Paradigm Press: The Publisher Behind the AI Black Paper

Paradigm Press is the publisher behind Jim Rickards’ Strategic Intelligence newsletter and the AI Black Paper presentation. The company focuses on macro-level financial research, geopolitical analysis, and capital flows, which aligns with Rickards’ background in complexity theory and his work with the CIA and Pentagon.

Jim Rickards is not a typical newsletter publisher. He served as an advisor to the CIA and Pentagon, and he was called in to help negotiate the bailout of Long-Term Capital Management (LTCM) in 1998. As he tells it, they called me in to help negotiate a bailout with the Fed. In fact, in the book When Genius Failed they detail the whole story, plus the five long days I spent on the phone with the Federal Reserve. We likely saved the U.S. economy that day.

His track record includes sending a warning to intelligence officials in Washington in 2006, two years before the subprime meltdown. The CIA circulated his thesis among its senior staff, and it appeared in the CIA’s official journal, Studies in Intelligence. He then testified before Congress in 2007 and supplied the Treasury Department with a plan to avert the crisis. Three weeks later, Lehman Brothers collapsed. His team claims to have helped subscribers achieve gains as high as 468% during the 2008 financial crisis.

Rickards founded Strategic Intelligence roughly 15 years ago, focusing on complexity theory, geopolitical shifts, and capital flows. He claims fewer than 10 people in the world know how to properly apply complexity theory to financial markets, which positions his analysis as genuinely unique. His political track record includes predicting Brexit in 2016, Donald Trump’s victories in both 2016 and 2024, and the Ukraine war. His team also says it warned readers about the Covid crash three weeks before it began and published a pandemic thesis four months before the first reported case.

The AI Black Paper is one of Paradigm Press’ most ambitious presentations. The scale of the AI bubble is staggering. Rickards cites JP Morgan’s Chair of Investment Strategy, who noted that three-quarters of gains in the S&P 500 since the launch of ChatGPT came from AI-related stocks. Without those AI-driven gains, the S&P 500 would be worth roughly half what it is today. AI expenditures accounted for 92% of GDP growth, meaning AI-related spending now contributes more to the nation’s GDP growth than all consumer spending combined.

Nvidia, which designs the advanced chips at the heart of the AI boom, became the first company in history worth $5 trillion. That single stock represents almost 20% of all U.S. GDP. As Rickards points out, Nvidia does not even manufacture its own chips. Taiwan Semiconductor and other manufacturers build them. Nvidia just draws up the designs.

The Minsky Moment framework, named after Harvard economist Hyman Minsky, describes how bubbles collapse in four phases. First, the hedge finance phase, where companies take on debt they can repay from cash flows. Second, the speculative phase, where companies take on more debt than earnings can cover. Third, the Ponzi phase, where companies need new investors just to service existing debt. Finally, the Minsky Moment itself: the culminating event when investors finally catch on and the market suffers a massive collapse.

Rickards maps this framework directly to the current AI boom. He points out that the dotcom bubble followed the same pattern before the Nasdaq plummeted nearly 80%. The 2008 financial crisis followed it before the market fell close to 60%. The Great Depression of 1929 followed it as well. His argument is that AI is now in the Ponzi phase, and the Minsky Moment is imminent.

The AI Black Paper presentation promotes Strategic Intelligence, Rickards’ monthly newsletter from Paradigm Press. The price is $49 for 6 months, originally $299, an 83% discount that works out to about $8 per month. The guarantee is 3 months: subscribers can request a full refund for any reason within that window and keep all reports.

The package includes six months of Strategic Intelligence plus six special reports: AI Fallout (the biggest AI losers to remove from your portfolio immediately), The AI Black Paper Blueprint (his personal million-dollar roadmap), AI Meltdown Insurance (how to profit from the coming crash), Trump’s AI Arsenal (how investing in AI superweapons could turn $1,000 into $162,000), The Perfect Physical Gold Portfolio, and How to Make Your Home Your Personal Fortress.

Where to Learn More

For the complete analysis, read our AI Black Paper review covering Jim Rickards’ full thesis on the AI Minsky Moment.

Read our profile of Jim Rickards for more on the man behind the research.

See our AI Black Paper review for the complete analysis.

Ready to explore Jim Rickards’ full research? Learn more about Strategic Intelligence here.

This is not financial advice. Always do your own research before investing.