to many on the left. And the CIA had done the Abstract Expressionism thing and others, you know, where it was splitting the left between the authoritarian and libertarian segments, and that basically worked. And the left needed a decentralized left rather than a centralized left, because the centralized left of Stalin and Mao gave way to Gorbachev and Deng, who, you know, compromised the revolution, at least in part. You're right, communism didn't collapse in East Asia, but it went mostly capitalist, with the exception of maybe North Korea, right?

13:39我同意你那些觀點。但學術環境，即使高等教育普及，80、90 年代像潛伏病毒。人體可帶潛伏病毒，壓力一來就爆。很多情況：底層條件加壓力，浮到表面。我完全同意 woke 起源在學界，用 woke 受害者（女性、少數等）取代共產受害者（勞動階級）。And so I'll agree with all of your points up to that point. However, the academic setting was, you know, even with the mainstreaming of higher education and so on. In the '80s and the '90s, it was like a virus that was latent. You know how, like, a human body can harbor a virus that's latent, but then under stress, it, like, pops out, you know?

14:01但為何垂直起飛？David Rozado 的圖顯示父權、白人特權等在 2013 年、Obama 第二任期，在《紐約時報》literally 垂直。編輯決策。為何那時？我說是從潛伏到表現。在 elite 大學被 Foucault、Said 灌輸的人，當新進員工進《紐約時報》等。And, or like, you know, many, many kinds of things are like this where there's a— underlying condition, and then there's, like, a stress of some kind, and then it bursts to the surface. So I'm completely with you that the origins of woke are in academia, and the origins of woke are the replacement of, you know, the victim of communism, which is the working class, with the victim of woke, which is, you know, women and minorities and so on.

14:28他們很快發現，在 campus 學的恫嚇戰術，對準掌權的 1968 世代自由派，更好用。關鍵是世代更替：自由派雇進步派，進步派雇馬克思派，最後雇到 Pol Pot，每一輪招聘把大學往左推，又從 elite 學校招聘 spill 到所有機構。But why did it go vertical? And there's a graph that David Rozado has made, which shows that, you know, patriarchy, white privilege, all that stuff went literally vertical in 2013 exactly, the second Obama term, in The New York Times. There's an editorial decision to have it go vertical then. So why did it happen then? I argue that's when it went from latent to expressed. So that's what I'm saying. I mean, I think what happened was that people who had been indoctrinated with Foucault and Said at elite colleges then pitched up as new hires at institutions like The New York Times.

15:052013 年為何垂直起飛

15:05他們驚恐地發現紅衛兵在樓裡，指控總編微侵略或騷擾。2013、2014 campus 外才開始有這些經驗。還記得：上大學人數大擴張也占一部分。And very quickly they discovered that the tactics of intimidation that they had learned on campus worked even better when you directed them at the lame liberals of the 1968 generation, who were in positions of power. Now, critically, if you understand generational shifts here, whereby liberals will be inclined to hire progressives, and then the progressives will hire the outright Marxists, until finally you hire Pol Pot, a sequence of events in which each hiring phase moves the university further to the left, and this eventually spills over into all institutions because they're all hiring from these elite schools.

15:50愈來愈多年輕人接觸這些觀念。原本大學只服務很小的精英。全球高等教育大擴張，幾乎人人都該有學位的信念，讓一點 Foucault 滲進每顆腦，連體系較低層也是。And then, to their horror, they discover that the Red Guards are in the building, and they're going to accuse the editor-in-chief of microaggressions or harassment. And this is how it all kicked off. And it was around 2013, 2014 that people outside the campus began to have these experiences. One last thing to remember: massive expansion of the numbers of people going through college played a part.

16:15沒錯。我的一種想法是：學界尤其人文，像在監獄裡互捅 verbal 刀。Twitter 興起、140 字，很多人用 Foucault、Said 戰術，一句話：white privilege 等。So more and more, larger and larger shares of young people were exposed to these ideas. Previously, remember, originally universities were for really quite small elites. But this massive expansion of higher education everywhere in the world, the belief that somehow everybody or nearly everybody should have a degree, meant that a little bit of Foucault got into every brain, even at relatively low levels of the system.

16:38Mansplaining 等，根在學術文獻，使用者未必知道。像 Stinger 飛彈發到阿富汗，沒人知道設計者是誰。Absolutely. And actually, you know, one way I think about it is, you know, academia, especially humanities academia. All these guys, it was like they were in jail and, you know, creating verbal shivs to just stab each other. And then with the rise of Twitter and the 140-character kinds of things, lots of people are basically using Foucault's tactics or, you know, Said's tactics, like some of the one-liners: white privilege, you know.

17:08那些詞 lineage 回到學術期刊，若你反駁，有人搬出一整摞文獻。我同意： faculty lounge 起點，再進 Twitter 等環境。Mansplaining and so on. Those all have roots in academic literature that people were using, and they didn't even know that they were using it. It's like Stinger missiles being handed out in Afghanistan or something, and nobody knows who the Stinger missile designer is.

17:23但 timing：為何那時如此 compelling，時勢到了？我認為 blue masses 經濟受壓，需要一種意識形態，讓他們不勞而獲。But those words have that lineage that goes all the way back to those academic journals, and then if you contested them, some people would then say, "Oh, here's all the literature that supports them," right? So I agree with all that, that basically this was a faculty-lounge thing, starting in the faculty lounge, that then got put into the environment of Twitter and so on and so forth.

17:48校園戰術擴散到矽谷

17:482008 後 NGO 大爆發也開始，學界本身 pile 錢、crazy endowment 複利等，但那是 endowment。管理員、NGO 員工，有些是 failsons、靠信托的裙帶，很多是 blue 無產：兼職教授、自由記者等。But just the timing of why it proved so compelling, because, you know, an idea whose time has come, right? Why did it go vertical then? It's because the blue masses, I think, were under economic stress and needed an ideology that could let them get money without working for it.

18:06他們像靠信托的裙帶族。很多 others 是 blue 無產：兼職教授、自由記者那類。我認為 2008 後掙扎更劇。這類事都多因素。但我看到的現象是：那些人電梯往下，科技人電梯往上。Like, the whole NGO explosion also began post-2008, where all of these—so you're right, within academia itself, it had piles of money, it had these crazy endowments that compound and so on and so forth. But that's the endowments. The actual, you know, administrators or the employees of the NGOs, some of them are failsons.

18:27他們当中有些是靠信托基金的裙帶子弟。另有很多是藍營無產階級：兼職教授、自由接案記者那類。我認為 2008 年之後他們過得更吃力。這類現象向來多因素，但我看到的是：當科技人搭電梯往上，那些人卻在往下。They're like, you know, these nepotists with, you know, the trust funds and so on. Many others were sort of the blue proletariat, right? Like the adjunct professor, the, you know, like the freelance journalist, right? Those kinds of people. I think were struggling to a greater extent post-2008. So it's, you know, any kind of thing like this is multifactorial. But the reason I say that is, you know, a phenomenon that I saw was that a lot of those guys were on the elevator down when tech guys were on the elevator up.

19:01這在我們身上養出恨意。地理上也分野：他們常在紐約或波士頓，科技人多在舊金山。科技人很多是移民或亞裔，人口結構也不同。加總起來就是媒體對科技。And that bred a hatred in them for us, you know. And of course, there's also the geographical differences. A lot of those guys are in New York or Boston. A lot of tech guys were in San Francisco. And then, you know, not to put too fine a point, a lot of the tech guys are immigrants or Asian or, you know, like they're different demographically as well.

19:20我還想說：令我驚訝的是，woke 紅衛兵一現身，矽谷就這麼快投降。1990 年代、2000 年代初矽谷文化還相當強的 libertarian，我見過很多。All these things together, that's why you have media versus tech. Go ahead. I can say more. I was going to say that, to me, the surprising thing was how readily Silicon Valley folded when the woke Red Guards turned up. Previously, the culture in Silicon Valley, 1990s, early 2000s, had been robustly libertarian. I'd seen a lot of it.

19:42投降極快，大型科技公司複製 campus 結構。Google 變 Stanford 的鏡像，恫嚇戰術高度有效。And that really folded incredibly quickly, and the big tech companies began to replicate campus structures. Google started to become a kind of mirror image of— of Stanford in the way that it worked, and the way in which these sorts of tactics that are actually highly effective in intimidating people were deployed.

20:05我記得在 Stanford 親身遇到時想：奇怪，這些行為模式像極權：匿名告發信、法外調查委員會、人突然消失。I remember thinking, when I really ran into this at Stanford personally, how strange it was that patterns of behavior that I had associated with totalitarian regimes— for example, anonymous letters of denunciation, investigations and commissions outside the rule of law, sudden disappearances of individuals.

20:28史達林式行為重現校園

20:28我以為只有 Stalin 蘇聯或 Mao 中國。讀研究生時從沒想過，有一天會在自由社會 elite 大學複製。I had thought that only happened in places like Stalin's Soviet Union or Mao's People's Republic of China. It had never occurred to me, when I was studying those systems as a graduate student, that one day these patterns of behavior would replicate themselves at elite universities in apparently free societies.

20:51沒想到直到親眼見到，對某種人，參與告發、公審、消失有多 gratifying。現場仍讓我 cringe，沒預期親身經歷。That I never expected, and it had never occurred to me until I saw it in action, how gratifying it is to a certain kind of person to be involved in the denunciation, show trial, disappearance pattern of behavior. It's shocking to see it in action, and it still makes me cringe because I didn't expect to experience it firsthand.

21:13以為 1989、91 已過去，沒想到在 elite 美國大學 surface。但確實。有趣：像電影壞人死了，最後一幕手又從懸崖伸上來。I thought that had gone away in 1989, '91, and I never expected it to surface at, of all places, elite American universities. But it did. It's interesting. You know, I think of it like a path that, you know, like these movies where the bad guy dies.

21:29這些 mind virus 像病毒，會演化，epitope 不再被認得。免疫系統是好類比：不是逐鹼基對病毒定序，而是用 target sequence 快速判斷好壞。But then in the very last scene, like, the hand comes up over the ledge, you know. So, like, a lot of these things, these mind viruses are like viruses, and they evolve so that their epitopes are no longer recognized, right? You know, like, your immune system—actually, it's a very good analogy, I think, because your immune system isn't, you know, sequencing a virus and looking at every base pair and figuring out, is this good, is this bad?

21:54若像共產、經濟左派，抗體已演化能認得。若像種族馬克思主義，就 oh okay 直接飛過。It's basing its recognition on target sequences that it can use to quickly determine: this is bad, this is good, let this through, let this not. And if that virus can evolve enough to get past this sensor, it can get in, right? So if it looked like communism, if it looked like economic leftism, then enough antibodies, you know, had evolved to recognize that.

22:16還有他們行為方式，你類比蘇聯、毛時代中國。有趣：那些國家叫 purging，取消；那些國家失去生命、自由、財產。美國西方被取消，不會入獄、不會凍結帳戶、不會被搶。But when it looked like racial Marxism, then it was like, oh, okay, it can just fly right by, right? And so I think that's part of it as well. There's something else, which is the, you know, like, the way that these people behaved, you analogize it to the Soviet Union and to Maoist China.

22:34但你失去未來收入，當然痛，失去朋友、職位。不完整 purge：大批很有能力的人被不完整 purge，後來整體捲土重來，像 Deng Xiaoping 被 purge 三次，Mao 沒殺他，兒子被扔出窗外你知道。And it is, it's funny, because cancellation, you know, in those countries they call it purging, right? And it's interesting because in those countries, you'd lose life, liberty, and property, right? Fortunately, in America or the West, when you were canceled, you weren't jailed. You weren't—you didn't have your bank account seized, and, you know, you weren't robbed, right?

22:57取消文化的財務代價

22:57他回來掌管一切。很像 Trump 和被取消的人回來。幸運的是「軟版共產」。 stakes 較低，沒進西伯利亞勞改營。But you did lose your future income. It was certainly painful. You lost future income. You lost friends. People lost positions. But what it did, which is interesting, is— you know, these incomplete purges basically meant a large class of very able men were incompletely purged and then mounted a whole comeback later, sort of like how Deng Xiaoping was purged three times, but Mao didn't kill him, and he even has his son thrown out a window, as you probably know.

23:27財務後果已夠。還有聲譽損害。Adam Smith 兩本書，人人知《國富論》，少人讀《道德情操論》。重點：同輩 esteem 的動機不亞於利潤。But then he came back to run the whole thing. Very similar in some ways to, like, Trump and all the people who were canceled, like, coming back, right? And so it's like communism but for wimps, you know, fortunately, right? Yeah. No, the stakes were definitely lower, and the people canceled didn't end up in labor camps in Siberia, you know, right?

23:48取消文化就是毀聲譽讓人成社會棄民，若最後導致關帳戶，我們就在那條路上。記得：取消、審查、然後 outright 社會信用體系。But the possibility of there being financial consequences was enough, and— the other thing that's important here is reputational damage. I mean, Adam Smith wrote two books. Everybody knows The Wealth of Nations. Few people read The Theory of Moral Sentiments. But one of the key points Smith makes is that we're motivated by the esteem of our peers as much as we are by the profit motive.

24:10在演化，2020、2021 差點 breakthrough。我們退一步談 network state 這個 broader 問題？我們對歷史有兩套 broader 詮釋，超出教育。And that was what cancel culture was really all about: destroying reputations so that people became social outcasts. And if that led ultimately to their bank accounts being closed, we were on the path to that. Remember, we were on a path where cancellation, censorship, and then the outright social credit system.

24:32你的說法是網路創造 network state 可能，與傳統國家 distinct，或只有 vestigial 關係。我不會那樣說。像國家隨工業革命變 industrial state，資訊革命需要再演化。That was evolving, and around 2020, 2021, it came close to breaking through. Can we take a step back and think about this broader problem of network states? Because I think we have two different broader interpretations of history that extend beyond what's happened in education.

24:52這很接近 Philip Bobbitt 25 年前《阿基里斯之盾》，market state 是新現象，你在這點接近他。我提供不同視角：AI、產業政策回歸、原子回歸，需要大量電力與算力。I think, in your account, the internet creates the possibility for a kind of state, a network state, that is really distinct from the traditional state, or has only vestigial relationships to it. I wouldn't say that. I would say that it is the—in the same way the state evolved with the Industrial Revolution to become an industrial state, right, with the Information Revolution, it's going to need to evolve again.

25:23網路國家還是 AI 帝國

25:23我們進入新帝國世界。帝國是史上多數時間 dominant 政治秩序，大多數歷史就是帝國史，一度以為結束，那是 post-colonialism 在學界的事。So this is quite close to the argument Philip Bobbitt made 25 years ago. If you read The Shield of Achilles, Bobbitt makes this argument about market states as a new phenomenon, and I think you're quite close to his thinking in this respect. I want to offer a different perspective, which is more, I think, to do with artificial intelligence and the return of the return of industrial policy and the return of atoms, the need for vast quantities of electricity and computational power.

25:56人們沒意識到帝國回來多少。美國與中國是 AI 帝國，其他人遠遠跟不上。21 世紀會更像高度冷戰，兩個 rival superpower 在前沿科技 dominant。I think we are entering a world of new empires. Empire is the dominant political order throughout most of history. In fact, most of history is just the history of empires, and I think we've been through a phase in which it seemed to be over. This was what post-colonialism was all about in the academy.

26:17會 feel 很不同、surprising。1945 後以為 nation-state dominant、人人該有一個， proliferation 到近 200 個，有些小得荒謬。nation-state proliferation 時代結束，相當多 nation-state 實質走向 insolvency，兩個 AI 帝國 dominant 程度，我認為，超過美蘇。What I don't think people realize is how much empire is back. The United States and China are the AI empires, and nobody else is even close. And I think this is going to make the 21st century feel much more like the high Cold War, with two rival superpowers in positions of real dominance in the frontier technologies.

26:40那是我的 alternative framework。好，我同意部分、不同意部分。許多 nation-state 會因主權債務危機 insolvent，很多土地待售。我不同意 AI 帝國 framing，理由如下。第一，我不認為是「美國」，是 disunited tribes：Bluesky、Threads、TikTok 對 X、Truth Social、Gab。This is going to, I think, feel very different and surprising. Most people in the post-1945 era assumed that the nation-state was the dominant political form and everybody should have one, until finally you end up with a huge proliferation. You get up towards 200 nation-states, some preposterously small. But I think this age of the proliferation of the nation-state is over, and a substantial number of nation-states are in effect heading for insolvency, leaving these two AI empires in positions of dominance even greater, I would argue, than the United States and the Soviet Union.

27:19已經有數位分裂、數位分離、碎片化。我認為這 profoundly 過時，十歲了。今日美國意識形態不再是光譜兩極，是 horseshoe，極左極右在幾乎一切上同意，從經濟政策到 Israel 角色。好我會談到。我其實不認為美國還那麼 polarized，massive convergence。blue 和 red 我同意他們互恨。三階段。So that's my alternative framework. All right, so let me say why I agree with some of it and disagree with other pieces. So I do agree with you that many nation-states are going to go insolvent due to the sovereign debt crisis. There's going to be a lot of land for sale. But I disagree on the AI empire framing for the following reasons. First is I don't think it's the United States. I really think it's the disunited tribes, unfortunately. Basically, Bluesky, Threads, TikTok versus X, Truth Social, Gab.

27:45數位分裂與 horseshoe

27:45我 tweet 過：2010 年代 blue 加 tech 對 red；2020 年代 red 加 tech 對 blue；現在，Bernie-Bannon 之前我就 tweet，blue 加 red 對 tech。那是 Molotov-Ribbentrop。There's already been a digital secession, a digital separation, a fragmentation. I think this is profoundly out of date. This is 10 years old. The reality of American ideology today is no longer polarization along a spectrum. It is a horseshoe in which the far left and the far right now agree on practically everything, from economic policy to the role of Israel. Okay, so I'll get to that. So I actually don't think the United States is any longer all that polarized. There's massive convergence. So the blue and the red, I agree that they hate. So there's three phases.

28:20無政府共產與無政府法西斯對中心。不是 Bannon 和 Bernie 真同意，是他們恨同一批人，科技人。反科技是我眼中本世紀的反資本主義。所以我不認為美國是「AI 帝國」。至少三群：民主黨、共和黨、科技人；科技人人口結構不同、可見、顛覆左右兩邊，highly vulnerable。I actually tweeted about this, which is 2010s: blue and tech against red; 2020s: red and tech against blue; and now, and I tweeted this before the Bernie-Bannon thing. I saw this coming years ago. Now it's blue and red against tech. Now what that is, is it's Molotov-Ribbentrop.

28:38Sam Altman 家 Molotov 雞尾酒，Elon 車和經銷商被縱火，還有很多不能公開講的。今天在美國當科技人，尤其移民科技人，在我看像 1930 年代東歐的猶太資本家。It's anarcho-communist and anarcho-fascist versus the center. And it is not that Bannon and Bernie actually agree. It's just that they hate the same people, who are the tech guys, right? And anti-tech is the anti-capitalism of this century, in my view. And so that's why I don't think the U.S. is a, quote, AI empire. I think there's at least three groups, which are Democrats, Republicans, and technologists; and technologists, being demographically different, being visible, being people who've disrupted both left and right, are highly vulnerable.

29:11你在產業與族群變化的最前線，因此成為標靶。你若把 AI 實驗室的人口結構貼上社群，MAGA 會火大，woke 也會火大。The Molotov cocktails at Sam Altman's house, the— The, you know, Elon's cars are getting set on fire. His dealerships are getting set on fire. This is something where—and there's so many more things like this that aren't public that we can't talk about. But to be a technologist, like, especially an immigrant technologist in America today, is like being, you know, like a Jewish capitalist in Eastern Europe, like, in my view, in the 1930s.

29:35你在產業與族群變化的 leading edge，所以是 target。你若 tweet AI lab 人口結構，MAGA 會怒，woke 也會怒。It's something where you're on the leading edge of the industrial and ethnic changes that are happening, and so you're a target. And so, you know, if you look at the demographics of these AI labs, right, and you tweet them, both MAGAs are going to be mad, but wokes will also be mad.

29:51Woke 會說：天啊白人、全是男人。MAGA 會說：天啊不是美國人、全是外国人。對。但 Balaji，美國一直如此。鍍金年代對當時億萬富翁、robber baron 也這樣說。The wokes will say, "Oh, my God, there's so many white people, they're all men," and so on. And the MAGAs will say, "Oh, my God, they're not American, they're all foreigners," right? Yeah. But, Balaji, this is how the United States has always worked. I mean, exactly the same things were said in the Gilded Age about the billionaires of the time, the robber barons.

30:13鍍金年代的重演

30:1319 世紀末民粹主義含反猶，因為很容易把 Wall Street 等同猶太人，兩岸大西洋金融業 overrepresented。我認為你在政治、也許社群媒體上 over-index。美國會有暗殺與未遂。Anti-Semitism was a part of populism in the late 19th century because it was so easy to identify Wall Street with Jews because they were overrepresented in the financial sector on both sides of the Atlantic. I think you're over-indexing to politics here and perhaps also to social media. The thing about the United States is that there will be assassinations and assassination attempts.

30:39會有無政府主義者、campus 極左，但 business of America is business，1890、1900 年代也沒 fundamentally derail 商業模式。我們這時代， regulate AI、停 data center 等 noise，大多 noise，不會 meaningful 停建設，只有這種 capex 常伴的金融危機會停。There will be anarchists. There will be far-leftists on campus, but the business of America is business, and just as in the 1890s and 1900s, it didn't fundamentally derail the business model. So in our time, I think all of this noise— for example, "we need to regulate AI, we need to stop the data centers"—it's mostly noise. I don't think it's actually going to stop the build-out in any meaningful way. The build-out will only be stopped by the financial crisis that nearly always happens when you have this kind of capex.

31:13我不認為美國處於你以為那麼 profound 的 crisis，或新種 crisis，是見過的 crisis。創立者憲法 brilliant 之處是很難 entirely 奪權。But I don't think the United States is in such a profound crisis as you think, or it's not in a new kind of crisis. It's in the kind of crisis that we've seen before. What's brilliant about the way the founders designed the Constitution is that it's really, really hard to take it over entirely.

31:30聯邦制讓這很難。Trump obviously 想當皇帝，但 clearly failed，soon gone，第二任期已 lame duck。我認為你 exaggerate 政治 fundamentally 改變，republic business as usual。問題在我腦中是：其他人怎麼辦？middle powers 若以為自己有 power，是在 deluding。The federal system makes that very difficult. Trump obviously wanted to be an emperor, but he's clearly failed to become an emperor and will soon be gone. He's already in the lame-duck phase of his second term. I think you're exaggerating how much American politics has fundamentally changed. I think it's business as usual in the republic. The issue in my mind is, what does everybody else do? Okay, well, the middle powers, it seems to me, are deluding themselves if they think they have power at all.

31:58讓我 counterargument，然後最後給你。我愛 Calvin Coolidge「business of America is business」，但很多事像 1800、1900 年代末 Henry Clay Frick 被射等，propaganda of the deed。Let me make one counterargument, and then I'll give you the last word. My counterargument is, I love the Calvin Coolidge quote, "The business of America is business," but I think that lots of things are happening similar to those incidents in the late 1800s, early 1900s, like the shooting of Henry Clay Frick and so on, you know, propaganda of the deed.

32:17但在我看發生在 descent phase 而非 ascent：ascent 是成 superpower，這是 losing power。兩個 data point：我 wish 有證據美國 declining。我知道。我給……它 doing opposite，G7 GDP 占比 25 年來上升。But they're happening, in my view, in the descent phase rather than the ascent phase, right? That ascent phase was becoming a superpower. This is losing power. But let me give two quick data points. I mean, I wish I could see evidence that the U.S. is declining. I know. I'll give— It's doing exactly the opposite. Its share of G7 GDP has gone up in the last 25 years.

32:37G7 與全球購買力

32:37對，G7，不是全球 PPP，因為中國。你要問：真能在一黨共產下 run network state？兩個帝國哪個更 vulnerable？我認為是中國體系。也許。他們還有 terrible Stalinist OS。也許，但我再兩三點，球給你，最後給你。Larry Page、Sergey Brin、Zuckerberg、Elon、Thiel 都離開加州，Bezos 離開華盛頓州，Ken Griffin 離開芝加哥。Yes, of G7, but not of global PPP, because of China. And the question you ask yourself is, can you really run a network state with a one-party Communist Party regime? Which is the more vulnerable of these two empires? And I would argue it's the Chinese system that's the more vulnerable. Perhaps. They still have this terrible Stalinist operating system. Perhaps, but let me make—I'll make two, three points. I'll give you the ball. You get the last word. So Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Zuckerberg, Elon, Thiel, all having to leave California, Bezos having to leave Washington State, Ken Griffin having to leave Chicago.

33:12但他們去 Florida，不是離開美國，去 red state。下一點：創紀錄美國人離開美國，美國 diaspora 現在就在這，多是 wealthy。前面 talk 可能見過 investment migration，數字 up and to the right。But they go to Florida. I mean, it's not like they're leaving the United States. They go to a red state. But then that's my next point. Record numbers of Americans are leaving the United States. The American diaspora is now here, and these are wealthy people. In some of the earlier talks you may have seen investment migration, all these things, these numbers are up and to the right.

33:34過去 15 年加密貨幣顯示：人們極想離開 USD，Bitcoin 從 0.01 美元到近 10 萬，某時更高，相當於 1000 萬倍的貶值感。第二護照蓬勃，許多偉大文明也經過 diaspora 的艱難時期。And over the last 15 years with cryptocurrency, it showed. People had a huge hunger for getting out of USD. It went from $0.01 per Bitcoin to almost $100,000 per Bitcoin, or more than that at one recent point. That's a 10 million X, you know, devaluation. Second passports are booming, and many other great civilizations have also gone through tough times and seen a diaspora.

33:56這是我的 view。最後：中國有 Great Firewall，與網路隔離，有 vulnerability，某些軸 fragile，但 40 年 execute 很好。我 love 西方價值，下一代是 Britain 到 America 到 internet，Christendom 到 West 到 internet，像 3.0。目標 many ways 共享，implementation 不同。最後給你。So that's my view. Last I'll just say, China has its Great Firewall. It's protected from the internet. It has vulnerabilities. It's fragile in some axes, but it's been executing very well over the last 40 years. And so my view is, I love Western values. I think the next generation is from, you know, Britain to America to the internet, from Christendom to the West to the internet.

34:20一如既往 fascinating，我們 slightly overstayed，我 brief。我們在新加坡，probable 不少觀眾像你用腳投票，但相對全球人口仍 trivial。It's like version 3.0. So I share the goals in many ways. I differ on implementation. But let me give you last word. Well, as always, it's been a fascinating conversation. We slightly overstayed our welcome on this stage. I'll keep it very brief. As we're in Singapore, the probability is that quite a substantial number of people in the audience, like you, have voted with their feet.

34:46Nation-state 大挑戰是 fiscal：老化與生育崩潰。大到多數人無法想像中國人口本世紀末會減半以上、可能遠超。我感興趣的是 net 人往哪去。But it's still really quite a trivial number if you look at the global population trends. I mean, the big challenge facing the nation-state is a fiscal challenge, which has to do with aging and fertility collapse. And this is such a big phenomenon that most people can't get their heads around the thought that the population of China is going to more than halve, probably quite a bit more than halve, between now and the end of the century. So the interesting thing to me is where on net are people going?

35:20人才仍湧入美國

35:20青年精力往哪？創業 talent 往哪？仍 overwhelmingly 美國，不是中國。literally 沒有可測 talent inflow 到中國。一個帝國有優勢：可汲取全球創業野心，創業的人到哪都想進美國。Where is youthful energy going? And particularly, where is entrepreneurial talent going? And it is overwhelmingly still to the United States. It is not to China. There is literally no measurable inflow of talent to China. And this means that one empire has the advantage. It can draw on the entrepreneurial ambitions of people all over the world, because all the entrepreneurial people, wherever you go, want to get to the United States.

35:47只要仍是（Trumpism 十年仍是），我認為美國政治可 performative。Trump 這類人說關稅、限移民、寬鬆貨幣，都是 19 世紀末 playbook。但 reality 是：儘管關稅、限移民、Trumpism，business of America is business，talent inflow 是 AI 革命一部分，shows no signAs long as that's still the case, and it is the case despite now a decade of Trumpism, as long as that's still the case, I think American politics can be performative. You're going to have performative figures like Trump saying, "I'm going to do tariffs. I'm going to do immigration restriction." I'm going to do easy money, all of which is the late-19th-century political playbook. But in reality, what's going on, despite the tariffs, despite the immigration restriction, despite Trumpism, is the business of America is business, and the inflow of talent, which, of course, is part of what has made the AI revolution happen, that shows no sign

36:23of stopping。每走一個 Balaji，可能來三個。所以我 fundamentally bullish 美國作為 AI empire。Internet 在美國發明，美國與 internet entirely interdependent，不是 rivals 或 alternatives，同一事物的兩面。of stopping. So for every one Balaji who leaves, there's probably like three who arrive. And that's why I remain fundamentally bullish about where the United States goes as an AI empire. I mean, the internet was invented in the United States. The United States and the internet are entirely interdependent on one another. They're not rivals or alternatives. They're basically two facets of the same thing. That's how I think about it.

36:53美國就是 network state，network states 複數，50 個。好，最後給你。謝謝先生。謝謝。多聊。好，好。The United States is the network state. It's the network states, plural, 50 of them. Okay, you have the last word. Thank you, sir. Thank you. Let's talk more. Great, great.