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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: 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.