SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
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: 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?