Jul 15, 2026 · 59 min · 13 segments
The era of unquestioned American primacy may be ending. So what should U.S. foreign policy look like in a world where power is increasingly shared among rival states, regional powers, and allies?In…
Emma AshfordGuest
Reid SmithHost
Sasha SternHost
I think this concept of us moving from unipolar to multipolar made more sense before the Ukraine war and before AI.
And now it's like, all right, well, the Russian military strength isn't what we thought it was.
And it seems increasingly to me that We're either back to unipolar by a tech advantage or in a bipolar world where it's just America and China and no one else is equal.
There is, again, an active debate on that question, right? Is it bipolarity? Is it multipolarity? And I don't think there's actually that many people anymore arguing that the U.S.
And I think the reason for that is, you know, you're citing sort of the growth of AI and economic successes in the last few years.
China's economy has grown massively in that time, too, and they've experienced growth in AI.
And most analyses of power and of who is sort of most influential in the international system tends to rely on older metrics to do so.
They look at GDP, they look at production of natural resources, they look at your military strength and that kind of thing.
So at least by those metrics, I would say very clearly not in unipolarity anymore.
Suppose for argument's sake, America were to gain a substantive advantage in access to space or in quantum or in AI software.
It's certainly possible, right? There are and there have always been in history cases of technological change that drove great powers to rise.
Let me pick the steam engine, right? And the rise of British power globally as one example, right? But right now, I mean, again, those are very hypothetical.
If those were to happen, if, for example, as you say, the US were to engage in a significant program of building out space infrastructure and exploration, right, that could be something that would boost the US back up to the top of the rankings.
But today... where we are, I do not see that on the immediate near-term horizon.
What I see instead is a U.S. that has growing government debt, political polarization, where our economy is doing pretty well, but also has some significant issues.
And I see us struggling to sustain the commitments that we've made in those circumstances.
If you were to say computing power is a good metric for power, I think there's a possibility where America does extend computing power, call it 10x the globe.
In that world, I do wonder, do we actually shift back to a unipolar space where if intelligence is the thing that matters—
I mean, at the risk of sounding a little philosophical here, right? How do we actually measure power is a question that really matters here.
I think this concept of us moving from unipolar to multipolar made more sense before the Ukraine war and before AI.
And now it's like, all right, well, the Russian military strength isn't what we thought it was.
And it seems increasingly to me that We're either back to unipolar by a tech advantage or in a bipolar world where it's just America and China and no one else is equal.
There is, again, an active debate on that question, right? Is it bipolarity? Is it multipolarity? And I don't think there's actually that many people anymore arguing that the U.S.
And I think the reason for that is, you know, you're citing sort of the growth of AI and economic successes in the last few years.
China's economy has grown massively in that time, too, and they've experienced growth in AI.
And most analyses of power and of who is sort of most influential in the international system tends to rely on older metrics to do so.
They look at GDP, they look at production of natural resources, they look at your military strength and that kind of thing.
So at least by those metrics, I would say very clearly not in unipolarity anymore.
Suppose for argument's sake, America were to gain a substantive advantage in access to space or in quantum or in AI software.
It's certainly possible, right? There are and there have always been in history cases of technological change that drove great powers to rise.
Let me pick the steam engine, right? And the rise of British power globally as one example, right? But right now, I mean, again, those are very hypothetical.
If those were to happen, if, for example, as you say, the US were to engage in a significant program of building out space infrastructure and exploration, right, that could be something that would boost the US back up to the top of the rankings.
But today... where we are, I do not see that on the immediate near-term horizon.
What I see instead is a U.S. that has growing government debt, political polarization, where our economy is doing pretty well, but also has some significant issues.
And I see us struggling to sustain the commitments that we've made in those circumstances.
If you were to say computing power is a good metric for power, I think there's a possibility where America does extend computing power, call it 10x the globe.
In that world, I do wonder, do we actually shift back to a unipolar space where if intelligence is the thing that matters—
I mean, at the risk of sounding a little philosophical here, right? How do we actually measure power is a question that really matters here.
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