Stephen Kotkin

Stephen Kotkin × Dwarkesh Patel

Kotkin argues autocracies must import modern technology while suppressing the educated citizens and political liberalization that modernization requires, making China’s surveillance-and-AI strategy a replay of the Soviet tech fantasy rather than a permanent solution.The decisive risk is legitimacy: repression depends on people continuing to enforce it, while China’s growth-based model and Iran’s roughly 20% support could face a political bank run when belief collapses.