Andrew Sabisky is a self-described superforecaster. As one of Philip Tetlock’s devotees he claims to have an elite sensitivity to seeing the future. It’s a rare skill, so I hope you will understand the caution with which I say that when it comes to China, he’s completely wrong.

It’s true that the US and China are dominant in AI, and that India is a rising power, but the conclusion he chooses – to throw ourselves on the mercy of China – raises questions not just about the end but the signals he’s receiving.

The argument goes, according to Sabisky, that the United States and India are inevitably hostile to the UK. He not unfairly believes that we are too dependent on the United States, and somewhat inexplicably that Narendra Modi’s India is an immovable nationalist monolith. In contrast, he claims that ‘China is perhaps the only superpower whose elites do not have a fundamental aversion to Britain on historical-ideological grounds’. That’s news to me.

First, overdependence on the US is a criticism many of us share in defence and increasingly economics. But the connection between us is more than an alliance or a treaty. It’s genetic, coded into our societies and systems of governance. The unhelpful interventions in British politics by US leaders, and the obsession with US politics here, is because familiarity allows for disagreements among friends.

The American Dream was born in Bristol, Manchester and Glasgow. We hold £1.2 trillion invested in each other’s economies and trade £331 billion a year. At September’s state visit, American firms committed £150 billion to Britain, the largest package of inward investment ever, £31 billion of it aimed at AI. True, the withdrawal of Anthropic’s Fable 5 is worrying, but that’s a warning for us to improve, not to sell out.

The truth about how the British Empire is taught in schools

Andy Burnham is making Manchester look like a joke

The World Cup is evil

Second, the Indian Republic is the most populous nation the world has ever known. And with more than 2,500 political parties competing for power, hardly a monolith. Governments must win votes from a young country that........

© The Spectator