Jensen: 'We've done our country a great disservice' by offshoring • Hacker News Board

Re: Jensen: 'We've done our country a great disservice' by offshoring

#61

Post by khuey » Mon, Jan 05, 2026, 2:56 PM UTC

I used to agree with this (at least the headline), but then I lived through the Biden administration.

Fundamentally Americans want to consume more services and especially goods than the people living in America produce. The only ways to square that circle are

1. To get more people. But by 2024 prime age labor force participation was at essentially record numbers[0] so there aren't more people available domestically, and we saw in the election that swing voters are not fans of mass unskilled immigration.

2. To produce more with the same people (i.e. increase productivity). But in most cases this is up to technological advancement and not in the hands of policymakers. There are probably some sectors that could benefit from deregulation (e.g. construction) but those regulations have their own constituencies that don't want to see them go.

3. To force people to consume less (i.e. inflation). Voters hate this.

4. To import more from abroad.

In the end "offshoring" is the only politically viable option.

[0] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS11300060

Re: Jensen: 'We've done our country a great disservice' by offshoring

#62

Post by moogly » Mon, Jan 05, 2026, 2:57 PM UTC

K0balt wrote: post #43

moogly wrote: post #13

He is not causally connecting "AI" with industry and manufacturing here. Building data centers isn't manufacturing. He says in this piece that energy production needs to come first, and manufacturing later and not the other way around. Is he saying that AI will require building out energy production and the increased energy production will be used for... manufacturing? But it'll be used for the data centers. What, ex…

Manufacturing means, realistically, bootstrapping the general purpose robots that will foment the “third Industrial Revolution”, which will revolutionize capital and make money largely irrelevant. Energy, materials, and automation are the only relevant factors for capital in the post-employment era.

Oh yeah, I also like post-scarcity SF like Iain M. Banks. Funny names for those ships, right? So we're betting everything on infusing humanoid robots with "AI" and abundance will automatically follow? I'm missing a lot of steps here inbetween. Will we live in harmony or will it be a massive scramble by the various nations to extract every single piece of natural resource by way of PvP? Oh right, the robots will fight. It'll be like that ancient robot-fighting show. We'll have that show too, but it'll be AI slop now, and it'll be entertainment for the robot warfighters while they charge their batteries.

Can't we just make the billionaires buy everyone a robot from China instead? Oh wait, their money will be useless in a post-scarcity society and they will just be like any regular Joe. Wait a minute. That seems like a massive conflict of interest. Hmmm.

Re: Jensen: 'We've done our country a great disservice' by offshoring

#63

Post by rickydroll » Mon, Jan 05, 2026, 2:57 PM UTC

moogly wrote: post #50

ineedaj0b wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the price of metal, raw metal, coming out of factories like aluminum, steel, titanium is high because the cost of energy is high. I think it’s 30%-40% the cost of smelting it. Unless you can drop the price of energy and cheapen the raw material cost, the entire manufacturing industry will be uncompetitive. Primary smelters currently run pretty efficiently but are bottlenecked by two main factors in the USA: raw energ…

Bringing energy costs down. I see. While I'm not super well-versed in the US energy market, and I understand it's a bit complex, I do believe it's a mix of regulated and deregulated private monopolies under a bunch of regional ISOs, but there's an energy trading market down there somewhere setting spot prices, correct? So are you saying the US energy market should be, if not fully re-regulated, regulated harder, or p…

I believe you have it right. In theory, power generation should have been a well-regulated monopoly. Unfortunately, as soon as you add investors, aka rent seekers, the system is pushed to increase profits at the expense of the customer.

We should reset the monopoly by publishing and documenting tariffs for power and carriage. Third-party power suppliers should still have access to the power grid, with complete, transparent, and understandable costs for consumers.

There needs to be a plan for continual upgrades and maintenance, rather than starving the grid and then requiring big bursts of funding that go in part to the rent seekers.

Re: Jensen: 'We've done our country a great disservice' by offshoring

#64

Post by potato3732842 » Mon, Jan 05, 2026, 2:58 PM UTC

K0balt wrote: post #35

tokai wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sending production to the place with the cheapest labour is great way to have your companies being outcompeted by foreign actors. Unless we want to return to mercantilism a global empowerment of organized labour globally is the only real way to fix this.

This assumes that leadership has a vision beyond the next quarterlies. Offshoring is seen as a solution to organized labor, unfortunately. Exec compensation above a reasonable salary needs to to tied somehow to longer term outcomes.

Any executive in America can probably have a vision if they so chose. Their hand is forced by "the system".

The Weathertech CEO (or maybe I'm misremembering, in any case it was a big private company CEO) has a good talk about this IIRC.

Re: Jensen: 'We've done our country a great disservice' by offshoring

#65

Post by cryptica » Mon, Jan 05, 2026, 2:58 PM UTC

Outsourcing manufacturing was very short-sighted in light of the automation which was taking place and accelerating.

No doubt this short-sightedness was the result of our debt-based monetary system. The disconnection of money from long term value-creation created a cycle of speculative booms and busts which made short term bets the most viable strategy to ensure that execs would get their bonuses.

Also, the perverse legal concepts of 'corporate personhood' and 'limited liability' sealed our fate, ensuring that companies could pollute our land and water with chemicals... China was all too happy to send children's toys full of phthalates and other endocrine disruptors our way, ensuring that the next generation would be pacified and struggling with hormone-related issues (I leave you to infer cultural implications...)

Seems like China got their revenge for the Opium wars!

Re: Jensen: 'We've done our country a great disservice' by offshoring

#66

Post by hshdhdhj4444 » Mon, Jan 05, 2026, 3:01 PM UTC

hackthemack wrote: post #12

Ross Perot in 1992 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VRr60nmDyu4 We have shipped millions of jobs overseas, and ... a strange situation, we have a process in Washington where after you serve for a while, you can cash in, become a foreign lobbyist. We have got to stop sending jobs overseas. You're paying 12, 13, 14 an hour for factory workers and you can move your factory South of the Border, pay a dollar an hour for yo…

And yet the timeframe Huang mentions does not go beyond 20 years ago, indicating his statement is little more than political posturing.

Also, last I saw, he wasn’t prevented from speaking at any point in those past 2 decades and I don’t remember any mention from him about these issues despite the fact that there’s been bipartisan concerns about manufacturing in China for at least a decade.

It’s almost like he’s trying to position his company’s profit growing enterprises as a part of helping the poorest Americans to justify the U.S. taxpayer paying for a lot of it, or at least assuming all downside risk…

Re: Jensen: 'We've done our country a great disservice' by offshoring

#67

Post by zobzu » Mon, Jan 05, 2026, 3:01 PM UTC

jollyllama wrote: post #11

Offshore the datacenters (no jobs). Keep any manufacturing (some jobs). Problem solved.

no power no jobs.

same reason why america has been protecting their oil with wars.

energy is the basis for everything. cheap energy is what you want. cheaper than the next guy. it doesnt matter if its for AI, transport, refining goods, etc. its the same problem.

Re: Jensen: 'We've done our country a great disservice' by offshoring

#68

Post by rapnie » Mon, Jan 05, 2026, 3:02 PM UTC

potato3732842 wrote: post #60

freedomben wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, this was one of the first things I thought of too. I remember well the jokes about Perot being crazy, frequently used to dismiss his views. I'll never forget talking with an educated Perot voter (a friend of mine) at the time and actually being confronted with the real views, not a shallow strawman, and realizing I didn't have any good answers because I hadn't actually thought about it. That was a good matura…

>I remember well the jokes about Perot being crazy, frequently used to dismiss his views. Was he crazy or was he made to look that way as an excuse to dismiss his views? Sitting here in the 2020s knowing what we know now about "how it all works" it sure does cast a lot of doubt upon the past.

Isn't is similar to Carter being depicted as a 'weak president' because he had more progressive ideas than an average US president, which make similar amount of sense.. and hence best ridiculed as a threat to "greed is good" prevailing ethos.

Re: Jensen: 'We've done our country a great disservice' by offshoring

#69

Post by baal80spam » Mon, Jan 05, 2026, 3:02 PM UTC

ecshafer wrote: post #30

hackthemack wrote: post #12

Ross Perot in 1992 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VRr60nmDyu4 We have shipped millions of jobs overseas, and ... a strange situation, we have a process in Washington where after you serve for a while, you can cash in, become a foreign lobbyist. We have got to stop sending jobs overseas. You're paying 12, 13, 14 an hour for factory workers and you can move your factory South of the Border, pay a dollar an hour for yo…

One of my main arguments for a universal health care scheme in the united states is how horrendously expensive, for employers, health care is. Lets totally ignore efficacy, moral arguments, expense for the patient, etc. If you are a company in the US a large percentage of the effective compensation of employees is healthcare. A moderately good PPO is like ~$10k+ a year per employee. You can pay workers in some other…

Asking as not an American - $10k per year, how much % of a yearly salary is it?

In Europe (here: Germany example), which is frequently seen here as the ideal example of healthcare spending:

Employees and employers typically split around 14.6% of gross salary for public health insurance. [1]

[1] https://feather-insurance.com/blog/germany-healthcare-statis...

Re: Jensen: 'We've done our country a great disservice' by offshoring

#70

Post by shsusha » Mon, Jan 05, 2026, 3:03 PM UTC

tokai wrote: post #29

hackthemack wrote: post #12

Ross Perot in 1992 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VRr60nmDyu4 We have shipped millions of jobs overseas, and ... a strange situation, we have a process in Washington where after you serve for a while, you can cash in, become a foreign lobbyist. We have got to stop sending jobs overseas. You're paying 12, 13, 14 an hour for factory workers and you can move your factory South of the Border, pay a dollar an hour for yo…

Not sending production to the place with the cheapest labour is great way to have your companies being outcompeted by foreign actors. Unless we want to return to mercantilism a global empowerment of organized labour globally is the only real way to fix this.

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