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Qian Xuesen: The missile genius America lost and China gained (2025)

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Re: Qian Xuesen: The missile genius America lost and China gained (2025)

#121

Post by chmod775 »

KalMann wrote: post #117
raincole wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's mostly because a movie about someone who's an expert at building organizations is boring. Still issue (seriously). He might be an expert at building organizations in real life, but there is no rule that a movie about him has to focus on that part. Movies are not documentaries. Examples: Oppenheimer, A Beautiful Mind, The Imitation Game, Jobs, Social Media, and literally every movie that sells tbh.

I really don't think your argument is very convincing. Some of your examples are downright ridiculous? "Jobs" Making a movie about one of the creation of some of one of the most famous companies on Earth is obviously interesting. That's not comparable at all.

> Making a movie about one of the creation of some of one of the most famous companies on Earth is obviously interesting.

That's not what "Jobs" is about. It's the setting of a character-driven dramatization of Steve Job's life and his personality. You do not grow a company like Apple merely by dominating rooms with your personality, dropping oneliners and speaking in absolutes. There's a lot of actual work involved, the details of which would make for a movie rather boring to most audiences.

"Jobs" is a movie about Apple as much as "Inglourious Basterds" is a movie about the US military in WW2.

Re: Qian Xuesen: The missile genius America lost and China gained (2025)

#122

Post by Animats »

Apocryphon wrote: post #22
Animats wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That one, about a member of Congress, has a sex scene in a hot tub. It had movie potential. The Roy Krock movie worked because audiences understand McDonalds. Trying to explain the relationship between R&D policy and defense spending is much tougher. Although see Heinlein's "Destination Moon".

I don't deny that a lot of the examples given are either of people behind relatable everyday products and brands, or world-shaping historical events that every laymen has some inkling of. Or that in Congressman Wilson's case, a colorful and flamboyant personality beyond the potential 9/11 connection. Certainly when it comes to WWII era technocratic bureaucrat-administrator types I'd be more interested in, say, a film…

> Business Plot[1] ... Smedley Butler

That's a movie it's time to make.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Plot

Re: Qian Xuesen: The missile genius America lost and China gained (2025)

#123

Post by Animats »

grogenaut wrote: post #77
Animats wrote: post #6

That's fascinating. The article points out that nobody made a movie about this guy. That's mostly because a movie about someone who's an expert at building organizations is boring. Nobody ever made a biopic about Charles Wilson, head of defense production at General Motors during WWII, and later US Secretary of Defense. Hyman Rickover, who headed the 1950s effort to build nuclear submarines and warships, only has a l…

they completely glossed over Graves in Oppenheimer, one of the many reasons I hated that movie. There's a great "scene" in "the making of the atomic bomb" that also appears in the movie that they botched. Something along the way of oppenheimer stressing over "how do we pick the right way to make the bomb" and graves saying "simple, we do all of them". There's so much interesting material there and they instead focuse…

There are other movies about the Manhattan Project where Gen. Leslie Groves is the main character.[1] "Fat Man and Little Boy" is probably the most Groves-oriented.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Films_about_the_Manha...

Re: Qian Xuesen: The missile genius America lost and China gained (2025)

#124

Post by fakedang »

catigula wrote: post #66
fakedang wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you forget that most of his colleagues worked with the USSR? Von Braun was just lucky that the US got to him and captured him first.

Dumb comment. Nazis were blood enemies of communists. They didn’t want to fight the Americans or even the British.

And yet how many Nazi scientists advanced the Soviet nuclear and aerospace programmes willingly? How many former Nazis joined the Stasi? Hint hint, a fucking lot.

Re: Qian Xuesen: The missile genius America lost and China gained (2025)

#125

Post by arjie »

saghm wrote: post #35
999900000999 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It should be a cautionary tale. How many geniuses are leaving the US right now due to Xenophobia?

I had a friend working at a startup I interned at who had come over on a student visa, gotten a temporary visa to work, but then eventually was not able to keep it and ended up moving to Canada and working there. It's never made sense to me why we'd want to kick people out after they've received education here; if anything, it would make more sense to require them to work here for a bit after (although I'd also proba…

Immigration views tend to track who the immigrants seemingly threaten, so sites like HN tend to have the views about H1-Bs[0] that working-class people have about working-class immigrants (illegal or otherwise).

It'll be interesting to see if America can reverse this trend. Our ability to be a sink for global talent has been a massive boost to America's success. The funny thing is that there will be no substitute should America falter. The rising powers are not as immigrant friendly. There are as many foreigners in tiny Taiwan as in mighty China. What might well happen is that the particular combination of human agglomeration, relatively free markets, and a diverse society might just be lost and with it all the human productivity that came with it.

0: "do we really need them?" "aren't locals enough?" "we should train locals" https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

Re: Qian Xuesen: The missile genius America lost and China gained (2025)

#126

Post by raincole »

KalMann wrote: post #117
raincole wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's mostly because a movie about someone who's an expert at building organizations is boring. Still issue (seriously). He might be an expert at building organizations in real life, but there is no rule that a movie about him has to focus on that part. Movies are not documentaries. Examples: Oppenheimer, A Beautiful Mind, The Imitation Game, Jobs, Social Media, and literally every movie that sells tbh.

I really don't think your argument is very convincing. Some of your examples are downright ridiculous? "Jobs" Making a movie about one of the creation of some of one of the most famous companies on Earth is obviously interesting. That's not comparable at all.

If you actually watched Jobs you would know it has very little to do with how Apple was actually created in real life.

Of course a movie about Steve Jobs is inherently more marketable than one about Qian Xuesen. But one isn't inherently more boring than the other.

Re: Qian Xuesen: The missile genius America lost and China gained (2025)

#127

Post by verall »

verall wrote: post #115
hitekker wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That wikipage over-focuses on modern rightwing racism to the exclusion of modern leftwing racism against the Chinese. It doesn't account for how 2020's White Progressives treated Chinese-Americans as "white-adjacent" second-class constituents. For example, by funding front-groups that claimed authority over US Chinese & Asian concerns, from an almost exclusively partisan angle. https://sfstandard.com/opinion/2026/04/…

Crazy even Garry Tan can't write his own opinion blogs anymore

I know I'm not supposed to complain, and you are all free to flag this comment, but i actually cannot believe i got downdooted for calling out Garry Tan's slop racebaiting

Re: Qian Xuesen: The missile genius America lost and China gained (2025)

#128

Post by 999900000999 »

arjie wrote: post #125
saghm wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a friend working at a startup I interned at who had come over on a student visa, gotten a temporary visa to work, but then eventually was not able to keep it and ended up moving to Canada and working there. It's never made sense to me why we'd want to kick people out after they've received education here; if anything, it would make more sense to require them to work here for a bit after (although I'd also proba…

Immigration views tend to track who the immigrants seemingly threaten, so sites like HN tend to have the views about H1-Bs[0] that working-class people have about working-class immigrants (illegal or otherwise). It'll be interesting to see if America can reverse this trend. Our ability to be a sink for global talent has been a massive boost to America's success. The funny thing is that there will be no substitute sho…

>The rising powers are not as immigrant friendly.

This is absolutely true. In college I remember going out with girls from various different countries. Made friends with tons of folks from all over the world.

I guess you might see a bit of that in London or a handful of other European countries, but nothing on the same scale.

But you could argue from a business point of view you can get everyone on a zoom call anyway.

If I can hire someone in Malaysia for 1/10th of an American, why wouldn't I do that.

Re: Qian Xuesen: The missile genius America lost and China gained (2025)

#129

Post by ekm2 »

leonidasrup wrote: post #92
porphyra wrote: post #27

The US continues to repeat this mistake by adding hurdles for immigrant talent while persecuting or being generally racist against Chinese-American scientists [1]. Despite that, there's still a net influx of foreign talent coming to the US whereas relatively few people move to China. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Chinese_sentiment_in_the_...

China uses “non-traditional collectors” https://www.economist.com/china/2024/12/26/how-china-turns-m... "Despite being one of the most populous countries in the world (1.4 billion), second only to India, China has an exceptionally low percentage of foreign nationals, at only 0.05%, as of 2023" https://directhr.cn/pdf/Direct%20HR%20-%20Hello%20China%20or...

It is because it is populous that it does not have space for foreigners?

Re: Qian Xuesen: The missile genius America lost and China gained (2025)

#130

Post by [deleted] »

arjie wrote: post #125
saghm wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a friend working at a startup I interned at who had come over on a student visa, gotten a temporary visa to work, but then eventually was not able to keep it and ended up moving to Canada and working there. It's never made sense to me why we'd want to kick people out after they've received education here; if anything, it would make more sense to require them to work here for a bit after (although I'd also proba…

Immigration views tend to track who the immigrants seemingly threaten, so sites like HN tend to have the views about H1-Bs[0] that working-class people have about working-class immigrants (illegal or otherwise). It'll be interesting to see if America can reverse this trend. Our ability to be a sink for global talent has been a massive boost to America's success. The funny thing is that there will be no substitute sho…

[deleted]
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