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China using big data to detain people before crime is committed

theglobeandmail.com

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Re: China using big data to detain people before crime is committed

#111

It's a shame we moved a lot of the US industrial base to an authoritarian and potentially hostile country like China. A bit scary to think of the generation or two of people who won't have the knowledge to manufacture things should they ever need to because of conflict in some form. Seems like it reduces any leverage the US has for holding China accountable for much that it does.

Manufacturing output of the US hasn't decreased. China just eclipsed everyone: https://twitter.com/LegalKant/status/946904533183197185

The current projections are that the US will probably reclaim its manufacturing crown or get close to it. A big part of China's gains the last ten years are in over-production. As those excesses are eventually removed or reduced, the gap will close to practically nothing within about another 10-15 years. For example, that chart showing the manufacturing levels, if you do nothing else but remove China's current subsidized industrial over-production, the gap narrows such that China is merely ahead by 10-15%. China's manufacturing is no longer expanding meaningfully, whereas US manufacturing continues to expand slowly but surely year after year; the corp tax cuts and very inexpensive US natural gas will continue to bolster that.

http://fortune.com/2016/03/31/united-states-manufacturing-ch...

Re: China using big data to detain people before crime is committed

#112
post #87

It's a shame we moved a lot of the US industrial base to an authoritarian and potentially hostile country like China. A bit scary to think of the generation or two of people who won't have the knowledge to manufacture things should they ever need to because of conflict in some form. Seems like it reduces any leverage the US has for holding China accountable for much that it does.

I disagree.... the US was shit at producing weapons before WW2 (apart from Carriers), yet within two years was to able to be the number one mass producer in quantity, and eventually on quality. When there is both political and economical will, the country will be able to mass-produce again. Right now there is no economic incentive to do so.

America had one overwhelming advantage - thousands of miles of ocean separating it from enemy lines. The industrial capacity of practically every other major nation was laid waste by strategic bombing. America also had domestic production of nearly every important manufacturing input, rendering it practically immune to naval blockade.

Post-war, America didn't spend a single cent on rebuilding infrastructure lost to bombing, while the other major powers needed a decade of austerity just to get back to where they started. Britain was still repaying the Anglo-American war loan in 2006.

America did an excellent job of scaling up manufacturing capacity during WWII, but the factors that made it such a dominant force were largely accidents of geography.

Re: China using big data to detain people before crime is committed

#113

It's a shame we moved a lot of the US industrial base to an authoritarian and potentially hostile country like China. A bit scary to think of the generation or two of people who won't have the knowledge to manufacture things should they ever need to because of conflict in some form. Seems like it reduces any leverage the US has for holding China accountable for much that it does.

I like this point but can you elaborate on it more? My knee jerk reaction is to say "why". I'm not very familiar with manufacturing as I'm sure a lot of people aren't, but it seems like most of the knowledge is in the design of the factory not in the skill of the workers. I know that might be an ignorant statement but that's why I'm asking for elaboration.

The value is having all the factories so close together. So there is no waiting around for part A which will take a week to get here from B.

Re: China using big data to detain people before crime is committed

#114
post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The exception being Tom Bombadil, but he is a strange creature.

oh, yeah, sorry, I left that out, but that's a subtle issue, because it's not clear whether he is actually a creature, or an embodiment of nature.

That must be why he was left out of the movies.

/s

Re: China using big data to detain people before crime is committed

#115

It's a shame we moved a lot of the US industrial base to an authoritarian and potentially hostile country like China. A bit scary to think of the generation or two of people who won't have the knowledge to manufacture things should they ever need to because of conflict in some form. Seems like it reduces any leverage the US has for holding China accountable for much that it does.

What would holding China accountable entail, exactly? "America doesn't like they way you do civilization. We don't like the way you brought 650 million people out of extreme poverty in a generation. If you have to use authoritarian tactics to do that, it's better that they stay poor and addicted to opium. You have to disband now." "Oh, okay. Sorry America. We recognize the error of our ways. We will stop being China…

What's actually happening right now, is the US and others (eg South Korea, Japan, some countries in Europe) are aggressively begining to redistribute their capital allocations to other nations (eg Mexico), including South East Asian competitors to China (eg Vietnam).

Samsung for example is making the majority of their phones in Vietnam now.

US imports from Vietnam have gone from nothing to $50+ billion per year in 20 years. A 100 fold increase. It's equivalent to 1/4 of their entire economy and it's almost entirely a deficit. We're going to build large regional competitors to China for strategic purposes. Conveniently, they can also buy up US debt with all of those dollars we're pouring into their economy.

Some of this is because China's manufacturing costs have climbed so much, some of it is intentional strategic emphasis (as the TPP was / is meant to be). The US very clearly has shifted its political interest in Vietnam for example.

Re: China using big data to detain people before crime is committed

#116

As described by Martin Kleppmann at the end of his great book, big data analytics, when used without proper regulation, creates a downward spiral. Western world enforced rules against discrimination based on sex, race, etc., yet everyone seems fine when it's the algorithm spotting and executing on the biases, which statistically are fine, but nevertheless, may be wrong in many individual cases.

Maciej Ceglowski on this: "machine learning is like money laundering for bias."

http://idlewords.com/talks/sase_panel.htm

Re: China using big data to detain people before crime is committed

#117
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but the key difference is we have separation of gov't power and institutions to actually challenge some of these things. When the gov't oversteps it's bounds and they get their hand slapped by the courts, that's the system working . Our gov't is made up of fallible humans, thus we're never going to get to the point where our rights aren't under threat. Compare that to China, where your best hope is you know some…

Military Commissions Act seems to have passed the scrutiny of both legal and political part of the system. The legal battle has shifted permanently. It's now over details in particular cases, not over the generic principle. The notion of enemy is now in the US criminal law. The President of the United States has now the power to designate either US citizens for foreign citizens as enemy. The way it's defined includes…

What you're talking about - the erosions in the US system - is an extraordinary distance from where China is at already. You can't talk about Winnie the Pooh in China, or mispronounce the "ping" part of Jinping in the media. Those aren't jokes, that's indicative of China's rapid regression backwards. Over the last five years they've curtailed the few freedoms around business and expression that had been gained. Their economic & business agenda has entirely shifted as have the rules. Dictatorships have historically tended to only go one direction, and China is already a very, very low-rights nation.

Re: China using big data to detain people before crime is committed

#119
It appears that police are still building profiles themselves by sifting the big data for terrorist-matching patterns.

The next step is to let AI do it all. We don't even have to know what is being matched on what, just that Citizen A's "profile" is sufficiently similar to Terrorist B's "profile".

This is how AI takes over the world without requiring sentience.

Re: China using big data to detain people before crime is committed

#120

It's a shame we moved a lot of the US industrial base to an authoritarian and potentially hostile country like China. A bit scary to think of the generation or two of people who won't have the knowledge to manufacture things should they ever need to because of conflict in some form. Seems like it reduces any leverage the US has for holding China accountable for much that it does.

We need some investors to band up and recreate the hardware environment in Shenzhen. There would be a lot of money made that way too so not sure why there wouldn’t be one in Nevada or Arizona or something.

While I like the idea, I think there are presently cultural barriers in the way of that succeeding, mainly the Western view of IP vs the Eastern view of IP.

Bunnie talks about it on his blog here: https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=4297

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