Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

japantimes.co.jp

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

401–410 of 645 posts

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

#401

Post by yanhangyhy »

gpt5 wrote: post #388
yanhangyhy wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re not wrong to think that way. But now there’s less and less left for China to “copy,” and it’s hard to argue that many things aren’t being invented by China itself. Perhaps the real question is this: why is it that places that used to be technologically advanced no longer produce new, original inventions? Is it fear of China copying them? Did the U.S. decide not to develop a sixth-generation fighter jet because…

Can you clarify what are you talking about? The US has been developing 6th-gen fighter since the mid mid-2010s - not that I'd consider it as an important new original invention. What I would consider as the most impactful inventions of the last decade would be things like mRNA, Generative AI, and reusable rockets - all came from the US and the US is maintaining the lead in them.

> Can you clarify what are you talking about? The US has been developing 6th-gen fighter since the mid mid-2010s - not that I'd consider it as an important new original invention.

So you think that, as an advanced military project that should have been kept under the strictest secrecy, the Chinese somehow obtained it and, based on that, developed their own sixth-generation fighter—and even managed a successful test flight while the U.S. is still at the PowerPoint stage? I don’t know which scenario would be worse for the United States.

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

#402

Post by [deleted] »

tjwebbnorfolk wrote: post #301
jaggederest wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd cite as a counterexample in recent memory Sears, GE, Boeing, and Intel. I think collectively they've destroyed close to a trillion dollars by focus on quarterly results over long term, and they're not alone.

Yes, and we all saw what happened. They've experienced serious financial consequences, some went out of business. This is exactly what is supposed to happen when you do dumb shortsighted things. There's also risk in investing in very long-term things that may not pan out. WAI, in other words

[deleted]

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

#403

Post by gpt5 »

yanhangyhy wrote: post #401
gpt5 wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you clarify what are you talking about? The US has been developing 6th-gen fighter since the mid mid-2010s - not that I'd consider it as an important new original invention. What I would consider as the most impactful inventions of the last decade would be things like mRNA, Generative AI, and reusable rockets - all came from the US and the US is maintaining the lead in them.

> Can you clarify what are you talking about? The US has been developing 6th-gen fighter since the mid mid-2010s - not that I'd consider it as an important new original invention. So you think that, as an advanced military project that should have been kept under the strictest secrecy, the Chinese somehow obtained it and, based on that, developed their own sixth-generation fighter—and even managed a successful test f…

Well, if we compare what we know about China's NGAD, which is almost nothing, with what we know about US NGAD, which is also almost nothing, we can safely conclude almost nothing.

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

#404

Post by exceptione »

tsunamifury wrote: post #149
exceptione wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is a theme in the industries China does well in - western regulators ban cut-throat competition, The problem is not regulation, it is the lack of it: anti-monopolist practices and deregulation of the finance industry has led us to insane bubbles, dead markets and extreme wealth concentration. Any competition gets bought, crushed, or undercut via bankrolling. This is what you get when the 0.0001% gets to pull…

I think you have no idea how a command economy works. Haha. It’s literally state sponsored monopolies.

I am talking about the economy in the Western model, it works well if there is competition. And it usually needs the state to do moonshots, like the literal moon shot or Silicon Valley. But the American economy was the most impressive during the Roosevelt years. The war production was insane, with 75% state planned, state built and state owned factories. The private sector was dominated by oligarchy owned monopolies, which means it wasn't impressive¹. The government had no time for conservative fairy tales and needed to take initiative.

What helped was the public outrage over the insane profits the American oligarchs reaped during WOI. This enabled Roosevelt during WOII to set a maximum profit margin for the oligarchy owned factories and fined those who evaded the law. It was a shock for the conservatives to see how the bureaucracy turned America's mediocre output around with a fast, efficient and lean production monster. The monopolists had to resort to propaganda, claiming the government's success as theirs, injecting the falsehoods we now all take for granted.

___

1. As an exercise, think what would be possible if all the cash piles didn't sit at big tech, but instead enabled competition. Meta isn't still more than a useless addiction factory.

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

#405

Post by kaycey2022 »

vasco wrote: post #354
yanhangyhy wrote: post #323

Domestically, we often put it this way: since it wasn’t made by God, we can definitely make it ourselves. It’s only a matter of time — if not this year, then next year; if we can’t do it next year, we’ll just keep going. This is how we approach everything. There is a small caveat, though. China was not actually that far behind in the semiconductor field in the past. The problem was that corruption and fraudulent proj…

> since it wasn’t made by God, we can definitely make it ourselves. This implies copying what someone else did. Rather than inventing something new. I know it's not what you meant but if it wasn't made by God it's because it's already made by someone else. The sentence says to me more about copying than some relentless pursuit. The people who invented the thing to copy, those were more relentless presumably. And then…

I don't see why copying is unnatural or even bad. Maybe within a single economy or a group of economies which share a common understanding and laws, chosing to discourage copying to incentivise other citizen innovators makes sense.

But in the global context, between adversarial nations, or even countries that don't see each other as equal, it is absolutely foolish not to copy. Since everything is framed in terms of game theories, what is even the benefit of not copying and being a "good boy" country?

In fact in this situation a country's IP is almost its liability and not its asset. Because it should cost the holding country money and resources so their citizens' IP is protected. And these resources are better off preserved for more crucial knowledge.

None of this even makes the copier's actions bad or immoral. They have a moral imperative to succeed.

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

#406

Post by CuriouslyC »

krona wrote: post #383
yanhangyhy wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re not wrong to think that way. But now there’s less and less left for China to “copy,” and it’s hard to argue that many things aren’t being invented by China itself. Perhaps the real question is this: why is it that places that used to be technologically advanced no longer produce new, original inventions? Is it fear of China copying them? Did the U.S. decide not to develop a sixth-generation fighter jet because…

Can't wait to see the first Nobel prize in physics being awarded to a scientist who is actually a product of Chinese academy. Any moment now.

Nobel prizes are almost as sus as Oscars now. Corina Machado tells you all you need to know.

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

#407

Post by alexnewman »

gpt5 wrote: post #388
yanhangyhy wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re not wrong to think that way. But now there’s less and less left for China to “copy,” and it’s hard to argue that many things aren’t being invented by China itself. Perhaps the real question is this: why is it that places that used to be technologically advanced no longer produce new, original inventions? Is it fear of China copying them? Did the U.S. decide not to develop a sixth-generation fighter jet because…

Can you clarify what are you talking about? The US has been developing 6th-gen fighter since the mid mid-2010s - not that I'd consider it as an important new original invention. What I would consider as the most impactful inventions of the last decade would be things like mRNA, Generative AI, and reusable rockets - all came from the US and the US is maintaining the lead in them.

All of the US military is a waste including 6th generation fighters. We hope china copies our disinformation campaign. In fact as the usa has been taken apart almost all of our big secrets are just disinformation

- stealth (not really) - aliens (sure....) - 6th gen jets (where are the jets?)

The reality is that everything that you do in peacetime is just to scare the enemy and will have very little effect in war. Since the US doesn't have as much industrial capacity the only winning war is nuke from space first or learn to get along

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

#408

Post by CuriouslyC »

vkou wrote: post #365
mullingitover wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> why isn't the west's own supply chain options as immense? The US explicitly chose to be a service economy. China explicitly chose to be a mercantile economy. The US can absolutely switch paths, it will just take a long time and will require pushing millions into poverty. But we're on track to do it.

> But we're on track to do it. The only thing that the US is on track to is getting a taste of what real corruption feels like, enriching Trump's friends, and hollowing out its middle class.

Joke's on them. If a wave of post-trump anti-corruption retribution doesn't come when the Republicans get swept out of power, we're going to have a whole generation of Luigis.

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

#409

Post by lm28469 »

barrenko wrote: post #356
yanhangyhy wrote: post #323

Domestically, we often put it this way: since it wasn’t made by God, we can definitely make it ourselves. It’s only a matter of time — if not this year, then next year; if we can’t do it next year, we’ll just keep going. This is how we approach everything. There is a small caveat, though. China was not actually that far behind in the semiconductor field in the past. The problem was that corruption and fraudulent proj…

The final outcome is affected by the final 10%, you can even call it 1%, for which the semi-corrupt or "communistiquesque" countries never (seemingly) have the will or sheer talent for.

The level of cope... The US and the west in general is on a much more dire trajectory than China (which is facing its own demons, no doubt about that)

There is not much left of communism in China besides the name, it's more akin to a government steered economy, which arguably is very similar to what the west had when we moved at our peak speed, albeit more authoritarian. They still have what we mostly lost: a long term historical view of geopolitic.

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

#410

Post by CuriouslyC »

bilbo0s wrote: post #205
solid_fuel wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I took the previous comment as satire, considering that - for example - Chinese electric vehicles are now far more affordable than anything produced domestically in the US.

Just to give a hint of how we plan on dealing with this, how many of those cars can you buy in the US today? You can expect to be able to buy exactly that many chinese GPU or neural processors.

Bringing a car in is hard. Bringing a GPU in is easy.
Post reply on HN