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How China built its ‘Manhattan Project’ to rival the West in AI chips

japantimes.co.jp

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Re: How China built its ‘Manhattan Project’ to rival the West in AI chips

#261

Post by _zagj »

mistercheph wrote: post #222
decafninja wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that only works if China reciprocates, which they show no sign of doing. I’d imagine a Chinese citizen living, studying, or working in the US has access to a lot more advanced knowledge than a US citizen trying to do so in China. Up to this point, the US has been the one with the advanced knowledge. We now face a world where the opposite might become true. But using the previous example, I’d imagine a future hypo…

It doesn't require reciprocation because it is a generalized version of the rebasing problem in software. Over a big round table with cigar smoke in the air it's natural to come to the conclusion that the closed party can always outpace any set of open parties since it can take the public work and extend it with an advance that it keeps a secret. In reality, we observe that open parties tend to win, or at minimum, if…

> In reality, we observe that open parties tend to win, or at minimum, if they lose, the closed party tends to have an entirely disconnected line of research that rarely incorporates ideas from the open party

An obvious counter-example to this is the NSA/GCHQ and cryptography. They've repeatedly shown that they're a good 5-15 years ahead of everyone else.

Re: How China built its ‘Manhattan Project’ to rival the West in AI chips

#262

Post by jaggederest »

pogue wrote: post #256
GolfPopper wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> pursuing quarterly profits and forgetting to look up "Forgetting to look up" implies a desire or intent to do so. The United States - former leader of the collective West - made the choice decades ago to sacrifice everything on the altar of quarterly profits. All that remains are the consequences of that decision.

When did this whole quarterly profits thing start and what lead to it?

You can round it down to Milton Friedman as the ideology and Jack Welch at GE in the 80s as the implementation and figurehead, but the original seeds were in the SEC mandating quarterly reporting as part of regulation after the great depression.

We can all agree to blame Jack Welch as shorthand though, I think.

Re: How China built its ‘Manhattan Project’ to rival the West in AI chips

#263

Post by KylerAce »

standardUser wrote: post #159
notepad0x90 wrote: post #143

Good for them, I don't see this as a big deal other than my fear of west china invading china (taiwan! :) ). Don't get me wrong, I want the west to succeed, but a competition from China is exactly what is needed. They're building datacenters in arizona and india for TSMC because of this competition. I really hope we get past historical political rivalry and get along with China better. Competition is good, hostility…

The more China advances domestically, especially in this area, the less it has to gain from invading Taiwan. China is getting to the point where the conquest is finally doable (rapidly advancing and massive military, plus a weak US president), but the potential gains are diminishing year to year. I'd speculate that if they don't invade during Trump's term, they never will, and will pursue a different course down the…

Invading Taiwan isn't about chips at all, and in fact chips are actively disincentivizing invasion. Semiconductor fabs and the oodles of atomically precise ultra clean and ultra expensive equipment inside absolutely do not mix well with bombs.

Re: How China built its ‘Manhattan Project’ to rival the West in AI chips

#264

Post by terminalshort »

pogue wrote: post #256
GolfPopper wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> pursuing quarterly profits and forgetting to look up "Forgetting to look up" implies a desire or intent to do so. The United States - former leader of the collective West - made the choice decades ago to sacrifice everything on the altar of quarterly profits. All that remains are the consequences of that decision.

When did this whole quarterly profits thing start and what lead to it?

It's not real. Companies routinely lose money for years in pursuit of long term growth. But for some reason people love to use this as an explanation of everything wrong in our country.

Re: How China built its ‘Manhattan Project’ to rival the West in AI chips

#265

Post by woooooo »

tsunamifury wrote: post #233
ibrahimsow1 wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They flood an industry with funds and let them all compete with each other. Then they back the biggest winner. A command economy usually mandates X units of Y good. This isn’t quite that.

That’s only the first year after that it’s command and control for the vast majority. Also you take is highly simplistic. Even the small players are command and control. You’re likely just not aware how it works.

Its a pretty big detriment to American thinking that they take cold-war era characterizations of the Russian economy and then apply them to 2025 China.

The current Chinese worries are about having too much competition rather than too little, Google "involution" to read about it.

Re: How China built its ‘Manhattan Project’ to rival the West in AI chips

#266

Post by terminalshort »

xmprt wrote: post #86
echelon wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is anyone here calling legislators about it to inform them of this? Does anyone here have leverage to affect strategy?

It might be a bit nihilistic but at this point I don't think the current US administration has any strategy. In past administrations, it felt like even if there was a strategy, bureaucracy and lack of caring enough to do their job led to nothing happening. In this administration, it feels like there's no care for the rules so in theory a strategy could be pushed through... except there isn't one - literally whoever i…

Exactly right. Democrats have the desire to do big things, but not the capability. Republicans have the capability, but no desire.

Re: How China built its ‘Manhattan Project’ to rival the West in AI chips

#267

Post by terminalshort »

smallmancontrov wrote: post #219
scottyah wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's the same problem as the past administration and most members of congress- they're just too old to care about 50yrs from now. I don't think they're actively against the 50yr+ future, it's just that the world is changing too fast, and they're falling back to what they know- competing with their peers for power, money, and status. They only have some inkling of actual empathy for the communities their grand…

> same problem as the past administration Did you miss the Infrastructure act that spent $500B on roads, ports, and water projects? The CHIPS act that spent $50B on decoupling and R&D?! The Climate & Energy act ("IRA") that spent $400B on clean energy subsidies??!! I can understand the perspective of wanting more, but the forward-looking policies of the last administration were in a different galaxy compared to those…

The problem is that China could have built the same infrastructure for $100B and in 25% of the time. Pumping subsidies into our bloated bureaucratic nightmare of a system is only going to make the lawyers and bureaucrats who are its gatekeepers fatter.

Re: How China built its ‘Manhattan Project’ to rival the West in AI chips

#268

Post by tempest_ »

roadside_picnic wrote: post #139
xmprt wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It might be a bit nihilistic but at this point I don't think the current US administration has any strategy. In past administrations, it felt like even if there was a strategy, bureaucracy and lack of caring enough to do their job led to nothing happening. In this administration, it feels like there's no care for the rules so in theory a strategy could be pushed through... except there isn't one - literally whoever i…

> I don't think the current US administration has any strategy I 100% believe the strategy is to enlarge the Trump family's wealth, and it's been a wildly successful strategy (in the past year he's been able to create billions in wealth for his family [0]). At least this vaguely ties Trump's success to the success of the United States in a limited capacity. Completely destroying the US is not ideal for him, but it's…

> Completely destroying the US is not ideal for him

How can you say? The ultra wealthy are not playing team sports. If the country burned tomorrow they would just sit on their yacht or buy citizenship somewhere else.

Sure the lion share of his investments are currently in the US, but that could easily change.

Re: How China built its ‘Manhattan Project’ to rival the West in AI chips

#269

Post by [deleted] »

kiba wrote: post #253
mr_toad wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> West-- as usual-- is pursuing quarterly profits and forgetting to look up. The companies building out vast data centers for AI aren’t looking to make profits for several years (if ever), and are catching a lot of flak for it. The shareholders who seem to be focused on short-term profits and punish them every time they get cold feet. Oracle is a prime example of this. I don’t know if the markets in Asia work differe…

And they should be catching a lot of flak for it because it's not really long term strategic planning, it's overhyping a technology and running roughshod over society promoting misuses and AI slops.

[deleted]

Re: How China built its ‘Manhattan Project’ to rival the West in AI chips

#270

Post by terminalshort »

hkt wrote: post #116
roenxi wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The NASDAQ line go up model is why the AI boom is happening and a major factor in why it is Western companies leading the charge. The more bigger issue is that the west refused to sell chips to China so they had to figure out how to make their own. And margin compression is what free markets do. That is one of the big motivators to putting free markets everywhere, the freer the market the more compressed the margins…

> margin compression is what free markets do Except the market pretty much can't do this with Nvidia. Nobody is showing any sign of catching up: it is entirely possible we are seeing a runaway train and without the intervention of a massive state like China to create a viable competitor, there will never be one.

This situation has been going on for 5 years now. It's ridiculous to assume there will never be competition. You. could have said the same about Intel a couple of decades ago.
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