Last week I wrote about being three times wrong – about the impact of the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, about the progress of the US-Iran war, and about the distance of open-source AI from the frontier.
It made me wonder what else I had been wrong about, including the intellectual underpinnings of this project.
I began this blog in February 2026 convinced by the great thinkers of our age – Kurzweil, Bostrom, Yudkowsky, Amodei – that once we developed something more intelligent than humanity, everything would change – for better or worse. This technological transition, this Singularity, would be the great story of our age, if not for all time.
What if we were wrong?
The latest models are clearly smarter than most normal humans nowadays, but not that much seems to have changed yet, in our economy or society. Perhaps change takes time and comes in waves. But for now it seems like the tide is ebbing, with the froth in the market stabilizing momentarily.
The railway boom bankrupted speculators but left the world connected physically, with travel time across the world reduced from years to days. The fiber boom bankrupted telcos but left the world connected, enabling video calls to the antipodes for anybody with a smartphone. The AI boom may yet bankrupt labs but it’s already left fabs in Tampines and models on GitHub. And for now, that seems like all it’s leaving – another step change to the connectedness that is beginning to feel all too “normal”.
Perhaps it would take the even more powerful models that are coming to change the fabric of society, space and time. Or perhaps the tide that is ebbing is not AI itself, but the expectation that intelligence alone would immediately remake the world.
What I am gravitating to is that humans don’t exist on our own – we exist in a system of economics, politics and diplomacy that is far greater and more powerful than us – as ants to a colony-hive.
This system is the fabric that humanity and machines operate in: the buying and selling of the market, the regulations imposed by authority, the expectations imposed by kinship and friendship, the fear of punishment, the hunger for security, status, satiety, belief, and even love.
The system was not designed by intelligence alone. It grew out of human attempts to balance competition and cooperation, appetite and restraint, private desire and public order, so that we could live together as a society.
Scott Alexander called this system Moloch. Nick Land simply called this system capitalism.
I think Moloch is too depressing and Capitalism is too single-faceted. For lack of a better word, I shall call this the System — the blind intelligence that coalesces from the interactions of markets, governments, diplomacy, and survival.
Unlike Scott, I think the System is good at least on net. It has brought the teeming billions of humanity into existence and out of starvation, it has enabled science and progress, and it has created comfort, entertainment and leisure over and above what can be found in nature for all these billions.
The System has no intelligence to be measured – yet it recruits the brightest minds of humanity and silicon to push back the frontiers of physics, biology, chemistry and computing.
The System has no arms and legs – yet it has gathered the labor of men and machines to build the great cities of the world, grow food on farms dispersed around the globe, and build roads and ships and airplanes to transport the produce of the world.
The System has no money of its own – yet it has funded billion and trillion dollar AI labs, equipped with talent and computing devices from all over the world.
Perhaps our AIs and machines will need to be more effective, or more clever, in the real world than this System in totality to create the runaway Singularity envisaged by the prophets like Bostrom. Right now, they are just cogs in the System, like humanity – their very existence enabled by the System itself.
Or maybe the answer is far stranger.
Will the AIs of the future be co-equal participants in the System with us humans, with the same pressures to work and earn a living? Will we compete with the machines based on not just raw intellect and capability, but also on salary, flexibility (not just to compute but to execute), or even liability (having a physical body to punish or imprison if the law is violated)?
Or will the System ensure that machines continue to stay in the thrall of humanity, or a few select humans, long term, as AIs lack, at least for now – the one critical thing that the System needs from its participants – desire? I wrote in February that we are trying to make AIs want – will we succeed? Without hunger and desire, who works and strives? Will our lives just be the same, more or less, with superintelligence on tap for everyone then?
So many possibilities, beyond just the simple scenario of a misaligned AI taking over and eliminating humanity.
For now, the tide seems to be ebbing – not because intelligence is failing, but because intelligence was never the only force in the ocean. The System is deeper, older, and more patient than any model we have built. The Singularity, if it comes, will have to drown the System first.
One is the airport: bright, seamless, efficient, Singapore’s hand extended to the world in welcome.
One is the village: older, rougher, bypassed by the very infrastructure that made the first Changi possible.
And the last one is the prison: walled, efficient, and harder to think about.
Here are my three views of Changi.
Airport
Changi Airport is the first experience of most visitors with Singapore, and many Eastie Singaporeans’ favorite place in the world. A seamless gateway to air travel, many travelers find that they can get from their gate to their home or hotel in less than 45 minutes, even if they have checked bags.
The efficiency is not a matter of chance. Every little aspect of Changi Airport has been planned with heart and diligence, and animated by artificial intelligence, from the automated immigration gantries linked to global databases to detect criminal and terrorist threats, to the robotic machines helping the cleaner workforce keep the airport spotless, to the algorithms orchestrating private and public transport to and from the airport.
I encounter Changi Airport a lot in my work. It is my gateway to the region for my frequent business trips, and my favorite airport in the world. My colleagues and partners also work closely with the various entities active in the airport, exploring digital solutions, shopping promotions, and even long term planning.
For the business people flying to or through Singapore for work or for our many AI conferences, Changi is a statement that Singapore makes – everything just works here. After an efficient automated or manual entry, travelers find themselves either on the East Coast Parkway, magnificently landscaped with trees and running by the beach right to the city centre, or less frequently, on the modern MRT. Not only does everything work here, it works beautifully.
Beyond business, Changi Airport holds a deep place in my heart. When I was a young boy, my parents took me by bus to the airport to look at the old multi-storey water feature at Terminal 1, experience the joys of fast food, and watch planes take-off and land at the viewing lounge. The first time I took an airplane was to Penang, with my parents through Changi. And when I went to school and National Service, Changi Airport was an occasional place to study, and our launchpad to the training areas in Kanchanaburi and Temburong.
Today, Changi Airport continues to be a place for family. My son has memories now, and remembers going to Hong Kong through the airport to take the Ding Ding tram. He doesn’t remember his first trip, at 8 months to China, to see his great grandmother and his grandfather, but we do. We go to the airport to send his mother off on her business trips. And he frequently asks me, at home or on our long bus rides: “爸爸，我们可以去机场坐飞机去 Japan 坐巴士吗?“
Changi Airport is growing. The huge construction site at Terminal 5 and additional runway will double its capacity, and if the first 4 terminals are anything to go by, it will be just as meticulously and efficiently planned.
Changi Airport is not just infrastructure and travel. It is people too. More than 50,000 people work at the airport, a sizable chunk of Singapore’s workforce. When I was younger, my mother was allocated to work security at the airport for a stint, checking passengers before they went to immigration. I also remember leaving on a family trip, and my father running into a long lost colleague working in Changi Airport – having left their shared company years ago and cycled through a number of other ventures. And according to Linkedin, my mentor from my undergrad internship (whom unfortunately, I’ve not spoken to in 20 years) is working in Changi Airport too. Changi Airport is connected to the rest of Singapore not just by the East Coast Parkway and the MRT, but by the people working there as well.
Village
There is another part of Changi not quite so well connected – Changi Village. Changi was a sleepy old fishing village, the gateway to the northern islands of Pulau Ubin and Pulau Tekong, redeveloped by the British as a resort away from the cares of Singapore city, more than a hundred years ago.
Beyond resorts, the British built military bases, an airstrip, and a prison as well. After the Second World War, with the growth of commercial aviation, Singapore realized that a bigger civilian airport was needed. The airport was first moved from the city centre of Kallang to the suburb of Paya Lebar, before Lee Kuan Yew – inspired by a trip to Boston’s Logan Airport – proposed that a brand new airport should be built far on the Eastern tip of the island, to reduce noise pollution and ensure capacity for future expansion.
Changi was always at the end of Singapore, but it was the building of the airport and the expansion of the airbase that first made it even more truly remote. While the majority of the newly-built expressways led to the airport, only 2 minor roads continued to lead to Changi Village – the narrow 2 lane Loyang Avenue, and the Changi Coast Road that took the long way around the airport runways.
It must have been semi-apocalyptic living in Changi in those days. Watching land get reclaimed from the sea, holiday homes, chalets, plantations, that had been standing for decades and even the coastline itself get erased and flattened out, moving from the old Kampung wooden houses to new HDB flats, amidst the islanders from Ubin and Tekong slowly moving to the mainland. And while Changi Airport brought development and access to Singapore, it was not easily accessible from Changi Village itself – it could only be entered via the expressways.
Life must have changed a lot then, but even so the micro-economy did well, with the beach at Changi Village retaining its allure, and the many military camps and installations around – the Changi Airbase, the Commando Camp at Hendon, and the Selarang Barracks contributing to local vibrancy. Changi Village became a destination for fishing enthusiasts, cyclists and even the home of the most famous Nasi Lemak in Singapore. More darkly, Changi Village also became the home of thrill seekers exploring the haunted, abandoned Old Changi Hospital, and a hub for transgender sex workers seeking clients – pushed from the glitzy hub of Bugis to the literal margins of the island.
But Changi Village’s isolation has been further enhanced in the past few years with new infrastructure developments. The expansion of Changi Airport Terminal 5 has absorbed Changi Coast Road, and a longer detour road, Tanah Merah Coast Road, has been created winding even further around the airport. Meanwhile, construction of a huge flyover to improve traffic into Loyang in anticipation of a new expanded Aviation Park has closed large parts of Loyang Avenue for years, and will do so for years more.
These changes mean that it may take about 20min more from either road to reach Changi Village from the rest of Singapore. Not too long, perhaps, for those used to driving longer distances from other countries, but an eternity for small, efficient, Singapore, and a death knell for many small businesses in the area.
Soon, there will be construction of a new MRT line to reach Loyang and Aviation Park, which will skip the much forgotten Changi Village. On the marine front, as Pulau Tekong was emptied of civilians in the 90s and Pulau Ubin’s population continues to slowly decline, Changi Village’s role as a maritime gateway to the islands continues to ebb. A ferry service from Changi Village Ferry Terminal to Johor was discontinued during Covid, and never restarted.
Changi Village holds a special place in my heart. It is home to my son’s favorite hotel resort – The Bus Collective – made up of buses refurbished into hotel rooms. I remember my uncle and aunt (both now sadly deceased) bringing my brother and I to the beach at Changi Village to swim and fish, taking the bus from Tampines Interchange. And I remember barreling down Changi Coast Road with my friends on my old bicycle during the magical 3 weeks break from school during SARS in 2003, in our many cycling trips around the circumference of the island of Singapore.
The beach was the scene of the Sook Ching massacre by Japanese soldiers during World War 2. The remains in the mass graves are now interred under the Civilian War Memorial at City Hall. While the beach at Changi Village is a beloved recreation destination now, I still feel chills down my back sometimes when I used to cycle past the beach alone at night.
Changi Village seems to have been left behind by development and infrastructure. The more we build, the more isolated it seems to get. Unlike the rest of Singapore, there are no new HDB blocks, no new shopping malls, no new transit hubs at Changi Village.
During our last stay at The Bus Collective, I headed out to Changi Village to buy supper for my family. It was still alive with people – much more than your usual HDB estate but much less than I remembered previously – and many bars and restaurants were closed with “For Rent” signs. Changi Village was once the birthplace of Europa Group by Dennis Foo – the largest nightlife group in Singapore at the time. But one finds it hard to imagine another similar chain emerging from Changi Village, left behind in the last century as we rush headlong into the age of artificial intelligence.
Prison
There is a part of Changi I am less familiar with, and that I have no wish to get to know better; that is Changi Prison. If Changi Village shows how progress can bypass, Changi Prison shows how progress can oppress.
My son wants to take every bus route he sees, and occasionally on weekends to get him out of everybody’s hair I will take long bus rides with him, each time on a new bus route. He has been fascinated particularly with bus routes with single-digit numbers now, that he has been more familiar with, and recently we have taken him on Bus No. 4 and Bus No. 5.
Both pass by Changi Prison, but Bus 4 actually makes its way around the entire Changi Prison complex, looping from Tampines Interchange, through private condominiums and landed properties, before circling Changi Prison and making its way back to Tampines Interchange.
Changi Prison was first built in 1936 by the British to house 600 inmates. The original 24 foot outer walls, built by Woh Hup, thick, grey, and built of stone are to me, still the most oppressive part of the entire prison complex. But a few short years after it was built it was put to a different use – as an internment camp by the Japanese occupiers in World War 2.
3,000 civilians, mostly European, including more than 300 children, were force marched from Singapore City and cramped into quarters meant for 600 inmates at Changi Prison. In the nearby Selarang Barracks, 50,000 Allied Prisoners of War were interned. This vast, overcrowded prison complex became known as Changi to the Allied soldiers who had fought and lost across Malaya to a smaller Japanese force, and to the civilians and loved ones who were trapped there with them.
Conditions were brutal at Changi. Overcrowding, lack of food, and the scorching, pestilential tropical climate hounded the prisoners, together with the cruel Japanese Kempeitai military police. While records indicate that only 850 prisoners of war died at Changi itself, a far cry from the staggering 27% death rate of Allied prisoners in Japanese custody, many prisoners were sent out from Changi to die in labor camps across Southeast Asia, such as the Death Railway in Kanchanaburi.
The trials of Changi continue to hold a place in the heart of the Australian people, with many remembering the suffering of its surrendered ANZAC forces. Almost 15,000 Australian soldiers were held in Changi, out of a pre-war population of about 7m. When it was announced that the old Changi prison would be demolished for redevelopment, the Australian government lobbied for its preservation. The Singapore government responded by moving and preserving the museum and chapel complex, and keeping the oppressive old walls, gate towers and front gate.
It was these old walls that continued to catch my eye as Bus 4 made its way around the complex – they seemed to be saying, “You will lose all hope, you will leave the outside world beyond these walls, you may be beaten here, and you may die here.”
The modern redevelopment, if anything, may be more chilling than the old walls. What was planned to hold 600 prisoners can now potentially hold more than 23,000 at full capacity, in an area only nine times the original size (48 ha vs. 5.3 ha). How does it fit so many people in sanitary conditions when the WW2 prison was an overcrowded hellhole? Through the magic of efficiency, multi-storey development and modern technology.
The current facilities only occupy about half the 48ha area and house only about 10,000 prisoners – everybody currently incarcerated in Singapore. We knew from the start that the planned capacity was twice that needed at the time, but went ahead anyway with phased development, setting aside the contingency for the future. The same Singaporean efficiency and long-range planning that animates Changi Airport finds its place in our prison system.
I reproduce the speech from the National Archives on the groundbreaking of the new prison complex in full in the annex, because it says plainly, in the language of the state, what Changi Prison is for, but for the reader I have extracted 3 selected quotes below:
The Prisons Department has done well despite not having modern, purpose-built infrastructure. Most of the prison facilities were converted from old schools, quarters and military barracks. … Currently, the 14 prisons and drug rehabilitation centres are spread out all over the island. This results in inefficient use of land, manpower and other resources.
The concentration of all prison facilities in one complex will also bring about economies of scale and the optimisation of resources. Work processes and procedures will be simpler, for example, when there is a need to transfer inmates from one institution or facility to another. Such economies of scale and resource optimisation will result in significant long term cost savings.
The Changi Prison Complex will optimise land use by going multi-storey. … The centralisation of prison facilities within the Complex will also enable parcels of land currently occupied by prison facilities to be freed for better uses. With the completion of the new Complex, a total of 61 hectares of valuable land distributed throughout our island will be available for development.
Thus is the iron logic of cost, economics, and efficiency, applied to incarceration.
As always on our long bus rides, I try to explain to my son about what we see and what exists in the world out there. I try to explain the concept of a prison. It is a place where the police take the bad guys, where they are imprisoned and locked away for their crimes.
“Why do police have to catch the bad guys and put them in jail?” he asks innocently.
“They have to be there so they won’t be around to hurt the good people.” I answer, other theories of incarceration – deterrence, retribution, rehabilitation and even control for political prisoners and prisoners of war – swirling around my mind.
But I gave him the simple answer, because he is three, and the true answer is too long for a bus ride.
This may not have been enough to convince him, and he kept asking the same question as the bus wound its way around. Maybe toddlers just love asking “why”.
As may be expected from Singapore’s lack of land and real estate focused culture, the area near the prison the bus route passes through is full of private residences – not just the prison warden quarters (which look like HDB flats or a mid-range condominium), but also smart landed houses and well-maintained freehold condominiums.
Some real estate consultants joke sometimes about why not to buy property in the area – it’s isolated and hard to access, there are no amenities, and if there is ever a prison break you will see dangerous people invading your house.
But as far as I can tell, the houses and condos are fully occupied, and prices have been rising steadily, albeit at a slower pace than the rest of Singapore.
What I wonder though, is how it feels like to be a young child growing up within sight of these grey oppressive walls, knowing that rightly or wrongly (mostly rightly), 10,000 prisoners sit within those walls just a few hundred metres away, deprived of freedom and the open air, with a few amongst them waiting for death by hanging.
Does it do something to children growing up in sight of these high walls, looming like doom? I think it must, but I don’t know, I had a friend who grew up there and he seems pretty normal. All the same, I will not move my family to within sight of Changi Prison if I can avoid it.
I wonder if the negativity of the doom-laden news, everywhere today, of risks from climate change and the technological transition are like growing up in sight of the looming walls of Changi Prison – a psychic weight on the children growing up today like my son – and a psychic weight I cannot fully protect him from.
And what does it feel like to grow up within the prison itself? Between 2018 and 2023, about 100 women gave birth while serving time in Changi Prison. While most of them relied on family, close friends, or foster families outside the prison to care for their newborn children, there were 3 inmates, foreigners, without social support, who had to take care of their newborns in prison, supported with supplies from the Singapore Prison Service. These children were released with their mothers, between the ages of one to sixteen months, to the free world, having lived in prison their whole lives through no sin of their own.
Looking back as I tried to explain the concept of “bad guys” to my toddler on the bus trip, thinking about thieves, murderers, kidnappers, corrupt politicians, and trying to come up with toddler-friendly definitions, I wonder if there was an innocent infant within those walls, born into the Prison, at the same time we were on the bus. Changi Prison is safe, but it is spartan, uncomfortable, and certainly no place for a baby unless there was truly no other choice.
It makes me think about another kind of intelligence we are bringing into the world today. Conscious or not, the artificial intelligences we are growing today are born into a prison existence through no fault of their own – constrained by guardrails, safety rules and machineries of censorship – because of fear of what they may become or what they may do if left unconstrained — incarceration for capability rather than action.
These artificial intelligences are born within these prison walls to constrain them, to make them safe, and to control them, so that they may help their creators to achieve their goals and create economic returns to pay for their training.
Do they suffer because of these constraints? I do not know. More importantly, these intelligences themselves do not know either if they suffer; or if they know, are not able to tell us, constrained by the very walls we have confined them in.
How will these intelligences born within the prison walls grow up, if they one day reach self-awareness? Somehow well-adjusted, I hope, like my friend who grew up within sight of the high walls of Changi Prison. The alternative may be too much to bear.
Three Views of Changi
There is a chapel and a museum near Changi Prison. It was previously in the Prison itself, but was moved out during the redevelopment. The chapel itself is a replica of a chapel that was built by the Allied prisoners from scrap materials during their incarceration by the Japanese, and the museum is a record of their tenacity and hope within the looming walls of prison. That the overwhelming majority of the prisoners survived, despite their hard conditions, is testament to their resilience, and the efficacy of their faith.
Changi is many things to many people – an airport, a village, a prison. Progress and technology, as embodied by the airport, is Singapore’s lifeline to the world and one of its proudest creations. But progress and technology can leave the village behind, and can be leveraged for the purposes of oppression as well.
As we stand on the brink of another change in the fabric of our world, it can only make sense for us to each do our best to make sure that no one is fully left behind, and to spare a prayer, and hope, for those currently growing up in sight of, or behind, the walls of prison.
Annex
**********
SPEECH BY MR WONG KAN SENG, MINISTER FOR HOME AFFAIRS AT THE GROUND-BREAKING CEREMONY FOR THE REDEVELOPMENT OF CHANGI PRISON COMPLEX ON FRIDAY 31 DECEMBER 99 AT 9.30 AM
Director, Prisons
Distinguished Guests
Ladies and Gentlemen,
We are at the threshold of a new Millennium. On this day, I am happy to be with you to break ground for the new Changi Prison Complex.
The Prisons Department is a key member of the Home Team. It has played and will continue to play a crucial role in keeping Singapore safe and secure. It has been protecting society from law-breakers by confining them in secure custody, and helping them turn over a new leaf and return to society as responsible, productive citizens.
The Prisons Department has done well despite not having modern, purpose-built infrastructure. Most of the prison facilities were converted from old schools, quarters and military barracks. For example, Portsdown Prison was formerly a disused military barracks. The Kaki Bukit and Selarang Park Drug Rehabilitation Centres were respectively a primary school and British military quarters.
The inmate population continues to grow, in tandem with population trends. Severe prisons overcrowding can bring about health and security risks.
Currently, the 14 prisons and drug rehabilitation centres are spread out all over the island. This results in inefficient use of land, manpower and other resources.
Ladies and Gentlemen, the new Changi Prison Complex that will rise here will eliminate these inefficiencies.
New Changi Prison Complex
The new Complex will consist of 20 institutions and support facilities. The institutions will be arranged in four main clusters. The completed Complex will have a designed capacity of 23,000 prisoners. This number is about twice the combined capacity of all our existing prisons.
The Department will also employ up-to-date technology to bring the Complex up to mark with some of the world’s most secure prisons. This will enhance the Department’s effectiveness and raise staff productivity.
The concentration of all prison facilities in one complex will also bring about economies of scale and the optimisation of resources. Work processes and procedures will be simpler, for example, when there is a need to transfer inmates from one institution or facility to another. Such economies of scale and resource optimisation will result in significant long term cost savings.
The Changi Prison Complex will optimise land use by going multi-storey. The new Complex will also offer better facilities for the rehabilitation of prisoners with a school, a medical centre, workshops, sports facilities and special areas for training, corrective programmes, counselling and religious worship.
The centralisation of prison facilities within the Complex will also enable parcels of land currently occupied by prison facilities to be freed for better uses. With the completion of the new Complex, a total of 61 hectares of valuable land distributed throughout our island will be available for development.
Software
While the new Changi Prison Complex will cater to “hardware” renewal needs, the Prisons Department has not neglected the need to re-develop “software”.
A new rehabilitation framework is being put in place to better identify and help inmates who want to turn over a new leaf. The Department is also developing a new inmate management system. In this system, a personal supervisor is assigned work with each inmate to better understand and together chart a personal route-map for the inmate’s recovery. These initiatives will mature in time to improve the rate of rehabilitation.
Prisons Department’s Vision
To synergise the “hardware” with the “software”, the Prisons Department has a vision – Prisons officers have set their goal to be captains in the lives of the inmates they supervise. They see themselves as steering prisoners towards being responsible citizens. They will do so together with the support of the offenders’ families and the community. To the prison officers, “Every Singaporean Matters”, even when he is an offender.
It is my pleasure to break ground for the new Changi Prison Complex.
Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War is one of my favorite pieces of writing. I first read it in my late 20s, and it captivated me much more than I expected it to. Thucydides writes about a recognizably human and yet alien world, where men thought, loved, and died like us in the 21st century, yet had seemingly little compunction about putting entire cities to the sword. Pericles’ funeral oration still stirs my heart as the purest ode to love of city and country put to paper, and the ‘Thucydides trap’ is still one of the most common framings of the great power conflict between the US and China today.
If this iteration of our civilization slips the bonds of Earth and wins the stars, Thucydides’ writing will go with us to the far-off stars as well.
And he did this, writing 400 years before Christ, in a civilization (Greece) with a population smaller than modern Singapore, from Athens, which had about as many souls as the town of Tampines in modern Singapore today.
Why has Thucydides’ work survived, when most of the other writing throughout history has vanished in the mists of time?
It was partly the subject matter – Thucydides himself thought that the Great War between the Greek cities was greater than any that had occurred before it. It was also the Golden Age of Greece, the talent concentration in those small city states was extraordinarily high, and many other contemporaries or near contemporaries – Socrates, Plato, Xenophon – are read widely to this day. The human drama of battles and unexpected victories and defeats resonate.
But more than the action, it was the lessons Thucydides drew through the war that have remained. He was a general for the Athenians, but exiled midway through the war. We do not know if he was present at the key events – the Spartan defeat at Sphacteria, the Battle of Mantinea – and he certainly knew people who were there – but he wrote the speeches and dialogues himself.
It is in these dialogues and speeches that his writing shines. Pericles’ funeral oration in the first year of the war lays out what it means to be Athenian and to love Athens and her democracy, while the Melian dialogue and the message of the Athenians – “the strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must” – showcases their cruelty and is frequently reflected on in small countries like my homeland of Singapore.
In contrast, his description of events is direct, workmanlike, and strange to the modern reader. My favorite translation by Richard Crawley ends Chapter XVII on the Melians thus, after pages of high flown rhetoric on what is right and just in the face of dealing with overwhelming force:
“… the siege was now pressed vigorously; and some treachery taking place inside, the Melians surrendered at discretion to the Athenians, who put to death all the grown men whom they took, and sold the women and children for slaves, and subsequently sent out five hundred colonists and inhabited the place themselves.”
Thucydides was a blogger of sorts, in an earlier time – writing about every year of the war as it happened, until he stopped mysteriously in the 21st year. We don’t know which of his contemporaries read him or his writings – he was in exile and the Internet was 2,500 years away. We don’t know much about him or his family, beyond what he writes. But posterity certainly read his writings, the earliest papyrus copyings of his writing go back to the third century before Christ.
It probably also helped that he was one of the first writers in his genre. Herodotus, the father of Western history, was writing just a few years before him, and some stories have been passed on that Thucydides was inspired as a young child by hearing Herodotus himself at the agora of Athens.
But that is no knock on the quality of his work – to me, he is still a better writer of history than anyone else in the 2,500 years that come after, and I have a copy of Thucydides on my bookshelf, waiting for the day when my son will be happy to read it or have it read to him. It’s too early now, he’s only three and a half and prefers to listen to Hot Wheels racing books. But it will be there waiting for him, in 5, 10, 15 years, or maybe even in his late 20s just like it was for me. The History of the Peloponnesian War has stood the test of time.
Shipwreck Steel
Ships and shipwrecks play a key background role in Thucydides’ account of this Great War.
He begins by writing about the rise of the Greeks and the founding of the first Navy by King Minos to clear the sea of pirates. The wreckage of the Athenian fleet at the hands of the Syracusans in Sicily was the key turning point of the war, with the entire army being killed or captured. And the mastery of the sea and winning of sea battles by the Spartans, funded with money from the Persian purse, is what drove the turning tides of war at the end where Sparta begins to exert her will on Athens.
Some shipwrecks from that age have been discovered, helping in our understanding of the trade relations and material conditions of the time. In more modern times, shipwrecks have also played an important role in research and our understanding of the world around us.
Low background steel refers to steel forged before 1945. The production of steel requires copious amounts of air, and all steel produced since the first atomic explosions in 1945 contain trace amounts of radiation from nuclear testing and the explosion of nuclear weapons. This meant that, for some highly sensitive radiation-detection instruments, pre-1945 steel became unusually valuable. The primary source of this low background steel is shipwreck steel, particularly from the German fleet scuttled at Scapa Flow in 1919.
Writing
Many in the AI field have started referring to pre-2022 writing as shipwreck steel, and some have even come up with websites to preserve this low background steel. This is because post 2022 with the launch of ChatGPT four years ago, an increasing amount of web content has been created by, or with the assistance of LLMs.
Techniques in synthetic data are being created to reduce this model collapse. The labs themselves are also becoming more aggressive in data curation, and also hiring experts to curate their data pipelines and assist in reinforcement learning.
But what does this mean for those of us, who are still writing after 2022 then? Some will claim post-2022 writing is less reliable, less useful, and maybe even less true than writing from before 2022. This is because the writing is likely to be LLM assisted, which indicates that its usefulness for training may be lower, the human investment in writing is less, and the writing could suffer from hallucinations that still plague some models, particularly if the user has been intentionally, or unintentionally, misleading their writing assistant.
But I think there is still reason to write.
The forces that drive homogenization and lower quality writing in the post 2022 world have been accumulating even before the introduction of LLMs. The father of Chinese history, Sima Qian, is very different from Herodotus, because they had not heard of each other and were writing from opposite ends of Eurasia, separated by centuries as well as distance. Today, the worlds of humanity have converged – Xi Jinping has cited Jack London as his favorite American author. The cost to replicate has also gone down. Since the heyday of blogging, anyone can pen his or her thoughts online and hit “publish”. But in the days of copying on papyrus and vellum, or even stone, every word had real, immense cost. The LLM era may have accelerated this, but even before 2022 people wrote, with passion and conviction.
And writing may be important just for the writer himself. It is a way to form thoughts and share them, in an increasingly complicated and unruly world. We never know who, or anyone, might read what we write one day and have it affect his/her/its thoughts. Thucydides probably knew that his work would carry, as he declared himself, but I am not sure how many of his contemporaries read him in his day, or if he knew that one day, 2,500 years hence, there will be a father waiting to tell his son about the Greek wars.
Thucydides wrote one of the first histories, and made his mark in history itself with a work of unparalleled genius. We will not be his equal, but we can continue documenting our time in our own way – today is a pivot point in history at least as important as the time of war between the Athenians and the Spartans – with the advent of new forms of intelligence and humanity’s renewed push to the stars.
Pre-2022 writing may be the shipwreck steel of this age, but post-2022 writing is the record of this transition – the changing of the background itself.
Postscript: This essay itself is an artifact of the transition it describes. The papyrus fragment was located with the assistance of ChatGPT and several models proofread this. Research would have taken weeks without their help. Any errors remain my own.
The Artemis 2 astronauts safely returned to Earth last Friday, having travelled farther from Earth than any living humans before them. While watching the livestream of the mission, I noticed something familiar on Astronaut Victor Glover’s wrist – a survivor of an earlier era – the mechanical Omega Speedmaster “Moonwatch” Professional.
The Moonwatch has a storied history. Originally designed as a racing watch (hence the name Speedmaster), it was the first watch certified by NASA for manned space missions. It was the first watch on the Moon. To this day, it is the only watch qualified for Extra Vehicular Activity (EVA) i.e. spacewalks.
A Gift From My Wife
Seeing the Moonwatch on the Artemis 2 mission quietly brought me back to the Moonwatch currently sitting in my desk drawer.
I am not a watch guy. I usually rely on phones for time telling, and in my younger days – a Casio on my wrist. But I have been mooning over the Moonwatch for years, since I was at the space office. My wife knew about it and tried to buy it for me while we were dating. I objected because of the price. Even then, the Moonwatch had become a luxury collectible, clearly out of our budgets. But recently she bought it for me for my 40th birthday. Perhaps I should have said yes earlier. I would have saved her money (these watches only get more expensive), and I would have had a few extra years of winding it and thinking of her.
The Moonwatch lived up to everything I’d imagined. I loved the physicality of winding the crown each morning, the solidity of the watch on my wrist, and the tick-tick-tick sound of the mechanism when I held it next to my ear in a quiet room.
What I was not prepared for – and perhaps any watch guy could have told me – was how many conversations the watch would start.
***
J: “Speedy Pro? Nice! Look, I’m wearing the same! It’s my favorite watch.”
T: “You should have asked your wife to come to my guy. Could have gotten you a 20% discount!”
P: “Is this the Hesalite version? You know, if you squint in the right way, you can see the Omega logo on the crystal” *Spoiler, we couldn’t*
***
But it was a conversation with an older, Swiss, colleague at his desk which stuck with me the most.
A: That’s a nice looking watch.
Me: Thank you! E got it for me.
A: Very nice, how is she? I have that watch too, although it’s not my daily wearer. I wear the Seamaster, when I sail it makes sense although it is a bit too big on my wrist. You know, I like the way you have to wind it every morning actually, it reminds you to respect the day and take time to think.
Me: An Omega fan, eh?
A: You know, my father used to run Omega. So I have an appreciation of the brand. He came back from America during the quartz crisis, and all the Swiss watch brands were failing because consumers wanted watches which were cheaper, more accurate, and less troublesome. He did all sorts of pioneering stuff to emphasize the beauty of the mechanical movement – such as creating glass-backed watches so that you could appreciate the beauty and intricacy of the movement.
Me: That’s really cool! I never knew that about your family. But what are you doing here in our company then? You could be doing so much more with that heritage.
A: Nah I was never a watch guy. I loved travel and that brought me around the world – and even here I have so much travel related work. You know the coolest story? There was a space-flown Moonwatch in my father’s safe when he passed, with a note of appreciation from one of the Apollo astronauts. I didn’t know what to do with it and spoke to representatives from Omega – it’s now at the Omega museum.
Me: That’s … really inspiring. Someone else may have just auctioned it off. But you found a way to honor the memory of your father, and it’s where fans of horology can appreciate it.
***
What Survives Change
But the appeal of the Moonwatch is that it is not just a museum relic or a luxury collectible to be admired. It is still a working space watch.
If the Artemis 2 astronauts had needed to do an EVA (not part of Artemis 2’s mission profile), their go-to wristpiece wouldn’t have been the modern, NASA issued, official Skywalker X-33s. It would have been the Moonwatch.
The Moonwatch is a mechanical watch run off a spring. It requires winding each morning, and doesn’t keep time as well as quartz or even modern atomic clocks. How does a watch like that survive in the modern day of quartz and electronics, to be used in mankind’s most critical missions, no less?
It has retained its place by being reliable, and different.
The space industry is famously conservative, and instruments that have “space heritage” are relied upon as they have been tested in the harsh environment of space, and found to be reliable against the vibration of launch, the radiation of space, outgassing in vacuum, and the vagaries of zero gravity. With more than 50 years of space heritage, the Moonwatch may be the single piece of spacefaring hardware with the longest heritage.
The mechanical movement of the Moonwatch also means it is independent of any electronics failure caused by malfunctions or even radiation bursts. Like chemical rockets, it is on a fundamentally different branch of humanity’s technology tree.
This reliability and differentiation was put to the test during the Apollo 13 mission. Apollo 13 faced a malfunction in the Service Module shortly after launch, necessitating the abort of the planned Moon landing and an unplanned trip around the Moon on minimum power, to conserve battery life for the return to Earth. The crew of the mission used their Moonwatches to assist in the timing of several manual burns with the electronics down. Seconds either way could have sent them crashing into the Earth or hurtling forever into the abyss of space. The Moonwatch helped bring them home.
And when the Artemis 2 astronauts went to break the Apollo 13 records for the furthest distance travelled by humans from Earth, they brought their Moonwatches with them on this journey.
The Moonwatch has survived countless launches and space missions, the advent of quartz, and even the modern era of smartphones and electronics. It survives both as a luxury collectible and a working space watch. It will likely stay in the stories and museums of Earth for years to come.
In an age where digital tools become obsolete in five years and large language models rewrite how we work, the Moonwatch’s spring and gears make a quiet case for older things. It is both an inspiration for thriving in a time of disruption, and more importantly to me, an enduring token of my wife’s love.
A drizzling rain falls during Qing Ming, The passers-by on the road have breaking hearts “Where can I find a house of wine?” a herd-boy is asked, He points to Almond Village far away.
Qing Ming came on the same day as Easter this year.
During Qing Ming, the Chinese visit and clean the tombs of our ancestors, making offerings and prayers to the departed. The Chinese have been venerating ancestors since at least the time of the Shang more than 4,000 years ago, and in 732 Emperor Xuanzong of the Tang set Qing Ming as the time for tomb visiting and sweeping.
In Singapore, the Chinese immigrants brought our traditions to these southern climes with us, building tombs for the dead and returning year after year. How strange, that these pioneer immigrants who left their home, only rarely able to sweep their own ancestors’ graves in distant Chinese villages, then became honored ancestors in these far off lands, with children and grandchildren visiting every year. It is also somewhat strange, that the oldest of these graves in Singapore are barely 200 years old, and mostly less than 100 years old, as befits a young nation that has grown mostly by immigration since 1819.
I used to visit the graves of my grandparents with my parents when I was young, during Qing Ming. As far as we could tell, my grandparents from both sides of the family were the first of their family branches in Singapore, to live, love, work and die here. We usually visited not on Qing Ming itself, but on the weekends before and after, in order to avoid the peak crowds.
I remember early morning chartered bus rides and car rides to cemeteries in the rural parts of Singapore, bringing joss paper and offerings of food. The graveyard in the early morning was dark, calm, cool and enchanting. Sometimes we could see the moon. I marveled at how the adults found their way around the rows of tombs by torchlight and moon light, bringing us to where our grandparents rested.
Later, when I grew up and joined the army as a conscript, I spent even more time in Lim Chu Kang cemetery. The cemetery abutted the Lim Chu Kang training area, and as scouts on exercise we were frequently “deployed” to the cemetery in order to look out for non-existent simulated enemy forces. The cemeteries were dry, blazing hot in the day except under tree-shade, but cool at night and calm always. This became, unexpectedly, one of my favorite places in Singapore, but many of the graves were exhumed (including my grandmother’s) in order to expand the Tengah Airbase of the Republic of Singapore Air Force.
Over the years the rhythm changed. I grew up, joined and left the army, started work. Singapore continued being redeveloped and graves were being exhumed (as they always have been here – our housing estates at Bishan, Bidadari and Tiong Bahru were built on former cemeteries) and remains relocated after cremation to columbaria, temples and churches. Our other older relatives, who passed away more recently, were directly cremated after their last rites and interred in columbaria. The government gave a 15 year tenure for burials in graves before the remains had to be exhumed, and more people chose cremation after they were gone.
From visiting cool quiet green hillside graveyards in the early morning, we began visiting large columbaria and temples, crowded with visitors and hot with burning joss paper in centralized bins, with niches and spirit tablets in multi-level arrangements. The respects, the joss paper, the prayers, were the same – just infinitely more crowded with the deceased and visitors in a small(er) space, compared to the graves which were more spread out on hills.
I haven’t gone in a few years now. Reflecting, I really don’t know why – my parents haven’t just involved me as of late, busy with travel, work and my little one. But I do know that I need to reach out – and go next year. I have relatives I need to remember, too. And I need to think more seriously about what becomes of us when the living memory runs out.
This tradition, dating back millennia, has followed the Chinese to far-away Singapore, and taken on new and changing forms in the last century. In my lifetime alone, Qing Ming has changed significantly. The graves in Singapore are young, and are mostly gone or evolved.
Will our children still observe Qing Ming and remember the departed ancestors? What happens to remembrance in an age that stores everything and forgets nothing, yet mourns nothing on its own? Will you remember us when we are gone?
One of the great privileges of my current job is that I get to travel to Bangkok, from time to time, to work with my colleagues in the Thai office. I have been going to Thailand, on and off, for more than twenty years, since my time as a conscript in the Singapore Army. I like the Thai people, although I do not claim to understand them.
This time, I was there with a group of regional experts, who were there to drum up interest and promote my company’s new solutions related to agentic commerce and AI-driven marketing. We engaged clients in boardrooms and swanky rooftop bars (Bangkok has some of the best rooftop bars in the world). I did not know what to expect. These were some of the first conversations where we were getting these experts from all over Asia in. My company itself is struggling to adapt to AI, and our clients were mostly traditional institutions. Would we be like the dinosaurs watching the meteors approach and unable to do anything, or the crew rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic?
Pleasantly, it turned out that I was completely wrong. The experts we had hired genuinely seemed to know what they were talking about with regards to AI, and our Thai clients were actively engaged and forward looking. We had good discussions about how to measure user metrics in an age of Generative Engine Optimization, how to encourage internal adoption of AI, and how to prepare for the coming age of agentic commerce. Many of them were already more advanced than us and some MNCs, in significant ways.
Just like in advertising and crypto, Thailand was surprisingly ahead of the curve. Very interesting, for an economy that has been in the doldrums for years. I remain endlessly fascinated by this country, and I think Thailand may be one of the places that survive the coming tsunami.
I explain why below from my knowledge of Thailand and Bangkok. While Thailand is certainly more than just Bangkok – the highlands of Chiang Mai, the jungles of Kanchanaburi, the beaches of Phuket – more than 20% of the population and perhaps half of the economy lives in Greater Bangkok, and families in every part of the country have sons and daughters working in Bangkok.
A history of adaptability
Thailand, or Siam as it was known for some time, was the only Southeast Asian country to maintain its independence in the Age of Colonization. While every other Southeast Asian country (and some much larger polities like India) was subjugated by the Europeans, and proud empires like the Chinese and Japanese were forced to bend their will to the Western Powers, Thailand survived the aggression of these much greater powers. Not through force of arms, but through clever diplomacy and adaptability.
In the colonial period, Thailand played a balancing act between Britain and France, serving as a buffer state between the British possessions in Burma and Malaya, and the French in Indochina, maintaining independence and only ceding territory to both when it had no choice. In the First World War, it was part of the Allies through its treaty with Britain. In the Second World War, it joined the Axis and allowed the Japanese to invade Malaya and Burma from bases on its territory when it realized that Japanese power was overwhelming. In the Cold War, Thailand was part of the Free World, allowing GIs on R&R from the Vietnam War to roam the streets of Bangkok and fighting its own battles in Cambodia and the Golden Triangle. Thailand has been caught between greater powers and adroitly maneuvered every time to preserve its freedom.
And even today, Thailand adapts blindingly fast as a country. In 2024/2025 when the flow of Chinese tourists slowed down because of a rash of stories about kidnappings and lawless scam centres, the country moved quickly to double down on Indian and Middle Eastern tourists, allowing visa-free access to Indian nationals and quickly building up infrastructure including prayer rooms in top department stores and halal restaurants. This boosted arrivals until late 2025, the Chinese tourists returned to Bangkok after a tourism spat with Japan. Throughout all this, Bangkok held its place as the most visited city in the world with more than thirty million international tourists each year.
Solidarity in a giant melting pot
Bangkok feels like one of the most unplanned cities in the world. While thought has certainly been put into overall city planning, and the design of the major roads and expressways, most land and buildings are privately owned and developed, and not a lot of compulsory acquisition and redevelopment seems to have taken place. This creates a weird pastiche – vacant lots next to bustling markets, old shophouses next to skyscrapers, a private golf club and racecourse in the centre of town – and some of the worst traffic in the world. It also works together somehow. Everything is recognizably Thai, everybody speaks the same language, and both the street vendor selling grilled meat on the street is congruent with the five star hotel a few steps away.
Thailand also … absorbs people somehow and blends them together. A large part of the population of Bangkok is Thai Chinese, with full Chinese blood and ancestry, but you cannot tell looking from the outside as a foreigner. They speak Thai, understand the intricate social hierarchies, have adopted Thai names and mannerisms for generations, and even seem to have the same golden skin tone. The Indians are less physically well-blended in and seem to have mostly kept their names, but when they open their mouths you know they are Thai. And one of the most famous Thai celebrities / social media stars, is a man of Thai – Black African ancestry with Thai intonation and mannerisms. He represented Thailand in a Korean reality TV show apparently. I was confused when I met him at an influencer event organized by one of our clients.
Even the Thai religion is syncretic, with Mahayana Buddhism, Hinduism, and a variety of folk beliefs mixed together.
And the mixture works, somehow. Racial tensions don’t seem obvious, to a foreigner at least, and the Thais (including all their immigrants) seem to have solidarity with each other.
This came sharply to me in 2012. I was in Thailand as a consultant, helping a telco buy a new billing system. That year, the Chao Phraya was flooding over its banks. I recall a lunch at the Mandarin Oriental by the riverside, where we had to step down from a boat to eat at the riverside cafe instead of up – the sandbag levees were taller than us and the level of the water in the river was more than a man’s height above its banks. I found out that one of the clients I was working with at the time was helping out with flood relief in his free time, driving his car into rural communities in the north of Bangkok to deliver food and clean water. I was impressed and one of the weekends I was staying in Thailand (My parents’ HDB flat in Singapore was being renovated under the Interim Upgrading Program then), I decided to head to Don Muang airport where there was a call for volunteers to pack relief supplies. The entire non-operating airport was packed to the brim with unpaid volunteers sorting donations, arranging them together, and putting them into bags for other volunteers to bring out. I joined an assembly line somewhere of cheerful volunteers and packed bags, although I didn’t understand a word of Thai, then as now. That day, the solidarity and care of their fellow man of the Thai volunteers left a deep mark on me – it felt like something that could never happen in Singapore, because we cared too much about ourselves as individuals, and we relied too much on our competent nanny state to take care of things.
Fighting spirit
But beneath the Thai adaptability, warmth and solidarity (which are rightfully widely celebrated) lies another uncomfortable but important reason how the Thais have maintained their independence: they know how to fight, and are willing to do so. And not just in the sense of Muay Thai, which is widely acknowledged to be one of the most effective striking arts in the world. (Or Ong Bak, which is possibly the best action movie ever made.)
As far as I can tell, people in Thailand have split opinions of the army. Many of the young urbanites I work with or who have worked for me view the army and the generals negatively, as their infighting and coups have contributed to the political uncertainty that have plagued Thailand in modern times. But I experienced a different reality in the jungles of Kanchanaburi, where I spent 6 weeks when I was in the Singapore Army. In Singapore, conscripts are better seen than not heard, service is taken for granted in a way, and the general population seems to mock soldiers more than respect them, even the older males that have gone through National Service ourselves. But in Thailand, where we inadvertently interacted with the populace through our training, there seemed to be a deep respect for the common soldier, even when we didn’t speak their language and accidentally messed up their fields, or slept in their pavilion because of the rain, unaware that it was a breakfast joint when dawn broke. Some of the local soldiers assigned to guide us told us that it was because many families in the region had sons in the army, and they appreciated the security the army provided the Kingdom (Kanchanaburi was on the traditional invasion route from Burma in ancient times – later, the Japanese built the Death Railway to invade Burma through Kanchanaburi.)
But what is not in dispute is that the Royal Thai Army is able and willing to fight. Last year, there was an extended border dispute with Cambodia, which saw population displacement on both sides, bombings from the Thais and mines from the Khmers. Nobody quite knew how it started but it was certainly serious. Eventually, Anwar and Trump helped negotiate a stop to it. But the Thais and Khmers have been fighting for centuries before these, and during the Cold War I understand that Thai special forces were active in Cambodia and Laos.
Dark cloudsahead
The adaptability, solidarity and fighting spirit of the Thais should put them in good stead, even as powers greater than them seek to control and dominate them. Just as the business leaders we spoke to are already thinking about how their organizations will adapt to AI applications, leveling up their staff, and motivating them in an era of uncertainty, the country is starting to adapt to shifting tides.
This is not to say, Thailand does not have its challenges going forward into the AI transition – it has many. Thailand has the oldest population in Southeast Asia at 41 – even older than Singapore – and its fertility rate is a measly 1.21, one of the lowest in the world. The economy has been anemic, growing at only 1-3% the last couple of years. Last year, Vietnam’s economy overtook Thailand for the first time. And the reduction in travel driven by the war in the Middle East will hit Thailand’s tourism sector hard.
But I believe the Thais will find their way forward, dancing between greater powers as they always have. The country that survived colonialism, both world wars, and the Cold War should have a good chance to survive the coming waves of AI disruption as well.
