CONCEPT
The Geography of Value
The spatial redistribution of economic value that AI produces — the migration <em>from code to ecosystem</em> mapped onto the international system, revealing which nations' competitive advantages strengthen and which devalue.
The geography of value is this book's term for the spatial redistribution of economic value that the AI transition produces. As value migrates from the code layer (commoditized by AI) to the ecosystem layer (protected by institutional stickiness), the national distribution of competitive advantage shifts accordingly. Nations whose economic position rests on code-layer production face structural devaluation. Nations whose position rests on ecosystem-layer institutions find their advantages appreciating. Understanding this redistribution is essential to any strategic response adequate to the AI moment, because it exposes which national assets AI threatens and which it strengthens, and which national vulnerabilities require the institutional dam-building that smart power demands.
In The You On AI Field Guide
India's two-hundred-billion-dollar IT services industry illustrates the code-layer vulnerability. The industry employs millions and generates a significant portion of India's exports. Its value proposition — skilled engineers producing code at lower cost than in-house development teams in the United States and Europe — is precisely the proposition that AI commodifies. When a