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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

#501

Post by DrScientist »

foldr wrote: post #418
yanhangyhy wrote: post #401

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. 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…

China doesn’t yet have the jet engine technology to compete with American 5th gen fighters. I certainly don’t think the US or anyone else should be complacent, but the US has a substantial lead for now.

Not sure fighters matter as much these days - Russia has air superiority in terms of jets over Ukraine - but it uses them infrequently - appears the problem is the ground based counter measures are quite effective and much cheaper.

If they want to attack by air - drones and missiles rather than planes appear to be the way to go.

Similarly aircraft carriers - they can only really be used now to bully small countries. To anybody with significant missile/drone tech they are just massive, slow, sitting ducks.

What matters is drones and missiles etc and how fast you can churn them out. Who would win that?

The US is going to have to find a way to live with countries like China and India, rather than trying to suppress them.

The current US policy of trying to dismant all the organisations that were set up post world war II in order to keep the peace is madness.

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

#502

Post by LiquidSky »

MrSkelter wrote: post #452
andyjohnson0 wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is how we approach everything. > This is because it is not only a government policy, but also a Chinese way of thinking. Nothing can interrupt this process. Is there any evidence that this kind of homogeneous "national character" is objectively real? Or is it just another story that people tell themselves?

[flagged]

You’re not addressing the parent’s question about how any of this is about the “Chinese way of thinking”. In fact, in offering a purely material explanation for China’s success, that it simply has more people and resources, you’re actively arguing against the idea.

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

#503

Post by iknowSFR »

adventured wrote: post #430
iknowSFR wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s a NYT’s interview several months back where the journalist phrased it as in America, you have to prove success first to get funded. But in China, funding comes first and the successful companies emerge.

Which isn't at all accurate. Venture capital specifically exists to fund first, in the pursuit of success later - and the US has been by a dramatic margin the leader in doing that for the past ~60-70 years.

VC still requires startups to find themselves and prove something first. China basically has a program to do X and anyone can sign up to be a part of that program. All are funded and the winners emerge. I’m broadly generalizing that process but that’s not how VC approaches it.

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

#504

Post by gpt5 »

DrScientist wrote: post #492
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.

> 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. This so myopic. The covid mRNA vaccine that Pfizer made billions from was done by BionTech a company in Germany led by immigrant turks. Sure some American's recently got the Nobel prize for the pseudouridine modifi…

I’m sorry, but you are completely missing the point.

Nobody disputed that mRNA, like all science, has many inventors. And that many people in the west as a whole has worked on the technology. Everything you said about the contributions to mRNA is correct, and doesn’t diminish US’s critical part in it.

The point was, and remains, that saying that the US has stopped becoming innovative, is just nonsense.

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

#505

Post by senordevnyc »

soared wrote: post #494
dangus wrote: post #460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the places where American inefficiency is most visible is in construction, urban planning, and healthcare. America blows a significant amount of its money by having its citizens drive everywhere with no option to take a train, bus, bicycle, or low-speed e-scooter. Americans take a crazy percentage of their income and just dump it into the stagnant automotive industry. Americans blow between $5,000-10,000 a ye…

Show me these magical cities where an extra $750/mo in rent lets you both move from the suburbs to downtown, and increase your sq footage!

Seriously, delusional take. I live in Manhattan and I’m considering a move to Westchester (large suburban county just north of NYC). Average cost per sq foot to buy in Manhattan is about $1500, and it’s about $400 in Westchester. That’s before you touch the other differences in cost of living (taxes, childcare, groceries, etc).

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

#506

Post by lm28469 »

techas wrote: post #462
lm28469 wrote: post #409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 te…

>There is not much left of communism in China besides the name, After living 2 years in China and visiting the country every year for the last 12 years, I disagree with you. Many not minor things in China are still very aligned with communism. How the university system works, land property, production in unpopulated areas and small towns, participation of the government in industry, etc…

Yeah but then again most people think "if it's not capitalism it's communism", there is a whole spectrum and China definitely does not belong in the communist part of the spectrum anymore. It's a mix of authoritarian socialism and state capitalism, you can add many other words to the mix but communism isn't at the top of it anymore

New things deserve new definitions, we have to get out of the ww2 lingo where everyone is a nazi, a fascist, a communist or a capitalist, it's overly simplistic and muddies the water. 2025 China is completely different than 2000 China which itself is completely different than 1980 China.

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

#507

Post by DrScientist »

jabl wrote: post #440
CuriouslyC wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The peace price is different, and it's been a bit of a hit and miss at least since Kissinger got it. And the economics prize, though it's not officially really a Nobel prize. But the core science prizes, AFAICT, are pretty spot on. Of course there are always many worthy contenders of a prize and one can quibble should this or that person really deserve to get it instead of another person, but I haven't heard of any o…

It's still very political - with a small p.

For example the recent nobel prize for Chemistry being awarded to David Baker, Dennis Hassabis and John Jumper.

Why the hell is David Baker on that list? He was just the head of a very big lab that was working in the traditional way using largely physics based approaches, making incremental progress.

AlphaFold blew that whole approach out of the water.

They cite the design of Top7 back in 2003 - it's not at the level of impact as Alphafold.

The impact of Alphafold is obvious to all - the importance of the 2003 Baker paper doesn't stand out to me from 1000's of other possible candidates - that's where self-promotion, visibility and politics plays a part.

The 2003 Baker paper has 2249 citations over 22 years. The 2021 AlphaFold paper has had 43876 citations in 4 years..........

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

#508

Post by jermaustin1 »

GuB-42 wrote: post #490
MrSkelter wrote: post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

As a non-American, I think that Americans are special in that they have the right combination of hard work and personal initiative and efficiency. To oversimplify, Europeans are efficient workers, but unlike Americans, they use their efficiency not to produce more but to work less and enjoy life. East Asians are hard workers but they tend to favor group cohesion over maximizing individual potential, which is not as e…

I feel this is true of Americans and Europeans. And as an American, I've been migrating myself more and more into the European mindset. I put in my 8 hours, and I'm done, then I do non-work related activities for the next 8 hours, then I sleep for the next.

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

#509

Post by konart »

energy123 wrote: post #295
dluan wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reunification in Taiwan has nothing to do with chips, and militarily PRC was able to do so a long time ago. The political will in PRC to "kill other Chinese" is zero.

> The political will in PRC to "kill other Chinese" is zero. Counts for nothing, these narratives are built on sand. Russians also saw Ukrainians as "brothers", as did South/North Koreans before the war, among countless other examples.

>Russians also saw

"see". Many people in Russia view this war as a civil one.

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

#510

Post by [deleted] »

andyjohnson0 wrote: post #425
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…

> This is how we approach everything. > This is because it is not only a government policy, but also a Chinese way of thinking. Nothing can interrupt this process. Is there any evidence that this kind of homogeneous "national character" is objectively real? Or is it just another story that people tell themselves?

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