141–150 of 216 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I used to live there and they don't really know MIT in China. I'd say only among the academics. Certainly not a household name.
Are you sure? Because there’s a bus load of fascinated Chinese tourists clamoring to look at MIT every other hour.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree with the general spirit of what you're stating, but the fact of the matter is that the Chinese government has proven conclusively that its vision of the future is not one that incorporates a free flow of information or the preservation of individual rights; the Chinese government as an entity is not a viable partner in the task of building the society of free information you envision - it is an obstacle stand…
Individual rights is a Western philosophy. Eastern philosophies have long favored collectivism, including the “free” Japan.
My team was interviewing engineers last year. We had a Chinese engineer come interview with us. She was in the States on a work visa, and her first job here was for a state government project. She was on a team building a web application that had public-facing and internal-facing UIs, and she was apparently working on both of these.
Anyways, she comes in for the interview, and shortly after our conversation begins she pulls out her work laptop, opens up her work project, and start going through the code with us! I asked "is this open source?" and she said no. I could even see slack messages coming up from her team mates.
I honestly couldn't believe it. We asked her to stop. As you can imagine, she didn't get an offer from us.
This is what a commerce war looks like. It's not about China being an oppressive state, spying, etc. The former didn't matter all these decades, and the latter goes on forever from all sides and nobody bats an eye. It's about China catching up to (and surpassing in some cases) US tech, and not being content to be the mere "factory of the US" but sell its own stuff. Like Korea, Taiwan, and Japan each did in their own…
Japan caught up and surpassed the US without the corporate espionage or subsequent commerce war.
Is there any evidence that these two companies aren’t Chinese government operatives?
China is now running into some of these invisible barriers and constraints that have been in place all along and this brings them into light and exposes the self serving hypocrisy of the current system to the rest of the world. There are global mechanisms to take complaints with evidence yet this 'war' is not being fought in the trade commissions but in the public press with innuendo and smears and political pressure on allies.
How do we then even talk about words like competition, free trade and innovation in neutral terms when companies like Qualcomm can succeed unhindered while others like Huawei are politically demonized and constrained in market access.
I was a PhD student at MIT CSAIL a few years ago and recall an incident where a visiting scholar from a corporation who had donated money had to be asked to leave because he essentially scraped every piece of internal data and code in the lab and sent it back home. What was amazing to me was that he was allowed to return a few months later with the explanation “it was just a cultural misunderstanding” I want to be ca…
Being a big believer in Open Source and Freedom of Knowledge, I think we, as humans, would progress much more quickly if we broke down barriers to knowledge sharing. It would help everyone progress much more quickly. Keeping knowledge secret, especially in research, which is usually publicly funded is not the right thing. We can debate all we want but the reality is that China has progressed and its people have benef…
There has been a lot of fud and scaremongering on China and Russia with very little evidence and facts. This makes it look like the commitment to competition, free markets and due process is hollow and self serving and the moment it doesn't benefit you you try to change the rules. China is now running into some of these invisible barriers and constraints that have been in place all along and this brings them into lig…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The US does not have execution vans for dissidents whereas China does, for instance.
I am not a Chinese dissident. China is not going around the globe putting people in execution vans there. So my personal consequences of Chinese surveillance are rather limited. The possible impact on my life is in no way comparable to the possible impact of the same by the US. I would like to not be mistook landing on no-fly lists, being banned from international banking as well as from making business with any comp…
I would recommend that you think of yourself as a dissident, including as a foreign dissident, even if you aren't actually one. I think that attitude can be a great source of moral guidance and perspective.
I just finished reading 'AI Superpowers' and I hardly understand now if US has any single chance to compete with China's Tech fairly, openly, democratically, with respect.
That whole book is a PR piece from a VC trying to generate deal flow. Scratch below the surface and there's not much substance to his 3 big arguments.