6 ms·

The US is trying to avoid repeating the mistake it made with the USSR of allowing a hostile nation to buy its way to a modern industrial/technology base.

tivert 3y ago
> The US is trying to avoid repeating the mistake it made with the USSR of allowing a hostile nation to buy its way to a modern industrial/technology base. As far as I'm aware, the US didn't make that mistake with the USSR. IIRC, it was always under pretty strict export controls. IMHO, if the US allowed to any country to "buy its way to a modern industrial/technology base" that country was China.
- Longlius 3y ago
  There's a somewhat famous (possibly apocryphal?) story about the USSR's campaign to get its hand on American minicomputers to reverse engineer. The CIA would intercept shipments they suspected were being sold to the Soviets and fill the boxes with rocks before sending them along to be picked up by KGB agents in South America. Ultimately the Soviets did end up procuring a few western machines and reverse-engineering them. This is a look at one such machine - essentially a desktop PDP-11 used by the Soviet nuclear power industry: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1EWsWxObjA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1EWsWxObjA
  - dboreham 3y ago
    There were pdp-11s everywhere in the 1970s, and the designs were published (I have the schematics in my desk drawer here on microfiche). They were built from off the shelf TTL chips that again could be bought everywhere (things like UARTs often did use an LSI chip, bit harder to get hold of but still readily available) So it's inconceivable that a state level actor couldn't easily produce clones, even without ever having seen one! All the stories about "campaign to get its hand on American minicomputers" etc is theater.
    - tivert 3y ago
      There were pdp-11s everywhere in the 1970s, and the designs were published (I have the schematics in my desk drawer here on microfiche). They were built from off the shelf TTL chips... > All the stories about "campaign to get its hand on American minicomputers" etc is theater. The stories might be true, but not so much about acquiring the designs as quality implementations. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_computing_in_the_Soviet_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_computing_in_the_So...: > Soviet industry was unable to mass-produce computers to acceptable quality standards[6] and locally manufactured copies of Western hardware were unreliable.[7] As personal computers spread to industries and offices in the West, the Soviet Union's technological lag increased.[8] > ... > Since computers were considered strategic goods by the United States, their sale by Western countries was generally not allowed without special permission.[39] As a result of the CoCom embargo, companies from Western Bloc countries could not export computers to the Soviet Union (or service them) without a special license.[84]
mytailorisrich 3y ago
China is not inherently hostile to the US. They are strengthening and have more resources to assert themselves like any country would and should, which is actually what the US are hostile to because they don't want competition. On the other hand, if the USSR's aim was world revolution then yes they were inherently hostile to the US.
- CyanBird 3y ago
  > China is not inherently hostile to the US The US does not, and will not allow a "near peer" nation to exist, ever. It will use all the tools at its disposal to avoid that situation from ever happening, that's one of its own very core tenets for national security Japan, China, Brazil, etc it does not matter if it's actually aggressive against the US or not
  - mytailorisrich 3y ago
    Exactly. That is the real issue. This of course also means that China not being a democracy is just convenient to make them the 'bad guys', but is not really the issue and I expect things would be exactly the same if China was a democracy.
    - tivert 3y ago
      > This of course also means that China not being a democracy is just convenient to make them the 'bad guys', but is not really the issue and I expect things would be exactly the same if China was a democracy. That's, frankly, nonsense. Things most certainly would not "be exactly the same if China was a democracy" and had political values compatible with the US.
      - DiogenesKynikos 3y ago
        The anti-Japanese hysteria of the 1980s suggests otherwise.
      - mytailorisrich 3y ago
dboreham 3y ago
> mistake it made with the USSR of allowing... I fondly recall all the iPhones made in USSR that we used to buy.
pyuser583 3y ago
Wait did that happen with the USSR!?! Could you provide more info?
pphysch 3y ago
The USSR bought Sputnik (satellite) from USA? Ridiculous revisionism.
jrochkind1 3y ago
That does not match my understanding of the history. A) Didn't the US prevent technology transfer to the USSR as much or more so? B) The analyses I have seen have said that the reason the USSR fell is because it could not match the USA industrial/technology base, and specifically that in trying to keep up with US defense spending, they ended up spending 12-15% of GDP on defense (compared ~5-6% in US at the time), and that this was a big problem for them, that they were spending more than they could afford on defense. C) At the time the USSR fell, which the US considered positive and a victory... it still didn't have a "modern industrial/technology base", did it? At that point, we started helping Russia (not the USSR) develop that, and encouraged privatization of the economy... that was done in a way to create an oligarchy... that led Russia to where it is. i don't understand what you're talking about, a history where the US "made the mistake of allowing the USSR to buy its way to a modern industrial/technology base". By doing... what? That resulted in... what? What actions or inactions of the US or USSR are you talking about?

tivert 3y ago

> The US is trying to avoid repeating the mistake it made with the USSR of allowing a hostile nation to buy its way to a modern industrial/technology base. As far as I'm aware, the US didn't make that mistake with the USSR. IIRC, it was always under pretty strict export controls. IMHO, if the US allowed to any country to "buy its way to a modern industrial/technology base" that country was China.

Longlius 3y ago
There's a somewhat famous (possibly apocryphal?) story about the USSR's campaign to get its hand on American minicomputers to reverse engineer. The CIA would intercept shipments they suspected were being sold to the Soviets and fill the boxes with rocks before sending them along to be picked up by KGB agents in South America. Ultimately the Soviets did end up procuring a few western machines and reverse-engineering them. This is a look at one such machine - essentially a desktop PDP-11 used by the Soviet nuclear power industry: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1EWsWxObjA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1EWsWxObjA
- dboreham 3y ago
  There were pdp-11s everywhere in the 1970s, and the designs were published (I have the schematics in my desk drawer here on microfiche). They were built from off the shelf TTL chips that again could be bought everywhere (things like UARTs often did use an LSI chip, bit harder to get hold of but still readily available) So it's inconceivable that a state level actor couldn't easily produce clones, even without ever having seen one! All the stories about "campaign to get its hand on American minicomputers" etc is theater.
  - tivert 3y ago
    There were pdp-11s everywhere in the 1970s, and the designs were published (I have the schematics in my desk drawer here on microfiche). They were built from off the shelf TTL chips... > All the stories about "campaign to get its hand on American minicomputers" etc is theater. The stories might be true, but not so much about acquiring the designs as quality implementations. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_computing_in_the_Soviet_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_computing_in_the_So...: > Soviet industry was unable to mass-produce computers to acceptable quality standards[6] and locally manufactured copies of Western hardware were unreliable.[7] As personal computers spread to industries and offices in the West, the Soviet Union's technological lag increased.[8] > ... > Since computers were considered strategic goods by the United States, their sale by Western countries was generally not allowed without special permission.[39] As a result of the CoCom embargo, companies from Western Bloc countries could not export computers to the Soviet Union (or service them) without a special license.[84]

mytailorisrich 3y ago

China is not inherently hostile to the US. They are strengthening and have more resources to assert themselves like any country would and should, which is actually what the US are hostile to because they don't want competition. On the other hand, if the USSR's aim was world revolution then yes they were inherently hostile to the US.

CyanBird 3y ago
> China is not inherently hostile to the US The US does not, and will not allow a "near peer" nation to exist, ever. It will use all the tools at its disposal to avoid that situation from ever happening, that's one of its own very core tenets for national security Japan, China, Brazil, etc it does not matter if it's actually aggressive against the US or not
- mytailorisrich 3y ago
  Exactly. That is the real issue. This of course also means that China not being a democracy is just convenient to make them the 'bad guys', but is not really the issue and I expect things would be exactly the same if China was a democracy.
  - tivert 3y ago
    > This of course also means that China not being a democracy is just convenient to make them the 'bad guys', but is not really the issue and I expect things would be exactly the same if China was a democracy. That's, frankly, nonsense. Things most certainly would not "be exactly the same if China was a democracy" and had political values compatible with the US.
    - DiogenesKynikos 3y ago
      The anti-Japanese hysteria of the 1980s suggests otherwise.
    - mytailorisrich 3y ago

dboreham 3y ago

> mistake it made with the USSR of allowing... I fondly recall all the iPhones made in USSR that we used to buy.

pyuser583 3y ago

Wait did that happen with the USSR!?! Could you provide more info?

pphysch 3y ago

The USSR bought Sputnik (satellite) from USA? Ridiculous revisionism.

jrochkind1 3y ago

That does not match my understanding of the history. A) Didn't the US prevent technology transfer to the USSR as much or more so? B) The analyses I have seen have said that the reason the USSR fell is because it could not match the USA industrial/technology base, and specifically that in trying to keep up with US defense spending, they ended up spending 12-15% of GDP on defense (compared ~5-6% in US at the time), and that this was a big problem for them, that they were spending more than they could afford on defense. C) At the time the USSR fell, which the US considered positive and a victory... it still didn't have a "modern industrial/technology base", did it? At that point, we started helping Russia (not the USSR) develop that, and encouraged privatization of the economy... that was done in a way to create an oligarchy... that led Russia to where it is. i don't understand what you're talking about, a history where the US "made the mistake of allowing the USSR to buy its way to a modern industrial/technology base". By doing... what? That resulted in... what? What actions or inactions of the US or USSR are you talking about?