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Why is selling China AI a bad thing? Free market is better. I'd like to buy a BYD Electric Car, but apparently the US Government (Biden and Trump Admins) think

Why is selling China AI a bad thing? Free market is better. I'd like to buy a BYD Electric Car, but apparently the US Government (Biden and Trump Admins) think that is a bad thing too.

lordofgibbons 1y ago
The U.S defense apparatus sees China as its primary adversary. Anything that can help china to develop a stronger economy or military is seen as a threat. Therefore, anything that can create a wide gap between U.S and China's A.I capabilities is seen as attractive.
- tinbad 1y ago
  This comment is framed as if Chinas dictator regime is seeing US as any different. China (and Russia for that matter) had plenty of opportunities to collaborate with rest of world, instead they decided to pursue their own imperialist shenanigans.
dijit 1y ago
Tangent; A lot of people forget that the basis of the European Economic Area and European Union was to promote free trade with the sole intent purpose of making future wars unthinkable. As in, if Britain depends on France for power, and France depends on Britain for pharmaceuticals- going to war with each other becomes intentionally difficult to the point of near impossibility without extremely good reasons. If you want your opponent to know that you don't mind going to war, a good option is to ensure you don't "depend" on them for anything, and to cut them off from getting good things from you that might aid them.
- throw0101d 1y ago
  > A lot of people forget that the basis of the European Economic Area and European Union was to promote free trade with the sole intent purpose of making future wars unthinkable. And that was one of the reason for letting China into the WTO: the thinking is they'd prosper and the citizens would see the advantages of capitalism and economic liberalization would lead to political liberalization. How's Chinese political liberalization coming along? (Remember that Europeans generally had political liberalization before WW2.)
  - dijit 1y ago
    > How's Chinese political liberalization coming along? Same as it was in Ukraine, a slow groundswell and then an all at once revolution due to the "powers that be" not listening. https://www.economist.com/china/2024/09/05/liberalism-is-far-from-dead-in-china https://www.economist.com/china/2024/09/05/liberalism-is-far... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberalism_in_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberalism_in_China
- skippyboxedhero 1y ago
  The EU explicitly does not promote free trade. The countries within the EU are almost all countries with a very long history of protectionism, there are significant NTBs in every industry, there are specific industries where there have been decades of massive subsidies, and...perhaps the most funny...there isn't free trade within the EU. EU politicians talk endlessly about free trade but these are rules for other people, not them. The lack of harmonization INSIDE the EU in services is significant (and btw, this is also true of other economic blocs, for example this is true of the US to a certain, far lesser, extent). Finally, the issue with free trade for the EU is that their products aren't competitive. They have 2 countries which run massive trade surpluses because due of the Euro and obviously bad central bank policy, if this wasn't the case then there would be rebalancing (EU's persistent trade surpluses contribute to financial instability in the same way that China's trade surpluses contributed to instability pre-07, it is very bad for everyone but politicians in two countries in the EU). Also, there was significant trade before WW1 (we didn't recover that peak in terms of trade until the late 90s) and it didn't stop war. Saying that opposing free trade is the same thing as declaring war on your neighbours is nonsensical (and I assume relates to something going on US politics).
  - dijit 1y ago
    > The EU explicitly does not promote free trade. How can you say this when it's explicitly one of the four fundamental freedoms in the EU? I can't even read the rest of your comment when you're so completely wrong right off the bat. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_single_market https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_single_market https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_economic_freedoms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_economic_freedoms To list them here: * Free movement of goods * Free movement of services * Free movement of capital * Free movement of labor/people
    - skippyboxedhero 1y ago
      You failed to engage with any of the points I made, your only evidence is a vague statement of principles that no-one has ever behaved in line with. This is a peculiarly modern viewpoint with people raised on social media: saying something is a good as doing it. What you say matters, what you do doesn't. To just go through the list: there isn't free movement of goods externally, there isn't free movement of goods WITHIN the EU (again, be clear...we aren't talking about the EU trading with other countries, this is countries within the EU trading with each other), there isn't free movement of capital WITHIN the EU, there is free movement of people...sometimes, but Schengen has been repeatedly suspended by member states because of the political instability it causes. Btw...all of this public, the EU has been trying to harmonize services for two decades (before this, they didn't even try), the EU has been trying to harmonize capital markets furiously since the Euro crisis...it hasn't worked because of the issues with the Euro, central bank policy, and the weakness of French/German banks.
janice1999 1y ago
> I'd like to buy a BYD Electric Car, but apparently the US Government (Biden and Trump Admins) think that is a bad thing too. It's a bad thing if you believe China is subsidising BYD and others (including with the use of slave labour) in order to destroy non-Chinese automotive makers by flooding external markets with cheap cars. Add on top the fact that modern EVs are rolling surveillance platforms...
- e40 1y ago
  I don't understand why this isn't more obvious. I understand why industrialists want us to ignore working conditions in other countries (the extra money goes into their pockets), but why regular folk (which I assume most of us here are) don't care about the conditions of labor in other parts of the world. It baffles me. If it can happen there it can happen here (obviously it is not going to happen here soon, but given the right conditions... and conditions seem to be changing quite fast these days...).
- mystified5016 1y ago
  Is it destroying a market or is it out-competing? US makers are not at all interested in building EVs that Americans want or need, they only want to build luxury adware platforms. If another country builds an EV that Americans do want, why is it suddenly a bad thing? Is this a capitalist economy where anyone can compete, or is this a communist country where only government blessed companies can compete? It can't be both.
  - janice1999 1y ago
    US makers are (or at least were) pivoting to making cheaper EVs. Supply chain constraints during COVID was one of the reasons they were focusing on luxury EVs. >why is it suddenly a bad thing There is no "suddenly". These arguments have existed as long as nation states have. A country does not like it when another country attempts to undermine its companies and manufacturing capacity with unfair competition. Just look at all the tariffs and lawsuits between the US and the EU over state subsidies of airline manufacture over the last decades. It's not a China-only issue and never has been. > Is this a capitalist economy where anyone can compete Capitalist economies are not magical natural occurrences. They result from rules, in this case those agreed between countries. The WTO exists for a reason. State subsidies and a counties degree of protectionism will always play a part in economic discussions.
throw0101d 1y ago
> Why is selling China AI a bad thing? Free market is better. For one, China isn't a free market. If they were perhaps it would be more fair to allow them to easily compete. For another, countries having (access to) certain capabilities may be negative as life is more than just about commerce and money: > Democratic countries’ economies are mainly set up as free market economies with redistribution, because this is what maximizes living standards in peacetime. In a free market economy, if a foreign country wants to sell you cheap cars, you let them do it, and you allocate your own productive resources to something more profitable instead. If China is willing to sell you brand-new electric vehicles for $10,000, why should you turn them down? Just make B2B SaaS and advertising platforms and chat apps, sell them for a high profit margin, and drive a Chinese car. > Except then a war comes, and suddenly you find that B2B SaaS and advertising platforms and chat apps aren’t very useful for defending your freedoms. Oops! The right time to worry about manufacturing would have been years before the war, except you weren’t able to anticipate and prepare for the future. Manufacturing doesn’t just support war — in a very real way, it’s a war in and of itself. * https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/manufacturing-is-a-war-now https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/manufacturing-is-a-war-now China (and others) may have goals other than just making money or a middle-class life sty.e
howmayiannoyyou 1y ago
Free market is better when its truly free. Free from: - Predatory export subsidies. - Protective non-monetary barriers to import/export. - Theft of intellectual property. - Monopolization of dual-use and essential manufactured products. - Two sides that are not posturing for war. - One side that is not disregarding international law. In the case of AI, the scale of CCP military command & control, and intelligence collection is vast due the size of the PLA, PLAN, MSS, etc. Denying them AI to fuse and coordinate may be a lost cause ultimately, but time has a value all its own and that's what the US is after as it - and its allies - reconfigure to defend the SCS, India & the Pacific in general.
tzs 1y ago
> I'd like to buy a BYD Electric Car, but apparently the US Government (Biden and Trump Admins) think that is a bad thing too. A big difference is that the Biden administration did want you to have an EV--they just wanted it to be American made. Hence the large subsidies to promote the US EV industry. The Trump administration does not want you to have an EV. Not only does the bill they just passed in the house remove the subsidies it adds an annual $250 penalty for each EV you own. They say that the $250 is to make up for the gas tax you aren't paying, so as to support the roads, but that is a clear lie. If it were to make up for the gas tax it would be set so that on average an EV driver pays about the same as an ICE driver. That would be about $95. (Also, the $250 penalty is indexed to inflation whereas the gas tax is not, and has not changed since 1993, so it will be sticking it even more to EV owners as time goes on).

Why is selling China AI a bad thing? Free market is better. I'd like to buy a BYD Electric Car, but apparently the US Government (Biden and Trump Admins) think that is a bad thing too.

lordofgibbons 1y ago

The U.S defense apparatus sees China as its primary adversary. Anything that can help china to develop a stronger economy or military is seen as a threat. Therefore, anything that can create a wide gap between U.S and China's A.I capabilities is seen as attractive.

tinbad 1y ago
This comment is framed as if Chinas dictator regime is seeing US as any different. China (and Russia for that matter) had plenty of opportunities to collaborate with rest of world, instead they decided to pursue their own imperialist shenanigans.

dijit 1y ago

Tangent; A lot of people forget that the basis of the European Economic Area and European Union was to promote free trade with the sole intent purpose of making future wars unthinkable. As in, if Britain depends on France for power, and France depends on Britain for pharmaceuticals- going to war with each other becomes intentionally difficult to the point of near impossibility without extremely good reasons. If you want your opponent to know that you don't mind going to war, a good option is to ensure you don't "depend" on them for anything, and to cut them off from getting good things from you that might aid them.

throw0101d 1y ago
> A lot of people forget that the basis of the European Economic Area and European Union was to promote free trade with the sole intent purpose of making future wars unthinkable. And that was one of the reason for letting China into the WTO: the thinking is they'd prosper and the citizens would see the advantages of capitalism and economic liberalization would lead to political liberalization. How's Chinese political liberalization coming along? (Remember that Europeans generally had political liberalization before WW2.)
- dijit 1y ago
  > How's Chinese political liberalization coming along? Same as it was in Ukraine, a slow groundswell and then an all at once revolution due to the "powers that be" not listening. https://www.economist.com/china/2024/09/05/liberalism-is-far-from-dead-in-china https://www.economist.com/china/2024/09/05/liberalism-is-far... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberalism_in_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberalism_in_China
skippyboxedhero 1y ago
The EU explicitly does not promote free trade. The countries within the EU are almost all countries with a very long history of protectionism, there are significant NTBs in every industry, there are specific industries where there have been decades of massive subsidies, and...perhaps the most funny...there isn't free trade within the EU. EU politicians talk endlessly about free trade but these are rules for other people, not them. The lack of harmonization INSIDE the EU in services is significant (and btw, this is also true of other economic blocs, for example this is true of the US to a certain, far lesser, extent). Finally, the issue with free trade for the EU is that their products aren't competitive. They have 2 countries which run massive trade surpluses because due of the Euro and obviously bad central bank policy, if this wasn't the case then there would be rebalancing (EU's persistent trade surpluses contribute to financial instability in the same way that China's trade surpluses contributed to instability pre-07, it is very bad for everyone but politicians in two countries in the EU). Also, there was significant trade before WW1 (we didn't recover that peak in terms of trade until the late 90s) and it didn't stop war. Saying that opposing free trade is the same thing as declaring war on your neighbours is nonsensical (and I assume relates to something going on US politics).
- dijit 1y ago
  > The EU explicitly does not promote free trade. How can you say this when it's explicitly one of the four fundamental freedoms in the EU? I can't even read the rest of your comment when you're so completely wrong right off the bat. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_single_market https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_single_market https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_economic_freedoms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_economic_freedoms To list them here: * Free movement of goods * Free movement of services * Free movement of capital * Free movement of labor/people
  - skippyboxedhero 1y ago
    You failed to engage with any of the points I made, your only evidence is a vague statement of principles that no-one has ever behaved in line with. This is a peculiarly modern viewpoint with people raised on social media: saying something is a good as doing it. What you say matters, what you do doesn't. To just go through the list: there isn't free movement of goods externally, there isn't free movement of goods WITHIN the EU (again, be clear...we aren't talking about the EU trading with other countries, this is countries within the EU trading with each other), there isn't free movement of capital WITHIN the EU, there is free movement of people...sometimes, but Schengen has been repeatedly suspended by member states because of the political instability it causes. Btw...all of this public, the EU has been trying to harmonize services for two decades (before this, they didn't even try), the EU has been trying to harmonize capital markets furiously since the Euro crisis...it hasn't worked because of the issues with the Euro, central bank policy, and the weakness of French/German banks.

janice1999 1y ago

> I'd like to buy a BYD Electric Car, but apparently the US Government (Biden and Trump Admins) think that is a bad thing too. It's a bad thing if you believe China is subsidising BYD and others (including with the use of slave labour) in order to destroy non-Chinese automotive makers by flooding external markets with cheap cars. Add on top the fact that modern EVs are rolling surveillance platforms...

e40 1y ago
I don't understand why this isn't more obvious. I understand why industrialists want us to ignore working conditions in other countries (the extra money goes into their pockets), but why regular folk (which I assume most of us here are) don't care about the conditions of labor in other parts of the world. It baffles me. If it can happen there it can happen here (obviously it is not going to happen here soon, but given the right conditions... and conditions seem to be changing quite fast these days...).
mystified5016 1y ago
Is it destroying a market or is it out-competing? US makers are not at all interested in building EVs that Americans want or need, they only want to build luxury adware platforms. If another country builds an EV that Americans do want, why is it suddenly a bad thing? Is this a capitalist economy where anyone can compete, or is this a communist country where only government blessed companies can compete? It can't be both.
- janice1999 1y ago
  US makers are (or at least were) pivoting to making cheaper EVs. Supply chain constraints during COVID was one of the reasons they were focusing on luxury EVs. >why is it suddenly a bad thing There is no "suddenly". These arguments have existed as long as nation states have. A country does not like it when another country attempts to undermine its companies and manufacturing capacity with unfair competition. Just look at all the tariffs and lawsuits between the US and the EU over state subsidies of airline manufacture over the last decades. It's not a China-only issue and never has been. > Is this a capitalist economy where anyone can compete Capitalist economies are not magical natural occurrences. They result from rules, in this case those agreed between countries. The WTO exists for a reason. State subsidies and a counties degree of protectionism will always play a part in economic discussions.

throw0101d 1y ago

> Why is selling China AI a bad thing? Free market is better. For one, China isn't a free market. If they were perhaps it would be more fair to allow them to easily compete. For another, countries having (access to) certain capabilities may be negative as life is more than just about commerce and money: > Democratic countries’ economies are mainly set up as free market economies with redistribution, because this is what maximizes living standards in peacetime. In a free market economy, if a foreign country wants to sell you cheap cars, you let them do it, and you allocate your own productive resources to something more profitable instead. If China is willing to sell you brand-new electric vehicles for $10,000, why should you turn them down? Just make B2B SaaS and advertising platforms and chat apps, sell them for a high profit margin, and drive a Chinese car. > Except then a war comes, and suddenly you find that B2B SaaS and advertising platforms and chat apps aren’t very useful for defending your freedoms. Oops! The right time to worry about manufacturing would have been years before the war, except you weren’t able to anticipate and prepare for the future. Manufacturing doesn’t just support war — in a very real way, it’s a war in and of itself. * https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/manufacturing-is-a-war-now https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/manufacturing-is-a-war-now China (and others) may have goals other than just making money or a middle-class life sty.e

howmayiannoyyou 1y ago

Free market is better when its truly free. Free from: - Predatory export subsidies. - Protective non-monetary barriers to import/export. - Theft of intellectual property. - Monopolization of dual-use and essential manufactured products. - Two sides that are not posturing for war. - One side that is not disregarding international law. In the case of AI, the scale of CCP military command & control, and intelligence collection is vast due the size of the PLA, PLAN, MSS, etc. Denying them AI to fuse and coordinate may be a lost cause ultimately, but time has a value all its own and that's what the US is after as it - and its allies - reconfigure to defend the SCS, India & the Pacific in general.

tzs 1y ago

> I'd like to buy a BYD Electric Car, but apparently the US Government (Biden and Trump Admins) think that is a bad thing too. A big difference is that the Biden administration did want you to have an EV--they just wanted it to be American made. Hence the large subsidies to promote the US EV industry. The Trump administration does not want you to have an EV. Not only does the bill they just passed in the house remove the subsidies it adds an annual $250 penalty for each EV you own. They say that the $250 is to make up for the gas tax you aren't paying, so as to support the roads, but that is a clear lie. If it were to make up for the gas tax it would be set so that on average an EV driver pays about the same as an ICE driver. That would be about $95. (Also, the $250 penalty is indexed to inflation whereas the gas tax is not, and has not changed since 1993, so it will be sticking it even more to EV owners as time goes on).