“Not until I went into the churches of America and heard her pulpits flame with righteousness did I understand the secret of her genius and power. America is great because America is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.”
-Alexis de Touqeville
October 28, 2025 — George Washington’s strategic vision for America was that it should leverage its relative isolation and newness to disentangle itself from the conflicts and hatreds of the old world, to avoid the wars and conflicts that periodically drained and debilitated it.
- Instead, Washington urged, the U.S. should focus on trade with everyone and prosperity for all. Until the end of the Cold War, the U.S. followed that advice.
- Since then, the U.S. has lost its way, a Cold War mindset run amok, being drawn into petty foreign conflicts driven by the ancient hatreds of the old world. Meanwhile, it has funded a massive state complex that becomes increasingly inefficient with every passing year.
- It’s time to change that. We need to revert to the mindset that allowed us to prosper during most of our history. Let’s dig in.
America’s Role
America’s role in the world isn’t that of the world’s policeman (a temporary post-World War II role foisted upon the U.S. due to the Cold War) or as the destination of immigrants (for most of the 20th century, when we saw the most significant increases in individual incomes and quality of life, the U.S. didn’t accept many immigrants). Instead, the role the U.S. has played throughout its existence is as the world’s leader in the production, adoption, and socioeconomic integration of new technologies. We figured out how to do it successfully first, and the world followed. We did it with;
- Trains.
- Electrification.
- Telephones.
- Cars.
- Planes.
- Appliances.
- Space.
- Computers/Internet.
It didn’t matter which country discovered the technology. Americans built more of it, deployed it faster, and adopted it quicker than the rest of the world, and prosperity followed. In short, this ability to transform new technologies into something universally beneficial ahead of everyone else is America’s true superpower.
A New Opportunity: Autonomy
A new opportunity for the U.S. to lead the world in the production, deployment, and adoption of a transformative technology is now available. If you haven’t noticed, AI-fueled autonomous vehicles have arrived. Vehicles that can;
- Drive/fly/sail themselves.
- Navigate themselves to destinations.
- Operate safely in complex environments.
Vehicles in all operational domains.
- Ground (cars, trucks, etc.)
- Sea (surface, subsurface)
- Air (fixed and rotary wing drones)
- Space (launch, orbital transfer, etc.)
This rollout of autonomous vehicles isn’t an option. It’s inevitable, just as it was with trains in the 1800s, automobiles in the early 1900s, and planes in the 1930s. The only question is whether the U.S. will lead or follow.
The Benefits of Being First
There are benefits to being first. The country that successfully rolls out autonomy first will take a commanding lead in;
- In the production of autonomous vehicles, from the AIs that run them to the equipment itself. For example, embracing autonomy would enable the U.S. to revolutionize the shipbuilding industry to such an extent that it could increase America’s 1% market share to 50% or more within a decade or two.
- The development of services made possible by autonomy, from space launch to drone air-freight/delivery/
transportation to robotaxis/freight/delivery. This would create global networks that quickly become unassailable. - Reaping the widespread benefits of deployment and adoption. In short, many of the same types of benefits we saw from being first in everything from electricity to cars to planes to computers. For example;
- Shrinking costs (for example, SpaceX utilized autonomy to reduce the cost of space launch to nearly 1-2% of what it was a little over a decade ago; we’ll likely see something similar in robotaxis/freight trucking/shipping),
- less time (point to point, rate of onset, frequency),
- and business process compression (the number of steps it takes to do anything, from a business process to a simple task, drops)
Autonomous America
What would an America that embraced autonomy look like in 2050 (seems far away, but it isn’t)? Here are some ideas;
- Traveling would be on demand (via an app) and so inexpensive that it wouldn’t make sense to own a car (freeing up garage space if you opt for that). Flying would be far less expensive, and short trips would be available on demand from local air hubs (yes, this would pave the way for flying ‘cars’). Caravanning across the country in autonomous mobile homes, moving from destination to destination overnight while the passengers slept, would become a retirement goal for many.
- Freight and delivery. Autonomous shipping would open up small ports and rivers for freight, radically reducing costs by bypassing choke points. Freight by air and land would be continuous, inexpensive, and geographically dispersed as ever smaller locations open for business. Last-mile delivery would also be automated, working bidirectionally like an autonomous, on-demand postal service, but at far lower cost. New home/small businesses would emerge to take advantage of the ability to inexpensively deliver food, crafts, and products made at home, or just vegetables just picked from the vine, to customers on demand.
- New U.S. megacorporations, employing millions of Americans, would emerge to build these vehicles or run the globe-spanning services they make possible. Autonomous vehicles (air, space, land, and sea) would soon blanket the globe, and these early movers would quickly find themselves unassailable due to barriers to entry. This advantage would accelerate as autonomous vehicles were adapted to take on specialized tasks from farming to construction to firefighting. For those seeking greater resilience and independence, autonomy would enable you to farm enough food to sustain yourself without dedicating all your time to it.
What This Means
Of course, it’s possible to get this wrong. Here’s how;
- We delay. We protect existing jobs by maintaining regulatory barriers that block autonomy. We become timid, using fears of accidents and other safety concerns to prevent the innovation and experimentation needed to develop a level of autonomy that is far safer than what we have today for the same tasks. In short, we don’t act like Americans, and instead discard the pragmatism, risk-taking, and willingness to innovate that delivered success in the past.
- We permit abuse. As autonomy matures and the businesses providing it grow large, there will be a tendency for large firms to abuse Americans by charging monopoly rents or adopting mercantilist policies that keep domestic prices high to fuel global expansion. To avoid this, we should ensure robust competition for services in every market segment and ensure that prices for domestic autonomy serve as the floor for global pricing. One helpful way to increase participation and generate buy-in for this transformation would be to allow individuals to purchase autonomous vehicles that they can lease to big service providers, yielding long-term income potential.
- We don’t apply lessons learned from the Internet to autonomy. Open networks built on minimal common standards for routing, package size/weight/labelling, and deconfliction— in the air, on land, across the sea, and in space—would accelerate the global spread of autonomy and spur competition. It would even make it possible for small providers or individuals capable of meeting the interconnection requirements to provide autonomous services across this network.
Let’s remember who we are and take a risk to remake the world (again).
John Robb
Global Guerrillas & Grey Swan Investment Fraternity
P.S. from Addison: Ahead of this week’s Grey Swan Live! with John Robb, we’ll review some of his recent writings, such as this piece today on how America’s vision can endure in the 21st century. We’ll take a look at events in the Middle East and the latest developments in warfare this week, too.
John is a regular contributor to Grey Swan Investment Fraternity and the author of Brace New War. If you’re a paid-up reader, you can review his analysis of Antifa, Terrorism and Political Warfare in the October issue of the Grey Swan Bulletin.
Mr. Robb’s our go-to expert for exploring the geopolitics of the Trump administration’s tariff strategy, understanding Gaza, the global intifada and the ongoing standoff in Ukraine. We also look to Robb, in his work as a consultant to the military’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, to keep abreast of innovations at the forefront of the rapidly developing technical future of warfare.
With the markets rallying on positive news of a U.S.-China trade deal today, John can point us to the next global hotspots – and some of the more attractive investment opportunities that may be off the radar with traders happily blowing the AI bubble.
If you’d like, you can drop your most pressing questions right here: Feedback@GreySwanFraternity.
