The text, written at the end of January this year, has lost none of its relevance, but we apologize for the delay in publication. — Editorial Team
If we had more people like you in our country, my dear friend, who know how to not let themselves be fooled, we would be in a different situation.
Tadeusz Dołęga-Mostowicz, "The Career of Nikodem Dyzma"
I am writing this text from the headquarters of Kuryer Polski in Milwaukee, the first daily newspaper in the United States, founded in 1888, and I bitterly refer to the announcement published by the US Department of Commerce. The Joe Biden administration has included Poland on the list of countries for which restrictions on the import of the latest Nvidia chips will be introduced.
This decision brings Poland – a member of NATO and the European Union, economically among the top twenty most developed countries – geopolitically to the second league of US allies.
The most important Polish specialist in the field of artificial intelligence, Prof. Piotr Sankowski, former president of the IDEAS NCBR institute, the Polish center for research on artificial intelligence, responded to this matter equally bitterly. I would like to remind you that at the end of 2024 he did not receive financial support from the new Polish government. In an interview that the Professor gave to Gazeta Wyborcza, we read, among other things: "The saddest thing was when I heard from great scientists that they were considering leaving Poland again."
But let's get back to the announcement regarding the decision of the former US administration. The European Commission responded to the decision of the Joe Biden administration. "We are concerned about the US measures adopted today restricting access to the export of advanced AI chips for selected EU Member States and their companies," Vice-President Henna Virkkunen and Commissioner Maroš Šefčovič wrote in a joint statement. Of course, without commenting on the fact that Poland was not included on the map of European AI (Artificial Intelligence) factories.
Credit: A. Wozniewicz
The European Union has placed AI factories in the following countries: Spain, Italy, Finland, Luxembourg, Sweden, Greece and Germany. Washington has identified the countries to which the export of chips will be unlimited as "key allies and partners". Poland is not among them. Thus, we have found ourselves behind a technological, deprived of rapid development, second-class zone, in the dualism zone on the Elbe. This decision can be changed, but who in Washington is lobbying for Poland?
Reaction of Polish publicists
Classifying Poland as a 'second-rate AI' country — a country that is a loyal ally of the US, fighting shoulder-to-shoulder on many fronts, and at the same time, educating some of the best IT specialists in the world, IT specialists who often power American AI companies — may become the greatest allied betrayal since World War II," Jarosław Królewski, founder and president of Synerise, a technology company operating in the AI field, said in an interview with money.pl. [8]
In "Everything that matters" Michał Kłosowski comments [3]:
When leaving, Joe Biden divided the world, dealing cards in a technological game for power. Unfortunately, Poland was not among his administration's closest allies and all we got was a punch in the nose. Because the fight for AI development is a fight for a new, technological division of the world.
On channel Zero [4] editor Mazurek thundered:
Joe Biden Announces Sanctions, and Poland Hits List of Countries with Limited Access to AI Chips. Nvidia Protests, Experts Sound the Alarm, and We? Risk Falling to the Tech Second Line. What Does This Mean for Our Country's Future?
Strategy & Future analysts react similarly, but here, despite the growing aversion to the quality of Polish ruling elites, there is less emotion and more analysis of the situation. The head of the Polish think-tank himself clearly presents this in one of his most important interviews on the Rymanowski Live channel: "Rymanowski, Bartosiak: AI, Trump, Putin, the new Yalta?" [1]
Jacek Bartosiak makes a bold claim that behind all these events lies the weak efficacy of the Polish state with inefficient diplomacy, administration, judiciary, services, army, and lack of vision of the state as a result of the changing world. He is seconded in this by Marek Budzisz, also from Strategy & Future, who emphasizes similar aspects in "Rzeczpospolita" [5]. "We need "God's peace" between PO and PiS, because the fate of Poland is at stake," he says.
It is difficult to find such discussions about the future of Poland on the main public or commercial television stations. There, Polish politicians' arguments about current issues, which are of little importance from the point of view of national security and development, are popular.
Already in the first paragraph of his article [5], Budzisz says: "For the sake of the future and survival of the Polish state, Donald Tusk and Jarosław Kaczyński must end the Polish-Polish civil war and change their political strategies. Each of them is not only polarizing, depriving Poland of national unity, but also means that we will be watching its end at the same time when the future of our world will be decided."
The Polish-Polish War
Here, across the ocean, we are deeply disappointed by the lack of vision for Poland's development, the devastating Polish-Polish war, the inability to cooperate with the Polish diaspora, and with the peripheral minimalism stemming from the lack of ambition of political elites. We observe this state of mentally colonized political elites with negative emotions. More and more young Poles are coming to American Big Tech. Another thesis can be put forward that after the announcement of Trump's policy, the announcement of the Stargate artificial intelligence project worth 500 billion dollars, and the launch of their projects by the Chinese, young active and educated Poles are leaving across the ocean in search of opportunities to realize their life goals.
In the sphere of politics, however, we are locked in a mental bubble dating back to the Sanation era. The Polish mentality of political elites does not rely on ideas generated by state, private or university intellectual centers. The mentality of elites in Poland is based on faith in what the party leader says, and the state of knowledge and skills of politicians can be seen in the reports in the Sejm (the Polish parliament).
Donald Tusk's former associate Jan Maria Rokita speaks clearly about the beginnings of the Polish-Polish war: "Tusk came up with, and I know exactly when, because I talked to him about it then, the concept of radical polarization and building hatred towards PiS, and specifically towards the Kaczyński brothers," said Jan Rokita in an interview with PCh24tv. [7] As Rokita stated, Donald Tusk decided in 2005 - "and this is the key moment" - "that this is a total task and that it has to be done all the time."
Budzisz ends his article [5] with an important warning: "Messrs. Tusk and Kaczyński! It is time to establish contact with (geostrategic) reality and finally start thinking about Poland's grand strategy, because without it it may turn out that in the future you will be fighting your battles in exile."
Burning Taxpayer Money
Public money in Poland is political loot and is also spent in a similar way. Such examples in Poland can be seen at every turn, but to illustrate this article, let the aviation industry, and airports in particular, serve as an example. The discussion about CPK and decisions around this important project for Poland are a clear example of the fact that politicians do not care about what is important for Poland, and the decisions themselves are often made by political oligarchs and lobbying groups behind a given project.
If it weren't for the financial support of the Marshal's Office, the Zielona Góra-Babimost airport would be empty. The local government subsidizes flights with millions of złoty, but these are mainly holiday flights, not scheduled flights. Only LOT's Warsaw is a regular flight. If the Lubuskie Marshal announces an "appropriate" tender, Ryanair could come to Zielona Góra, which would cost local taxpayers millions of złoty.
Rynek Lotniczy.pl reports. [6] Similar situations occur at other airports, which were built not to meet the needs of residents, but to meet the excessive ambitions of local politicians.
What Is It Like in America?
In 1973, the Office of Net Assessment (ONA) was established within the structure of the Department of Defense, whose goal and main task is to present long-term assessments of trends, key skills, threats, opportunities and future solutions in terms of the development of the country and the United States Army. Thus, alongside hundreds of foundations, private and government organizations, there is an intellectual center where the country's development is projected. This think tank, established by Richard Nixon inside the Pentagon, is responsible for the advisory and forecasting voice of what is needed in the country and what needs to be built. Its location in the Pentagon structure allows for the forecasting of infrastructure in a way that everything that is created in the United States is created in such a way that it can also have a military character in the future.
However, even in the US, taxpayer money is being burned for ideological purposes related to the promotion of liberal democracy in many places around the world. Donald Trump has decided to suspend all foreign aid from the US for 90 days. This applies primarily to the USAID organisation, about which the head of the State Department, Marko Rubio, speaks scathingly in an interview with Fox News. For three months, US officials are to check whether the foreign aid is "consistent with American interests".
In Poland, on January 1, 1997, the Government Center for Strategic Studies was established and was one of the offices organized as part of the reform of the administrative and economic center of the government. The RCSS took over some of the powers of the abolished Central Planning Office, but it was still a structure of the so-called political booty with friends of the rabbit, family, etc.
In 2013, the National Center for Strategic Studies (Narodowe Centrum Studiów Strategicznych, NCSS) Foundation was registered by Tomasz Szatkowski and Jacek Kotas. The Foundation claims that in its research activities it cooperates with the best expert centers in the country and abroad, we read on the website, which shows the date on the news tab: Sunday, February 10, 2019. [The NCSS portal (ncss.org.pl) is offline and its content can only be viewed using the online archive «Wayback Machine» — editor's note]
"Sentenced to Peripherality"
It is worth referring here to an important interview by Krzysztof Mazur with Bartłomiej Sienkiewicz from 15 June 2018, where on the pages of the Jagiellonian Club portal the reasons for the policy of "hot water in the tap", dependence on Germany and the search for paths to Polish empowerment were discussed by both gentlemen. [9] It was then that the aforementioned condemnation to peripherality was made in a simple answer to the question: "Why did you lose?" - "Because we awakened the aspirations of Poles, which we were unable to meet".
With Poland's accession to the European Union, the mentality of Polish elites began to believe in subsidies. They became a panacea for all the problems of Poles, but along with the EU money, which got connected to the Polish bloodstream, a substance called EU regulations slowly seeped from the Union, which deprived Poland of its agency year after year.
The current government continues the policy of "hot water in the tap" and an example of mentally corrupt officials is the case of Poznań, where the city defends the decision to buy used, 30-year-old streetcars from Bonn. There is a Polish streetcar factory in Poznań.
"24 large trees were planted at Trzech Krzyży Square in Warsaw, at a cost of almost PLN 14,000 (USD 3,634) each. The trees came from Germany, because there are no such large trees available in Poland." [10]
In Warsaw, a toilet was built for PLN 650,000 (USD 168,736). But will the aspirations of Poles, especially the younger generation, never be realized?
A more optimistic vision of Poland is drawn by Professor Marcin Piotrowski in the book "The Golden Age. How Poland Became the European Growth Leader and What Future Awaits It?" The author describes our country as an example of unprecedented economic success after 1989, when we achieved the fastest growth rate in Europe and one of the fastest in the world. Thanks to this, in the lifetime of just one generation, Poland joined the narrow group of countries with a high level of income and entered its economic golden age. In addition, Professor Piątkowski points out threats to further development and proposes a new growth model that would allow Poland to catch up with the West for the first time in history. This is a different book, created in the United States, where the philosophy of why it is worth seeing the glass half full is the driving force of development and progress.
It must be stated at this point that the driving force of inspiration for Poland's development is not government institutions - it is Poles and their aspirations.
Conclusions
For Poland to continue to develop, it is necessary to end the Polish-Polish war, which paralyzes any forward movement, and to end the policy of handing out taxpayers' money, to replace the current elites with elites loyal to our raison d'état.
Most analyses suggest that the system of governing the state is inefficient. Therefore, the constitution should be changed in such a way that it is clear, simple and concretely presents the method of governing the state. It is necessary to departisanize the state and reject unnecessary bureaucracy that kills the creativity of Poles. It is important to tear apart this round-table corset that – like an invisible wall – blocks the way to the restoration of Pax Polonica and Polish national agency. This is possible, but only by opening up to circles that have not participated in the current political process and by creating a broad national representation with them.
It is time to build a professional civil society, with think tanks, non-ideologized university centers, and other institutions where there should be a place for creative, new, Polish intelligentsia.
The most important thing is to build a program for Poland in which we, as Poles, will build the strength of the Polish state, its army and the infrastructure necessary for the development of Poland in the form of highways, high-speed railways, CPK, transit ports, nuclear energy, developing the arms industry and creating development opportunities for the young generation, developing artificial intelligence start-ups, quantum computers and Polish business.
We must not be a peripheral country. We must develop. The dynamics of geopolitical processes on the continent, as well as on a global scale, are forcing Poles to take a new look at the definition of our raison d'état. There is no doubt that it should continue to be understood as an above-party-affiliation action, within the majesty of the Republic of Poland, to realize the overriding interest of the Polish state, common to many past and present generations of compatriots at home and abroad.
