EY and I don’t seem to agree that “nuke every semiconductor fab” is a weakly pivotal act (since I think AI is hardware-limited and he thinks it is awaiting a clever algorithm).
Note that the difficulty in “nuke every semiconductor fab” is in “acquire the nukes and use them”, not in “googling the address of semiconductor fabs”. It seems to me like nuclear nonproliferation is one of the few things that actually has international collaboration with teeth, such that doing this on your own is extremely challenging, and convincing institutions that already have nuclear weapons to use them on semiconductor fabs also seems extremely challenging. [And if you could convince them to do that, can’t you convince them to smash the fabs with hammers, or detain the people with relevant experience on some beautiful tropical island instead of murdering them and thousands of innocent bystanders?]
Note that the difficulty in “nuke every semiconductor fab” is in “acquire the nukes and use them”, not in “googling the address of semiconductor fabs”. It seems to me like nuclear nonproliferation is one of the few things that actually has international collaboration with teeth, such that doing this on your own is extremely challenging, and convincing institutions that already have nuclear weapons to use them on semiconductor fabs also seems extremely challenging. [And if you could convince them to do that, can’t you convince them to smash the fabs with hammers, or detain the people with relevant experience on some beautiful tropical island instead of murdering them and thousands of innocent bystanders?]
I think there might be a terminology mistake here—pivotal acts are actions that will make a large positive difference a billion years later.