Competition in the AI Era

Five foundational frameworks — cheap prediction, five forces, disruption theory, aggregation, and technology cycles — that structure every competitive analysis that follows.

The attacker-defender asymmetry — data moats, speed advantages, vertical positioning, the wrapper trap, and the conditions under which incumbents transform rather than fall.

Differentiation when features commoditize — distribution advantages, infrastructure-layer moats, foundation model economics, and where application-layer value actually accrues.

National competition beyond the rhetoric — US-China capability asymmetries, semiconductor chokepoints, regulatory strategy, talent concentration, and compute access as geopolitical leverage.

Which industries restructure first, why, and who captures the value — the information-first disruption sequence, healthcare's regulatory barriers, finance's compounding incumbency, and creative industries' curation shift.

When AI commoditizes cognitive tasks — the task framework, skill premium inversion, complementarity conditions, career moats, and the irreducibly human advantages that AI cannot replicate.