From batteries and solar panels to drones and satellites, China is building tech capabilities that extend well beyond AI, writes Steve Feldstein in his new book, "Bytes and Bullets: Global Rivalries, Big Tech, and the New Shape of Modern Warfare."
Don’t wanna sound like that guy, but this pretty much due to all the manufacturing capacity we shifted over to China. I mean they certainly got a jump start, yeah? It doesn’t hurt that the whole place is a building machine…wonder where they’d be if we never moved all that manufacturing there to begin with…
China has 1 billion more people than the US. And they’re graduating PhDs in STEM at twice the rate.
Frankly, if you don’t expect them to surpass the US in the coming decades, you’d have to be delusional, the numbers bare it out. A billion more people.
Absolutely, outsourcing manufacturing gave China a massive head start. But the West also outsourced decades of expertise, supply chains, and industrial know how while congratulating itself on becoming a service economy. China didn’t just inherit factories: it invested, learned, innovated, and built an industrial ecosystem. We handed them the starting line, not the finish line.
It’s worse than most realize. When I went to Guangdong 10 years ago, I expected to meet fabricators and technicians making our products, but I instead met engineers probing our customers and capabilities.
That company has since been acquired for pennies on the dollar by Google, to the surprise of no one.
And the irony is that China has moved far beyond copying Western technology. It’s now a global leader in research output, including fundamental research in materials science, chemistry, and physics. The West outsourced manufacturing, underestimated the transfer of expertise, and somehow assumed China would remain the world’s assembly line forever. That assumption aged spectacularly badly.
Which is extra ridiculous after having just gone through the same thing with (much smaller) Japan only a couple of decades prior and having domestic auto, heavy and precision machinery markets trounced.
Once they see a few dollar signs in the short term, all long term vision becomes blind.
Don’t wanna sound like that guy, but this pretty much due to all the manufacturing capacity we shifted over to China. I mean they certainly got a jump start, yeah? It doesn’t hurt that the whole place is a building machine…wonder where they’d be if we never moved all that manufacturing there to begin with…
China has 1 billion more people than the US. And they’re graduating PhDs in STEM at twice the rate.
Frankly, if you don’t expect them to surpass the US in the coming decades, you’d have to be delusional, the numbers bare it out. A billion more people.
or racist. Maybe without even realizing
Liberals being secret racists!? No waaaaaay
Absolutely, outsourcing manufacturing gave China a massive head start. But the West also outsourced decades of expertise, supply chains, and industrial know how while congratulating itself on becoming a service economy. China didn’t just inherit factories: it invested, learned, innovated, and built an industrial ecosystem. We handed them the starting line, not the finish line.
It’s worse than most realize. When I went to Guangdong 10 years ago, I expected to meet fabricators and technicians making our products, but I instead met engineers probing our customers and capabilities.
That company has since been acquired for pennies on the dollar by Google, to the surprise of no one.
And the irony is that China has moved far beyond copying Western technology. It’s now a global leader in research output, including fundamental research in materials science, chemistry, and physics. The West outsourced manufacturing, underestimated the transfer of expertise, and somehow assumed China would remain the world’s assembly line forever. That assumption aged spectacularly badly.
Which is extra ridiculous after having just gone through the same thing with (much smaller) Japan only a couple of decades prior and having domestic auto, heavy and precision machinery markets trounced.
Once they see a few dollar signs in the short term, all long term vision becomes blind.