Mokyr, an economic historian who won the Nobel for work on technological change and growth, is answering whether America keeps its lead in innovation. He frames it as a handoff that has already happened repeatedly — Britain took it from the Netherlands, Europe lost it to the United States — and names it after Donald Cardwell, the historian of technology who first noticed the pattern. He was dismissive in the same answer of the idea that AI leadership is a horse race with a finish line.
I like to talk about your work and understand the theories behind why innovation drives living standards. And your work explores this theme in detail, and you've determined and proved that it's not just technological innovation that matters, it's a lot more. Let's start by talking about the current situation. You've written about Cardwell's law, the law that no society stays technologically creative for very long. Britain is one example. It's lost its global lead when the winners of one era organized to block the next. How do technological innovations lead to economic growth, broadly? And let's use the United States as an example today. Where does the United States sit on the curve, according to Cardwell's law, today?
Well, the United
States has been the world's technological leader basically for most of the 20th century. It essentially dethroned Europe for a variety of reasons. One of them, of course, was two world wars that tore Europe apart. And the other is, and not unrelated, that a very large number of major scientists and inventors and engineers pick up their suitcases and left Europe to go to America, you know, because of what was happening in Europe. And so the United States has been a world leader for most of the 20th century. And in some ways, you know, there are still areas in which they are leading. Everybody is talking about AI, everybody talking about computer, what digital, and so on and so forth. And it is all still made largely in America. But there are clouds on the horizon, and everybody's talking about those clouds. And of course, there is a considerable number of people who think that there is a good chance that at some point the United States will replace, well, it's China who replaced the United States, just as the United States replaced Europe, and much as the European continent replaced Britain in the late 19th century, and how Britain replaced the Netherlands in the 17th and 18th century, and so on and on and on. So the United States is still a very technologically creative nation. And I don't think anybody's right mind would deny that. But there is competition. And one way of thinking about this competition is actually healthy, that it makes you work harder, you know, to stay ahead of the competition. Whoever wins in AI wins, said our learned and wise president a couple of days ago. And there you have it. I don't know if it's about winning at all. I mean, the notion that somehow technology is a bit like a horse race in which the first to cut the finish line winner. I mean, that is a sort of a simplified idea, you know, propounded by somebody who hasn't a clue. About economics. But, you know, leadership can be distinguished, although it's typically easier to distinguish it after the fact than during the fact. But I think there is a good chance that at some point the United States will at least have to share leadership with China and possibly cede it to China, depending a bit on what happens here and to some extent, of course, what happens in China. And so, by and large, the quote that I like to make is that, you know, Cardwell's law suggests that no country remains technologically creative for very long. Now, very long might mean a century. But that is, in fact, a sort of an empirical regularity that Donald Cardwell, who was a very eminent historian of technology, first observed. And I wrote about it because I thought it was fascinating and tried to tell a story of why that might be so.
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Yeah, so go ahead.
Let's use AI as an example, please. Well,