4 ms·

So far the support of Apple, Google, Microsoft, Facebook and Cisco/Akami have given the US government a business, intelligence, and social engineering platform

So far the support of Apple, Google, Microsoft, Facebook and Cisco/Akami have given the US government a business, intelligence, and social engineering platform the likes the world has never seen before, and still people today wildly undervalue its power in the world today. They have effectively deplatformed Europe, South America, the Middle East and Asia, put anyone but China within second reach from a mass data collection perspective, and expanded the economic hegemony of the US more deeply and completely than the military ever could. The US is now on the verge of the second great breakthrough of mass automation of that data, intelligence and action. I am honestly shocked that this third stage of American Dominance has not be countered by any other nation save China, and even they're only defensively. America's global brain drain might have been the single most effective strategy that the planet has seen so far... The only question is if the rest of the world is going to wake up and counter this.

thatguysaguy 3y ago
No one else is really capable of making this technology at the level of the US, besides maybe China. Europe has the brainpower for sure, but they don't seem to be able to leverage it into actual innovation.
- peanuty1 3y ago
  European technologists and engineers are hamstrung by EU regulations.
  - EricE 3y ago
    Good government are like good spices - a little bit can make a dish amazing, but too much utterly ruins it.
  - azinman2 3y ago
    Is it really regulation? Or is it financing, laws about firing, cultural approaches to work, or a myriad of other differences?
    - causalmodels 3y ago
      Isn't the EU currently considering making open source ai developers legally liable for their models?
    - paulddraper 3y ago
      > Or is it financing, laws about firing, cultural approaches to work, or a myriad of other differences? You could argue chicken or egg, but many of those are regulation-related.
  - wintermutestwin 3y ago
    …and I would’ve gotten away with it if it weren’t for those darn regulators! The US used to have consumer focused regulators too, but they have been undermined for long enough to neutralize the threat to monopolistic megacorps.
72mena 3y ago
> "America's global brain drain might have been the single most effective strategy" The website has a section titled "Bring your AI Skills to the U.S.", and then a button with this label "Learn about pathways to work in the U.S.". This is very encouraging. And it reminded me of Eric Schmidt's recommendation on this topic [1], which was published on the final report of the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence: Chapter 10. Page 178: "Nations that can successfully attract and retain highly skilled individuals gain strategic and economic advantages over competitors." [...] "Unfortunately, international students in the United States are increasingly choosing to study in other countries or return home. One reason is the growing backlog of green card petitions. Indian immigrants face a particularly long wait. Many will spend decades on constrictive work visas waiting to receive their green cards, hindering both the technology sector’s ability to recruit talent and Indian immigrants’ quality of life." The report recommends to focus on building better Immigration Policies. Maybe this .gov initiative listened to the advice from the report. [1]: https://www.nscai.gov/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Full-Report-Digital-1.pdf https://www.nscai.gov/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Full-Report...
- tsunamifury 3y ago
  Yea I think it's more that Schmidt believes that AI is the force-multiplier of any existing system of power in the world today, and whatever it takes the US needs to continue to fuel it. But he also seems to understand the labor/intelligence relationship to get there better than anyone else. I really missed him when he left Google, Sundar is a pail shadow.
- azinman2 3y ago
  I find that very interesting given Eric Schmidt took citizenship in Cyprus, and to my knowledge, not because he has any prior tie to that country. If he really believed in the U.S. then he shouldn’t be getting late-in-life (post-billionaire) citizenship elsewhere.
  - tsunamifury 3y ago
    When you are a billionaire the greatest thing you can afford is self-contradictory behavior.
paulddraper 3y ago
> America's global brain drain might have been the single most effective strategy that the planet has seen so far... > The only question is if the rest of the world is going to wake up and counter this. Probably not. Simply put, there's no first-world country in the world where top talent can earn even close to a US salary, which largely due to the fact that US is relatively permissive towards large income disparities. Other countries "fixing" that would be politically infeasible.
- tsunamifury 3y ago
  Yet at the same time Liberal thought is the reason we have made such an incredible break thought in AI technology with the LLM. Quite literally the hippy movement lead to the open source movement lead to the internet lead to the LLM. So we have this seeming conundrum between little l and big L liberalism... ... im struggling with the realization that Liberalism the big idea is probably an afforded luxury ideal of the rich, as well as a runaway self-re-enforcing flywheel of wealth/advancement. I benefit from it, but fewer and fewer are going forward, while the US is simultaneously winning harder and harder. This is a nightmarish equation!
- mazlix 3y ago
  > Simply put, there's no first-world country in the world where top talent can earn even close to a US salary, which largely due to the fact that US is relatively permissive towards large income disparities. Why do you think it's A -> B and not B -> A? What factors of the US being permissive towards large income disparities do other nations lack that prevent them from paying equivalent salaries. One specific thing I've heard which makes sense to me toward explaining the salary gap is the US tends to have at-will employment while other nations make it more difficult to fire people. I wouldn't personally classify as promoting income disparity though.
  - tsunamifury 3y ago
    It has an undeniable ability to draw the best talent away from Europe and Asia, who want to earn more. I have worked with armies of these people -- they left their home countries for the opportunity for the big check. And those checks are way past the disparity you describe from at will employment, this is 10x more not 1.4x more.
seydor 3y ago
why would they? for most people in the western world it seems location doesn't matter anymore.
userabchn 3y ago
I think the foreign influence operations that aim to increase division in American society and promote equality of outcome are an attempt to counter it, not by outcompeting America but by hobbling it, seem to be somewhat effective.
- tsunamifury 3y ago
  Yea that seems to be the idea -- try to constrain America as much as possible if you can't beat it on its own terms. However US military as grown such that it likely can fight a 3 front war and most other nations would rather the sweet sweet trade deals they get by cooperating over some obscure ideological vision of a world without america.
WD40forRust 3y ago
There's good reason I run GrapheneOS and Qubes OS exclusively on my devices, and I route everything coming out of my systems over Proton and Tor (ofc not nested xD)...
jowea 3y ago
> The US is now on the verge of the second great breakthrough of mass automation of that data, intelligence and action. I am honestly shocked that this third stage of American Dominance has not be countered by any other nation save China, and even they're only defensively. As someone who has similar thoughts, I'm not so sure. The EU has been trying for a while. Russia also puts quite a bit of effort into having an Internet that can operate separately from the US. edit: That still doesn't explain to me why China and Russia don't have stronger pro-Linux (or something) initiatives. Even the middle powers could at least try to have some control over their technological infrastructure.

thatguysaguy 3y ago

No one else is really capable of making this technology at the level of the US, besides maybe China. Europe has the brainpower for sure, but they don't seem to be able to leverage it into actual innovation.

peanuty1 3y ago
European technologists and engineers are hamstrung by EU regulations.
- EricE 3y ago
  Good government are like good spices - a little bit can make a dish amazing, but too much utterly ruins it.
- azinman2 3y ago
  Is it really regulation? Or is it financing, laws about firing, cultural approaches to work, or a myriad of other differences?
  - causalmodels 3y ago
    Isn't the EU currently considering making open source ai developers legally liable for their models?
  - paulddraper 3y ago
    > Or is it financing, laws about firing, cultural approaches to work, or a myriad of other differences? You could argue chicken or egg, but many of those are regulation-related.
- wintermutestwin 3y ago
  …and I would’ve gotten away with it if it weren’t for those darn regulators! The US used to have consumer focused regulators too, but they have been undermined for long enough to neutralize the threat to monopolistic megacorps.

72mena 3y ago

> "America's global brain drain might have been the single most effective strategy" The website has a section titled "Bring your AI Skills to the U.S.", and then a button with this label "Learn about pathways to work in the U.S.". This is very encouraging. And it reminded me of Eric Schmidt's recommendation on this topic [1], which was published on the final report of the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence: Chapter 10. Page 178: "Nations that can successfully attract and retain highly skilled individuals gain strategic and economic advantages over competitors." [...] "Unfortunately, international students in the United States are increasingly choosing to study in other countries or return home. One reason is the growing backlog of green card petitions. Indian immigrants face a particularly long wait. Many will spend decades on constrictive work visas waiting to receive their green cards, hindering both the technology sector’s ability to recruit talent and Indian immigrants’ quality of life." The report recommends to focus on building better Immigration Policies. Maybe this .gov initiative listened to the advice from the report. [1]: https://www.nscai.gov/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Full-Report-Digital-1.pdf https://www.nscai.gov/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Full-Report...

tsunamifury 3y ago
Yea I think it's more that Schmidt believes that AI is the force-multiplier of any existing system of power in the world today, and whatever it takes the US needs to continue to fuel it. But he also seems to understand the labor/intelligence relationship to get there better than anyone else. I really missed him when he left Google, Sundar is a pail shadow.
azinman2 3y ago
I find that very interesting given Eric Schmidt took citizenship in Cyprus, and to my knowledge, not because he has any prior tie to that country. If he really believed in the U.S. then he shouldn’t be getting late-in-life (post-billionaire) citizenship elsewhere.
- tsunamifury 3y ago
  When you are a billionaire the greatest thing you can afford is self-contradictory behavior.

paulddraper 3y ago

> America's global brain drain might have been the single most effective strategy that the planet has seen so far... > The only question is if the rest of the world is going to wake up and counter this. Probably not. Simply put, there's no first-world country in the world where top talent can earn even close to a US salary, which largely due to the fact that US is relatively permissive towards large income disparities. Other countries "fixing" that would be politically infeasible.

tsunamifury 3y ago
Yet at the same time Liberal thought is the reason we have made such an incredible break thought in AI technology with the LLM. Quite literally the hippy movement lead to the open source movement lead to the internet lead to the LLM. So we have this seeming conundrum between little l and big L liberalism... ... im struggling with the realization that Liberalism the big idea is probably an afforded luxury ideal of the rich, as well as a runaway self-re-enforcing flywheel of wealth/advancement. I benefit from it, but fewer and fewer are going forward, while the US is simultaneously winning harder and harder. This is a nightmarish equation!
mazlix 3y ago
> Simply put, there's no first-world country in the world where top talent can earn even close to a US salary, which largely due to the fact that US is relatively permissive towards large income disparities. Why do you think it's A -> B and not B -> A? What factors of the US being permissive towards large income disparities do other nations lack that prevent them from paying equivalent salaries. One specific thing I've heard which makes sense to me toward explaining the salary gap is the US tends to have at-will employment while other nations make it more difficult to fire people. I wouldn't personally classify as promoting income disparity though.
- tsunamifury 3y ago
  It has an undeniable ability to draw the best talent away from Europe and Asia, who want to earn more. I have worked with armies of these people -- they left their home countries for the opportunity for the big check. And those checks are way past the disparity you describe from at will employment, this is 10x more not 1.4x more.

seydor 3y ago

why would they? for most people in the western world it seems location doesn't matter anymore.

userabchn 3y ago

I think the foreign influence operations that aim to increase division in American society and promote equality of outcome are an attempt to counter it, not by outcompeting America but by hobbling it, seem to be somewhat effective.

tsunamifury 3y ago
Yea that seems to be the idea -- try to constrain America as much as possible if you can't beat it on its own terms. However US military as grown such that it likely can fight a 3 front war and most other nations would rather the sweet sweet trade deals they get by cooperating over some obscure ideological vision of a world without america.

WD40forRust 3y ago

There's good reason I run GrapheneOS and Qubes OS exclusively on my devices, and I route everything coming out of my systems over Proton and Tor (ofc not nested xD)...

jowea 3y ago

> The US is now on the verge of the second great breakthrough of mass automation of that data, intelligence and action. I am honestly shocked that this third stage of American Dominance has not be countered by any other nation save China, and even they're only defensively. As someone who has similar thoughts, I'm not so sure. The EU has been trying for a while. Russia also puts quite a bit of effort into having an Internet that can operate separately from the US. edit: That still doesn't explain to me why China and Russia don't have stronger pro-Linux (or something) initiatives. Even the middle powers could at least try to have some control over their technological infrastructure.