April 22, 2026

We Already Lost the Power Race to China. Now What?

1 hour 7 minutes

"There will be a lot fewer people employed doing existing work in not just insurance, but in all business." Phillip reports from the press pool at Semafor World Economy 2026, where 500 CEOs, a quarter of the US Senate, and 20 G20 finance ministers spent two days in Washington DC sketching out the next decade. Inside: why the AI race is really the electricity race (and why we may have already lost it to China), the $10 trillion and 250 gigawatts Meta says AGI will cost, Senator Mark Kelly on the new commercial space economy, Levi's 50% DTC milestone, Ralph Lauren's experience-economy flex, and why Balzac saw the "exterminator economy" coming 200 years ago. Plus: white smoke from Apple Park.

Key Takeaways:

Space is getting a concentric-circle economy. NASA hands low-Earth orbit to private industry; the moon is next; Mars is the horizon. Sen. Mark Kelly laid out the vision at Semafor.

AGI has a price tag, and it's $10T. Meta's Dina Powell McCormick framed the path forward: trillions in capital, 250GW of power, and geopolitical fallout to match.

The AI race is actually the electricity race — and the US lost it five years ago. Chips and lithography aren't the bottleneck. Power is, and China builds more in a year than the US builds in a decade.

NIMBY has evolved into BANANA. Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anyone is the new posture from Virginia to Maine, and the quiet threat to American AI competitiveness.

The heritage brand isn't dead; it just needs a thesis. Levi's built a three-layer AI framework — process, product, people — and is posting 16 consecutive quarters of DTC growth to prove the strategy works.

Everyone's becoming an exterminator. The age of sovereignty is producing a wave of DIY micro-entrepreneurs using ChatGPT as their back office. Every job AI takes, it seems to hand back, just in a flat-brimmed hat.

The American consumer is less bearish than the algorithm suggests. Ralph Lauren, Kickstarter, and Chime all reported data at odds with recession narratives. Spending is healthy, savings are up, and creators are launching.

In-Show Mentions:

The Commerce Department is a hedge fund now

Dispatch from Semafor: Pritzker on what beats fear

[POLICY BRIEF] The Halo Effect of the New Economy

Future Commerce Podcast: Marcus Collins

Associated Links:

Check out Future Commerce on YouTube

Check out Future Commerce Plus for exclusive content and save on merch and print

Subscribe to Insiders and The Senses to read more about what we are witnessing in the commerce world

Listen to our other episodes of Future Commerce

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

...more

View all episodes

By Phillip Jackson, Brian Lange

4.9

8383 ratings