>Again, consider the past: How might an 18th-century society feel if it had decided to bank on slow-but-stable efficiency increases in sailboats, slow progress toward better cures and nicer houses — but locked themselves out of the Industrial Revolution? They might have still felt good when news of the weavers smashing their looms and the sick and destitute pooling in the streets of Manchester reached them. But they would have come around to their deficits — perhaps when their ships of the line ran into steel-hulled steam ships so powerful that naval warfare was no longer a competition. Perhaps reality would reach them when they learned that every foreign peasant could afford new woven garments, or when they learned of mass-produced penicillin all-but-eradicating some of the most persistent lethalities they faced. However stable the periphery, it might soon feel the same way.

Basically Japan c. 1840. It was, compared to most of the rest of the world, an advanced society. It had some awareness of what was going on in Europe and America thanks to the longstanding Dutch trading relationship. But none of that prevented Perry's fleet from almost effortlessly demonstrating its technical superiority.

This is what the author warns against when advising against the temptation to seek refuge in "sovereign AI", or eschew AI and stay with c. 2026-era technology.