From Machine Tools to Machine Learning: The New American Century

Philippe Laffont and the All-In besties see what the doomscrollers miss: America owns artificial intelligence

Is American exceptionalism in decline—or are we looking in the wrong direction?

Yes, we ceded America’s machine tooling advantage somewhere around the Kennedy administration. Anyone in the workforce under 25 runs the risk of slipping into a TikTok fugue state at their desk. Billionaire investor Ray Dalio has taken 1,000 pages to diagnose the U.S. with late-stage decadence. And China? It’s building megacities, acquiring raw materials, and funding science at scale. The decline narrative writes itself.

But about a half hour into a recent All-In Podcast, Coatue's Philippe Laffont delivered a sharp reframe: we're not witnessing an end to American exceptionalism—rather, a new beginning is just coming into focus. His thesis cuts through the nostalgia: America dominates artificial intelligence. The full stack. OpenAI to Anthropic, NVIDIA to AMD, cloud infrastructure to foundational models—from Silicon Valley to Boston, America has built a flywheel of tech talent, risk capital, and institutional agility that no other power center—not China, not the EU, not India—can match.

America didn't ‘lose’ machine tooling. We transcended it.

The world’s industrial base is evolving. Yes, China has physical scale and a command economy that can build bridges, cities, and chip fabs on demand. But much of it is about replicating, not inventing. Crazy Rich Asians-style capitalism—garden parties, jazz bands, Roaring 20s glamour—feels more like an homage to America’s Gilded Age than a leap into the unknown.

Meanwhile, America writes the future's operating system. AI isn't another app—it's the new infrastructure. And we're not just competitive; we're dominant. The top models, chips, cloud platforms, and VC-backed experiments are American. Microsoft alone processed 50 trillion AI tokens in March 2025, a surge that signals both usage and the scale of American AI ambition.

Reality intrudes, naturally. AI's energy appetite strains our aging power grid. Data centers already consume 4% of national electricity, heading toward 12% by 2030. A third of our electricians are approaching retirement. China plays the long game, investing in open-source AI, cultivating its digital sphere, and exporting affordable solutions to emerging markets while we debate guardrails.

At home, policy wonks are still wrestling with AI ethics, privacy, and questions of existential risk. But for all our hand-wringing, America remains the world's premier laboratory for what's possible. Our private sector moves quickly, our universities magnetize global talent, and our messy, maddening system still rewards invention over imitation, risk over repetition. Of course, sustaining this edge isn’t automatic: smart public policy is essential. For example, a Trump White House executive order aims to clear away regulatory barriers and solidify U.S. leadership in AI by promoting innovation and national security.

Through the lens of innovation velocity, America isn't declining—it's accelerating. Exceptionalism was never our birthright. It's our daily choice. And so far, we're still choosing wisely.

American exceptionalism isn't dead. It just looks different now. And if history teaches anything, that's precisely how it should be.