Can $500 Billion Win the AI Race? | Anton Leicht

In a post-AGI world, can a country without access to frontier AI even be considered sovereign anymore? Anton Leicht says once frontier AI becomes a core economic input, the countries that own it will pull further and further ahead. Everyone else stays a customer… or worse. Maybe the dominant power wants your land, or a military base, or a resource. Without economic leverage, there’s very little you could do about it. Anton — Carnegie fellow and writer of the blog Threading the Needle — thinks middle powers should band together and build their own frontier models. He’s costed it out: something like $500 billion over four years for a band of allied democracies. That’s not absurd money for the G7 minus the US. The problem is you’d be asking treasuries to take on sovereign debt for a speculative venture with no business case, wide open to US coercion and domestic backlash. So despite its promise, Anton’s verdict is that it probably won’t happen. His backup is for countries to ask themselves: if intelligence becomes abundant, what stays scarce? • Upstream, that’s everything that feeds the supply chain: ASML’s lithography machines, chipmaking, exclusive training data — all of it gets more valuable as AI does. • Downstream, “a country of geniuses in a data centre” still can’t cure cancer without someone building the production plants and running the trials. The Europeans, Japanese, and South Koreans are good at exactly these real-world bottlenecks. It’s an imperfect fix. The US would still hold more leverage, plus an incentive to re-industrialise and cut you out. The prize is avoiding the worst outcomes: a gradual but irreversible decline, waiting to be either annexed or discarded as the US and China race ahead. In this episode, Anton and host Tom Reed look at what middle powers should start doing now to keep a seat at the table. This episode was recorded on June 19, 2026. Chapters: 00:00:00 Cold open 00:00:43 Who’s Anton Leicht? 00:01:06 Most countries face bleak AI futures 00:06:10 How middle powers can strike AI deals 00:12:16 The $500 billion AI moonshot 00:24:54 Would the US crush allied AI? 00:31:56 When to launch the AI moonshot 00:35:45 Why AI dominance is forever 00:37:42 Is AI dependence catastrophic? 00:42:45 What’s left to sell in an AI-dominated world? 00:47:47 Policies to avoid mass AI-layoffs 01:08:29 Who really governs Anthropic? 01:10:52 Why “pausing superintelligence” fails 01:21:08 Is an American AI monopoly safe? 01:28:40 Explaining AGI to the world 01:31:05 Is Anton bullish or bearish on Germany? Our production team includes: • Video editors: Josh Alward, Dominic Armstrong, Ollie Bignell, Andrés Escobar, Jasper Luithlen, Milo McGuire, Luke Monsour, and Simon Monsour • Producers: Elizabeth Cox and Nick Stockton • Coordination and support: Katy Moore and Lou Moran • Camera operator: Jeremy Chevillotte Music: CORBIT