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Inside a Heist of American Chip Designs, as China Bids for Tech Power

nytimes.com

191–200 of 211 posts

Re: Inside a Heist of American Chip Designs, as China Bids for Tech Power

#191

Notes from the ground here. My undergrad was in EE at an "elite" school - I can say definitively that ~50% of the MS/Ph.d. students in EE were from China (with the other 50% largely from India). They TA'd many of the graduate level courses and were the majority of the students taking high level semiconductor design courses that centered on fabrication and nanotechnology. China's short term goal is clearly to reach pa…

This happened with Japan too, anyone that wants to know how they dominated the electronics industry in the 70's/80's should checkout the book "We were burning"

Re: Inside a Heist of American Chip Designs, as China Bids for Tech Power

#192
post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

50 million? What the hell, that's multiple cities worth of depopulation. There's no way that could be true

It's actually The Great Leap Forward, and even if it's "just" 20 million, which is most likely is, it's both true and atrocious.

>A lower-end estimate is 18 million, while extensive research by Yu Xiguang suggests the death toll from the movement is closer to 55.6 million.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Leap_Forward

Re: Inside a Heist of American Chip Designs, as China Bids for Tech Power

#193
post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well the vast majority of these kids would prefer to stay in the US. Clearly the solution to prevent them from taking their knowledge back to their home countries is to denigrate them politically and make it harder and more inconvenient for them to live and work here.

I would not agree with this. I went to an elite business school and my Chinese classmates all felt there was far more opportunity for them in China with an American education. They’re not stupid, they look at China and see an economy growing at 6-9% a year while the US is stuck at 1-2% and they know where the growth is for the medium-term. They also see a mature American economy that can be tough to crack even for na…

More like US 4% and China 7%.

Re: Inside a Heist of American Chip Designs, as China Bids for Tech Power

#194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> With the government and political system that US currently has it will take very short amount of time for China to close this gap as well. That's a pretty amusing claim given China is a wildly regressive Communist dictatorship and the world's most indebted nation (before they even get well-off at the median, which bodes very badly for their future). Not to mention that the people of China have few rights at all at…

> The US has 45 of the top 50 universities on earth, and 19 of the top 20 Right, and North Korea is the second best country in the world according to the research of North Korean scientists.

Actually, the best known ranking of world Universities is produced in China (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_Ranking_of_World_Univ...).

It broadly confirms the parent's point, though I disagree with the idea that it will take generations for China to improve.

Re: Inside a Heist of American Chip Designs, as China Bids for Tech Power

#195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>America is not where opportunity is these days Yes, but the living standards in the United States are far higher. Sure you may never become a billionaire here like you can in China, but you can breathe the air and the traffic isn't that bad. The schools are better, the houses are bigger. China may get there, but I know where I'd rather be over the next 20-30 years. And they can always move back.

Not that far, and shrinking fast, depends on who and where you are in China, just like the US. Trump is fixing the air quality issue[1]. China has excellent high speed trains and very innovative and modern shopping malls and housing estates. Google around. Chinese primary and secondary schools are way better than American high schools. Chinese attend international universities to gain experience and network opportuni…

> Chinese primary and secondary schools are way better than American high schools. Chinese attend international universities to gain experience and network opportunities. They are not here to because here is better.

You heard of the (infamous) Gaokao? It's gruelling, and necessitates nothing but continuous study day in and day out to get into a decent Chinese university.

If they could, a lot of Chinese would prefer to study in the US (or any other western country for that matter).

Re: Inside a Heist of American Chip Designs, as China Bids for Tech Power

#196
post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The current US government approach to immigrants, legal or otherwise, would seem designed to convince immigrants to go elsewhere. I think China will be fine given that it can simply shut down exports to the US if T​r​u​m​p's tariff pettiness starts to sting. Where, precisely, do you think your phones and computers are manufactured?

> The current US government approach to immigrants, legal or otherwise, would seem designed to convince immigrants to go elsewhere. I'm curious where you live and wether or not you can actually, personally, witness the effects of legal immigration there. In SoCal, where I've spent the last decade+, what you're saying rings completely hollow, to me. I have seen literal tour buses of mainland Chinese folks touring new…

I live in New York City. We have all sorts of immigrants here.

Re: Inside a Heist of American Chip Designs, as China Bids for Tech Power

#197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny, and beneath the joke lies a nice nugget of truth: the landscape of hardware design languages is a truly sad thing to behold and deeply hinders innovation in the space. There are numerous attempts at fixing the problem, but all of them ring hollow as the big ASIC design shops basically are all relying on ancient languages. Another thing that IMO has dealt a grave blow to the whole scene is a cultural one: peopl…

If you think Verilog is bad, you should see the languages used by heart surgeons, civil engineers and rocket scientists. The language of human biology is ridiculously verbose without even a hint of polymorphism. ;-) My point is that it's a little silly to evaluate hardware engineering through the lense of software engineering. In hardware engineering the part that looks like "software" (what a HW engineer may refer t…

I am not claiming in any way that the problem we face in HW design are the same as the SW folks do. I most certainly agree that RTL is but a small chunk of the overall effort of designing a chip. But I am afraid my point that this chunk is in a terrible place still stands.

You have also entirely ignored my second point :)

Re: Inside a Heist of American Chip Designs, as China Bids for Tech Power

#198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Well the vast majority of these kids would prefer to stay in the US. I'm afraid you're making assumptions here. America is not where opportunity is these days, especially in the hardware manufacturing sector.

>America is not where opportunity is these days Yes, but the living standards in the United States are far higher. Sure you may never become a billionaire here like you can in China, but you can breathe the air and the traffic isn't that bad. The schools are better, the houses are bigger. China may get there, but I know where I'd rather be over the next 20-30 years. And they can always move back.

>The schools are better

At the undergrad and graduate level, perhaps, and as another poster commented, probably not for very long.

But for the school years before undergrad, I'm sorry to say, America is in a very bad way.

I don't know how it compares to China, but American public primary and secondary school is definitely not where I'd have my children receive an education

Re: Inside a Heist of American Chip Designs, as China Bids for Tech Power

#199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> immigrants were from countries with similar sensibilities People in the U.S. have been complaining about the 'values' and 'sensibilities' of the new immigrants since Benjamin Franklin would go off about Germans. Then of course it was Irish, the Italians, etc. etc. Older generations of Central European Jewish people even complained about the Eastern European Jewish immigrants at the turn of the 20th century. Of cour…

> The sensibilities of 1930s Germany? Or maybe the sensibilities of early 20th century Europe, which was friendlier towards socialist, pro-labor policies than both modern India and China (people tend to forget that the SPD existed before Hitler). I know it's a hot-button issue, but I'm not anti-immigration and you're preaching at the wrong person. I will strongly disagree with your somewhat extreme belief that sensib…

> the sensibilities of early 20th century Europe

These are the sensibilities that led to the two worst wars in world history, that gave birth to both Nazism (and other fascists) and Bolshevik totalitarian Communism, that produced millions of people (in Germany, Russia, Eastern European countries, France, and more) who participated in or stood by while tens of millions were murdered in German-controlled territory and were starved in Ukraine?

All those people were the products of the 'sensibilities' of early 20th century Europe. By the standards of some, the U.S. should never have let any emigrate.

Re: Inside a Heist of American Chip Designs, as China Bids for Tech Power

#200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not interested in your advice but I'm happy talk about the issues. That said, I'm not sure what you're saying or what you think I said. Immigration is, I believe, a human right. It's liberty - liberty to travel, to make the most of yourself, and it's opportunity. People should be free to make the most of themselves. It's also economic freedom, which generally yields more productive economies for all. For practica…

Exit makes sense as a human right. This is true across many levels of organization: you are free to quit your job, drop out of school, even emancipate yourself from your family after a certain age, and it's widely recognized that protecting the freedom to do these things improves collective outcomes. A corollary is that you should be allowed to join organizations that want you. But entry to any organization, regardle…

I'm not talking about private business. I'm not sure how that got into the conversation.
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