["Big Short" Chanos: In a bull market, people are willing to pay a premium for promises, while in a bear market, they discount based on reality] According to a report by Jinse Finance, on July 20, Wall Street's legendary short-seller and founder of Chanos & Co., Jim Chanos, stated bluntly that the current wave of investment in artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure is breaking historical records in terms of both speed and scale of capital inflow. However, the economic logic underpinning this frenzy has yet to be validated, which is concerning. The market is currently engaging in a classic "dream-to-reality ratio" game, where investors are willing to pay a premium for promises painted by companies, while paying little attention to whether the actual numbers can deliver. He warned that hundreds of billions of dollars in capital expenditures are being based on short-term spot prices, yet are being used to support asset investment decisions spanning 20 years, creating a fundamental mismatch in time horizons. Chanos's core argument is that the capital efficiency of hyperscale cloud providers is systematically declining, which will force these companies to make real strategic shifts within the next 12 to 18 months. According to his estimates, for companies like Google, Meta, Amazon, Microsoft, and Oracle, the incremental return on invested capital has dropped from about 40% a year and a half ago to around 20% currently. If the pace of capital expenditure growth continues unabated, this figure could further decline to 10%. Chanos remarked, "At that point, the management teams of these companies will face a real question: Should we continue burning money like this, or would it be better to simply buy Treasury bonds?" He predicts that this moment of reckoning could emerge as early as late 2026 to 2027, and it will be unavoidable by then. He summarized his observation of the current market pricing logic with one sentence: "In a bull market, people are willing to pay a premium for promises; in a bear market, they only discount based on reality. Clearly, we are in the former right now. Will we transition to the latter? I don't know."