Commenteries on Peter Thiel’s “The Straussian Moment”

If you are inclined towards Philosophical topics of discussion I highly recommend you watch Peter Thiel’s conversation with Peter Robinson:

In the second half of the conversation, Thiel touches on the subject of innovation and on the US vs China conflict. He is famous for claiming that the world at large is lagging in innovation in important life-changing areas. Summed up by:

We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters.
Peter Thiel

Furthermore, he claims that even if the US were to keep the leading position in valuable research and innovation this would not be enough as China would be first in everything else and would have effectively outsourced the most expensive part of an economic system (innovation) out to the US and would simply focus on scaling and adopting said evolutions in technology.

While watching this talk (more than a couple of times), I have moved from misunderstanding to agreeing, and now to disagreeing with some major points Peter makes regarding the US and China conflict.

Firstly, on the topic of (technological) innovation (and export), I believe that the blockchain industry structure is the trailblazer which other technologies are soon to follow. Specifically, the (blockchain) industry's structure does not have a singular or bi-center hub(s) that dominate the evolution and direction of the industry. Instead, it is decentralized. It was founded in the US and arguably even in California, however, shortly thereafter blockchain technology and cryptography have spurred multiple physical centers and more importantly digital hubs which all co-evolve the market forward.

Secondly, it seems like the US is the strongest leader in culture and branding/hype generation compared to other (western?) countries and communities. If cultural evolution is a progression from biological evolution, then cultural evolution cannot be forgotten when discussing the US and China conflict. To my knowledge, not many people are willingly and energetically following the Chinese culture. So, over the next 50 years, it will be important to keep an eye on who the net exporter of culture is.

Lastly, Thiel makes an interesting remark about countries either rising or falling. It seems like he means this economically but I would love to see if one can make this question for a moral system as well. i.e. can one quantify if a system (/country) is morally rising or falling?