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

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151–160 of 211 posts

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

#151
post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The USSR came from far behind and beat us to space. Authoritarian regimes may struggle to allocate food efficiently but they're fine at allocating scientists. I would say that's debatable. The USSR did beat the US to orbit (and in space station technology), but it fell short getting to the Moon, launching scientific space probes, and building a space plane.

"The USSR did beat the US to orbit (and in space station technology), but it fell short getting to the Moon, launching scientific space probes, and building a space plane." Those are arguably issues of running out of resources, to some extent, not inability to innovate. At some point you need money to turn innovative ideas into reality.

Elon Musk got asked what’s the best way to get started on building a space oriented company and his response was essentially “build a billion dollar internet company first”.

By innovating and letting private individuals to do as they please in their own self pursuits the US was able to get that money for space.

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

#152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comment is excellent, and I agree with everything you say. I will retort, however, that we Americans should not take our technological dominance for granted, just as a precious generation of carmakers and related industries had to learn what happens when foreign competitors (especially with government support) eat up domestic markets that companies like Ford and GM thought belonged to them forever. I’m not sugge…

The correlation of the rise of Europe/US and the decline of China/India (55% of world gdp at the time) is directly tied to a massive amount of illegal drugs pumped by US/England/France into China for a 100 year period. The reaction of a society to a forced drug epedemic will create 2nd and 3rd order effects (like a closed society) that are very easy to criticize today by people who are unaware of one of the largest p…

The destructive civil war between 1927 to 1950 between the Kuomintang and the CCP had a big impact. So did the 1930s Japanese invasion.

Most damning of all, Mao's bad economic policies directly killed more than 35 million people, mostly through starvation. He killed more people than Stalin or Hitler.

But the CCP does not discuss these much. It's harder to accept that another 30 years of humiliation (from 1949 to 1979) was the leadership of China shooting itself in the foot.

Remember that second and third order effects are difficult to measure. EVERYTHING is first, second, third etc order effect of something that happened in the past. China's current growth can only occur in the post WW2 US world order that allows all nations to lift themselves out of poverty through trade.

For other readers: parent account is 10 months old with only 1 other comment. This is an indication of a 50 cent army member or at least someone who has been influenced by CCP propaganda, which has grains of truth but systematically exaggerates the influence of certain things.

It is though an interesting question to what China would be like if the Opium Wars never happened.

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

#153
post #93
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is particularly clear for India, which is a natural US ally. India has only become a natural US ally fairly recently... And largely due to the 'frenemy' status that the US has with China. (Which in itself is a consequence of the 'frenemy' status that the USSR had with China... It's turtles all the way down.) Through much of the Cold War, US-India relationships were very, very cool. Instead, they had good relat…

nation-state alignment What has made the past 50 years so peaceful (amongst the big powers, at least) is that nations that share values have aligned. France and Germany and the US and Australia share a philosophy of governance, not just a short term realpolitik goal. (Of course sharing a language helps too: Canada, UK, US, Aus, NZ are tight for that reason in good part)

(And also don't forget Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and almost all of Latin America among the liberal democratic governments, and Turkey until recently.)

But I think the emphasis on values is unfortunately not true. The parent overlooks all the right-wing dictatorships that the U.S. allied with, from Indonesia under Suharto to Iran (under the Shah) to Iraq under Saddam Hussein (when Iran turned against the US) in the 1980s to Chile under Pinochet to the junta in Greece to Saudi Arabia to Egypt to Mobutu in Zaire/Congo to Central American dictators to many more on every continent.

And today, right-wing dictatorships are arising among NATO allies, but I haven't heard a word about ejecting them from the alliance.

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

#154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The U.S. helps to educate and provide opportunity to people, regardless of national origin - regardless of the arbitrary, invisible lines on a map, drawn by the powerful, in which they were born. Partly as a result, the greatest economic miracle in history has occurred since WWII (and especially since the end of the Cold War), with hundreds of millions of people pulled from millennia of hopeless, abject poverty. Anot…

Academic immigrants these days are also potentially undercutting/warping expectations about labor in academic labs. 36k (for grad students) or 50k (for postdocs) are hardly acceptable salaries from an American perspective, but to folks from India and China those salaries are fortunes relatively speaking. To Indians/Chinese a 70 hour work week for that money might be worth it. Contrast this to past academic immigratio…

> 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 course, for most Americans, those people with the 'wrong values' and 'foreign sensibilities' are your ancestors.

Human beings have their own sensibilities as individuals, not those of some country or ethnicity - people in my own family don't even share those things. I'm sure the parent would not want to be told what they will think and what they will do based on where they were born; that they can't determine their own character; it's absurd. And the truth is that when you give them liberty and opportunity, they thrive and share those same universal values. The track record is undeniable.

So please let's not make the same mistake again. The sensibilities of 1930s Germany? Italy? Egads. Though I guess they also discriminated based on nationalism and ethnicity.

It's a happy, wonderful thing: Let's believe in people, give them freedom and opportunity, and everyone thrives.

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

#155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The correlation of the rise of Europe/US and the decline of China/India (55% of world gdp at the time) is directly tied to a massive amount of illegal drugs pumped by US/England/France into China for a 100 year period. The reaction of a society to a forced drug epedemic will create 2nd and 3rd order effects (like a closed society) that are very easy to criticize today by people who are unaware of one of the largest p…

The destructive civil war between 1927 to 1950 between the Kuomintang and the CCP had a big impact. So did the 1930s Japanese invasion. Most damning of all, Mao's bad economic policies directly killed more than 35 million people, mostly through starvation. He killed more people than Stalin or Hitler. But the CCP does not discuss these much. It's harder to accept that another 30 years of humiliation (from 1949 to 1979…

The secret treaty between President Roosevelt (relation of the leading drug pushers) and Japan, giving the Japanese permission to invade Korea/China in 1905 didn't help either.

Many historians believe reversal of this treaty caused Pearl Harbor and started WW2.

Quite embarassing for the Nobel Prize winning Roosevelts indeed.

https://www.c-span.org/video/?290682-1/the-imperial-cruise

Most people don't know history, so it's easy to sweep under the rug.

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

#156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The U.S. helps to educate and provide opportunity to people, regardless of national origin - regardless of the arbitrary, invisible lines on a map, drawn by the powerful, in which they were born. Partly as a result, the greatest economic miracle in history has occurred since WWII (and especially since the end of the Cold War), with hundreds of millions of people pulled from millennia of hopeless, abject poverty. Anot…

I'm mostly with everything but the second half of your first sentence here, but unfortunately that embeds such a huge misconception that the net value of your comment could very well be negative unless you acknowledge and clarify/correct this. The boundaries of Apple, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, etc. are "arbitrary [and] invisible" to some extent, and obviously drawn by the powerful. But "the current set of lines are…

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 practical reasons, mostly to prevent the economic shocks of mass migrations, it needs to be somewhat limited and controlled. But I want the poorest, most oppressed people coming to my country; they are the ones who need freedom the most - the most marginal social and economic gain. I'm completely confident that they and their children will thrive and make my country better. And for practical and moral reasons, I'd like more diversity; the sooner we can do away with the dominance of any ethnic group, the sooner we can be rid of their BS bigotry, which is a drain on us all. (Imagine, for a moment, the world without bigots - so many problems solved.)

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

#157

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…

> To many good full-stack jobs that pay ~40% more.

The gap is even greater in China, since China has a booming Internet industry, second only to the US, while its semiconductor industry is still in infancy and cannot survive without subsidies. My friend, who graduated with a degree in EE from Tsinghua University, lamented that almost none of her classmates stayed in EE fields. Note that Tsinghua University is the undisputed best Chinese university in engineering schools.

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

#158
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?

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

#159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The destructive civil war between 1927 to 1950 between the Kuomintang and the CCP had a big impact. So did the 1930s Japanese invasion. Most damning of all, Mao's bad economic policies directly killed more than 35 million people, mostly through starvation. He killed more people than Stalin or Hitler. But the CCP does not discuss these much. It's harder to accept that another 30 years of humiliation (from 1949 to 1979…

The secret treaty between President Roosevelt (relation of the leading drug pushers) and Japan, giving the Japanese permission to invade Korea/China in 1905 didn't help either. Many historians believe reversal of this treaty caused Pearl Harbor and started WW2. Quite embarassing for the Nobel Prize winning Roosevelts indeed. https://www.c-span.org/video/?290682-1/the-imperial-cruise Most people don't know history, so…

Did not record password to 'asdfasdfklj' throwaway acc.

I agree that great power horse trading before and after WW1 has caused a lot of issues. A rules based world order is an improvement on that. I wish USA followed the rules and did not invade nations such as Iraq.

I forgot to mention relative GDP is a bad measure. Absolute GDP (on a log scale) is a much better measure. The relative GDP graph will falsely make it look like India and China declined far worse than they did around 200 years ago. The reason is the industrial revolutions, which separated population size from a nation's GDP (at least until recent globalization). One nation growing due to industrial revolution by itself does not make a stagnating non industrial economy weaker in absolute terms.

I think a large fraction of that relative decline would have happened even if there was not an absolute decline due to misdeeds of certain British and American people in the 1800s.

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

#160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The secret treaty between President Roosevelt (relation of the leading drug pushers) and Japan, giving the Japanese permission to invade Korea/China in 1905 didn't help either. Many historians believe reversal of this treaty caused Pearl Harbor and started WW2. Quite embarassing for the Nobel Prize winning Roosevelts indeed. https://www.c-span.org/video/?290682-1/the-imperial-cruise Most people don't know history, so…

Did not record password to 'asdfasdfklj' throwaway acc. I agree that great power horse trading before and after WW1 has caused a lot of issues. A rules based world order is an improvement on that. I wish USA followed the rules and did not invade nations such as Iraq. I forgot to mention relative GDP is a bad measure. Absolute GDP (on a log scale) is a much better measure. The relative GDP graph will falsely make it l…

Quite the contrary, colonizing all of Africa, South America, India, and drugging China (at about the same time) did a lot to boost GDP...

Industrial revolution works even better if all prevailing exporters all of a sudden fall off a cliff.

"Mean reversion", word of the century.

Interesting bonus fact for economic historians, in 1890, 30% of Britain's GDP was illegal opium smuggling to China.

Would be interesting to see the numbers for the USA (by some accounts, the biggest exporter by that point)...

Courtesy of Aaron Swartz: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3112527

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