Here begins the Great Game Download this PDF here. U.S. President Donald Trump’s second term is not just another burst of tariff theatre; it is

“There’s only two cultures that are going to win in the next year. It’s going to be us or China.” The subtext of Palantir CEO Alex Karp’s widely cited speech from late 2025 sounds like tech‑bro theatre until you reflect on it. In artificial intelligence, there is no bronze medal. There will be a hegemon and a runner‑up. Everyone else will be a client. Markets are not pricing that reality. Investors still treat the AI build-out as marginal cloud spend or another overhyped software cycle. They debate whether Big Tech is “exhausting its available capital” or whether capex “must mean revert,” as if infrastructure were optional and competition courteous. They are using valuation models from the wrong century for the wrong game. AI is not an app store. It is a weapon system—and the operating system of the next industrial era. The capital going into it is not a bubble. It is rearmament.