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Clone legacy tech, leapfrog at the cutting edge. Masterful strategic execution, hats off to China. One example. Drones have proven to be a strategic gamechange

Clone legacy tech, leapfrog at the cutting edge. Masterful strategic execution, hats off to China. One example. Drones have proven to be a strategic gamechanger in the 2020 Azeri-Armenian war. In the same league with the musket, the machine gun, the tank, the airplane, the carrier. Who is the world leader in commercial drones? DJI, a Chinese company. US market share? 76%. It's not even close. https://dronelife.com/2021/03/05/has-the-u-s-china-trade-war-changed-djis-drone-market-share-the-latest-from-drone-industry-insights/ https://dronelife.com/2021/03/05/has-the-u-s-china-trade-war...

ChemSpider 5y ago
Is this for professional drones (say > US$ 2000) or including all the RC toy drones?
dnautics 5y ago
> leapfrog at the cutting edge is there anything cutting edge about DJI products aside from volume? TBH I think probably the only thing truly special about DJI is that their software interface actually works, but in the world of "all software" it's still pretty janky (the bar is low in drone-world).
- angelzen 5y ago
  I'm addressing the condescending Western trope, IMHO stemming from denial, that China somehow lacks 'a source of creativity and critical thought' to be 'truly innovative and successful in the high-skill arena'. Commercial drones, mobile computing, 5G, Internet. High skill high growth industries that barely existed 25 years ago where China is at least on par with the West, and with evergrowing market share.
  - dnautics 5y ago
    Well I'm an American born asian, and I've worked with 1) Chinese professors, postdocs and grad students and 2) Chinese postdocs who did their undergrad in the US. The difference in creativity levels is night and day.
    - angelzen 5y ago
      That's intriguing. My original comment was longer and included https://macropolo.org/digital-projects/the-global-ai-talent-tracker https://macropolo.org/digital-projects/the-global-ai-talent-.... A plurality of top AI researchers are Chinese. The Chinese undergrad pipeline appears very strong. If China figures a way to keep over half of its most promising undergrads from moving to US for grad school and/or work, chances are there would be a new unquestionable top tech dog (err, dragon) of the XXI century.
      - dnautics 5y ago
        haha I mean not just china, but it's not like the worldwide AI pipeline is rife with innovation these days. Do you watch Yannic Kilcher's paper reviews? I keep waiting for a model that will do something I want (image -> language with a transformer model that doesn't have a fixed token length during training). I have been waiting for about 3 years, haven't seen it yet. You can't measure innovation by bulk flow of humans through a system. If anything if you force too many humans through a pipeline that needs innovation you risk kneecapping progress because the separation of wheat and chaff becomes quadratically harder, increasingly gamed, and the people who actually have talent and creativity inevitably burn out and fuck off to do something else.

ChemSpider 5y ago

Is this for professional drones (say > US$ 2000) or including all the RC toy drones?

dnautics 5y ago

> leapfrog at the cutting edge is there anything cutting edge about DJI products aside from volume? TBH I think probably the only thing truly special about DJI is that their software interface actually works, but in the world of "all software" it's still pretty janky (the bar is low in drone-world).

angelzen 5y ago
I'm addressing the condescending Western trope, IMHO stemming from denial, that China somehow lacks 'a source of creativity and critical thought' to be 'truly innovative and successful in the high-skill arena'. Commercial drones, mobile computing, 5G, Internet. High skill high growth industries that barely existed 25 years ago where China is at least on par with the West, and with evergrowing market share.
- dnautics 5y ago
  Well I'm an American born asian, and I've worked with 1) Chinese professors, postdocs and grad students and 2) Chinese postdocs who did their undergrad in the US. The difference in creativity levels is night and day.
  - angelzen 5y ago
    That's intriguing. My original comment was longer and included https://macropolo.org/digital-projects/the-global-ai-talent-tracker https://macropolo.org/digital-projects/the-global-ai-talent-.... A plurality of top AI researchers are Chinese. The Chinese undergrad pipeline appears very strong. If China figures a way to keep over half of its most promising undergrads from moving to US for grad school and/or work, chances are there would be a new unquestionable top tech dog (err, dragon) of the XXI century.
    - dnautics 5y ago
      haha I mean not just china, but it's not like the worldwide AI pipeline is rife with innovation these days. Do you watch Yannic Kilcher's paper reviews? I keep waiting for a model that will do something I want (image -> language with a transformer model that doesn't have a fixed token length during training). I have been waiting for about 3 years, haven't seen it yet. You can't measure innovation by bulk flow of humans through a system. If anything if you force too many humans through a pipeline that needs innovation you risk kneecapping progress because the separation of wheat and chaff becomes quadratically harder, increasingly gamed, and the people who actually have talent and creativity inevitably burn out and fuck off to do something else.