fascinating thanks b for posting

Posted by: Jo | Sep 4 2023 16:08 utc | 3

The raw materials for hi-tech don’t just fall off the back of a potato cart.

China’s export restrictions on gallium and germanium is just the beginning, and the country has more tools for countermeasures if Washington plans tougher technology restrictions on Beijing, said Wei Jianguo, former vice-minister of commerce.

https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202307/05/WS64a4ca73a310bf8a75d6d545.html

Posted by: too scents | Sep 4 2023 16:10 utc | 5

In 2018 China demonstrated large swarms of coordinated drones that could draw moving pictures into the sky.
Now the Pentagon wants to replicate such capabilities.

I mean, this is done commercially all the time in the West too. Here is a display by an American company to promote the new Mario movie.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OcxfXaZSDeI
But the point is taken, China has now reached the point where it has control and dominance over all kinds of new industries and technologies due to the fact that did not reciprocate towards the neoliberal policies in the West which saw massive capital from it flow into China. China looked at what the West was doing, giving it all it’s industry so it’s CEOs and the company shareholders could be richer for a while at the cost of the US and other Western countries being much poorer int he future and laughed. China stipulates foreign investment must come with essentially the cloning of the company with a majority Chinese ownership. Though granted this is similar to the trick of industrialisation done in Japan and then copied by South Korea decades later.
China sees the flow of capital as a one-way street, lots of other countries get lots of FDI but adhere to the same neoliberal rules as the country which sent the FDI and then the money flows right back out with maybe a residue left over if there was wise industrial policy. (Have you noticed the words “industrial policy” seem to have left the lexicon in the Anglosphere?)
However, I sometimes think b is too easy on China due to understandable desire to see the neocon infested US empire fall. China is a country with a potential mentality of a superiority complex (What current Chinese leadership, old enough to remember a very different China feel is irrelevant, what matters is what the generations that grow up with it feel) with the “Middle Kingdom” and like other North East Asian countries has a deep ideal of racial identity, solidarity and potentially superiority. China has the potential to be a very negative hegemon for the West. Even today, the Chinese government has banned the teaching in Tibetan in some provinces that are part of historical Tibet but not the current “administrative zone”, this has historically been how you kill languages. The Chinese government also has an often immature tone befitting it’s prior status as a set upon revolutionary state as opposed to it’s now status as a great power.
The goal should always have been to make peace with Russia to counterbalance China inheriting the US status as a hegemonic hyperpower to enable a true multipolar world. China has the very real capacity to become a new hyperpower and should be treated with extreme caution. There will be far fewer wars, there will be no Chinese neocons out to start wars in the Middle East in service for a particular country but war is the not only form of oppression.

Posted by: Altai | Sep 4 2023 16:17 utc | 7

Let me repeat the money quote from b’s piece

Huawei has 207,000 employees globally, according to its website, and 55.6 per cent are research and development personnel. This is up from the end of 2021, when the company said it employed 195,000 people, with 54.8 per cent of them in R&D.

The US use to do R&D but never at the level China is….I seem to remember percentages of R&D in the 30’s at the high
The bigger point to me is that China and other non-Western countries are at a disadvantage because they only do R&D for profit, not for a broader purpose like humanity’s future.
The damn shit show in the West cannot end soon enough for me…..GO CHINA/RUSSIA!!

Posted by: psychohistorian | Sep 4 2023 16:17 utc | 9

US conceded hubris is its downfall.

Posted by: expat44 | Sep 4 2023 16:20 utc | 11

This article informs us thus:
“In 2018 China demonstrated large swarms of coordinated drones that could draw moving pictures into the sky.”
This kind of display is an inherent outcome of Chines cultural traditions and true aspirations. not to ham but to display. . I heard local academics wishing for it whilst being a student at Peking University 1974-74 and 1990-93 at the Hángzhou Institute of Electronic Engineering. ´ But they discovered tha Yankees were watching them and desisted from further advances. Now they are returning — and with a vengeance!

Posted by: Tollef Ås/秋涛乐/טלפ וש | Sep 4 2023 16:20 utc | 13

Entirely foreseeable. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. The British tried this exact approach with Jacquard looms in the late 1800s. It failed and American companies took over the weaving for the US. Same thing will happen here. The US is trying to keep tools from the Chinese just as the British tried to do to the US in the late 1800s. We will meet the same failure that the Brits had.

Posted by: Jeff Harrison | Sep 4 2023 16:30 utc | 15

Posted by: Altai | Sep 4 2023 16:17 utc | 4
But the point is taken, China has now reached the point where it has control and dominance over all kinds of new industries and technologies due to the fact that did not reciprocate towards the neoliberal policies in the West which saw massive capital from it flow into China.
==================================================
Great article by b, good comment by Altai, thxs.
What you say about certain one-way aspects of trade and investment seems true. Why this has been allowed to go on so long I cannot tell. The official story is that the US thought that the Chinese would be so enamored of Big Mac culture they would become liberal democracies and could take them over from within like they tried in Yeltzin’s Russia. Maybe. I find that hard to believe, but no other story is offered in its place.
One thing seems sure: the West is not only falling behind, it is being deliberately hobbled from within. Trump’s policies began reversing the outflow of manufacturing and several large companies announced they were coming back home, including Apple. But then he got the boot. It remains to be seen if he can elbow his way back in thanks to massive support from We the People, but it’s not likely, nor is any reversal via elections at this point. In which case presumably the sabotage will continue until the desired end is reached. I suspect it has something to do with the New World Digital Money Order. Not long now.
(I read years ago that the Master Plan is to have China = Manufacturing, Russia = Defense, America = Finance & Services, Africa = Resources, Israel = Security (CBDCs?). Probably rubbish, but quite likely there is some sort of deal…)

Posted by: Scorpion | Sep 4 2023 16:37 utc | 17

Yet another comment ending with reference to an undisclosed “Them” with a “Master Plan” from our resident Nazi tolerator above me. It never ceases to amaze how far from reality some of these comments are, given the relatively high level of fact based analysis in the posts themselves.

Posted by: Brautigan | Sep 4 2023 16:44 utc | 19

#4 – “The goal should always have been to make peace with Russia to counterbalance China…”
This was a position advanced by Trump foreign policy advisors in 2016 (which was deceitfully portrayed by the political opposition and media as proof of Trump’s status as “Putin’s puppet”).
It remains a preferred policy option for a faction of intellectuals on the US right.
However, imagining the intention of this policy prescription is enabling “a true multipolar world” is misunderstanding where these people are coming from. The intention is to reinforce a hegemonic northern hemisphere bloc of Caucasian peoples – oops, let’s say European and Americas – and retain control over the global south by forming an alliance to throttle the Chinese.

Posted by: jayc | Sep 4 2023 16:53 utc | 21

The Americans are hypocrites. They industrialized through corporate theft:
Samuel Slater was a child worker at a factory using Arkwright machines, and was indentured to and trained by Jebediah Strutt, the owner of the factory. By the time he turned 21, in 1789, coastal cities like Providence, Boston, and New York were struggling to industrialize. Factories began to pop up, but they were often unsuccessful. Slater heard of the struggles of the coastal American cities, and thanks to his many years of work on Arkwright machines was well-versed in English industrial processes. But Slater’s real coup was memorizing in exacting detail, down to the smallest intricacies, the precise workings of the spinning wheel. He learned it so thoroughly, in fact, that he’d be able to reproduce it without having to smuggle highly illegal written plans. In 1789, he left England for New York. By 1790, Slater had written a boastful letter to the Almy & Brown mill in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, promising to build them a spinning wheel just like those in England. “If I do not make as good yarn, as they do in England,” he wrote, “I will have nothing for my services, but will throw the whole of what I have attempted over the bridge.” The promise was enough for co-owner Moses Brown, who contracted Slater to build the machines in 1790.

Posted by: Maracatu | Sep 4 2023 16:56 utc | 23

A sub plot to this story is the way that China has learned from the history of the Soviet Union how to deal with capitalist sanctions, boycotts and other manifestations of economic warfare.
The USSR failed in its attempt to do what China has been doing since 1949, which was the NEP.
As b points out above German industrialisation relied on borrowing the most advanced techniques (and importing the men who knew how to employ them) from Britain. As did the US where the textile industry was built in the same way.
This is the way the world works- Britain gained its knowledge of cotton textile production from India- the other side of the triumph of Manchester is the way that the British wrecked India’s superior textile industry to clear the way for its own exports.
The entire foundation of the Empire whose funeral rites we are now anticipating lay in the development of Chinese marine developments and armaments production.
Those who emphasise the capitalist traits of Chinese industry are missing the crucial point that it is guided by plans and is aimed at long term objectives- both of whicxh are anathema to the capitalisy class which believes, following Keynes, that “in the long term, we are all dead.”
Left to capitalism we would be.

Posted by: bevin | Sep 4 2023 16:58 utc | 25

It is in fact true that the Chinese nicked western technology. There were and maybe post-covid, still are, hundreds of Chinese students in all university departments. In Britain at least, the universities depend on the fees from Chinese students in order to survive.
But it is legitimate, as we did the same to them, when they were more advanced technologically speaking than the west. First case was silk, with silkworm eggs hidden in hollow bamboo in the 6th century. Then porcelain, but it took until the 17th century to get the technology right. And finally gunpowder, which was nicked by the Mongols and transferred westwards. i.e. everybody does it, one shouldn’t complain about what’s happening now.

Posted by: laguerre | Sep 4 2023 17:00 utc | 27

@Altai | Sep 4 2023 16:17 utc | 4
About the potentialof China to become a negativ for the west and about certain moves against Tibetan language
Chinas behaviour sofar has been very constructive.
Win-win remember.
If the west continues having a low quality education with exams without real value we ought to welcome chinese influence on our reforms.
About Tibet. I think it matters a very great deal what the west is attempting to do using Tibet against China.
And Tibet has for a long time been manipulated by the anglosaxons for that purpose. Further the history of Tibet isnt exactly reassuring. Dalai Lama was once the moral councel for the mongols when they massmurdered by the millions.
And it appears that such monks would be practising pedohiles to an extent. At least according to conventional westerners mean by that. I dont claim to know or understand this well but it may be that some external influence wouldnt be a great harm if it ceases to allow Tibet to be a battering ram for the anglosaxons.
The anglosaxons have influenced Afrika so they turned against France without turning against the anglosaxons.
They spoke of skipping french education and so on.
Maybe this was just a warning and things will calm down.
But western countries, France included, have become far too americanised. It is the influence by the anglosaxons on all countries we ought to be concerned about.
And incidentally you may add the US itself as partly a victim since the british managed to manipulate the situation in the US by funding all libraries to boost Britains interests. The carnegie foundation was all over the place boosting war boosting Britain, boosting collectivism.
Leibniz admired and wanted the west to collaborate with China.
If that had happened instead of Britains elites doing everything to demonise Leibniz, the world might have been a much better place.

Posted by: petergrfstrm | Sep 4 2023 17:14 utc | 29

And one of the reasons Hollywood is in Cali was to escape Edison’s patents regime.

Posted by: JonB | Sep 4 2023 17:22 utc | 31

I previously posted that I have been intrigued by the Harmony OS that Huawei was developing. FOSS. Not sure if they are using it in their phones yet. IIRC correctly it was in past on a git. I could be wrong, but the severe difficulty of going with a Huawei phone in usOfa is not just about chips, but also about open source OS. DARPA must have a lot of muscle in Android and IOS for inserting and design. I would liken it to Saddam Hussein and Gadaffi pushing for a gold based different currency.
And of course whenever Huawei is mentioned I remember the CFO being detained in Canada.
peace out

Posted by: paxmark1 | Sep 4 2023 17:23 utc | 33

Trump didn’t revive manufacturing. That’s just empty rhetoric.
Also the idea that China is dangerous if they are powerful is projection from Westerners who non-whites gaining power.
What will China do that the West hasn’t tried? Nothing different.

Posted by: Peter Dahu | Sep 4 2023 17:23 utc | 35

“To maintain a technological edge over China, we will have to spend an additional several hundred billions of dollars, train a highly-skilled workforce, educate or import more scientists and engineers, …”
Excuse me. Increasingly the United States is importing foreign scientists and engineers – and it’s driving talented Americans out of these fields. Compared to finance and law and medicine, in the US science and engineering are increasingly dead-end fields. Other than a handful of lucky winners, salaries and job security for these professions are stagnant and falling. In science increasingly the talented people are fleeing for administration – only chumps do actual science.
Now at one level so what – there is an unlimited amount of talented Indians and Pakistanis etc., who cares if there are no American scientists and engineers? I think it does matter. You have a mass of talented but disposable workers with no connection to the nation, and the best dream only of moving into another field. Look at England. As the “brain drain” started causing talented English to flee, senior government officials said so what, we can replace them with Pakistanis for so much cheaper. And indeed they can, and have. The UK has dirt cheap labor – but this hasn’t boosted their technology, it has rather crushed UK manufacturing, it’s all moving to finance. yes?
US graduate students in science and engineering are increasingly slackers looking for a subsidized party, or third world refugees who care only about escaping their own hellish lands, or diversity babies sold the story that they too can be Einstein if they only believe in themselves. And as time goes on, the best foreign scientists and engineers will gravitate to other countries with better opportunities. Remember, the immigration policy that gave the US people like Einstein and Fermi and Szilard etc. was highly restrictionist. In the long run you can have quality, you can quantity, but you can’t have both.
If we really wanted to boost US technology, we would have to have a more universal mercantilist trade policy, break up the monopolies, limit the import of foreigners to people of truly outstanding ability, add back rigor to our universities… but I don’t see that happening.

Posted by: TG | Sep 4 2023 17:30 utc | 37

@paxmark1 | Sep 4 2023 17:23 utc | 17
The backdoor in AOSP “Android” handsets is the modem. The modem controls a hypervisor that hosts the phone’s operating system.
The NSA/CIA must be livid about the success of Huawei’s BaLong modem.

Posted by: too scents | Sep 4 2023 17:38 utc | 39

The bigger point to me is that China and other non-Western countries are at a disadvantage because they only do R&D for profit, not for a broader purpose like humanity’s future.
Posted by: psychohistorian | Sep 4 2023 16:17 utc | 5
Surely you jest!

Posted by: Jams O’Donnell | Sep 4 2023 17:39 utc | 41

Some stuff was copied/stolen IP which is true but the vast majority of the tech that China got was actually transferred to them when manufacturing was offshored. That was part of the deal for when foreigners open factories in China, the exchange was to get cheap skilled and educated labour, and a brilliant supply chain while you transferred the technology and allowed the Chinese to have 50% ownership in the venture (the Chinese own the actual factories, machines, tools, etc. for the most part). So it really is sort of like the economic take off of Imperial Germany, Reconstruction-era America or Meiji era Japan except on steroids.

Posted by: leaf | Sep 4 2023 17:47 utc | 43

What will China do that the West hasn’t tried?
Posted by: Peter Dahu | Sep 4 2023 17:23 utc | 18
How about a successful command economy?

Posted by: Jams O’Donnell | Sep 4 2023 17:48 utc | 45

Imperial decline is a process which takes time and is fueled by a long term series of convenient and expedient decisions. Reversing that process is impossible; human nature won’t allow it because the necessary concatenation of decisions needed to do it are all inconvenient and non expedient. This is pretty much why all imperial declines inevitably proceed to the end point, which is collapse. It’s tantamount to reversing aging.

Posted by: A. Pols | Sep 4 2023 17:49 utc | 47

My comment was prevented from posting, so I published it at my substack, “Complimentary Comment to MoA’s “How Sanctions Failed To Hinder China’s Development” with a link back to b’s article.

Posted by: karlof1 | Sep 4 2023 17:51 utc | 49

Posted by: TG | Sep 4 2023 17:30 utc | 19
Consider this quote from an American education expert:
“The US has never been first in the world, nor even near the top, on any international tests. Consistently over the past half century, American students have typically scored near the median at best, but most often being in the bottom quartile. The historical record indicates that American elementary students are only average at best, their performance degrading year by year until high school seniors perform last in almost all international tests. The International Science Studies that began in high schools in the late 1960s and early 1970s found that 14-year-olds were below average and seniors scored last of all countries. In the International Mathematics tests that began in the 1960s, American high school seniors scored last of all nations. In the 1982 International Mathematics Study, high school seniors placed at the bottom on almost every test. In terms of the PISA tests, American students – placing last – are simply following the pattern that has been consistent for the past 50 years or more.”
And a quote from one news report: “In October of 2013 a new global report issued by the OECD found that Americans ranked well below the worldwide average in just about every measure of skill. In math, reading, and technology-driven problem-solving , the United States performed worse than nearly every other country… The US would have looked even worse if China had been included in this study. In basic literacy – the ability to understand and use basic written text – 80% of Americans reached only a level 2 out of 5. And in math and numerical proficiency, using numbers in daily life, they are worse … and 10% scored below level 1. Technological literacy and ability were worse too. In problem-solving in a technological environment and the use of “cognitive skills required to solve problems”, the Americans were at the bottom.” And that bottom is in math, vocabulary, language usage and technology, with Chinese students far surpassing the Americans even when using a language that is not their own.
China is estimated to spend around $6bn a year on its space programme. Although that is almost $1bn more than Russia, it is still a fraction of the American space budget, which is around $40bn a year. Despite its large budget, the US made only 19 successful space launches in 2013, compared with China’s 14 and Russia’s 31.

Posted by: Jams O’Donnell | Sep 4 2023 17:57 utc | 51

January 25, 2026. Tensions with China have escalated to the level of the Cuban Missile crisis. During an off shore wargame with Taiwan, a missile downs a nearby Chinese fighter jet. Commander Jack D. Ripper claims it was an accident.
Suddenly the skies darken as if by a massive flock of birds. Within a few minutes, every person on board the USS Armageddon is dead, individually hunted down by an individual AI drone. The drifting hulk is towed into Hainan port.
Now add tanks, missiles, aircraft…..soldiers. China might be very close to this. In particular, videogame development might lead the way sooner than you think ! Putin knows that mastery of AI equals mastery of the world (he pretty much said so). I don’t see US pundits in any panic about this.

Posted by: Eighthman | Sep 4 2023 18:04 utc | 53

The bigger point to me is that China and other non-Western countries are at a disadvantage because they only do R&D for profit, not for a broader purpose like humanity’s future.
Posted by: psychohistorian | Sep 4 2023 16:17 utc | 5
Until the 80ies there were companies engaged in fundamental research. Bell labs in the US,
Philips Natlab in Holland. Smaller companies sometimes had a single employee who management trusted to do generally useful stuff when left alone. That is all gone now. Today you might talk to a Chinese company that has more people in R&D than your companies’ entire workforce.
It’s not for everyone, but if you’re young and feel you can handle it: go east.

Posted by: Passerby | Sep 4 2023 18:13 utc | 55

From b’s commentary:

In his July speech, Ren said the best motivation for talented workers is passion.
“I think the material reward is not that important,” he said. “The first thing is that [the worker] finds a position he has passion for … If he can work on something he is interested in, he will have no regrets.”

That has always been the case, has it not? I remember 50 years ago reading articles about job hunting after getting my EE degree, one idea I read that was imprinted upon my soul deeply was the belief that for talented workers, challenge of the task at hand is more motivating than the prospect of higher salary in driving an employee to succeed.
China’s recent rise, by recent I actually date it way back to 1949, has always been driven by passion of a down-and-out nation scrapping every inch of their nation for survival resources to do better, and better, and better. I don’t know for how much longer this passion will last. I hope it will last another 75 years.

Posted by: Oriental Voice | Sep 4 2023 18:22 utc | 57

One of the problems I see with American technology is the need to import vast amounts of talent from overseas. But it’s not that the talent is from overseas, as they would just naturally move their families here and become Americans themselves. The problem is that much or most of that talent comes from South Asia, where the culture is extremely harsh and unyielding. What results is a tech culture that would ultimately destroy itself from within.
After all, if the Indians, Malaysians, Pakistanis, et. al. are so smart, then why is it impossible for them to actually have one single decent tech company? And yet, they are imported to the US to work and then become managers, where they practice their harsh caste culture.

Posted by: Bao | Sep 4 2023 18:31 utc | 59

If China’s military gets drones of the quality that Chinese companies produce for consumers it is likely a generation ahead of everyone else.

Russia has published a video where it drops a bomb in Donbas from a UAV that looks like a modified mass-produced Chinese drone. See the Skyzone logo at 10sec in this video (if it’s not blocked where you are) https://eng.mil.ru/en/news_page/country/more.htm?id=12476809@egNews

Posted by: Brendan | Sep 4 2023 18:32 utc | 61

To maintain a technological edge over China, we will have to spend an additional several hundred billions of dollars, train a highly-skilled workforce, educate or import more scientists and engineers, and provide broader incentives to manufacturing

While capital would really love to just be able to pilfer engineers from India, I have to imagine that the backlash towards this from professionals would be devastating politically. Unfortunately both the GOP and Democrats stand for deprofessionalization via a million H1B visas.
And I also want to say, at the expense of sounding like Sam Gompers, that the quality of engineers from India is not like the quality of engineers from the US or PRC. I have yet to meet an H1B software engineer from the subcontinent who didn’t consistently need help with seemingly basic programming tasks. OTOH I have met many second generation Americans whose ancestry is from the subcontinent who went to the lowest tier schools in America but who were still more skilled than their H1B counterparts if not a cut above their white American counterparts. I think this speaks to an inferior credentialing system in India, where there is likely a lot of graft or rote memorization-based “teaching to the test” – stuff we used to criticize China for. The big companies, the FAANGs, may get the cream of the H1B crop, but the H1B engineers who are coming to small and medium sized businesses seem to be uniformly submediocre.
American kids are also not as interested in developing tech so much as simply using it to keep themselves entertained. It’s rare for kids to actually take a keen interest in programming, especially when the mere fundamentals that they teach you in “coding” classes only get you so far. And that’s just coding – where are the kids interested in electronics? The ones who want to be physicists? Astronauts? It’s not just the US that has this problem, but kids in the US just want to be entertainers and to be entertained. Nothing inherently wrong with that – maybe that secures the US as a cultural exporter, like it did for the UK.
You know the saying, “the US is always ten years behind Europe”? Well, the UK now is where the US is heading. They are undergoing an economic transition from a core economy to a peripheral one. The standard of living of the average working class Briton is heading towards that of workers in the “middle income” nations. At one point, British workers had a chance to take the reins of political and economic power, and while this trend in living standards couldn’t be reversed, it could have at least been self-managed with some dignity. British workers gave that up to be homeowners and independent contractors. The US is already a nation of homeowners, but it is also already undergoing a homelessness crisis in its major cities – which will spread as the core problem, the prioritization of the interests of homeowners specifically over those of people who need homes in general, is universal policy. The US has no public housing system even on par with the threadbare system the UK has. And for that reason, among others, our reversion to the mean will probably be catastrophic.

Posted by: fnord | Sep 4 2023 18:35 utc | 63

Chinese arrogance (their “complex of superiority”) doesn’t make them want to rule the world. It makes them want to shut off from the outside world, a “Centre of the World” sufficient to itself.

Posted by: Nanabozho | Sep 4 2023 18:38 utc | 65

Posted by: Brautigan | Sep 4 2023 16:44 utc | 10
Yet another comment ending with reference to an undisclosed “Them” with a “Master Plan” from our resident Nazi tolerator above me. It never ceases to amaze how far from reality some of these comments are, given the relatively high level of fact based analysis in the posts themselves.
===============================
Took the words right out of my mouth! Funny how people project onto others what is true for themselves, isn’t it?

Posted by: Scorpion | Sep 4 2023 19:00 utc | 67

Excellent. I really hope China and Russia will also eventually produce an operating system for personal computers. Enough of the false windows/apple dichotomy and its inbuilt us/eu/israel surveillance. And Linux will never be of any use to professionals in music, illustration or any other field that needs dedicated hardware.

Posted by: Jusses | Sep 4 2023 19:03 utc | 69

Very good article b. I would like to make two comments.
1. Technology is virtually impossible to protect.
To understand why is firstly to understand what is technology. It is ‘knowledge’ which is structured and systematically applied. And knowledge cannot be contained. It is spread in every communication, in every action, in every product. Protecting technology is a fool’s errand. Even patents are of little value, especially if you’ve degraded the integrity of your legal system, such as the U.S. has.
In my opinion, there is only one method for an entity (company or country) to maintain a technological edge. That is to make one’s technology widely available, thus discouraging potential competitors from spending the resources to replicate it. That ensures the entity with the technology will always have first-user advantage, and will also have a source of funding to maintain the pace of technology development.
Unfortunately for the U.S., they have done the exact opposite. By restricting technology they have given the Chinese a tremendous incentive not only to replicate U.S. technology, but to develop a technology infrastructure that enables them to develop new and unique technologies. They have unleashed a competitor that has a depth and quality of human scientific potential that far surpasses what the U.S. currently possesses or can ever hope to posses.
2. ‘What remains within our power is to restore American pre-eminence’.
No, the U.S. no longer has this power.
Human creativity requires a vibrant market for new knowledge and ideas, and the products of this knowledge and these ideas. This is why market economies are so powerful. But the U.S. no longer has a ‘market economy’ but rather an ‘economy of serial monopolies’. For monopolies, R&D is a risk and expense that is not needed, because there is little competition that requires new technologies and new products to compete. The money is much better spent inflating stock prices. As for international competition, the U.S. has shown that it prefers protectionism, coercion and sabotage to honest competition.
The degradation of U.S. infrastructure, industrial and educational systems, as a result of this serial monopolization, is readily apparent to anyone with open eyes. Without reverting to a real ‘market economy’ with fair and honest competition, both domestic and international, the U.S. has no chance to restore its pre-eminence.
But the ‘serial monopolists’ ‘own’ the U.S. government and its legal and electoral systems. They will never allow a return to real markets or fair and honest competition, either economic or political, as it would destroy their own power and wealth.
Unless it is able to break the hold that the ‘serial monopolists’ have on both its economic and political systems, I am afraid that the U.S. committed to a long slide into national oblivion.

Posted by: dh-mtl | Sep 4 2023 19:10 utc | 71

“…train a highly-skilled workforce, educate [snip] more scientists and engineers…”
That’s simply not going to happen, and there is no reason for anyone here not to know it. There is a simple way for anyone to know beyond a shadow of a doubt that it is over for the Empire of Delusions: Become a school teacher in American classrooms.
American school districts are crying out for teachers. If you have a pulse, you can get a job teaching in American schools. The pay will be shit, and the working conditions even shittier, but you will not be doing the job to get rich. You’ll be doing the job to see what is in the development pipeline for America’s future. I’ve been there and I can assure you America’s future is even more grim than you can possibly imagine.
It is not just that American youth are lead-paint stupid, though they are that too. They are lifeless and vacant. They eyes are dull and empty, their faces slack with jaws hanging loose and open. They slump formless and dissipated in their desks, inert and sessile.
This may be difficult to recognize if you have been stewing for long in the same putrefying miasma of imperial decline as the students have. The students’ dull and vacant stares might seem normal to you if you if that is what you are accustomed to, but a quick visit to a Chinese classroom will shatter that illusion of normalcy.
I have tried to explain the difference in attitude and outlook between American and Chinese students before, but I am sure my efforts fell short. I’ll try again anyway.
As much as American students are listless and lifeless, Chinese students are bright and enthusiastic. While American kids slouch at their desks like human meltdowns, Chinese students sit upright, attentive and alert. The difference is like night and day.
There is an infectious atmosphere of enthusiasm and optimism in China, with extremely high expectations steeled by a commitment to diligently and industriously strive to being part of realizing those expectations. Just being in the classroom with such students is energizing.
Meanwhile, being in the classroom with American students will crush your soul and suck the life out of you. These kids have no future and they know it. Furthermore, the workforce pipeline has been filling with these kinds of kids for generations now. It will take revolutionary changes in American society (“woke” ain’t it) to turn this around, and that isn’t likely for a couple generations either. There is no highly-skilled workforce forthcoming in America, and no tsunami of scientists and engineers poised to break across the American economy either. That’s just wishful thinking.

Posted by: William Gruff | Sep 4 2023 19:46 utc | 73

Ren is certainly correct in his assessment of motivation. In a university Economics department you will find professors who blithely teach that human development is driven by profit, while in the office across the hall a fanatic, marginally paid, researcher labors into the night on the next breakthrough. And of course the brilliant guys who work R&D in America surrender their copyright rights to the predatory capitalists who run the company–and their rich shareholders. In a nutshell, China succeeds because it is run by flexible Communists who constantly adjust to material reality. That’s what Marxism is. Not a rigid ideology a la the USSR. But a work in progress aimed at common prosperity that harnesses and guides the market, and overrules profit when it does not serve the public interest.

Posted by: Richard | Sep 4 2023 19:48 utc | 75

The whole concept of IP and protected markets thereby needs scapping. It is detrimental to humankind. The new rule is ideas get shared. There’s a bunch of other stuff that would have to change around it too: I can already hear the lawyers complaining about their loss of intellectual property. Fine. Let the AI take them out.

Posted by: oracle | Sep 4 2023 19:51 utc | 77

Comparing number of university graduates with a country of 1.4 billion population is not fair. So, let’s look Russia, with ca 150 mil population, graduates the same number STEM students as USA. As a graduate of edu system similar to Russia’s, I can tell you that EVERYONE in primary school starts biology, chemistry, physics, geography, history and 1st foreign language at age of 10, and somehow everybody passes these classes. [ an F in one course would result in hold back]. That is the same for future hair dressers and chemical engineers. in high school chemistry, physics, etc. continue for2-3 years unless one picks emphasis and gets extra hours of expanded physics/ math or chem/bio. Universities only look at grades in relevant subjects and courses focus on the major, since everyone had already had 5-6 years of literature art history geography etc.
I do not understand American flexibility of kids choosing how much math or science they take, and while having A is a rare occurrence past grade 4, somehow all kids are capable to do trig or quadratic equations before high school.

Posted by: Agnieszka | Sep 4 2023 20:01 utc | 79

Laguerre 14
What about paper? I rebound dozens of theological rants like Fox’s Book of Martyrs. Libraries of wall to Wall treatises of theological tripe

Posted by: Giyane | Sep 4 2023 20:15 utc | 81

Peter Dahu | Sep 4 2023 17:23 utc | 18 …What will China do that the West hasn’t tried?…
A better question was “What does China not do in order to avoid the West’s systemic pitfalls?” In short: It reins in the worst parasites.
A good article from 2021: “The Consequences of Moving from Industrial to Financial Capitalism” (my emphasis)

…the Chinese economy doesn’t really have to pay a banking class because banking is the most important public utility of all. Banking is what China has kept in the hands of government and Chinese banks don’t lend for the same reasons that American banks lend.
…its objective in banking is not to make a profit and interest, not to make capital gains and speculation. It creates money to fund actual means of production to build factories, to build research and development, to build transportation facilities, to build infrastructure. Banks in America don’t lend for that kind of thing.

A number from 2015: The Economy’s Greatest Illness: The Rise of Unproductive Finance

…research shows that only around 15% of the money flowing from financial institutions actually makes its way into business investment. The rest gets moved around a closed financial loop, via the buying and selling of existing assets, like real estate, stocks, and bonds.

@Jams O’Donnell | Sep 4 2023 17:48 utc | 23 [China has]…a successful command economy
From the first source above:

…basically free markets and libertarianism is adopting central planning, but with central planning by the banks. America is a much more centrally planned economy than China.

Posted by: OttoE | Sep 4 2023 20:15 utc | 83

Personally I am very concerned about private companies holding my entire I D , from passport to Google searches, from what my enemies have written about me to what I have written about my enemies.
This is a control-addict obsession that every country and global enterprise from Islamic State to the Chinese Communist Party feel entitled to steal our privacy. Musk has just cottoned onto the scam offering recruitment agency services, which entities him to access Full IDs.
Western culture of Liberalism traditionally instructs us to be non-judgemental but neo-liberalism is highly judgemental and intolerant of adherents to traditional mores.
China tries to distract its nefarious spying by pointing to Western spies , which is strong evidence that China has no qualms about lying. I’m afraid that there are enough liars already in the West, without another branch of Satan’s followers opening in China. The terrorism of Turkey and the Mughal empires is vastly different from traditional Jewish and Christian values.
The only difference being that the West is hypocritical about its violence, while the East prefers to wear its violence on its sleeve.
Islam is under threat from the Usukis creating terrorists to give Islam a very bad reputation. We don’t need a China that is emboldened by its economic strength to fight Usukis militarily, because that means us.
Unfortunately the idiots in power in Usukis are already emboldened to have Iraqis, Ukrainians, Africans , Libyans , be gladiators for their Satanic amusement. The danger is that they will provoke China, for their pornograhic amusement of nihilistic destruction.
It won’t be China’s fault if they strike back to Western provocation.

Posted by: Giyane | Sep 4 2023 20:48 utc | 85

Why does China copy so much?!?!
https://thesaker.is/nations-built-on-lies-how-the-us-became-rich/
The USSA only got rich by copying, stealing, modifying, and then using its position of isolation from land wars to build a military with which it could bully the world. I wonder if the NYT, WaPo or any of the others will write articles asking why China DOES NOT copy the other type of “inventions” that are so prevalent in the USSA today: toxic financial derivatives, usurious credit, and the bailing out of the worst actors in those regards while simultaneously (and by design) screwing the tax payer. Kinda doubt it.

Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Sep 4 2023 20:59 utc | 87

@37 W. Gruff: A fine piece of writing. For thoroughness, let me ask what the general time-period was when you were teaching in the U.S. I often hear comments from people of my age cohort (60s) decrying the initiative, knowledge, awareness of the younger generations, and I tend to dismiss it as “that awful Rock music is melting their brains” sort of talk. I don’t have a lot of contact with the younger generations, so I’m asking what others are actually seeing, and hoping for “our generation was better” type perspectives to get filtered out so we can see the actual picture.
As some of you know, I have advocated for many years (here at MOA and elsewhere) for a full-on tsunami of engagement – at all levels and functional roles in society – in new product development (PD). I see PD as the mechanism of human adaptation and evolution. Note that my definition of “product” isn’t “toaster” or “computer chip”. A new product is a new solution to a human problem. Products are composed of technology and material. “Technology” is simply “what humans know how to do”.
Religions, language, numbers, math, negotiating skill … they’re all products, just like the physical implementations like a hammer, a car or a smart-phone.
To the point here: I have spent many years trying to engage my local Americans in the activity of product development. They seem to see it as alien – something “somebody else” does.
Some of you remember the origins of Alibaba. It was basically a national flea market (public square, full of tables, everyone hawking the goods they produced) that enabled a huge swath of Chinese people to buy components from someone (at Alibaba), formulate and build a new product from those components, and then sell that value-add product to others (on Alibaba). I remember being absolutely blown away at the depth (variation) and breadth (how many involved) of Alibaba. It was a huge boiling pot of innovation and effort and economic activity.
There’s still – at this late date – nothing like Alibaba here in the U.S. Not because Ebay or Amazon or FB couldn’t have produced the tech, but I’m wondering if it’s because there are too few people that would want to use it.
Back in the day, I built a prototype of web app that brought together new product ideas, people, and the resources the participants controlled. Sort of “primorial soup for innovation”. The intent was create a context / enable / facilitate new product development. You may say “that’s like Kickstarter”. Not quite. The website facilitated all the work that must happen _before_ it gets posted / announced on Kickstarter. Team-building. Deal-making. Concept definition. Prototype. Market testing. That sort of stuff. Kickstarter is more aimed at financing the roll-out and getting some early adopters for a full-on market test. Latter-stages of PD.
I remember showing the website to local political and “economic development” officials.
“Dead cat bounce” is an apt phrase to describe the experience.
I was astonished at their (vapid) reaction. Political people: “It’s too complicated”. Econ devel officals: “What _is_ this thing?”
I’d be curious to hear of others’ experience with product development (now .vs. before) or for those who’ve done it in more than one country, e.g. “here .vs. there”.

Posted by: Tom Pfotzer | Sep 4 2023 21:04 utc | 89

Posted by: Maracatu | Sep 4 2023 16:56 utc | 12
Posted by: laguerre | Sep 4 2023 17:00 utc | 14
I’m impatient, as an American, with the notion that because we “stole” Britain’s technology at some point in history, thereby gradually relegating their economy to second class, if there’s any cause and effect there, therefore we are somehow morally obligated to sacrificing any technological advantage we might have to China because we have no moral right to that advantage. We are not “hypocrites” complaining about what China has done. If we speak realistically, we are describing what they’ve done, insomuch as that’s what’s happened. It helps us to know what we need to do next. They are our competitors here. In other circumstances they may well be our good allies, but let’s be clear minded. We don’t owe them anything any more than they owe us anything. If it’s in their interest to “steal” our technology, then so they will. If it’s in our interest to sanction them in some way, then sanction we should. If not, not.

Posted by: jonboinAR | Sep 4 2023 21:10 utc | 91

Talent recruitment has long been important for Huawei.
————————————————————
Xerox sent me to Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh in 1989 (campus recruiting for engineers).
Incredibly bright kids all gave me the same answer, corporate America no longer wants to hire white males. Xerox was looking for Hispanic males that year.

Posted by: Acco Hengst | Sep 4 2023 21:14 utc | 93

“To maintain a technological edge over China, we will have to spend an additional several hundred billions of dollars, train a highly-skilled workforce, educate or import more scientists and engineers,…”
Across the board of manufacturing in America, including agriculture and services, wages have to be so high for workers to afford basically secure living that America can never be competitive internationally.
It is not enough to just graduate more STEM students, but those students will need an affordable life, including the chance to educate their children. And, I doubt they will be comfortable living in a tech bubble, surrounded by the precarious masses.
Then, to turn design into practice requires workers, also well fed and secure. Again, they will not be comfortable being the only ones to enjoy a decent life.
To prosper, America needs a life redesign where finance is just a bank account or a mortgage.

Posted by: Tedder | Sep 4 2023 21:15 utc | 95

Posted by: William Gruff | Sep 4 2023 19:46 utc | 37
Going to have to disagree with some of that. I’ve got siblings who teach, one of whom quit never to return after taking a job in a school district I won’t name, but will give you a hint: “Hands up, don’t shoot” from 2014. The other sibling is doing fine and their students are bright, motivated and competitive. This sibling also previously taught in rural West Virginia and the situation was mostly the opposite with a few exceptions.
So it varies greatly by school, district, and part of the country. But it’s not usually a factor of USsian kids being, by nature, slack jawed morons (whether due to mothers smoking or doing drugs while pregnant, malnutrition, pollution, etc.); rather it’s “the system.” And by “the system” I mean American style gangster capitalism which preaches greed as a virtue, heck THE virtue and inculcates Americans of all ages with the inability to delay gratification. Want that $60,000 middle of the line Chevy pickup truck? Don’t worry, you don’t have to save a dime! Here’s a 12 year loan at 4% interest (better or worse depending on your Credit Score™). Same doesn’t apply with housing, BTW.
Anyway, a lot of kids see this propaganda and they expect things to be handed to them without having to put in years of hard work. This is especially damaging to the kids who *are* born with lower IQs; a lot of them become opioid or meth addicts and homeless. But the ones who are capable of becoming engineers, chemists, physicists or physicians – assuming they can get college paid for in this usurious society – are herded toward Wall Street or Sillycone Valley type jobs. Everything from “financial planning” to day trading to quant to video game programmers to animators. A huge swath of mostly useless if not actually deleterioius careers for any functioning nation state.
Throw in lack of health care, studen loan debt, lack of public transportation (or high speed rail between metros), a parasitic military industrial complex (which, btw sucks a good portion of the engineers, physicists, chemists, etc. away from productive civilian jobs, even if indirectly) and a bloated foreign policy apparatus, and that’s where we’re at. Don’t get me wrong, if it wasn’t for the Cold War (or another “conflict” that would’ve been invented in its absense) then I fully understand that a lot of the scientific and engineering breakthroughs of the 20th century in the US might not have happened. A parasitic military industrial complex is, afterall, good for something.

Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Sep 4 2023 21:19 utc | 97

Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Sep 4 2023 21:19 utc | 49
I should have added the following, but got caught up in my tangential rant.
Another barrier for American kids to higher education for careers in science and engineering (and there is a need for SOME lawyers, authors, sculptors, religious studies, etc.) is the way our society is structured in general. As people become poorer by way of plateauing wages not keeping up with inflation, and the inability to afford basic necessities due to low wages combined with corporate and bankster greed, their parents (or parent – singular) do not have the time or energy to give children the attention they need OUTSIDE of school.
So the kids are left to spend their days and nights with their “screens”, whiling away time they could be reading and learning on TikTok and other “apps.” Hell, this is evident among my own friends in their 30s and 40s. 85% of them have never read a book of any kind (except portions of the Bible of course) outside of school. When I ask them to expound on their opinions on virtually any topic, the answer is a YouTube link to some idiot yammering into a webcam/mic with stuid graphics and sound effects, or a cartoon style animation. ZERO. ATTENTION.SPAN. And this results from an upbringing where their parents are not engaged because in most cases (my anecdotal ones anyway, I’m sure there are plenty of lazy parents too) they don’t have the time and they’re always tired and stressed from the experience of trying to get by in this FIRE sector, Hollyweird, and Social Media/SillyCone Valley dominated society.
I 100% believe that if we implemented some sort of free community college, took the screens away form the kids and put strict regulations on the finance sector, the decline could at least be slowed.

Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Sep 4 2023 21:32 utc | 99