The Lie At The Heart Of The "AI Revolution"

Is AI the new nuclear age?

Photo by Matt Park on Unsplash

The speed at which we are developing AI is astonishingly rapid, outstripping any previous paradigm-shifting technologies, like nuclear technology. Even beloved Hank Green has agreed with this statement. This lightspeed development has been used to push an AI economic arms race narrative, spreading fear that, if the West does not lead the AI race, its economy will be crushed, meaning that we need to pour our resources into this one sector to stay ahead and avoid death. In this way, the AI boom directly mirrors the nuclear arms race between the West and the Soviets. However, there is just one problem with this narrative: AI is not developing, nor will it ever develop anywhere near as fast as nuclear technology did. This core framework used to justify the AI boom is based on a flat-out lie. Let me explain the reality and the impact of this falsehood.

Nuclear Technology

Nuclear technology developed at a truly astonishing pace. This was partially fuelled by World War II and the Cold War, but also because the technology’s immense utility was felt straight away, which caused more effort to be put towards its improvement. So, let’s have a brief fly-by tour of the history of nuclear technology.

In 1938, chemists Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann discovered nuclear fission.

In 1942, Enrico Fermi, of Fermi paradox fame, achieved the first controlled nuclear fission chain reaction.

In 1945, Oppenheimer’s Manhattan Project (you might have heard of it) detonated the first nuclear bomb, and a month later, the first nuclear bomb was deployed in anger against the Japanese. The project cost $2 billion in 1945 dollars, or $36 billion in 2025 dollars, with more than 90% of the costs coming from nuclear infrastructure build-out to establish a nuclear industry in the US.

In 1951, the first energy was produced via fission from the Experimental Breeder Reactor I in the US. This reactor was mainly used to produce plutonium for nuclear bombs, so it was never connected to the grid.

In 1952, the first hydrogen bomb, Ivy Mike, was successfully detonated.

In 1954, the first hydrogen bomb was delivered to the US stockpile as part of Operation Castle, which cost roughly $30 billion in 2025 dollars.

In 1954, the first nuclear-powered submarine, the USS Nautilus, was launched. It used a miniaturised nuclear reactor to power itself, enabling it to stay submerged for months at a time and making it one of the first nuclear-powered ‘things’ ever built.

In 1956, the first full-scale nuclear power plant to deliver power to the grid was deployed in the UK. Calder Hall cost £35 million to build, equivalent to £765 million in today’s money.

It took just three years for us to go from controlling fission to using it to create a deployable bomb. Likewise, it took just nine years to go from controlling fission to building a commercial, full-scale nuclear power plant. All in all, it took 18 years to go from discovering nuclear fission to creating a mature nuclear industry that fundamentally changed the face of global politics and economics. No technology in the history of humankind has had such a rapid development or as sudden and profound an impact.

Yet, arguably, the major projects which defined this monumental leap forward and created this nuclear industry, namely the Manhattan Project, Project Castle, and Calder Hall, all collectively cost less than $100 billion in today’s money.

A Brookings Institution study found that the US had spent $5 trillion, or $10.6 trillion in today’s money, on its nuclear development, which included both bombs and power plants to supply nuclear material for nuclear weapons, from 1945 to 1995. A substantial 20% of that expenditure happened between 1945 and 1960, during which much of the nuclear infrastructure and industry was built. In other words, during peak nuclear development spending, the US was shelling out the equivalent of $141 billion (in 2025 dollars) per year.

This might all sound like a lot, but it had immense utility. The West’s nuclear stockpile enabled a new-age colonialism that was equally as lucrative as it was cruel. The US and other nuclear-armed nations witnessed a noticeable return on nuclear expenditure. Likewise, nuclear power became a wildly profitable and economically significant sector by the 1980s and remains so to this day. As such, investing in nuclear technology was arguably the ‘best’ investment the West has ever made, given these immense returns.

AI Technology

Okay, so what about AI? It sure feels like it has developed more quickly than nuclear power. After all, most of us thought it was just a sci-fi technology until 2022. Well, when do you believe the first AI was invented? It was a lot earlier than you might think.