#247 – Anton Leicht on how middle powers avoid losing everything in a post-AI world

<p>In a post-AGI world, can a country without access to frontier AI even be considered sovereign anymore?</p><p>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.</p><p>Anton — <a href="https://carnegieendowment.org/people/anton-leicht">Carnegie fellow</a> and writer of the blog <a href="https://writing.antonleicht.me/"><em>Threading the Needle</em></a> — thinks middle powers should band together and build their own frontier models.</p><p><a href="https://writing.antonleicht.me/p/the-moonshot">He’s costed it out</a>: 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.</p><p>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?</p><ul><li>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.</li><li>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.</li></ul><p>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.</p><p>In this episode, Anton and host Tom Reed look at what middle powers should start doing now to keep a seat at the table.</p><p><a href="https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/anton-leicht-middle-powers-agi-left-behind/?utm_campaign=podcast__anton-leicht&amp;utm_source=80000+Hours+Podcast&amp;utm_medium=podcast"><strong>Learn more, video, and full transcript:</strong> https://80k.info/AL</a> </p><p><em>This episode was recorded on June 19, 2026.</em></p><p>Chapters:</p><ul><li>Cold open (00:00:00)</li><li>Who’s Anton Leicht? (00:00:43)</li><li>Most countries face bleak AI futures (00:01:06)</li><li>How middle powers can strike AI deals (00:06:10)</li><li>The $500 billion AI moonshot (00:12:16)</li><li>Would the US crush allied AI? (00:24:54)</li><li>When to launch the AI moonshot (00:31:56)</li><li>Why AI dominance is forever (00:35:45)</li><li>Is AI dependence catastrophic? (00:37:42)</li><li>What’s left to sell in an AI-dominated world? (00:42:45)</li><li>Policies to avoid mass AI-layoffs (00:47:47)</li><li>Who really governs Anthropic? (01:08:29)</li><li>Why “pausing superintelligence” fails (01:10:52)</li><li>Is American AI monopoly safe? (01:21:08)</li><li>Explaining AGI to the world (01:28:40)</li><li>Is Anton bullish or bearish on Germany? (01:31:05)</li></ul><p><em>Our production team includes:</em></p><ul><li><em>Video editors: Josh Alward, Dominic Armstrong, Ollie Bignell, Andrés Escobar, Jasper Luithlen, Milo McGuire, Luke Monsour, and Simon Monsour</em></li><li><em>Producers: Elizabeth Cox and Nick Stockton</em></li><li><em>Coordination and support: Katy Moore and Lou Moran</em></li><li><em>Camera operator: Jeremy Chevillotte</em></li><li><em>Music: </em><a href="https://open.spotify.com/artist/4lWobp6IUcSZ7w5mhnU1c9"><em>CORBIT</em></a></li></ul>