In this episode of The B. Newsletter audio edition, we examine how artificial intelligence is reshaping global power, business strategy, and economic incentives.

The discussion explores why the AI race is no longer about building the best large language models, but about scale, deployment, and infrastructure. We compare U.S. hyperscalers’ multi-hundred-billion-dollar AI investments with China’s efficiency-driven approach, including the market impact of DeepSeek’s R1 model.

The episode also looks at how AI is becoming political and economic infrastructure, the limits of brute-force scaling, and what OpenAI’s move toward advertising signals about monetization, trust, and the future of AI platforms.

For business leaders, investors, and technology executives, the episode ends with a critical question: in an AI-driven economy, are you shaping the system — or being shaped by it?

Some things read better than they sound—charts and data included in the written edition.