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It used to be a time when showing up to the task at hand was somehow the guarantor of success. I lived most of my life in that time.
Well, not anymore.
For a few good decades, the compounding effect of just being there every single day for whatever you set out to do was enough to outweigh the opposing forces. The world was functioning in such a way that some sort of predictability was interwoven in its deepest fabric.
I was born 50+ years ago. The WWII survivors generation was still alive. Technology was in its infancy. Politics was still a matter of diplomacy, not a matter of sheer force. People were functioning on an even field — some more than others, that’s true, but the field was overwhelmingly even. In that context, persistence was the safest way to “make it.”
The world we live in today couldn’t be more different. AI is now running the show, and the mind-boggling thing is that this “AI” is literally a handful of companies. And their investors. Period. These are the new, hidden in plain sight, overlords.
If I should browse back through human history to find similar situations — ones in which the world was ruled by an incredibly small elite — the first matching moment is the Mongolian Empire. I can already hear the pushback: “Look at that guy, he’s delusional.” You have the right to believe that. I bet many of the people living during the Mongolian Empire had the same thoughts. Most of them ended up dead. The few who survived were smart enough to accept Genghis Khan’s conditions, surrender, and live under his rule.
Asymmetrical Advantages
During Genghis Khan’s time, the Mongolians had an asymmetrical advantage: speed. Their horseback warfare was no match for any army back then. That allowed them to control the military game. And the world.
Today, AI labs have an asymmetrical advantage too: they can build whatever they want, faster than anyone else. Even more, they know what others want to build. They have a real-time window into the collective mind. They literally see where the world is going and have the resources to get there before anyone else.
So they just rule the world, without you even noticing.
And now, try to put yourself in their shoes: if you had the ability to rule the world, would you brag about it? Or just pretend you’re doing it “for the best of humanity” while quietly following your own agenda? Would you create more friction, or — using your very own influencing abilities, now part of the society itself — steer the collective opinion towards something neutral, or even slightly appreciative towards your brand?
The Chronicle of an Announced Acquihire
If you think the Mongolian Empire comparison was far-fetched, hold your breath — I’m coming in even stronger.
Have you ever heard of OpenClaw (or ClawdBot)? It’s an autonomous agent that went viral literally overnight, less than two weeks ago. Its main differentiator was that it can connect to your messenger — WhatsApp, Telegram — and interact with you from there. Basically an always-on assistant. The immediate impact, especially for non-tech users, was huge. It transformed a bunch of code into something that seemed “real,” because it could talk to you. So the hype was instant, unstoppable, and still rippling as we speak.
A couple of days ago, the main developer of this project was hired by OpenAI. The OpenClaw work was parked in a foundation, but the IP locked inside that developer’s head is now with an AI overlord.
And here’s where it gets interesting. Why did this specific always-on agent go viral overnight? Why not others — like nanobot, from which I forked aigernon, by the way. How does virality happen on the internet? Is it organic, or are there other actors working silently in the background, unseen and unaccountable?
Stay with me for 30 seconds while I sketch an alternative version of events. What if things actually happened this way:
- OpenAI wants to push a specific type of product involving audio conversations with customers.
- Using their intelligence capabilities, OpenAI surfaces more and more information about an Open Source project called ClawdBot — one primarily wired to their competitor’s model, Claude.
- soon, ClawdBot goes viral, acquiring something OpenAI cannot buy directly from their commercial position: grassroots legitimacy and genuine community hype.
- OpenAI hires the main developer, signaling they will deliver “what the masses want, but now more secure, better polished.” The competitor is left behind — Anthropic even sent cease-and-desist orders demanding a name change before the acquihire, which suggests they suspected something.
- End result: OpenAI implements its own agenda, with wide community support, and lands a clean hit on its main competitor.
At this point, this is a conspiracy theory scenario. It may look plausible from a respectable distance, but there’s no proof and it’s essentially impossible to obtain any. All we can honestly say is “maybe, but probably not.”
Amplifying Yourself
I brought up this story not for drama – tech drama happens every day. But this specific one is a live demonstration of how the game is played now. Organic effort, community trust, years of coding — all of it absorbed in a single strategic move by someone with more resources, more intelligence, and more reach. Even more: you, the very creator of the product, never had a word in the story, you were just a pawn.
That’s the new operating system of the world.
The question isn’t whether this is fair. It’s: what do you do knowing this is how things work?
THIS is what you’re competing against. THIS is the scale of the world’s flexibility, and THESE are the forces at work.
Do you think you can survive this by just “showing up”?
The game has changed, and just to stay afloat you need a 5x on top of your current value. This is not an abstract 5x. If you’re a developer, you need at least five more versions of yourself, with different capabilities and angles:
- a marketing you
- a research you
- a customer support you
- an extra team of coders
- an always-on CEO of you
This is just to stay afloat. To keep being there and seen. This doesn’t guarantee any form of success. It just keeps you alive, somehow. It is, in essence, your submission to the new conquerors — allowing you to keep living for a while.
If you want to do more than survive this new AI Genghis Khan wave, you need to 100x yourself.
The 100x isn’t about working harder. It’s about building leverage that compounds without you. Your ideas need to travel further than your hands can carry them. Your name needs to be in rooms you’re not in – and be recognizable in a second. Your framework, your method, your angle — needs to be so distinctly yours that even when someone larger absorbs the wave you created, they can’t absorb you.
The Mongolians conquered everything. But they couldn’t conquer the cultures that were too deeply rooted to be replaced. They ruled over them, yes. But those cultures survived. Some of them outlasted the empire entirely.
Your goal is not to beat the AI overlords. Your goal is to be un-erasable enough that they have to work around you.
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