# Who Really Moves History's Needle? | Samo Burja MTS · 2026-07-29 Samo Burja discusses the Trump administration's ban on Chinese humanoid robots, arguing it protects national security but harms US power users who rely on Chinese prototyping. He proposes Operation Paperclip Maximizer: granting 50,000 green cards to German and Japanese engineers to reindustrialize US robotics. Burja estimates only about 2,000 live players exist worldwide, with 300 in the US, and notes Silicon Valley generates them by inspiring overspecialized 'dead' players. He contrasts the ban with the need for technology transfer from China, which has surpassed the US in manufacturing high-tech goods like batteries and EVs. Burja also warns that without such transfers, US consumers miss out on innovations like Unitry robots and BYD cars, while China scales robots millions-strong. ## Questions this episode answers ### How many 'live players' does Samo Burja estimate exist worldwide and in the US? Samo Burja estimates there are about 2,000 live players globally and roughly 300 in the United States, which he says is disproportionately high. He defines live players as individuals capable of changing the world, and notes that Silicon Valley generates them rather than just discovering them. China ranks second with perhaps 100–150 live players, with the country currently producing more per capita than other East Asian nations. [19:54](https://mts.podhood.com/2f6e2499-e499-408f-9d45-2af575f64d9a?t=1194000) ### What is Samo Burja's 'Operation Paperclip Maximizer' proposal? Samo Burja proposes giving 50,000 green cards to skilled German and Japanese engineers to work in the US at high salaries, aiming to transfer manufacturing expertise back to America. He argues that old-guard companies in Japan and Europe stifle young talent, so a targeted immigration program could help US firms scale advanced manufacturing, particularly in robotics, where China currently leads. [17:16](https://mts.podhood.com/2f6e2499-e499-408f-9d45-2af575f64d9a?t=1036000) ### What does Samo Burja think about the US ban on Chinese humanoid robots? Samo Burja argues the ban will slow US prototyping and hurt power users, since Chinese robots like Unitree’s are readily available while American companies lag. He acknowledges national security concerns but suggests the US should instead push for Chinese factories on US soil to transfer manufacturing know-how, as was done with Japan in the past, rather than simply banning imports. [3:28](https://mts.podhood.com/2f6e2499-e499-408f-9d45-2af575f64d9a?t=208000) ## Key moments - **[0:00] Intro** - [0:00] Samo Burja: 'Silicon Valley generated live players; it didn't just discover them.' - **[3:25] Robotics Ban** - [3:46] Samo Burja: 'If we're banning Chinese robots for national security, what does that say about our phones?' - [5:45] Chinese robotics prototyping will remain years ahead of the US, predicts Samo Burja. - [7:06] Samo Burja: 'Very few American companies can say you can order a robot on their website and have it shipped to you, unlike Unitree.' - [9:57] Samo Burja: 'Our AI hackers are for now way better than theirs.' - [11:17] Samo Burja calls for the US to force Chinese robotics firms to build US factories to transfer manufacturing expertise, like with Japan. - [11:55] China has surpassed the US in manufacturing expertise for many mass high-tech goods, says Samo Burja. - **[14:10] Sponsors** - **[15:32] AI Models** - [15:32] Samo Burja notes the split in US AI policy: some want zero restrictions on Chinese models, others a total ban. - **[16:59] Scaling Robotics** - [17:16] Samo Burja proposes 'Operation Paperclip Maximizer': grant 50,000 green cards to autistic German engineers to boost US robotics. - [19:13] Samo Burja: 'Every car in the US basically should be a Tesla … it should be the iPhone of cars.' - **[19:36] Live Players** - [19:54] Samo Burja estimates about 2,000 live players exist worldwide, with 300 in the United States. - [21:22] Samo Burja names Leopold a live player. - **[21:46] Outro** ## Speakers - **Samo Burja** (guest) ## Topics Robotics ## Mentioned BYD (company), DJI (company), Tesla (company), Unitry (company), Grokipedia (product), Wikipedia (product) ## Transcript ### Intro **Samo Burja** [0:00] If you grow up in a thriving society with many opportunities, people who might over-specialize and over-constrain developmentally, and become extremely competent "dead" players, they are inspired to become live players,right? Silicon Valley generated live players; it didn't just discover them. Because people knew that it existed, they knew it was there. That's why the sort of Bill Gates generation was sort of followed by, like, you know, the Teal-Elon-era generation was followed by the 2010s, like, software business generation, and now the AI generation. **Host** [0:36] And we're back. **Samo Burja** [0:36] And we're back. **Host** [0:37] We are live, once again, with Samo Burja, who's the co-founder—or founder—of Bismarck Analysis. And also, he's worked on Palladia magazine, he did the Great Founders Theory, and you can follow him at Samo Burja,@SamoBurja, S-A-M-O-B-U-R-J-A, on x.com, the Everything app. So, Samo, welcome back. **Samo Burja** [0:57] That was a very thorough intro. **Host** [0:58] Yeah. **Samo Burja** [0:58] It's a pleasure to be here, and I appreciate the thorough intro. **Host** [1:01] Do you ever look at PE articles? I used to. **Samo Burja** [1:03] I used to. I used to have one. It got canceled. I think the editors are very activist-y, and they'll argue about relevance, and then there'll be political changes over the years. You can be nominated for deletion. But, you know. **Host** [1:15] Really? **Samo Burja** [1:16] Once MTS is big enough, you guys just name me, and then we'll be Wikipedia. I'll be Wikipediaed up again. **Host** [1:22] Right,right,right. **Samo Burja** [1:23] Wikipedia has. **Host** [1:23] You gotta run for Wikipedia. **Samo Burja** [1:24] Wikipedia is kind of falling off, to be honest. I feel the AI summaries are getting quite good now. **Host** [1:29] Yeah, Wikipedia has a real problem where they defer far too much to mainstream journalists, which is not—you know, I'm not saying, like, "Ugh, the fake news media is terrible," but it's like, you know, the mainstream media does not do a good job covering, for example, AI or internet culture. And so articles on these topics on Wikipedia are really, like, hamstrung by this lack of coverage. They often don't exist at all. If they do exist, they're often rather biased, or, like, very short kind of stubs. **Samo Burja** [1:57] Wikipedia is almost a success case for volunteer contributions and a post-econ—sorry, a post-economic mode of production. You know, basically because people are not being really paid as full-time staff, essentially, to edit it. But unfortunately, the tyranny of the person with the most time results in some pretty skewed and bizarre phenomena. Anyone who's been in a group chat knows it's never the person you wish posted most in a group chat that posts most in a group chat. It's the person with the most time and the least high-quality takes. **Host** [2:30] Yeah. **Samo Burja** [2:31] Yeah. I don't know, I'm in some group chats where some surprisingly high-quality people are spamming a lot. But I do think that, like, Grokipedia, for example, is just, like, straightforwardly better on a subset of things. Maybe that subset will grow over time. I guess if you're AGI-filled, you expect the subset of things that Grokipedia wins on to just become everything. **Host** [2:50] Are you gonna get, like, an Anthropic-ipedia? **Samo Burja** [2:52] Well. **Host** [2:53] Claude-ipedia? **Samo Burja** [2:53] Claude-ipedia? Yeah, why not? Yeah, why not? And especially because, at one point, why do you need a human editor between you and the prompt? You can just prompt the AI to assemble the writing you want it to. **Host** [3:05] Right,right. **Samo Burja** [3:05] Why would you have them prompt it and edit it for you? **Host** [3:08] We have Samo Burja, Grokipedia. **Samo Burja** [3:11] That's great. **Host** [3:11] Talking about—yeah, it seems rather unbiased. It actually talks about your ideas. It's not very comprehensive on early life. **Samo Burja** [3:21] You know, you guys can always interrogate me about early life, but maybe let's talk about. **Host** [3:25] Early life, yes. ### Robotics Ban **Samo Burja** [3:25] Some more timely things. **Host** [3:26] Let's talk about Unitry. **Samo Burja** [3:27] Yes. **Host** [3:28] Exactly. **Samo Burja** [3:28] Okay. **Host** [3:28] So the headline is, "Trump administration bans new Chinese humanoid robots to protect US AI buildout." And then, you know, you look into the article, it's in addition to connected power inverters and quadruped robots as well. So what are your takes on this? **Samo Burja** [3:46] Well, first off, there is a national security argument for, you know, banning Chinese industrial production. But if we're doing national security arguments for, like, you know, robots that could be hijacked by China, that we shouldn't have them, what does that say about our phones? What does that say about our chips? What does that say about our electronics? And so on. And many, many things are built in China. I assume all of them have hardware backdoors, because why wouldn't they? The United States certainly has attempted to install hardware doors into the internet. I've assumed for the longest time, since about, oof, 2007 at least, we should assume that the entire internet and every machine on it is, you know, visible to the United States or some branch of the United States. But also that the same is true of China, and probably has been true since, I don't know, 2015, 2016, when they really made it a national security priority. Ironically, for the same reason the United States did,right? The United States upgraded this infrastructure massively during the war on terror. I know the Chinese perceived themselves, because of the Uyghur terrorist attacks that had happened and the subsequent extreme, you know, I do not endorse it, the internments, the reprisals, all of that. I don't endorse that. But it was actually the same kind of stimulus that, you know, made their surveillance state happen. But to go back to the robotics question, I am in favor of the US reindustrializing and rapidly building out robotics. But it is certainly the case that this will impact the US consumer negatively. Now, you could say, and I—we actually did say this before we went live on air, that this impacts power users for now. Now, of course, power users are exactly the people you want to empower. **Host** [5:29] Right. **Samo Burja** [5:29] These are people who are working here in the Bay Area, or, you know, maybe in Segundo or whatever, and they're using this rapid Chinese prototyping to develop interesting toys, projects, prototypes, things that might well end up being US companies. All those things are somewhat slowed down, and the road for us to reindustrialize to the point where we could prototype very fast, that's gonna be such a long road that the Chinese might just be years and years ahead in their prototyping in the meantime. I think also we will see a rapid expansion of consumer robotics. It's just, you know, even if you don't go all the way to humanoid robotics, there's just so many things where machine learning will be easily applied to this new generation of, you know, these kind of servomotor-based, like, like, like very dexterous hands and other limbs. It's cheaper and cheaper every year to reproduce the human hand. You know, eventually this, I think, just fills more and more economic niches. I still think it's gonna take very specialized training, clever product design. Engineering choices will matter for sure. But do we really want a world where, you know, the Chinese are widely using these robots and Americans just don't have them? **Host** [6:44] Yeah. I think that my general take on this at first glance is, like, you have US companies doing robotics, the Sunday robotics and physical intelligence and so forth, but they don't—they, first of all, haven't shipped anything that is so developer-friendly. And I am skeptical about the. **Samo Burja** [7:02] They've hardly shipped anything at all. **Host** [7:04] Yes. This is true. **Samo Burja** [7:06] I mean, like. **Host** [7:07] Sad. **Samo Burja** [7:07] How many of these companies can you go on their website and click order and pay them money and have a robot shipped to you? **Host** [7:12] Yeah. **Samo Burja** [7:13] You can on Unitry. Very few American companies can say the same. **Host** [7:17] Yeah. But you at least have, like, prototypes,right? But they're all gonna be, like, very proprietary, sort of closed-source robots that will, like, have the home use cases. But it's not—it's, like, I am concerned about our ability to make an open-source ecosystem in the US for robotics, because I don't think that our, like, economic environment favors that very much. So that's what I most am worried about in the short term. **Samo Burja** [7:42] I also just, you know, I just do think we are already suffering as consumers by basically not being able to buy Chinese EVs and Chinese cars. **Host** [7:50] Yes. **Samo Burja** [7:50] I think they've demonstrated a super high level of quality. If you go to Brazil, Eastern Europe, all these places, people love those cars. Americans, in a way, don't. **Host** [7:59] They still do. **Samo Burja** [7:59] Yeah, I mean, Americans, in a way, don't know what they're missing out on. So we could easily imagine a world where, again, in China, there would be millions and millions of robots that one of their companies has scaled up. People are used to using them. And people in the States don't even know that they're missing out on it because, well, they don't use them. And, you know, I think maybe TikTok sort of shows this, but when you're looking at a place like be it Japan or China, you never quite know how common something that went viral on social media is. You can tell yourself, "Oh, this is a rare prototype." You don't see the person whose lunch is being delivered by a robo dog instead of, you know, you know, an Uber Eats driver from Nepal or whatever. **Host** [8:43] Yeah. I think, like, anyways, you can go on. I forgot what it was. **Samo Burja** [8:49] Yeah, the counterargument to this is, like, yes, you know, BYD has created huge consumer surplus for people in China and around the world. Surely Unitry would do the same. But, you know, China is an adversary, and we can't be reliant on them for, you know, all of these robots that are going to be hugely important industrially and militarily. Like, for example, what if there are sleeper agents? You know, if we deploy these robots for military purposes, what about that? Or what about much more mundane measures? Like, what if this becomes super critical to our supply chains and then China just stops supplying them? Or remotely breaks them? Or all kinds of things. Well, you know, my counterargument would be if China mass-weaponized robots and, let's say, honestly, self-driving electric vehicles,right? You can actually weaponize vehicles at scale. You know, I think we would retaliate with our own cyber offense. And I think there's some version, you know, there's some version of, like, a cyber mutually assured destruction. I'm pretty sure we could cripple huge chunks of their infrastructure. And at least for now also, it's not just the human cyber warfare expertise, which I think the US has the best in the world. It's also the superhuman one,right? The AI, you know, our AI hackers are for now way better than theirs. **Host** [10:04] Yeah. Well, I think this makes sense. Like, there was a similar ban, I think, earlier this year on drones, like DJI drones. And so this makes total sense. I'll give it to them. But with. **Samo Burja** [10:15] Well, drones have, like, very obvious military applications. **Host** [10:18] Yeah. And with robots, I'm not entirely sure. I think the pattern, like, seems to just be, like, because we do have Tesla here. And although Tesla does have, like, pretty significant business in China, it is, like, the frontier. Like, I don't know if there's any benchmarks we could, like, point to, but it is the frontier of, like, you know, of EVs. And so if, like, but that obviously has. **Samo Burja** [10:41] Let's put it this way. Tesla is the only American company who can successfully compete in the Chinese market. So I think it's the only modern American car company. **Host** [10:49] Yes, exactly. **Samo Burja** [10:50] And all the other car companies are living on borrowed time. **Host** [10:53] Yeah, but that, like, only comes at a cost to consumers because Tesla has, like, attempted to make more affordable vehicles, but it hasn't really succeeded. **Samo Burja** [11:01] Yeah. I mean, let's not forget, Tesla does build in China, and perhaps this offers us an intermediate solution. We're perhaps not cooperative enough with China to say, "Hey, fine, we will buy your Unitry robots. However, you have to have a factory here in the States." **Host** [11:17] Yeah. **Samo Burja** [11:17] This was the traditional deal in the '60s, '70s, and '80s that was struck not just with Western Europe, but with Japan, for, you know, "We will buy your Toyotas. You have to buy some of our stuff, and you have to make some of the Toyotas in the United States." And then you had knowledge transfer from Japan that had actually surpassed US expertise in manufacturing. And I think the deeply uncomfortable truth is China has surpassed us in manufacturing expertise for many of these mass high-tech goods, and we need to affect a technology transfer back to us. **Host** [11:49] Whoa, big if true. You're telling me China has surpassed the US in manufacturing mass-produced high-tech goods? **Samo Burja** [11:55] People keep forgetting this. People keep pretending as if it's not true. **Host** [11:58] Does anyone really deny this? Like, for some things, yes, like, the US still has a lead. Advanced semiconductors, for example. But, like, you know, on a lot of things, like batteries, for example, photovoltaics, like humanoid robotics, EVs, like, obviously China's ahead in manufacturing. **Samo Burja** [12:15] Well, people will agree with that premise, but they're not gonna jump to the conclusion, which is that actually we should just bully these companies to build in the US and then train Americans to do these jobs and then steal their tech. **Host** [12:27] Yeah. **Samo Burja** [12:28] You know, or steal. You know, we can respect our own IP laws. It's whatever. Personnel is policy,right? It's very trivial for, like, engineers to reimplement things that are patented in a way that's not patented. Usually. Not always. Usually. **Host** [12:43] I think the concern with robots, though, is just that all of the supply chain components and all the, like, minerals refining that it takes to build the robots is all in China. So this extra feels like a shooting yourself in the foot moment because we don't have the supply. Like, we just actually don't have it. It's just not present. So I don't know. Like, do you think that they would retaliate in any way? **Samo Burja** [13:08] I mean, you know, Chinese economic calculus is very tricky,right? Even today, something as simple as oil as a commodity, it's very unclear what the official Chinese strategy is for, say, dealing with the oil shocks coming from the Middle East that, you know, will keep coming for the foreseeable future. And because of that, because they're such a large consumer, it's sort of like, you know, unclear how exactly oil prices move. And I think the same is true of most of these economic retaliation measures. I sometimes wonder whether there are profound misunderstandings happening between the Chinese and US government because they actually look at such different economic metrics and channels, where, for example, the two sides might think that they're retaliating against each other, and the other side might not even notice it's a retaliation because they're, like, so not talking in the same language. **Host** [14:02] Yeah. **Samo Burja** [14:03] About the global economy. **Host** [14:04] Yeah. **Samo Burja** [14:05] We'll continue monitoringright after this message from our sponsors. **Host 2** [14:10] Scale your startup on Neon, the Postgres backend for apps and agents, built by Databricks. neon.com/mts. ### Sponsors ElevenLabs, AI that communicates at human level across every channel and modality. ElevenLabs.io/mts. Special thanks to our sponsor, Kong. Kong, the AI connectivity platform. Connect APIs, LLMs, agents, and systems with serious security and governance. Try it at konghq.com. Thanks to Blitzy, autonomous software development for enterprise codebases. Ship 5x faster at blitzy.com. **Host 2** [14:57] Let me tell you about Merge. OpenAI, Dropbox, and Ramp use Merge to get AI to production faster. Merge.dev/mts. Quick word from AdQuick. Make your brand a billboard. Out-of-home advertising as easy to scale as digital. adquick.com. Thanks to our sponsor, Macroscope. AI codebase understanding for engineering leaders. Try it out at macroscope.com/mts. ### AI Models **Samo Burja** [15:32] Well, one area in which this seems to happen a lot is AI models, where you have people suggesting, like, basically opposite courses of action in order to achieve the same goal. Where one is like, "Oh, you know, we want to build the US AI industry. We need zero restrictions on Chinese models because open-source models are really important for the US." And then others say, "We want to build up the US AI industry. We need to ban Chinese models because they undercut, you know, our margins and they make us dependent and they could be sleeper agents and all kinds of stuff." I mean, I think that the, I don't know, like, the sleeper agent attack feels like a one-time attack. And I really wouldn't worry about it until every person has a Unitry robot butler in their home. Then I'd be very worried about it. I sort of think that in these early stages, we could afford to continue buying and prototyping these vehicles and then, you know, these robots, and then simply invest very strongly into our own companies once they become fledgling companies. So I would say protect the power user. However, it is also the case that, you know, politics is not a game of perfection. You cannot let the perfect be the enemy of the good. If the United States is thinking at all about developing and protecting the high end of our own industrial base, that is such a positive development, I don't feel like nitpicking it too much. ### Scaling Robotics **Host** [16:59] Yeah. Are there any, like, robotic companies that you think would be able to, like, deploy robots at scale? Like American robotic companies? Or maybe, like, you know, allied nations. We could, like, outsource some of the supply chains to, like, Japan or something. **Samo Burja** [17:16] You know, what I would honestly do, and this is politically completely impossible, is I would run Operation Paperclip Maximizer and just give a 50. **Host** [17:26] Someone should talk about that. That's a new concept. **Samo Burja** [17:28] It's a new concept. **Host** [17:28] Awesome. **Samo Burja** [17:30] Give 50,000 green cards to autistic German engineers and tell them, "Hey, you can come work here for 150,000 euros." And that's big money in Germany. **Host** [17:41] Right. **Samo Burja** [17:42] And extremely cheap here. And then those high-precision engineers could actually be employed at US companies that would scale. Because here's the problem,right? It's not gonna be in US allied nations because all of those companies are super old. The one exception is South Korea. Japanese companies are dominated by the old. German companies are dominated by the old. You know, CEO of Rheinmetall, you know, mocking drone production in Ukraine as if it's, like, something housewives assemble in their spare time. You know, that's not the kind of attitude where the young engineers hired by Rheinmetall get to do the cool stuff. And I think if we only let that talent from Europe and, frankly, Japan, an opportunity here in the States, an immigration opportunity, those directly targeted at entire industrial verticals, to just take them en masse, bring them here, I think US companies would make very good use of them. Now, we do have some US talent, but I think it takes live players like Elon, and he would have to prioritize, say, I think I'm, you know, I'm not running Tesla. He is. But I think Tesla would need a capital injection of some kind and would need to prioritize its humanoid robots over its cars. And then I would totally believe it could do that. But why do that when you can actually still make the cars even better, keep your share in China, and eat up, you know, eat up the remainder of the legacy car companies here in the US? **Host** [19:13] Yeah. **Samo Burja** [19:13] I think every car in the US basically should be a Tesla based on fundamentals today. I think it should be the iPhone of cars. And I'd be super happy if someone competed, but no one's competing. So we might as well all buy the iPhone of cars. **Host 2** [19:27] Yeah. **Host** [19:27] Yeah, I agree. Do you think, like, we just rely too much on this concept of live players in the US because we are such a, like, an. **Host 2** [19:36] Do you know who you're talking to? ### Live Players **Host** [19:36] It's almost just like. **Samo Burja** [19:38] I coined the term. I literally coined the term. **Host** [19:40] I know you coined the term, but, like, I mean, like, an over-reliance. Like, we over-bet on these people. **Samo Burja** [19:44] I think we take them for granted. **Host** [19:45] Oh, really? **Samo Burja** [19:46] And there are actually not that many of them. **Host** [19:48] Well, if you had to give a number. **Samo Burja** [19:49] That we know. **Host** [19:50] If you had to give a number. **Samo Burja** [19:51] How many are there alive today? **Host** [19:52] In the US? **Host 2** [19:53] In the world and in the US. **Samo Burja** [19:54] Okay, you know, actually, I think the US disproportionately still produces them and disproportionately still attracts them. So I would say, if I have to give a rough number, I would say, depending on how you define them and depending which sectors and verticals you look at, about 2,000 in the whole world and about 300 in the United States. And actually, the US is probably the single highest number of any country in the world. **Host** [20:22] Yeah. **Samo Burja** [20:22] I would say that, like, second highest number is probably, like, 60, no, more. Like 100 or 150 in China, for example. And China's generating more of them per capitaright now than other East Asian countries are. I think people don't understand that, you know, if you grow up in a thriving society with many opportunities, people who might overspecialize and over-constrain developmentally and become extremely competent dead players, they are inspired to become live players,right? Silicon Valley generated live players. It didn't just discover them because people knew that it existed. It knew it was there. That's why the sort of Bill Gates generation was sort of followed by, like, you know, the Teal Elon era generation was followed by the 2010s, like, software business generation, and now the AI generation. **Host 2** [21:13] Yeah. **Host** [21:13] Yeah. I can't wait for the Zoomer live players. **Host 2** [21:16] The Zoomer live players. **Samo Burja** [21:16] I'm looking forward to that. **Host 2** [21:17] It's already starting. **Samo Burja** [21:18] I already met a few. I already met a few. **Host 2** [21:20] I would consider Leopold one. **Samo Burja** [21:22] I think so, yeah. I think I actually think so. You know, you heard it on MTS first. We've not done a Bismarck brief on Leopold, but yeah, Leopold is a live player. **Host 2** [21:30] Yeah. Well, really interesting. Hopefully, we get to get good humanoid robotics soon in America. Samo, thanks so much for coming to the Situation Room live in person. **Samo Burja** [21:42] Pleasure. MTS is an X-Native live streaming news and interview show covering technology, business, politics, and culture as it happens. Catch us every weekday live on X, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. --- This library is powered by PodHood (https://podhood.com), the podcast website platform.