The proverbial "50B" is investment in next year's model. The current model cost under "30B", and therefore "is profitable". It is a bet on scaling, yes, but that's been common throughout the industry (see, eg, Amazon not being profitable for many years but building infrastructure)
> If every year we predict exactly what the demand is going to be, we’ll be profitable every year. Because spending 50% of your compute on research, roughly, plus a gross margin that’s higher than 50% and correct demand prediction leads to profit. That’s the profitable business model that I think is kind of there, but obscured by these building ahead and prediction errors.
You're missing the forest for the trees. Per-token pricing is irrelevant when you're just trying to get shit done. I pay 20 bucks a month for OpenAI, but I use likely $200+ a month of tokens just on the coding (and I'm just looking at the raw tokens, this is ignoring all the harnessing on their end). Even OpenAI has said that they're losing money on the 200-dollar subscriptions[1]. This is not a viable business model. Why do you think they are introducing ads this year[2]?
Which should be a good waking up call to investigate the MIC about their abysmally low productivity. Iran is a good stress test for the airforce and logistics - and the lesson is that Taiwan is indefensible with current production rates.
If US stocks are so depleted after something that is barely a skirmish against 8th tier adversary - a lot of people that have been responsible for procurement in the last 20 years should lose their jobs.
Taiwan might be indefensible at any rate of production the United States could conceivably spin up within a practical time horizon.
The volume of fire that can be generated inside the 100km line by PLAN/PLAAF/PLAARF forces is nothing less than breathtaking. Even if you parked three Ford class carriers inside optimal mission radius, and their entire complement could take off and land in near-training conditions, and they don't need DCAP or electronic warfare coverage, *AND* if every single bomb and aircraft has a glassy-perfect mission right weapon to right target - EVEN WITH all these impossible conditions satisfied . . you're still not generating enough weapon effect to suppress even half of the PRC fire generation complex vis a vis a Taiwan situation. And they don't need half.
And that is not going to be the operational situation for USN. No, not by a long shot. If we're particularly unlucky, we might not ever know for sure what happened to the USS Whoever - just that it sailed into an electronic fog past Zamami and was gone. Rescued sailors could add little more.
The powers-that-be know this, the elected politicians know this (but don't care because they often have pockets stuffed from Chinese interests), but still we have chest beaters of the unstoppable American juggernaut. Yes, we do have a very big military - it's true! - but it's a military that the largest economy in the world has spent a good deal of its resources working to counter. For twenty years.
My greatest fear is that the chest beaters do assert direct control, court disaster, and have the worst possible reaction. I'm not confident in a sane response to a major surface asset being sunk; these are not people mentally geared to handle humiliation.
We're flirting this line already with Iran - with goddamn Iran of all people - where many People Who Should Know Better have already been flapping their mouths about breaking the taboo on First Use. For Iran.
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