Sangeet Paul Choudary

1 week ago | platforms.substack.com | Sangeet Paul Choudary

In the years between the two World Wars, France built The Maginot Line - a line of fortifications stretching along its eastern border. The Maginot Line was an unshakable defence; a masterpiece of military design comprising underground bunkers and armored gun turrets, with rail lines connecting garrisons. It was built to prevent the kind of trench warfare that had devastated Europe barely a generation earlier. It was, by all accounts, a perfect answer to the wrong question.

2 weeks ago | platforms.substack.com | Sangeet Paul Choudary

In 19th-century Paris, the Académie des Beaux-Arts defined what counted as legitimate art. Realism, the prevailing standard, emphasized precision and visual accuracy. Success was based on how well you aligned with these norms. The system rewarded consistency, not experimentation. The invention of photography in the 1830s and 1840s began to challenge this standard. At first, photography seemed like a threat to painters.

3 weeks ago | platforms.substack.com | Sangeet Paul Choudary

In medieval warfare, survival was determined by how well you could keep enemies out. Castles were surrounded by moats, designed to slow down invaders. The moat was the barrier that gave you time and leverage. You won by making conquest harder than it was worth. Warren Buffett made the metaphor famous in investing circles. The best businesses, he said, have economic moats, which come in many forms - network effects, learning effects, regulatory capture, resource control, and so on.

1 month ago | platforms.substack.com | Sangeet Paul Choudary

My next book Reshuffle is now available for pre-orders. There is no dearth of books on AI. But Reshuffle is different because it doesn’t try to explain the impact of AI through the familiar lenses of automation and productivity. At best, these lenses help uncover first-order effects of AI.

2 months ago | platforms.substack.com | Sangeet Paul Choudary

Marc Andreessen calls DeepSeek AI’s Sputnik moment. Yes, it did catch the US unprepared but that’s where the ‘space race’ analogy ends. Today's AI race is not merely an 'arms race' nor is DeepSeek easily explained away as just a Sputnik moment. This race is playing out against the larger backdrop of more than a decade of technology infrastructure export by the largest economies around the world.