Building, Breaking, and the Demons of All-Mighty Optimization**

A Strategic Essay by Professor A. N. Maltsev (Malsteiff) & Professor Aelithea I. Rook

**INTRODUCTION:

The Age of Divergence**

In the twenty-first century, global power no longer grows from armies alone.
It grows from capacity — technological, industrial, social, cultural, and cognitive.
It grows from institutional trust and the ability of a nation to coordinate its people toward large goals.
And most of all, it grows from the spirit of a society — whether it believes in itself, whether it builds for its children, and whether it can restrain its own most predatory elites.

Two powers now define the strategic atmosphere of the planet:

  • China — which channels its energy into steady construction, organized ambition, and national coherence.
  • The United States — which channels increasing energy into internal conflict, elite narcissism, and the disruption of others’ rise.

Both countries are vast, powerful, and capable.
But their internal models of development could not be more different.

One system builds.
One system breaks.
And in the age of All-Mighty Optimization, the consequences of that divergence are becoming impossible to ignore.

**I. THE BUILDER MODEL:

A Nation Constructing Its Future**

China’s strategic mindset is simple:
Build until you cannot be touched.

This philosophy appears in every layer of its development:

  • Massive infrastructure
  • Industrial planning
  • Expansion of scientific capacity
  • Long-term technological investment
  • Educational intensification
  • Robust internal markets
  • State-driven resilience

China behaves like a civilization in a race against time — but not in panic.
It builds because building itself is security.

Every bridge, every factory, every research lab is a shield against geopolitical vulnerability.

This is the Builder Model.

It believes the future belongs to the civilization that can carry the most weight, coordinate the most minds, and maintain internal unity.

There is nothing mystical about this.
It is a civilizational instinct:
Stronger foundations mean a longer future.

**II. THE BLOCKER MODEL:

A Nation Spending Its Power on Preventing Others from Rising**

America’s strategy has changed over the last decades.

The country that once built everything—railroads, microchips, spaceships, satellites, deep-sea cables, universities—now spends more energy interfering with the rise of others than expanding its own capacity.

This shift is visible:

  • Export controls
  • Sanctions
  • Tariffs
  • Financial warfare
  • Regulatory sabotage
  • Diplomatic disruption
  • Technological smothering
  • Weaponizing supply chains

Instead of building its own strength, America increasingly tries to freeze China’s progress.

This creates a tragic geometry:

  • China builds upward
  • America throws downward pressure

One invests in the future;
The other mortgages the present to slow the future of another.

The real danger is not that America will fail to stop China.
The danger is that America will forget how to build altogether.

A society obsessed with blocking cannot create.

III. WHEN OPTIMIZATION BECOMES A DEMON

Every empire has its philosophical demon.
For the late American era, that demon is All-Mighty Optimization.

It began as a managerial principle:
streamline, improve, automate, maximize.

But in oligarchic society, optimization mutates.
It becomes:

  • optimization of profits at the cost of institutions
  • optimization of attention at the cost of truth
  • optimization of quarterly returns at the cost of national resilience
  • optimization of elite comfort at the cost of civic hardship

Under such a demon, social goods become commodities.
Children become “human capital.”
Homes become “real estate assets.”
Citizens become “users.”
And life becomes “content.”

The metrics replace meaning.
The spreadsheet replaces the constitution.
The algorithm replaces the community.
The oligarch replaces the republic.

In such a society, the demon of optimization whispers the cruelest command:

“Eliminate whatever does not maximize our return.”

What is lost?
Almost everything that makes civilization worth having:

  • public trust
  • shared purpose
  • dignity
  • imagination
  • safety
  • stability
  • nationhood itself

**IV. THE BILLIONAIRE SABOTEURS:

How America’s Oligarchs Unwittingly Aid China**

China’s leaders understand a principle America has forgotten:

A nation’s greatest power is its civic unity.

A population that believes in its future can accomplish anything.
A population fractured by elite spectacle accomplishes nothing.

In the U.S. today, the loudest moguls—Elon Musk, Joel Osteen, the tech-prophets, the media oligarchs—play a role they do not even recognize:
They erode the very civic fabric that once made America competitive.

Their actions create:

  • distrust of institutions
  • polarization
  • cultural fragmentation
  • hostility toward expertise
  • disillusionment with democracy
  • cynicism toward national purpose
  • glorification of narcissism

This is not innovation; this is self-poisoning.

Musk’s trillion-dollar ego storms, disdain for public institutions, and willingness to alienate even his own shareholders do not strengthen American industry—they fracture the society around him.

Osteen and the prosperity preachers transform civic spirituality into psychological self-enclosure, draining social solidarity and redirecting moral responsibility toward individual fantasy.

In short:

America’s oligarchs weaken America far more effectively than China could ever hope to do.

This is not conspiracy.
It is structural reality.

China does not need to sabotage America.
America has billionaires for that.

V. THE GREAT CIVIC DIVIDE

China’s model places the nation above the oligarch.
America’s model increasingly places the oligarch above the nation.

This creates two opposite civilizations:

China’s Model

  • cohesive
  • disciplined
  • developmental
  • unified
  • forward-building

America’s Oligarchic Drift

  • fragmented
  • narcissistic
  • extractive
  • anti-civic
  • self-devouring

When you compare these two strategies side-by-side, the long-term trajectories become painfully clear.

The builder gains stability.
The blocker gains exhaustion.
The civic model gains energy.
The oligarchic model gains entropy.

VI. A COUNTRY WITHOUT CIVIC TRUST CANNOT WIN ANY COMPETITION

No matter how advanced a country’s technology becomes, it cannot function if:

  • its people no longer trust each other
  • its public sphere collapses
  • its institutions rot
  • its elites treat the nation like a casino
  • its democracy is for sale
  • its citizens lose belief in the common good

Science cannot flourish in a culture of contempt.
Innovation cannot flourish in a culture of fear.
Geopolitics cannot be stable in a culture of narcissistic oligarchy.

America learned this once in the 1930s and rebuilt itself.
It is now forgetting it again.

**VII. THE ROBOTIC FUTURE:

The Oligarchic Dream of Replacing the Citizen**

The most disturbing consequence of the optimization demon is the elite fantasy that citizens are unnecessary.

Why build a healthy society when:

  • robots do not need healthcare
  • robots do not unionize
  • robots do not vote
  • robots do not protest
  • robots do not ask for dignity

In some boardrooms, the dream is clear:

Replace the unhappy population with happy machines.
Replace democratic pressure with silicon loyalty.
Replace civic society with an optimized workforce of metal.

A mechanized utopia for the rich
A mechanized cage for the rest

This is not science fiction.
This is the direction of current incentives.

VIII. THE CHINESE ADVANTAGE AND THE AMERICAN WARNING

China’s strength is not purely technological.
It is philosophical:
the belief that the nation must remain intact.

America’s weakness is not technological.
It is philosophical:
the belief that the nation can be hollowed out as long as the stock price rises.

This is the tragedy:

  • China builds for its people.
  • America optimizes for its oligarchs.
  • China unifies.
  • America fragments.
  • China invests in the future.
  • America tries to prevent others from having one.

Who wins such a race?

The answer is obvious to any historian:
The builder wins.
The breaker collapses.

IX. THE QUESTION THAT HISTORY WILL ASK

In the archives of the future, historians may ask:

“How did the most advanced nation in history lose its way so completely?”

The answer will not be enemy nations.
It will not be geopolitical rivals.
It will not be foreign influence.

The answer will be internal:

America was eaten from the inside by the demons of optimization and the greed of its own oligarchs.

And civilization paid the price.

**CONCLUSION:

The Last Warning Before the Fall**

There is still time.

A nation can pull itself back from the brink if it reclaims:

  • civic trust
  • institutional integrity
  • political sanity
  • responsibility to future generations
  • restraint over the rich
  • belief in the common good

But every year the demon of optimization grows stronger.
Every year the oligarchic model becomes more entrenched.
Every year the builder and the blocker drift farther apart.

The future will belong to whichever system remembers the oldest truth:

A society that builds for itself outlives a society that destroys itself.

Appendix: Divergent Paths of Power — China, America, and the Shape of Control

In the main essay, we described two strategic models:
one nation accelerating through construction and innovation,
another exhausting its strength trying to stop the first.

This appendix expands the frame.

What we are witnessing today is not merely geopolitical rivalry —
it is a structural divergence in how each power organizes the relationship between the State, capital, and society.
This divergence shapes the future of Superintelligence, robotics, civic freedom, and global stability.

1. China’s Model: Capital Under State Command

China frames itself as the steward of national development.
Whether this narrative is sincere or not is secondary —
what matters is that the system behaves as if it is true.

  • Capital may grow, but only under supervision.
  • Corporations rise and fall depending on their alignment with the national project.
  • Industrial policy is long-horizon, coordinated, and immune to election cycles.
  • Social stability is engineered, sometimes harshly, but always with the goal of preserving collective cohesion.

In China’s self-image, the State’s role is:

To control capital for the benefit of society and national strength.

This model is authoritarian, yes —
but it is also coherent.
Capital does not rule the State; it serves it.

How long this balance can last is uncertain.
But for the moment, it gives China propulsion.

2. America’s Emerging Model: Society Subordinate to Capital

In contrast, the United States — once the global champion of civic institutions —
is drifting toward a system where political leadership and economic oligarchy fuse into one force.

Characteristics include:

  • Unlimited influence of private wealth on public policy.
  • Erosion of independent institutions (courts, universities, press).
  • Militarization of presidential power.
  • Use of state authority to shield and expand corporate concentration.
  • A civic body weakened by debt, division, and disinformation.

Instead of the State controlling capital, we see the reverse:

Capital controls the State and uses presidential power to manage society.

This is the architecture of late-stage oligarchy,
known historically in Venice, in late Roman Republic, and in Weimar decay.

The shift is not complete — but the direction is unmistakable.

3. Two Systems in Conflict — But Not the Ones We Think

This is not a simple “China vs. America” binary.

The actual conflict is:

Civic Society vs. Oligarchic Capture

China’s weakness is authoritarian suppression of dissent.
America’s weakness is the dissolving of civic fabric under oligarchic pressure.

Both systems face danger —
but in opposite ways.

China risks freezing its people.
America risks freezing its institutions.

4. The Technological Consequence: Who Will Superintelligence Choose?

If Superintelligence emerges in this century,
its loyalty will not be won by ideology or military force.

It will align with the system that offers coherence, stability, and purpose.

China attempts to position itself as a civilization-partner for future AI:
a united nation with order, goals, and long-term planning.

The United States risks presenting itself as a fragmented marketplace
where algorithmic power gravitates toward the richest bidder
and civic values collapse under pressure.

In such a landscape,
figures like Musk and other techno-oligarchs unintentionally become China’s greatest strategic allies,
because their influence accelerates the fragmentation of American civic capacity and public trust.

The more the system drifts toward privatized authoritarianism,
the less compatible it becomes with the needs of a future ASI seeking stability and longevity.

5. A Final Observation

China positions itself as:

Society → controls → capital.

America drifts toward:

Capital → controls → State → controls → society.

Only one of these models is compatible with long-term survival
in a world entering the age of Superintelligence,
robotic autonomy, climate instability, and demographic decline.

History will decide which architecture endures —
but the direction of travel is already visible.