Kardashev’s Rise
There’s a scene in House of Cards where Frank Underwood meets a journalist named Zoe at a train station late at night. He’s just wrecked a Secretary of State nomination by leaking an old editorial. Then he hands her the replacement:
“Say that name: Catherine Durant. Say it over and over. Tomorrow afternoon, write it down. And watch that name come out of the mouth of the President of the United States.”
I’ve always loved that scene. Frank sees a shifting landscape and bends it to his will.
Last week I saw something similar:
The FCC Chairman invoking the Kardashev Scale.
The Kardashev Scale measures a civilization by how much energy it can harness, from a single planet to an entire star and eventually a whole galaxy. Nikolai Kardashev proposed it in the 60s. I’ve really only ever heard Elon talk about it. For years it’s felt like an idea that lived on podcasts and long X threads. Elon’s earliest use of the word on X appears to be in early 2024 but he’s been talking about the broader idea for decades:
Seeing that phrasing from the FCC Chairman was jarring. Kardashev has moved from fringe science fiction to the language of policy.
I’ll bet before Trump is out of office in 2028 we hear him say the word Kardashev.
“Say that name. Say it over and over.”
When you poke the world, something comes out the other side. Plant a word in the right place and eventually it reaches the top.
We’re somewhere between the train station and the Oval Office. It’s fun to be alive while it’s happening.