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China has a "stunning lead" over the US:
The Biden administration might be limiting China's ability to manufacture advanced chips, but according to an independent think tank, the Asian nation is still ahead of the US when it comes to research in 37 out of 44 crucial and emerging technologies, including AI, defense, and key quantum tech areas.
Insider reports that the Canberra-based Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) believes China has a "stunning lead" over the US when it comes to high-impact research across the majority of critical and emerging technology domains.
[...] The think tank notes that for some of these technologies, the ten leading research institutions are based in China and are collectively generating nine times more high-impact research papers than the second-ranked country, which is usually the US. What could be especially worrying for America is that two areas where China really excels are Defense and space-related technologies. ASPI writes that China's advancements in nuclear-capable hypersonic missiles took the US by surprise in 2021.
How is China so far ahead? Some of it is down to imported talent. The report notes that one-fifth of its high-impact papers are being authored by researchers with postgraduate training in a Five-Eyes country (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States). However, most of China's progress comes from deliberate design and long-term policy planning by President Xi Jinping and his predecessors.
The near-term effects of China's lead could see it gaining a stranglehold on the global supply of certain critical technologies, while the long-term impact could result in the authoritarian state gaining more global influence and power.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Sunday March 05, @07:59AM (53 children)
Just like bacteria you hit with antibiotics: eventually they evolve and the antibiotics don't work anymore.
Russia is eolving out of US-dependency too, albeit more slowly and starting from a lower starting point.
The US have initiated their own slide into irrelevance when they initiated their embargo and forced their enemy to evolve.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by canopic jug on Sunday March 05, @10:47AM (46 children)
It's less the embargo and more that the US does not have a long term strategy, especially when it has come to education aside from divestment. You can lead in science and technology if national conditions (and sentiment) prevent bringing up new skilled specialists.
For over 40 years now, basically two going on three generations, there has been effectively no basic education. The Reagan administration cut the education budget by significant double-digit percentages and then each year since then has chipped away at what is left. His administration especially targeted research and development. Cutting investments in education always costs far more in the long run and now we are reaping that lack of investment. There can be a few good universities and colleges remaining still but that does not do much good if the incoming students lack not just the prerequisites but even the basics.
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 05, @11:50AM (37 children)
Just need the US to somehow convince more Chinese students to take up "Gender Studies" instead of Science and Tech stuff. 😂
Also that being smart is a bad thing - the US went past the "being stupid is just as good as being smart" point: https://aphelis.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/ASIMOV_1980_Cult_of_Ignorance.pdf [aphelis.net]
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 05, @12:39PM (36 children)
And yet, for a hundred years or more, the United States has been the brightest beacon of advanced technological research in the world. Almost as if allowing all people the freedom to think for themselves is a net positive!
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 05, @01:34PM (17 children)
The USA did well in aerospace after getting some Nazis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Paperclip [wikipedia.org]
But after that bunch retired/died NASA didn't seem to achieve that much really.
The US is a bright beacon because it's one of the few places in the world where you can start a company, lose billions every quarter for years and still keep going.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday March 05, @01:43PM (16 children)
Intelligence can't compensate for a bad system. NASA turned into a vehicle for transferring public funds to various interests. Perhaps you ought to look at SpaceX instead of NASA for an example of "achieving"?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 05, @06:05PM (9 children)
Well that's just psueudo intellectual bullshit. Intelligence is the ONLY way out of a bad system. Dipshit.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday March 05, @11:26PM (8 children)
And NASA is a great counterexample. There's a lot of smart people in NASA. They haven't fixed this system in fifty years.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 05, @11:32PM (3 children)
They are a military organization beholden to hierarchical chains of command. Not exactly a creative environment.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday March 06, @12:03AM (2 children)
My point exactly. Once they abandoned a productive path, there was no way to get back from inside the organization.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 06, @01:11AM (1 child)
Well, my point exactly is that whatever positive environment exists anywhere was arrived at by escaping a poor environment. Your position is that there is no way out, my position is that that there is only 1 way out.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday March 06, @12:22PM
And my point is that won't happen from inside NASA.
There's plenty of ways, they just require outside action. SpaceX is one of those ways.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Gaaark on Monday March 06, @11:58AM (3 children)
Kind of hard to fix something where your funding keeps changing all the time and getting cut and cut and cut: try to have long-term goals with unknown future funding.
At that point, all you get is career bureaucrats.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday March 06, @12:20PM (1 child)
The thing is "getting cut and cut and cut" hasn't been happening since the 1970s. NASA funding is more than ample for long term goals. And if you look at things like the James Webb Space Telescope, they do carry out long term goals. The real problem is that NASA abandoned their primary role long ago and spends far more on dead end technology development and maintaining funding networks, than doing stuff in space.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Monday March 06, @09:39PM
Correct: the geeks left (or gave up) and the bureaucrats took over. :(
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Tuesday March 07, @12:14AM
Pournelle's Iron Law in action.
https://www.jerrypournelle.com/reports/jerryp/iron.html [jerrypournelle.com]
Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy states that in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people:
First, there will be those who are devoted to the goals of the organization. Examples are dedicated classroom teachers in an educational bureaucracy, many of the engineers and launch technicians and scientists at NASA, even some agricultural scientists and advisors in the former Soviet Union collective farming administration.
Secondly, there will be those dedicated to the organization itself. Examples are many of the administrators in the education system, many professors of education, many teachers union officials, much of the NASA headquarters staff, etc.
The Iron Law states that in every case the second group will gain and keep control of the organization. It will write the rules, and control promotions within the organization.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Sunday March 05, @09:22PM (5 children)
Perhaps you ought to look at SpaceX instead of NASA for an example of "achieving"?
Space-X has robots on Mars? Vehicles past the heliosphere still sending data? Two space-based telescopes, even the old one is mind-blowing? Granted, they did do better than the Space Shuttle with reusable equipment, but the shuttle was 40 years ago.
Carbon, The only element in the known universe to ever gain sentience
(Score: 1, Disagree) by khallow on Sunday March 05, @11:30PM (4 children)
One thing isn't like the rest. Lowering the cost of Earth to orbit is vastly more important than token missions in space. You can say that the Shuttle was 40 years ago, but NASA hasn't upgraded it since - it has turned out to be a deadend. SpaceX is a genuine game-changer.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by PiMuNu on Monday March 06, @05:39PM (2 children)
> token missions in space
That's a bit unfair. One might argue that developing new rockets is exactly *not* NASA's role. NASA's job is to do interesting things in space, rovers and space telescopes and what not. The rocket is an implementation detail.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday March 07, @12:17AM
Indeed, but they've spent $40-50 billion on it so far and it'll grow to over $90 billion, if they keep it up as planned. That's 3-4 full years of NASA funding on developing a new rocket that will suck the oxygen out of the room for their other projects even if it succeeds as planned. My take is that with a modest change [soylentnews.org] in the unmanned program (well, aside from just dropping SLS permanently), they can vastly increase the science output from their spacecraft that they're supposed to be deploying. The TL;DR is that instead of massive concentration on R&D for the next mission, they deploy a number of copies of the old mission first - say 5-10 of each spacecraft made.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Tuesday March 07, @12:17AM
Perhaps rockets were more interesting to develop when they were tipped with warheads. /s
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 11, @08:36PM
Let the for profit companies do the cheap stuff with good enough technology so they can pay their shareholders. Let NASA do the cutting edge dangerous and difficult stuff with public money as an investment in the future of the country.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 06, @12:10AM (17 children)
Wonderful. You know a bit of history. But, a hundred years ago is history. So is 20 years ago. A year ago is history. Today the US is sliding into irrelevancy. Read the post above about getting Chinese students to study gender fluidity, women's history, black history, and underwater basket weaving. STEM is where students need to be, if we want to remain technologically relevant.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 06, @01:32AM
My point was that Azimov's "cult of ignorance", that he claims the US always has had, doesn't appear to have have prevented the technological rise and dominance of the USA. So is it really a big deal to worry about?
I'm going to need more than some pearl-clutching about vociferous social studies students to convince me that the largest economy, and largest most technologically advanced military, is sliding to irrelevance in any meaningful timeframe. Especially if you're suggesting that China, with its teetering economy, time-bomb demographics, reactionary politics, and untested military, is going to slide any slower.
As of today, the greatest technological advancement released so far this year appears to be ChatGPT, and where was that developed? China?
No, the "AI" that China's top tech companies demonstrate to the public is little more than a woman with a microphone behind a low-FPS Unreal Engine stock avatar: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1wJRjQ_wMzA&t=80s [youtube.com]
Or perhaps you heard that now half of the planet's satellites were made by SpaceX. A Chinese company is that?
What advanced technology has China actually brought to the table in recent history? I don't mean rumours or propaganda, I mean actual products that can be acquired today. 5G you might say? Sure, Huawei played a part, but not as much as China wants you to think [ericsson.com]. Anything else?
Your pet social studies boogie men are irrelevant. You only think social studies students are a problem because your favourite news outlet is amplifying extremists. STEM is thriving, it's well paid, it's cool, it's in the zeitgeist, it's just not newsworthy.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday March 06, @12:31PM (15 children)
So if we didn't read the post above the US wouldn't be sliding into irrelevancy? Thanks for not telling us first, you meanie.
There has to be a need first for those students. One of the things missed here is that institutional and societal obstacles still happen - such as environmental regulations and NIMBYism against a host of industrial works (refineries, nuclear plants, and rare earth mines, for example). And the less flexible and open a society is, the less STEM it'll do. That's a large part of why Silicon Valley happened in California. STEM people tend to be weird and California used to handle weird better.
(Score: 2) by quietus on Monday March 06, @01:07PM (14 children)
Isn't California not also famous for its (extensive) environmental regulations?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday March 06, @01:24PM (13 children)
(Score: 2) by quietus on Tuesday March 07, @07:41AM (12 children)
Since which they've rested on their laurels. One of the interesting points raised in Frederick P. Brooks "The Design of Design" is that constraints are an advantage. They bound the design space, thus speeding up the task of deciding exactly what to design. Couldn't it be argued that, as people grow wealthier, they will long for better health, fresh air, crystal clear rivers? If that is so, wouldn't an economy with more strict environmental standards be better prepared for the future?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday March 07, @01:17PM (2 children)
(Score: 2) by quietus on Tuesday March 07, @04:23PM (1 child)
Want stuff == basis of advanced economy.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday March 07, @11:02PM
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday March 07, @01:48PM (8 children)
(Score: 2) by quietus on Tuesday March 07, @04:28PM (7 children)
To prepare for the future, you better surround yourself with people, and businesses who are also preparing for the future. You do realize that the Industrial Revolution first took hold in those places where wage costs were highest, don't you?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday March 07, @10:57PM (6 children)
Nope, and I doubt you realize that either! I'll note, for example, that the poorest tended to be the people employed in factories and mines.
Moving on, we see today a very high sensitivity to labor costs. They certainly aren't flocking to high wage cost locations today!
(Score: 2) by quietus on Wednesday March 08, @11:04AM (5 children)
Mmmm. If you really are interested in economic history, try to get hold of Fernand Braudel's books -- they're not in print anymore, but you can still find them in antique shops. He's a giant in the field, and his books are well worth the investment. Specifically, for industrial revolutions, read Civilization and Capitalism (it's a trilogy, like his other work, The Mediterranean).
For now, you'll have to contend with a 2015 article from The Economic History Review, The high wage economy and the industrial revolution: a restatement [sci-hub.st].
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday March 08, @03:36PM (4 children)
Sure there is a logical explanation via supply and demand for why expensive labor would incentivize cheaper automation. But that ignores that there were other paths that could be taken. Another is simply that UK exports go down, causing labor value to decline as well, and wages to go down. That is, wage differences equalize and nothing changes.
And that's where California heads now. Sure, they have those high labor costs, but they also have a variety of onerous obstructions to anyone who wants to build improved automation: aggressive environmental regulations, labor union protectionism, goofy political ideology, etc. They'll get the high costs (including high cost of living!) without the benefits. And a large, extremely poor population to boot. They still have a waning Silicon Valley so for the near future, we may see key automation improvements done in California, but there's not much room for them there.
(Score: 2) by quietus on Wednesday March 08, @05:09PM (3 children)
I see you made it to Table 1. I am surprised.
(Score: 2, Funny) by khallow on Wednesday March 08, @06:51PM (2 children)
(Score: 2) by quietus on Friday March 10, @03:33PM (1 child)
Luckily that doesn't happen all too often :P
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday March 15, @05:49PM
Let's consider an example of how California blocks automation: "AB 5" [wikipedia.org] a state law that attempted (and failed) to ban the practice of classifying gig economy workers as contractors. My take is that this was done merely to protect labor unions (and that we'll likely see future efforts to ban gig work). Any automation that significantly displaces workers would also run hard against this political opposition.
So why would someone developing new automation develop and apply it in California where their efforts could be torpedoed by hostile labor unions?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by RamiK on Sunday March 05, @01:38PM (1 child)
It's called an exit strategy: You cut all long term investments, milk whatever you can while you still have control over the establishment and then run off to whichever tax shelter you've been favoring throughout the years with all the gold you can carry.
compiling...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 05, @05:49PM
Why run away? Just re-brand success as stealing all the gold - "smart" - and stay in place.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by khallow on Sunday March 05, @01:39PM (4 children)
You do realize that federal spending on education is almost completely irrelevant to basic education and always has been even before Reagan, right? And it's probably a net harm to higher education and research? Sure, they get more money, but they do poorer quality education and research.
Like there's any sort of history to base that claim on? My take is that federal level spending on education is an example of something that's mildly worse than doing nothing at all. It's the opposite of investment.
Finally, they haven't actually cut the education budget. It went up even under Reagan [ed.gov] (who was something of a drunken sailor when it came to spending).
There's something wrong with the narrative.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by HiThere on Sunday March 05, @02:20PM (2 children)
That *ought* to be true, but it isn't. The feds control lots of things that affect the targets of education. One of the targets they've pushed is "teach everyone equally". This doesn't work when people AREN'T equal.
That said, a lot of the "love of ignorance" is *because* of local controls. People tend to not like things that challenge their preconceptions. And the US as always been one to push "faith over works". That said, we also praise "folks who successfully become rich". Considerations about *how* the became rich are usually secondary. And there's a lot of praise of "working hard", as long as the one doing the praising isn't expected to do the work.
All that said, the Chinese have their own problems. They appear to have greater tolerance for fake claims than even the US. And they react much more strongly against any truth that might be embarrassing. So you can't really trust any claims they make as to how advanced they are, even if those making the claim believe it. This, unfortunately, means that the report may be totally accurate. (China does have a large population, and has a history of [often] trusting scholars. And periods when scholars [i.e. mandarins before that was made hereditary] ran the government quite well...for certain senses of well.)
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 05, @05:56PM (1 child)
The Asian concept of "losing face" is the antithesis of scientific discovery. And I can't see them losing that any time in the next 1000 years. As Carl Sagan said, there is NO authority in science:
* Arguments from authority carry little weight—“authorities” have made mistakes in the past. They will do so again in the future. Perhaps a better way to say it is that in science there are no authorities.
* Argumentation cannot suffice for the discovery of new work, since the subtlety of Nature is greater many times than the subtlety of argument.
* Try not to get overly attached to a hypothesis just because it’s yours. It’s only a way station.
* If there’s a chain of argument, every link in the chain must work - not just most of them.
http://www.inf.fu-berlin.de/lehre/pmo/eng/Sagan-Baloney.pdf [fu-berlin.de]
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 06, @09:30AM
I see plenty of signs that Western researchers also care about "losing face".
There's enough for Planck to say this and be accurate enough: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck%27s_principle [wikipedia.org]
Not in all cases of course but enough to refute your "no authorities" claim.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Monday March 06, @09:18PM
The problem isn't spending per se, it's CLASS TO TEACHER RATIO (which devolves to spending).
Here's info on Canadian public vs. private schools:
https://www.azerinform.com/private-schools-in-canada/ [azerinform.com]
The rich don't want to pay taxes towards public schools, but are quite willing to pay through the nose for good private schools.
Also (and i think this is KEY: parents should have to sign a contract (like they do in private schools) about behaviour of their children:
Contracts should be introduced into the public school system. Immediately.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 3, Informative) by Reziac on Monday March 06, @02:52AM
Here is the funding data, which only goes back to 1980:
https://www2.ed.gov/about/overview/budget/history/index.html [ed.gov]
And some history:
https://www2.ed.gov/about/overview/focus/what.html [ed.gov]
However... school districts are all locally funded and locally operated. What business does the fed have with a department of education, let alone a budget? If it's such a good idea, why have things gone to hell since the advent of a much larger budget and Common Core?
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by quietus on Sunday March 05, @04:39PM (4 children)
That's both the US and the EU then -- got the distinct impression the EU is a bit further along the embargo front. But, to your point again: you mean like during the Cold War, with the embargo against the USSR, China, and a whole bunch of satellite states of theirs?
Talking about antibiotics and such: how's that Chinese mRNA vaccine thingy coming along?
(Score: 1) by Runaway1956 on Monday March 06, @12:15AM (3 children)
We're not back in the Cold War days. Today, we have a rival who was given every opportunity to beg, borrow, or steal all of our tech, our education, our corporate secrets, and even our government secrets. We though we could ride that horse, but the horse got the bit between his teeth, and he's running where HE wants to run.
Or, to put it another way - the world has changed drastically since the Cold War. The geopolitics have little resemblance from then, and now.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 2) by quietus on Tuesday March 07, @07:52AM (2 children)
Your comment made me wonder whether the geopolitics of the Cold War weren't really the geopolitics of today i.e. upstart empires trying to push the incumbent empire from the throne -- with communist versus capitalist rhetoric just being the new wrapping paper around traditional power structures.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday March 07, @02:20PM (1 child)
You're onto something. Marxist thinking underlies a lot of modern progressive thinking. The right to education, Universal Basic Income, universal health care, and more. Not all Marxist thinking is wrong, or evil, but Marxism is basically flawed. But, we see "new" movements espousing a lot of Marxist thinking. Today's Antifa, for instance, didn't pop out of a vacuum - the groundwork was laid a century or more ago, with previous example organizations. Sorting out the threads is a helluva big job, but, yes, yesterday's geopolitics have flowed into today's, with some of the same actors, some actors being replaced. It's life.
The Cold War was just the biggest, central theater within that ongoing, fluid geopolitical drama. Not much is going to change in the next few hundered years, I think.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by quietus on Tuesday March 07, @06:58PM
(T.H.White, Arthur, the Once and Future King)
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday March 06, @01:43AM
Russia evolved out of US-dependency back in the 1920s. What you see now is all them.
Depends on whether China and Russia can evolve even when "forced". China looks like it could - though I suspect it'll depend on whether they can throw off the yoke of the CCP. Russia does not.