Not Even Your Life Is Wanted Anymore

https://www.zaobao.com.sg/realtime/china/story20251111-7801146

The news says robots are about to be deployed at scale. The article puts it decently: this is ‘high-quality development,’ this is ‘intelligent upgrading.’ But I keep feeling there is something cold in those words. Like a celebration for a funeral nobody was invited to.

There was a time when, however miserable things got, those at the bottom still had one presentable skill — trading their lives for money. Down the mines, hauling rebar, into the chemical plants. The pay was low, but as long as you were willing to grind, you could always live like someone who was ‘useful.’ Their lives were their last bargaining chip. Now even that chip is being taken over by machines.

To My Fellow Shareholders:

I will no longer be writing Berkshire’s annual report or talking endlessly at the annual meeting. As the British would say, I’m “going quiet.”

Sort of.

Greg Abel will become the boss at yearend. He is a great manager, a tireless worker and an honest communicator. Wish him an extended tenure.

I will continue talking to you and my children about Berkshire via my annual Thanksgiving message. Berkshire’s individual shareholders are a very special group who are unusually generous in sharing their gains with others less fortunate. I enjoy the chance to keep in touch with you. Indulge me this year as I first reminisce a bit. After that, I will discuss the plans for distribution of my Berkshire shares. Finally, I will offer a few business and personal observations.

After reading the recent magazines and reports, my honest advice is this: while these next couple of years are still livable, seize the day and go enjoy yourself.

Two assumptions:

1. Suppose AI really does keep breaking through and takes over most people’s jobs. Society will inevitably enter a turbulent period of painful adjustment, and nobody knows what will happen.

2. Suppose AI fails to break through and, in the end, cannot create that much value. Given the enormous leverage the whole world has piled onto AI today, the fallout when the bubble bursts would be no smaller than the 2008 subprime mortgage crisis. Nobody knows what will happen.

The core theme of this issue of The Economist is an interesting one — “Rebalancing the World” — but after finishing the whole magazine, the picture that popped into my head was something else entirely: a mahjong table with four players. One has just won a big hand, one is still bitterly waiting to draw the winning tile, one is counting tiles, and one is getting ready to flip the table and walk away.

The President’s Contradictory Posture

In public, President Trump has spent weeks deriding Zohran Mamdani as an extremist, a communist, and a threat to New York City. He has also insisted that he is “much better looking” than the 34-year-old Mamdani.

But in private, according to two people who disclosed the president’s remarks on condition of anonymity, Trump has described the New York City mayor-elect as a talented politician — sharp-minded and quick with an argument.

The Rare-Earth War

—— China’s strategic confidence and resource sovereignty amid the reshaping of global geopolitics

Preface

I studied geology at China University of Geosciences. As an undergraduate, as part of an academic activity organized by the university, I wrote a short paper titled “The Rare-Earth War.” Back then, the “war” was mostly a metaphor in the academic sense, an exploration of the relationship between resource competition and technological rivalry. Many years on, the world has shifted beyond recognition, and the scenarios once argued on paper are now playing out in reality. Taking up the pen again to rewrite “The Rare-Earth War” fills me with emotion.