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IMO The ballpoint anecdote has been severely misinterpreted by western media. The narrative seems to be lol China only learned to make ball point pen recently,

IMO The ballpoint anecdote has been severely misinterpreted by western media. The narrative seems to be lol China only learned to make ball point pen recently, when really it was Premier LiKeQiang politicized importance of precision manufacturing for national security, and 2 years later Chinese industry developed tungsten carbide manufacturing capabilities for advanced munitions. There was no economically sensible reason for domestic ballpoint manufacturing, the entire market dominated by Japan and Swiss was only worth 20M. Zero rationale for Chinese industry to coordinate tons of resources for this project outside of national security. The TLDR should be China is scarily efficient at pursuing national security goals. Chinese military modernization is explicitly designed to counter US in Taiwan invasion scenario. They have no other security commitments, the goal is singular and funded by a budget that is equivalent to 87% of Pentagons by PPP. China doesn't have hundreds of bases, expensive pensions, legacy system to maintain. Last year alone they seem to have figured out most of the pressing turbojet issues as well as completed enough space infrastructure for full maritime surveillance persistence in SCS. These were the largest deficiencies western analysts had to doubt Chinese capabilities. Basically, any piece on Chinese military capabilities from 2+ years ago is out of date. That's how fast things are moving. >social engineering and psyops As far as I'm aware, there is no credible research to demonstrate Chinese conducts large influence operations in English abroad. It's mostly limited to mandarin targeting Chinese diaspora. That said, things will certainly be interesting if China actually decided to invest heavily in this capability. English fluency is still somewhat valuable resource in China, it's not being wasted to troll western net. But pool of English literacy is growing massively in recent years and there will be a surplus ready for weaponization.

beerandt 6y ago
1) >As far as I'm aware, there is no credible research to demonstrate Chinese conducts large influence operations I didn't mean to imply that they currently do. (Or don't. Idk.) Just that it's an area of major concern, where we'll be vulnerable as a country and lack parity. But as you say, interesting possibilities. 2) >IMO The ballpoint anecdote has been severely misinterpreted... I'm aware, but it's still a very relevant case-study. I'm not making fun of them- Manufacturing is hard. You're correct, in that it was a lack of high precision, high quality manufacturing, and yes, they are catching up quickly... But there's still a gap (for now) in this area, especially when 1) there is institutional knowledge required to make something correctly, and 2) said knowledge is non-public, a trade-secret, or similarly-restricted, and 3) no one has opened a factory to willingly transfer such knowledge to Chinese factory workers. I believe one example is in industrial tooling, but I don't know if that's still true. More abstractly: When so much industrial knowledge in a country has come from external sources... Find out what they haven't had to learn on their own. What capabilities will be missing or disadvantaged within their war-machine? Exploit them. -Obviously China has its own ability to research and invent things (on its own), and I'm not implying that can't. But we're taking about competitive advantage and looking for weaknesses here.

beerandt 6y ago

1) >As far as I'm aware, there is no credible research to demonstrate Chinese conducts large influence operations I didn't mean to imply that they currently do. (Or don't. Idk.) Just that it's an area of major concern, where we'll be vulnerable as a country and lack parity. But as you say, interesting possibilities. 2) >IMO The ballpoint anecdote has been severely misinterpreted... I'm aware, but it's still a very relevant case-study. I'm not making fun of them- Manufacturing is hard. You're correct, in that it was a lack of high precision, high quality manufacturing, and yes, they are catching up quickly... But there's still a gap (for now) in this area, especially when 1) there is institutional knowledge required to make something correctly, and 2) said knowledge is non-public, a trade-secret, or similarly-restricted, and 3) no one has opened a factory to willingly transfer such knowledge to Chinese factory workers. I believe one example is in industrial tooling, but I don't know if that's still true. More abstractly: When so much industrial knowledge in a country has come from external sources... Find out what they haven't had to learn on their own. What capabilities will be missing or disadvantaged within their war-machine? Exploit them. -Obviously China has its own ability to research and invent things (on its own), and I'm not implying that can't. But we're taking about competitive advantage and looking for weaknesses here.