Take the Unicorn Pill

and see the Age of Asymmetry

I took the Unicorn Pill.

Its effects are still lingering.

My head feels woozy. My emotions are a confused sludge of anxiety, excitement, and dread.

The Unicorn Pill is like the red pill from The Matrix, but even trippier. Swallow it, and suddenly asymmetries are everywhere. They confront you at every angle.

What I saw was crazy: Technology was fueling insane imbalances, disruptions, and power shifts. The world looked warped.

In sum, it was an Age of Asymmetry. Elites reigned, rogue disruptors had global impact, and everyone else scrambled to keep up. Everything was out of balance.

Oh, and the rainbow unicorns! They ran wild across the Age of Asymmetry. They ruled it. By unicorns, I mean rare, game-changing forces — whether startups, people, or events — that defy the odds and achieve extraordinary impact.

The winner-take-all effects were insane.

In the stock market, for instance, just seven unicorn companies — Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, Nvidia, Meta, and Tesla — contributed 70% of the S&P 500's total returns.

In wealth, the top 0.1% wealthiest Americans controlled 20% of the nation's wealth, up from 7% in the late 1970s. Did you know the ten richest men in the world doubled their wealth during Covid? 

In Silicon Valley, tech insiders speculated on when AI would enable the first billion-dollar company run by a single person. The very definition of asymmetry.

And it wasn’t just economics. Dating followed the same pattern. On the apps, the top 10% of men got 80% of the women’s swipe rights. The unicorn men thrived, while the bottom half struggled.

Media was like this too. In books, Harry Potter alone accounted for 7% of book sales worldwide. In film, the top dozen commercial films made up half of the global box office revenue, even though 9,000 movies were released. On social media, the top 1% of Instagram influencers generated over 70% of the platform’s engagement.

The disparities were stark. Everything aligned with Power Law distribution, where the top dominates, rather than the familiar bell curve.

The Unicorn Pill made me see it all clearly.

Here’s another thing that struck me when I was on the pill: small rogue players used the godlike powers of new technologies to make a mark on the world. I saw this among startups and research labs, but it also happened in warfare.

In the Red Sea, for instance, sandal-wearing Houthis armed with inexpensive drones shut down shipping in the region by 90%, despite the U.S. pouring billions into defense munitions.

There was a pattern of disruption across the board. One time, a virus from Wuhan brought the entire world to a standstill for over a year! Another time, a glitch in a Microsoft software update grounded flights worldwide, causing chaos.

As the effects of the Unicorn Pill have begun to wear off, friends are asking, “Did you like what you saw? Should we take the pill?”

Yes, I say. Take the pill. See the Age of Asymmetry for yourself. It’s a critical worldview to understand. To internalize.

But how I feel about it is complicated. The ambitious part of me wants to seize the opportunities — to become an AI-enabled Übermensch, build world-changing companies, and find ways to solve problems at a much larger scale.

But the part of me that’s just a regular person feels anxiety about it — dread, exhaustion, fear. When wealth, success, and power flow so disproportionately to the top, what’s left for the rest of us?

Even at the top, the game never ends. In the Age of Asymmetry, there’s a massive gap between being in the top 1 or 2% and the top 0.1%. It’s a luxury problem, but it exists. This dynamic plays out in wealthy communities and elite universities, where well-off people still feel inadequate. The Age of Asymmetry puts the timeless question on steroids: When is enough, enough?

How one responds is personal and probably depends on one’s circumstances. If you’re a brilliant, well-connected 30-year-old with a STEM degree, the Age of Asymmetry presents incredible opportunity. But if you’re not as gifted, educated, or connected, it’s daunting.

From a policy perspective, the Age of Asymmetry strengthens the case for practical, Teddy Roosevelt-style progressivism, even for a capitalist like me. While I’m not at all opposed to billionaires or superstar companies, the Unicorn Pill helped me realize that we need to address their disproportionate influence. We must explore ways to support the other 99% as disparities continue to widen. It’s not only the right thing to do, but ignoring it could lead to social fragmentation and unrest. Do we really want a French or Russian-style revolution but with exponential technology? I don’t!

Here’s what I find so dizzying about the Age of Asymmetry: The same technologies allowing 22-year-olds to build unicorn companies, and pharma company to cure diseases, can be used by terrorists, cyberhackers, or rogue nations to cause untold harm. The Age of Asymmetry pits unprecedented opportunity against unprecedented danger. Being overly “safetyist” has its own pitfalls, but ignoring existential risks is like playing roulette with humanity.

As I come down from my trip on the Unicorn Pill, my stomach churns. Humanity is in a bind. I see how the Age of Asymmetry raises the stakes on everything. I think about my son and wonder about the world his generation is inheriting.

They say a group of unicorns is called a “blessing,” but sometimes I wonder if it’s a curse.