During the Obama administration, Peter Thiel gestured at some counter-narrative evidence of techno-material stagnation and in some ways — decline — in the United States over the last 50 years. In certain ways, his critiques were shocking and counter-intuitive to mainstream audiences still basking in the glow of the collective stupor around Hope, Change & FAANG. But surely, successful technology investor Peter Thiel, has seen the incredible rates of innovation we've all collectively experienced?
Thiel reframes the discussion to account for the very real but very thin cone of innovation happening since the early 70s, which in his estimation has been limited to exponential improvements in the world of bits and at best modest optimizations in the much wider cone of the world of atoms.
"We were promised flying cars, and all we got was 120 characters"
-Peter Thiel
The quote isn’t as much of a critique of Twitter — a powerful tool we didn’t have before — but it is an indictment of the limitedness of recent technological innovation. We've seen some extraordinary developments in computing. Thiel doesn't refute this but what the fuck happened to almost everything else? Aerospace, automobiles, housing, robotics, biotech, agriculture, education, health, the cost of living, Science more generally, etc?
Thiel isn't confident he knows what exactly happened to our Jetson dreams or why they faded away. We — like him — hate monocausal explanations so we're going to list some of the more plausible and popular factors in our lack of progress in material reality more generally:
Infantilizing regulatory smothering (Safetyism)
Bretton Woods I Collapse & Beginning of Financialization (Virtualization) via Fiat (de Gaulle calls the US's scam)
Nationalization, corporatization, and bureaucratization of The Science (peer-review, funding, large organizations setting agenda)
The Science has picked all the low-hanging fruit
Rise of neo-Malthusian environmentalism
Each of the plausible factors is an entire book on its own and makes some sense in isolation but makes a lot more sense as an ensemble that forms an interconnected web of suffocation. But since this is a forward-leaning post, we only bring up the past to create a mental map of where we are and how we got here. We invite others to re-litigate the past more thoroughly.
What we really want to dig for are the connection points at the depths of our lackluster atomic innovation. I think the phrase at the end of the last sentence is the hint we need to move forward.
Is Atomic Innovation, not the perfect place to start? The very concept of the “atom” and “atomism” points to the idea of common structures and fundamental units that underlie all material reality. Although-- on the surface of the world of appearances-- there is an endless multiplicity, there also lurks common components between the multiplicities, serving as a platform for that multiplicity to emerge, be understood, and be negotiated with. Master the “atom” and the space for possibilities expands indefinitely into a deep never-ending horizon.
“Atom-ic” also reminds us of the tremendous power and potential that nuclear weaponry and nuclear energy once had in the public imagination. But these atomic dreams stalled out in the early 1970s.
Are we not striking close to the roots of Thiel's crisis in the world of atoms? What happened to the atomic frontier, atoms for peace, or energy abundance? After all, the most efficient efficiency is abundance! Why were these incredible goals put on hold and how do we reignite our nuclear energies and re-become masters of Creation?
Blame Game
Like most tragic stories, the tragic character bears some responsibility for his fate. The nuclear energy complex over-promised, lied, and covered up its way to well-earned mistrust among the public. The early nuclear complex operated with a condescending and naive lack of candor with the public and consequently leaked power, creating an opportunity for a counterforce to smuggle its way in.
The counterforce to the hyper-modern atomic frontier turned out to be a regressive, safety-ist neo-Malthusian and Machiavellian environmentalism. The Greens, the world savers, the earth healers, the Luddites, the Gaia worshipers, the hippies, the de-growthers, the de-population-ers, the yuppies, and the effective-altruists were ascendant. Modernity had overplayed its hand and it had to be decelerated, managed, and regulated by The Great Mothers of Safety-ism and new-age Gaia Worship. The patriarchal atomic elite couldn't be trusted. The public wasn't wrong to not trust the atomic elite but they also ran into the paws of a wolf in sheep's clothing.
The postwar American environmental movement originated from the eugenics movement, which connected poor breeding with environmental degradation. Eugenics gained popularity in late nineteenth-century America through groups like the Immigration Restriction League and the Eugenics Records Office. Theodore Roosevelt, Madison Grant, and Henry Fairfield Osborn were among its earliest supporters. Grant and Osborn believed that non-Nordic immigrants threatened America's pristine wilderness areas. They later founded the Sierra Club and the Save the Redwoods League. Fairfield Osborn's son wrote one of the two books that linked prewar eugenics with the postwar environmental population control ideology. Their progeny are globe-trotting, antiracist private jet environmentalists.
The global environmental movement, inspired by and mimicking figures like Paul Ehrlich, Amory Lovins, Rachel Carson, and Al Gore have advocated for energy conservation, depopulation, and the rejection of nuclear power, arguing that it posed significant risks to the environment and human health. This broad-based and global coalition used political, legal, and cultural means to secure nuclear moratoria across the country, resulting in several states adopting outright bans on new reactor construction.
Ultimately, the environmentalists' push for intermittent renewable energy sources, making fossil fuels more expensive, and outright rejection of nuclear power slowly became a powerful cultural and policy direction for America's energy future. The ghosts of Al Gore, Rachel Carson, Amory Lovins, Paul Ehrlich, and millions of characters parroting them with smug, moral superiority, cast quite the specter over our current grid.
The nuclear industry's public relations missteps, such as Idaho Labs, the Three Mile Island disaster, and Chernobyl fueled the public's skepticism towards nuclear energy driving the public to trust their opponents over the nuclear illuminati. Cultural propaganda like the film The China Syndrome with Jane Fonda helps put any grand hopes for nuclear energy among the public on hold. But the problems weren’t limited to perception and bad PR; the economic and regulatory headwinds were just as bad.
In the 1960s, the utilities' business model began to fail, and nuclear power faced the same fate. By 1974, the AEC was abolished and replaced by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and the Energy Research and Development Administration (ERDA). The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) was established to regulate the industry and adopted the infamous Linear No-Threshold standard to measure radiation exposure. Proponents of nuclear energy argue that the LNT standard was a massive overcorrection, which led to the decline of nuclear power. Critics of LNT compare its methodology to a physician adding up every time one has been cut in their life and then telling them they have bled out.
Between 1974 and 1978, eighty nuclear plants were canceled, and the dream of "too cheap to meter" vanished. Because of the accumulating regulatory burden on nuclear power, the construction of new nuclear plants has proven to be very expensive. For example, the Vogtle plant in Georgia running five years and nearly $16 billion over budget.
America's nuclear fleet, although operational and crucial, has declined, with twelve reactors shutting down between 2013 and 2021. Greens will point out the great expense of building out nuclear power but never mention how the United States, Germany, Great Britain, the Soviet Union, France, and many others could all develop nuclear power somewhat quickly, safely, and economically in the 1950-and 60s. Nor can they explain how nuclear power is constructed today— essentially on time— and on budget in China and South Korea. They are not building with simple designs and with vastly inferior materials that make it easier for them to do it cheaply and quickly. At most the Chinese and South Korean plants have slight modifications. Essentially they work how ours work.
The construction costs and building delays experienced in the United States and other countries in building new nuclear capacity are not inherent to building the reactors themselves—like unreliable energy maximalists would have you believe— but rather depend on the context in which these projects are developed and executed. And that context is a slow-walking, suffocating, and mediocre regulatory state mixed with a failure to maintain industrial capacities and human capital.
Current State
Despite the long history of antagonism from the global environmental movement, there’s a vibe shift on the horizon. According to CNBC, environmentalists are softening their stance given the uphill climb ahead for their "climate goals."
If countries are to meet their objectives under the 2015 Paris Agreement to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, a significant contribution of nuclear power is indispensable. According to the IEA Sustainable Development Scenario (SDS) new nuclear capacity and ambitious lifetime extension programs for existing nuclear power plants are needed. This growing role for nuclear power to meet decarbonization objectives is also confirmed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
IEA , NEA, & the ORGANISATION FOR ECONOMIC CO-OPERATION AND DEVELOPMENT
I don't buy the premise of their softening and people shouldn't be praised for becoming more reasonable (it should be an expectation) but from a practical perspective, this is a positive development.
Although too cheap to meter atomic power never came to be, atomic power still plays a crucial role in the grid despite sticky public perceptions and incessant green propaganda.
Nuclear power is the densest, most abundance-friendly energy source that is currently available. Despite a hostile takeover of American energy policy by lobbyists for intermittent energy producers and stakeholders, nuclear power plants still provide approximately 20% of the electricity generated in the United States.
According to the US Energy Information Administration, there are currently 93 operating nuclear reactors at 56 nuclear power plants in 28 states across the country, but nuclear power's share of the overall electricity mix is expected to decline further in the coming years as more obsolescent nuclear plants are retired. Globally, nuclear energy accounts for about 10% of electricity production as of September 2021.
The United States has decent nuclear penetration but we’re not impressive for the "most powerful" country on Earth that also likes to think of itself as “exceptional.” Countries like Sweden and Finland get more than 30% of their electricity from nuclear sources and France gets about 70% of its electricity from nuclear power. We can do better. We should do better.
But first, let's discuss the limitations beyond blaming regulations and activists.
One major issue with atomic power in the United States is the outdated infrastructure and legacy systems that many nuclear power plants rely on. This is a safety concern, isn't optimal, and poses operational challenges. Another significant limitation is the structural integrity of fuel pallets and rods. It's estimated that 96% of the materials used in light water reactor fuel rods remain unused after their expiration.
In addition, the United States’ long vacation from new nuclear construction has significantly eroded the domestic supply chain and the nuclear industry’s ability to reliably execute. These erosions are compounded by the general de-industrialization trend during the same time period in the United States. The technology is fine, and in some cases has even improved but the personnel and institutional know-how is severely lacking. Our nuclear competencies have predictably atrophied. Unfortunately, we can’t print money or lower interest rates to gain them back.
Despite some of the obstacles, the nuclear power industry is actively exploring innovative concepts to enhance the efficiency, safety, and scalability of nuclear power. Among the advanced concepts are Small Modular Reactors (SMR). High-Temperature Reactors (HTR), Microreactors or Battery Reactors, and Fast Reactors. Each addresses different problems and opportunities in generating and distributing nuclear power.
These are all great and exciting but effective exploration and expansion of atomic power requires talent, courage, and capital to move these innovations forward safely and economically, at scale.
Total Demand(side) Victory
The more informed intermittent-energy maximalists can move on from the false premises and misconceptions about waste, and the general safety of atomic power to more sophisticated discussions around economics and cost. But this is mostly a misdirection. Anything as heavily regulated as nuclear material and grids shifts from being mostly a market-based problem and gradually becomes more of a political problem: A problem of Power. The NRC, EPA, OSHA, and others create an inter-locking machinery of higher construction and capital costs (the driver of high costs) and longer wait times through regulations like LNT and licensing delays. Remember, China and South Korea can execute with the same technology with significantly smaller and less dynamic economies. Much of the cost barrier is clearly self-imposed and not a natural law of the technology.
The nature and genealogy of the current Power is beyond the scope of this essay but there are hints in this essay that gesture at its essence(s).
It is the task of scientists, academics, journalists, politicians, lawyers, and labor to confront and overcome the obstacles to a neo-atomic renaissance. They are closest to the source(s) of these obstacles and we will leave this task to them.
Some Sly Roundabout Way
Confrontation is crucial but just as important is working around Power and doing something even they cannot stop.
Remember when I briefly discussed economics being a misdirection? This is mostly true but what if we can beat them on that battlefield first and make the outcome of confrontation less consequential or even more likely to succeed?
What intermittent-energy maximalists often harp on to kill any discussion of an atomic revival is COST. These costs are real and hard to get around without breakthroughs in technology and the regulatory state. But what matters most is not pure cost but attracting capital and the ratio between revenue and costs. The ratio determines a project's economic feasibility and sustainability more than raw aggregates of revenue or cost. Their ultimate meaning is derived from their relation to the other. The sly roundabout way to get around the partially manufactured but real cost obstacle to a nuclear future is to increase realizable revenue projections.
THE STATE OF THE U.S. NUCLEAR INDUSTRY:
NUCLEAR POWER IN THE U.S. HAS STAGNATED ALONG WITH OVERALL ENERGY DEMAND. PROSPECTS FOR GROWTH ARE INSTEAD IN EXPORTS OF NEW SMALL MODULAR REACTORS
Nuclear power provides millions of times more energy per unit of mass than any other viable energy source. Only fusion power, which currently remains speculative, can produce more energy than nuclear fission. The promise of any kind of major technological revolution or material economic growth in the medium-term future ultimately requires concomitant industrial growth, which itself ultimately requires cheap and abundant energy.
Nuclear power is by far the best way to achieve abundant energy in practice, so the growth or stagnation of nuclear industries almost necessarily bounds reasonable expectations about technological change and economic growth in the future.”
— Sam Burja, Bismarck Analysis, The State of the US Nuclear Industry
If its only prospects for growth are limited to exporting one new, speculative technology, that’s a future that is tough to attract capital to especially when you factor in the delays and botched executions over time. These high levels of perceived investment risk scares away most rational, non-ideologically motivated investors.
The Super-Commodity
Electricity is a peculiar commodity. In a way, it's not a commodity at all in the ordinary sense but is rather a super-commodity operating as a platform and engine for all other commodities and economic activity. Its importance and uniqueness are hard to overstate.
Electricity isn't easily or cheaply stored at a properly sufficient scale, at least for the foreseeable future, and it must be generated and used in real-time. Meaning the supply of electricity and the demand for electricity must be calibrated continuously to match. Any imbalance can cause disruptions in the grid, leading to blackouts. Any disruption to supply has serious consequences for much of the population fairly quickly.
In addition, the cost of generating and consuming electricity can vary depending on the time of day, season, physical location, and regulatory jurisdiction. In most of the world, electricity prices are heavily regulated but in some areas, electricity prices can fluctuate widely based on market conditions.
Given what we know about electricity, our goal here is to catalyze the nuclear industry into a sustainable growth spurt. What we need is an industrial source of demand that is highly reliable, scalable, flexible, interruptible, and can go anywhere a nuclear reactor (of any size) might be. We’re hunting for a unicorn demand load to provide the revenue necessary to make the economics of not only keeping plants on-line but also bringing new types of nuclear power plants to life.
Proof of Work: The Perfect Industrial Load
At their most reductive, Proof of work (PoW) mining operations require only three things: specialized computers (ASICs), cheap electricity, and internet access. In addition to its simplicity, PoW mining is an energy-intensive, highly flexible, and geographically agnostic industrial load.
The Bitcoin protocol runs 24/7/365 in perpetuity as long as there are human beings that run and use the protocol. The protocol automatically adjusts the difficulty of finding a new block every two weeks to ensure that a new block is added to the blockchain every 10 minutes--no more, no less-- maintaining assurances around transaction processing and Bitcoin's programmatic emission schedule. The success of finding a block does not depend on past effort, so going offline for a brief or long period of time doesn't affect a miner’s ability to find a new block (revenue) once a miner comes back online. This feature of the block-finding co-opetition is crucial because it means that Bitcoin mining operations can power up and down very quickly. This interruptibility separates it from other sources of industrial demand whose processes often rely on past work and a continuous stream of electricity.
So what we have in Bitcoin mining is a simple, highly reliable, expandable (growth prospects) source of demand that is dispatchable (portable) to any energy source in the world and responds quickly to the needs of any particular grid. This is the purest form we know of a flexible, heavy, portable, and interruptible commercial load. A unicorn industrial load.
Proof of work mining has the rare multiplicity of qualities necessary to materially increase the revenue potential of atomic power, improving its economic feasibility, making it more appealing to attract capital in all its forms. Electric money is the sly workaround to the problem of costliness and the lack of reliable, flexible, scalable, and location agnostic demand for nuclear power.
As the appetite for atomic power starts to reclaim the public imagination, a timely fire has been catalyzed in cyberspace by Crypto-Prometheans that will serve as the economic engine needed to restart the Neo-Atomic Age.
Current State of Bitcoin Mining
Bitcoin mining has rapidly matured from the early days of crazy, hobbyist home miners with their CPUs quickly through the GPU transition era and into the current era of advanced, specialized hardware known as ASICs controlled by professional operators and aggregated by sophisticated mining pools. Over the last decade, there has been a considerable amount of horizontal integration throughout the mining industry and general maturation with products and services like ASIC marketplaces, hash-rate derivatives, protocols, 5 nano-meter chips, and specialized operating systems making their debuts over the last couple of years.
Completely counter to the mainstream (media) narrative about Bitcoin energy consumption, Bitcoin mining is increasingly using non-rival, renewable, and stranded energy sources. Ironically, the more environmentalists want to meet their “climate goals” through intermittent energy supply the more they’ll need a unicorn industrial load like bitcoin to balance out supply and demand, covering over their naive, overzealousness. Mining uses what others cannot or will not, acting as the economic dung beetle of energy, transforming otherwise wasted energy into scarce, liquid, and censorship-resistant electric-money.
To maintain profitability, miners have a major incentive to create symbiotic relationships with the grid(s) they're using. This means they must balance their energy consumption with the needs of the grid, as excessive energy usage can drive up prices and affect the economics of mining in a particular location. Mining is particularly sensitive to electricity prices as it determines profitability more than any other factor. Overwhelming the grid with demand not only alienates grid operators but also doesn't make much economic sense on any significant timeline.
This symbiosis has best been realized between Texas’ ERCOT and Bitcoin miners, who have formal relationships that utilize the unique properties of Bitcoin mining to help stabilize a grid full of volatile retail demand and intermittent renewable supply. The reliability, flexibility, and economic incentives of Bitcoin make it a no-brainer for grid operators who have trouble dealing with the variability of the supply and demand of electricity on their grids.
The Bitcoin network pays for and converts the most abundant electricity currently available anywhere in the world into a costly signal that network participants are constrained by the limits of our material reality. Human beings have a choice to reject or accept this evidence but nonetheless, for those who do respect and accept the constraints of physics as out of the reach of human manipulation, proof-of-work is a truthful signal (hard to counterfeit) that acts as a Schelling point for people who do not or cannot trust each other but all abide by the rules of the protocol.
Proof of work is global coordination without trust or identity but voluntary acceptance of physics, math, and economic incentives. This voluntary, highly verifiable, and reliable binding allows for dynamic human coopetition over long periods of time and long expanses of space, at massive (possibly multi-planetary) scale.
The Mining Flywheel
Embedded within the Bitcoin mining industry is an innovation fly-wheel, powered by the need to create competitive mining hardware and software, as well as finding and/or generating the most abundant and cheapest sources of electricity possible. As a result, Bitcoin mining creates a positive feedback loop between the world of bits and atoms, pushing the frontier of both, irreversibly forward.
The world of atoms (electricity/hardware) anchors the world of bits (software, money, etc) to its constraints allowing trust to form in the world of bits, while the world of bits incentivizes and monetizes the creation and maintenance of abundant energy production as well as powerful and efficient hardware.
Information (bit) gains integrity; Energy (atom) gains liquidity
Given this regenerative loop, Bitcoin mining can be used as a means of financially bootstrapping the Neo-Atomic Age. The five new technologies I discussed earlier require considerable capital, and considerable evidence of efficacy and safety. Bitcoin mining is the global industrial load that allows not only the US but the global nuclear power community to monetize immediately, experiment almost anywhere (away from large population centers), shut down and turn back on when needed, and scale up whenever the plant is ready to. All they have to do is plug themselves into the network and start hashing.
Technology Often Precedes Science
In his book "Prometheus and Atlas," Jason Jorjani explains that technics or technological innovation drives scientific inquiry by creating new challenges and opportunities for exploration. According to Jorjani, technology, and science--in combination--create a flywheel or positive feedback loop, with each advancing the other in an iterative process. He argues convincingly that technology and science are closely interconnected and mutually reinforcing, but that technology often precedes science in terms of development and opens a new frontier for science and theory to explore which then drives more technological innovation.
Given Jorjani’s insights, the lack of innovation in the world of atoms might be the lack of growth in our energy production due to our lack of technological innovation within atomic power. More abundant, cheap power creates new opportunities for research and innovation that might not be possible or feasible given our current constraints on energy production. A stalling in our energy production paradigm would seem to put a dent in and act as a declarant to further scientific exploration.
Atoms & Bits: A Beautifully Generative Loop
Just recently, the positive feedback between atomic energy and Bitcoin formally ignited through Terawulf, an American bitcoin mining operation. The first network state is beginning to finance the atomic frontier.
Terawulf's Nautilus Cryptomine is set to become one of the largest and most efficient Bitcoin mining operations in North America. Nautilus is hashing via a 2.5 GW zero-carbon nuclear energy generating facility within the PJM interconnection (powers 13 states in the Midwest, Appalachia, & Tidewater). The Nautilus project is a collaboration between TeraWulf's nuclear mining facility subsidiary and Talen Energy Corporation. When completed, the jointly-owned facility is anticipated to reach a capacity of 300 MW. If Terawulf can pull this off they’re in a great position to be a major player in the North American Bitcoin mining industry. Low-cost, abundant-energy, rules.
According to Terawulf's CFO, Patrick Fleury, in the next couple of years we should expect to see some more vertical integration from the mining industry, owning and/or operating the source of their mining operation's electricity.
Although it hasn't been needed yet, miners have a long-term interest in helping create and secure abundant power sources after soaking up the low-hanging fruit of the existing non-rivalrous and stranded energy on the planet. How much low-hanging fruit there is and how long it will be available for exploitation is beyond my knowledge.
But, why?
Economic growth and in particular, greater and more effective use of energy is an indication of general economic evolution and advancement. Darwinian evolution itself can be characterized as increasing energy production, consumption, and efficiency at the individual and species levels. The key to biological evolution is to become better and better at capturing external energy supplies and using those supplies more effectively. The same goes for economic “evolution” if we think of the economy as an evolving organic system full of complex human beings. Radical de-growthers are essentially advocates of economic and thus social devolution.
Simply put, more effective energy conversion and consumption unlock possibilities for human flourishing, prosperity, and inquiry that weren’t possible before.
"Growth" can be a good thing but given the expectations we’ve set up for future generations and the accounting of our entire welfare state, growth is no longer a nice to have but rather an existential need. The explicit and implicit promises made to the young and ambitious, the family, the most vulnerable, and the retiree are made with the embedded assumption of real economic growth. Without it, the entire edifice decays and if bad enough, completely collapses.
The better angels of our nature are conveniently activated during times of ascendance, vitality, and abundance. Decay, stagnation, and collapse create more zero-sum situations inevitably leading to more suffering and violence. The rapid proliferation of mutually incompatible desires between individuals, groups, and nations pushes us into a spiraling descent of our deepest depravities. Real growth is a civilizational imperative. Real innovation-- in the world of atoms-- is only possible by capturing more energy and using it more effectively.
To preserve and extend culture and civilization, we must dismantle the vice-grip that nation-states and their green captors have over our energy infrastructure but in the meantime, we can and are routing around energy-abundance-deniers with the tools of the emerging network-state(s) making their vice-grip and protestations completely impotent.
They have lost the mandate of heaven but it is up to us to earn it ourselves. And we will, through some sly roundabout way, leaving save-the-earth grifters close to irrelevant.
Their world of stagnation, fear, ignorance, hypocrisy, decay, and saying No; is a depressing world of zero-sum, degenerative violence. Our world is one of aspiration, frontiers, abundance, building, truth-seeking, and saying Yes; giving the better angels of our nature a fighting chance through creative co-opetition at tremendous scale.
PS
Given the considerable lengthiness of this essay, I’ll dive further into the practicalities of plugging into the Bitcoin Network State in another essay: Part II Igniting the Flywheel.
 | A guest post by
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"and consequently leaked power,"
Funny.