01
The upstream determines the feasible
Capital expenditure decides where compute, fabrication capacity, laboratories, energy, and talent clusters can exist. Geopolitical blocs and national policies alter the price and availability of each input.
That changes which experiments are cheap enough to run, which teams can persist through uncertainty, and which questions become legible to funders.
02
Products push back upstream
Research becomes products; products create revenue, strategic dependence, and public expectations; those outcomes reshape policy and the next round of capital allocation. The loop is not clean or centrally controlled, but it is directional enough to study.
03
Benchmarks sit inside the loop
A polished score can attract customers and capital. That gives providers a reason to optimize every internal lever around visible evaluations, even when the resulting number says less about the underlying capability than the market assumes.
Macro analysis and technical evaluation therefore meet at the same point: both ask what incentive produced the signal and what downstream decision the signal will justify.