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It feels like the US for years has operated under the assumption that homeostasis for the global economy would always be “designed in California, assembled in C

It feels like the US for years has operated under the assumption that homeostasis for the global economy would always be “designed in California, assembled in China.” Like there was something in the American DNA that was lacking in China and innovation would always need to happen here. But China it seems doesn’t need the US to produce great cars, devices, robotics, or AI. We absolutely need China to help us build all of the above.

deleted 5mo ago
[deleted]
delfinom 5mo ago
Propaganda. We americans ate that shit up. There's nothing special about anything we design in the US other than time and money commitment to create it. China did have some espionage of course going on, but the vast majority of shit isn't some secret. And with the US shitting on China with restrictions, we increasingly caused them to invest time and money into things they otherwise would have passively accepted as coming from the west. ASML sees the writing on the wall for themselves in particular.
- jdcasale 5mo ago
  It's both. The US has generally resorted to propaganda rather than addressing the self-inflicted structural conditions responsible for the erosion of our dominance. China also conducted a broad, sustained, large-scale campaign of IP theft across almost every industry. Obviously there is no natural law preventing China from innovating (We have treated political liberalism as a prerequisite to innovation in a way that was always partly self-congratulatory), but it's also obviously true that the speed of the gap closure is due in significant part to theft. That doesn't change the fact that they are now a legitimate competitor who has gotten a lot of things right (and among these, some things that we get very wrong) and probably actually leads in some areas.
  - infecto 5mo ago
    I like this take a lot and agree with it. The US for too long has been asleep at the wheel on many areas, power generation one of them. China with no doubt has conducted very deep and sustained espionage campaigns and even with LLMs there is enough evidence that most of the initial gains was training off of western models. Again no complaints here but I think it’s important to acknowledge both which can be true at the same time.
    - FpUser 5mo ago
      >"Again no complaints here but I think it’s important to acknowledge both which can be true at the same time." and this acknowledgement will pay your bills
      - infecto 5mo ago
        Huh?
- clear-octopus 5mo ago
  [dead]
fridder 5mo ago
Might be more far to say: they needed the US until they caught up. The massive straight up IP theft helps a lot here. Though theft might be too strong since a lot of companies knew what they were getting in to
- anigbrowl 5mo ago
  Wait until you hear about the history of US industrialization. This trope of 'they stole our ideas' needs to fade away, it's a coping mechanism based on the assumption of inherent superiority of American society rather than the natural wax and wane of civilizations due to varying structural factors.
  - lejalv 5mo ago
    This so much. You can also read up about when Germany sent industrial spies to Great Britain. And the first documented case of industrial spionage was against... China. It plays this way: you're behind, you ignore IP rules. You're ahead: you create them to defend your newly-gained status. Also please no moralizing here on IP when the entire OpenAI/Anthropic playbook has been "massive straight up IP theft". The irony.
- dangus 5mo ago
  At some point we can’t keep blaming IP theft for obvious innovation and investments being made by China. We also can’t blame subsidy. All countries subsidize their industries. This video on the auto industry covers a different industry but has a lot of the same rhymes as far as China’s strategy: https://youtube.com/watch?v=UhhZu0ZHdw4 https://youtube.com/watch?v=UhhZu0ZHdw4 The gist of it is that China does the following: 1. Treats low margin industries like mining and utilities as areas to focus investment and come up with incremental improvements, making those available to all companies. The West, by contrast, allows private companies to handle those industries, who logically don’t bother investing in them since their investors consider those basic industries to be low-value segments of the production chain. But now we see those advantages in China where investments have been made (e.g., the best battery chemistries and mining/refining, the cheapest power (when was the last time your local utility company focused on reducing pricing?)). 2. Because all companies in China have access to the same excellent infrastructure, they must compete furiously on quality/features/price of their products. 3. China allows foreign competition so long as they operate in China (see: Tesla) further insisting that their domestic products be globally competitive and that foreign products sold in their country benefit their local ecosystem.
sandworm101 5mo ago
As john oliver said on conan many years ago: "an inflatable barbecue!". China can certainly design an inflatable barbecue. China can certainly biuld an inlfatable barbecue. But will the chinese people ever want and buy an inflatable barbecue? ... never. That is why the US will remain the premier consumer economy.
- nl 5mo ago
  The US is the richest consumer market in the world. And yet BYD is likely to outsell Ford worldwide this year (despite being banned in the US) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_automotive_manufacturers_by_production https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_automotive_manufacture...
roncesvalles 5mo ago
>Like there was something in the American DNA that was lacking in China and innovation would always need to happen here. There is (was): attracting the best minds around the world to a free and stable society. Trump voters threw it all away because they couldn't stand non-whites coming to America and doing better than old stock Americans.
- DaSHacka 5mo ago
  > attracting the best minds around the world to a free and stable society. China is comprised of ~91.5% ethnically Chinese citizens. [0] > Tump voters threw it all away because they couldn't stand non-whites coming to America and doing better than old stock Americans. The U.S. is more diverse than it's ever been [1], and under Trump we're still below the deportations of Obama's terms. Sounds like open-borders immigration was never necessary in the first place, given that we're being beat by a country with a similar demographic skew that we had like 80 years ago. Coincidentally, when we arguably had our best economic opportunities for citizens. Who'da thunk. Clearly, the only solution to our fading relevance is opening the border again and importing 500 million more ""doctors and engineers"" all the while China is investing in their *actual* doctors and engineers, and has extremely strict immigration policies [2]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ethnic_groups_in_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ethnic_groups_in_China [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_racial_and_ethnic_demographics_of_the_United_States#Historical_data_for_all_races_and_for_Hispanic_origin_(1610%E2%80%932020) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_racial_and_ethnic_d... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China#Population_policies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China#Population_policies
  - roncesvalles 5mo ago
    You're conflating Mexican border hoppers with skilled immigrants. I'm absolutely opposed to illegal immigration and have a more extreme position on how to deal with it than most Americans. What I'm irked by are Trump's attacks on legal immigration and the general worsening of the environment. ICE's kidnappings, the 100k H-1B fee, and the recent Green Card thing have deeply eroded America's attractiveness to legal immigrants. I think when MAGA came after H-1Bs, it became pretty clear that it's not about law and order, it's just a race thing. And if you want to go gloves off, I'll just say it: the main problem in America is that its 3 major ethnic groups are infected by anti-intellectualism and slothfulness, whereas the Chinese and various other cultures are not. The direct benefit from skilled immigration is so that we can increase the ratio of people who actually value education and hard work vs the failing old stock Americans whose broccoli-headed kids dream of becoming YouTube influencers instead of astronauts.
clear-octopus 5mo ago
[dead]
encrypted_bird 5mo ago
> Like there was something in the American DNA that was lacking in China In most Americans' eyes, unfortunately, there was. It was just known by the name "American Exceptionalism". Yes, it's nonsense, but unfortunately it is nonsense that has historically been used by most empires throughout history, and believed just as fervently by said empires' populi since it's one of the central elements of imperialism as a whole.
- TurdF3rguson 5mo ago
  The US models are still better though, let's not get carried away. Ours are better, theirs are cheaper. That's how it's always been.
  - TurdF3rguson 5mo ago
    Downvoters are being silly. If you want to make a case for American Exceptionalism being a hoax, that's fine. But don't use deepseek 4 pro (which is at 100 ELO or so below top models) to make that case. You have stronger arguments elsewhere. Capishe?
    - Kbelicius 5mo ago
      Downvoters aren't being silly, it's about you not considering the context of the discussion when writing your first reply. Deepseek wasn't mentioned once in this thread before your second post and AI was mentioned once in a list of different industries. Those should have been a clue to why your first post was downvoted. Basically, you wrote a non sequitur post and are surprised that it is being downvoted.
      - TurdF3rguson 5mo ago
        Um, take a break between bong hits to read the thread title pal: "DeepSeek makes the V4 Pro price discount permanent". I don't know what you thought we were discussing, puff the magic dragons perhaps? Lol. Seriously though, take a hike if you can't be bothered to read things.
dzonga 5mo ago
people might not wanna admit it because it feels politically incorrect - but that belief is massively due the idea of "western (white) supremacy". cz if you're smart & pragmatic - then you will know innovation can come from anywhere - but western elites choose to continually bury their heads in the sand.
HerbManic 5mo ago
The one major area they are still behind in is CPU tech, but they are hungry and thus moving quick. Looking at Loongsons processors for instance. About 15 years ago they coudl barely compete with a Pentium 2. Now they are about 4-5 years behind Intel/AMD. Further behind on some more specific work loads (SSL decoding for example) Not great but that is a decent jump. The jumps between generations are pretty decent. LA446 was a decent enough processor core but had an awful memory controller that held it back as soon as it needed to reach outside of cache. As such it was SLOW. But they learned the lesson and now the LA664 almost entirely fixed that issue. I think a big part of performance issues is that they are working domestic 5 to 7nm processes, so a good 5-7 years behind. They are launching the LA864 later this year and are touting some decent performance gains. That is just marketing so far but something to keep an eye on. Considering that these chips are using their own ISA, own designs, domestic manufacturing and they aren't terrible is a big thing. I suspect in the next 5 years they have the chance of completely closing the gap. But it can also go the other way that they end up stalling as smaller nodes get much more difficult to attain.
- TedDoesntTalk 5mo ago
  How much does corporate espionage help them?
  - shimman 5mo ago
    Probably the same amount it helped the US in the late 1800s/1900s, a substantial amount.
  - HerbManic 5mo ago
    Who knows but any 'answer' anyone could give is pure speculation. You could be right! But I do see this claim come up every time Chinese tech comes up. It might be a valid concern but it might also just be folks attempts to try and undermine the technology gains of the nation. The ISA they have developed with based off years of with with MIPS and RISC V, so it isn't entirely new but they are definitely pushing it forwards. I have no idea if any of their developments could be back ported down the RISC V.

deleted 5mo ago

[deleted]

delfinom 5mo ago

Propaganda. We americans ate that shit up. There's nothing special about anything we design in the US other than time and money commitment to create it. China did have some espionage of course going on, but the vast majority of shit isn't some secret. And with the US shitting on China with restrictions, we increasingly caused them to invest time and money into things they otherwise would have passively accepted as coming from the west. ASML sees the writing on the wall for themselves in particular.

jdcasale 5mo ago
It's both. The US has generally resorted to propaganda rather than addressing the self-inflicted structural conditions responsible for the erosion of our dominance. China also conducted a broad, sustained, large-scale campaign of IP theft across almost every industry. Obviously there is no natural law preventing China from innovating (We have treated political liberalism as a prerequisite to innovation in a way that was always partly self-congratulatory), but it's also obviously true that the speed of the gap closure is due in significant part to theft. That doesn't change the fact that they are now a legitimate competitor who has gotten a lot of things right (and among these, some things that we get very wrong) and probably actually leads in some areas.
- infecto 5mo ago
  I like this take a lot and agree with it. The US for too long has been asleep at the wheel on many areas, power generation one of them. China with no doubt has conducted very deep and sustained espionage campaigns and even with LLMs there is enough evidence that most of the initial gains was training off of western models. Again no complaints here but I think it’s important to acknowledge both which can be true at the same time.
  - FpUser 5mo ago
    >"Again no complaints here but I think it’s important to acknowledge both which can be true at the same time." and this acknowledgement will pay your bills
    - infecto 5mo ago
      Huh?
clear-octopus 5mo ago
[dead]

fridder 5mo ago

Might be more far to say: they needed the US until they caught up. The massive straight up IP theft helps a lot here. Though theft might be too strong since a lot of companies knew what they were getting in to

anigbrowl 5mo ago
Wait until you hear about the history of US industrialization. This trope of 'they stole our ideas' needs to fade away, it's a coping mechanism based on the assumption of inherent superiority of American society rather than the natural wax and wane of civilizations due to varying structural factors.
- lejalv 5mo ago
  This so much. You can also read up about when Germany sent industrial spies to Great Britain. And the first documented case of industrial spionage was against... China. It plays this way: you're behind, you ignore IP rules. You're ahead: you create them to defend your newly-gained status. Also please no moralizing here on IP when the entire OpenAI/Anthropic playbook has been "massive straight up IP theft". The irony.
dangus 5mo ago
At some point we can’t keep blaming IP theft for obvious innovation and investments being made by China. We also can’t blame subsidy. All countries subsidize their industries. This video on the auto industry covers a different industry but has a lot of the same rhymes as far as China’s strategy: https://youtube.com/watch?v=UhhZu0ZHdw4 https://youtube.com/watch?v=UhhZu0ZHdw4 The gist of it is that China does the following: 1. Treats low margin industries like mining and utilities as areas to focus investment and come up with incremental improvements, making those available to all companies. The West, by contrast, allows private companies to handle those industries, who logically don’t bother investing in them since their investors consider those basic industries to be low-value segments of the production chain. But now we see those advantages in China where investments have been made (e.g., the best battery chemistries and mining/refining, the cheapest power (when was the last time your local utility company focused on reducing pricing?)). 2. Because all companies in China have access to the same excellent infrastructure, they must compete furiously on quality/features/price of their products. 3. China allows foreign competition so long as they operate in China (see: Tesla) further insisting that their domestic products be globally competitive and that foreign products sold in their country benefit their local ecosystem.

sandworm101 5mo ago

As john oliver said on conan many years ago: "an inflatable barbecue!". China can certainly design an inflatable barbecue. China can certainly biuld an inlfatable barbecue. But will the chinese people ever want and buy an inflatable barbecue? ... never. That is why the US will remain the premier consumer economy.

nl 5mo ago
The US is the richest consumer market in the world. And yet BYD is likely to outsell Ford worldwide this year (despite being banned in the US) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_automotive_manufacturers_by_production https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_automotive_manufacture...

roncesvalles 5mo ago

>Like there was something in the American DNA that was lacking in China and innovation would always need to happen here. There is (was): attracting the best minds around the world to a free and stable society. Trump voters threw it all away because they couldn't stand non-whites coming to America and doing better than old stock Americans.

DaSHacka 5mo ago
> attracting the best minds around the world to a free and stable society. China is comprised of ~91.5% ethnically Chinese citizens. [0] > Tump voters threw it all away because they couldn't stand non-whites coming to America and doing better than old stock Americans. The U.S. is more diverse than it's ever been [1], and under Trump we're still below the deportations of Obama's terms. Sounds like open-borders immigration was never necessary in the first place, given that we're being beat by a country with a similar demographic skew that we had like 80 years ago. Coincidentally, when we arguably had our best economic opportunities for citizens. Who'da thunk. Clearly, the only solution to our fading relevance is opening the border again and importing 500 million more ""doctors and engineers"" all the while China is investing in their *actual* doctors and engineers, and has extremely strict immigration policies [2]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ethnic_groups_in_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ethnic_groups_in_China [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_racial_and_ethnic_demographics_of_the_United_States#Historical_data_for_all_races_and_for_Hispanic_origin_(1610%E2%80%932020) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_racial_and_ethnic_d... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China#Population_policies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China#Population_policies
- roncesvalles 5mo ago
  You're conflating Mexican border hoppers with skilled immigrants. I'm absolutely opposed to illegal immigration and have a more extreme position on how to deal with it than most Americans. What I'm irked by are Trump's attacks on legal immigration and the general worsening of the environment. ICE's kidnappings, the 100k H-1B fee, and the recent Green Card thing have deeply eroded America's attractiveness to legal immigrants. I think when MAGA came after H-1Bs, it became pretty clear that it's not about law and order, it's just a race thing. And if you want to go gloves off, I'll just say it: the main problem in America is that its 3 major ethnic groups are infected by anti-intellectualism and slothfulness, whereas the Chinese and various other cultures are not. The direct benefit from skilled immigration is so that we can increase the ratio of people who actually value education and hard work vs the failing old stock Americans whose broccoli-headed kids dream of becoming YouTube influencers instead of astronauts.

clear-octopus 5mo ago

[dead]

encrypted_bird 5mo ago

> Like there was something in the American DNA that was lacking in China In most Americans' eyes, unfortunately, there was. It was just known by the name "American Exceptionalism". Yes, it's nonsense, but unfortunately it is nonsense that has historically been used by most empires throughout history, and believed just as fervently by said empires' populi since it's one of the central elements of imperialism as a whole.

TurdF3rguson 5mo ago
The US models are still better though, let's not get carried away. Ours are better, theirs are cheaper. That's how it's always been.
- TurdF3rguson 5mo ago
  Downvoters are being silly. If you want to make a case for American Exceptionalism being a hoax, that's fine. But don't use deepseek 4 pro (which is at 100 ELO or so below top models) to make that case. You have stronger arguments elsewhere. Capishe?
  - Kbelicius 5mo ago
    Downvoters aren't being silly, it's about you not considering the context of the discussion when writing your first reply. Deepseek wasn't mentioned once in this thread before your second post and AI was mentioned once in a list of different industries. Those should have been a clue to why your first post was downvoted. Basically, you wrote a non sequitur post and are surprised that it is being downvoted.
    - TurdF3rguson 5mo ago
      Um, take a break between bong hits to read the thread title pal: "DeepSeek makes the V4 Pro price discount permanent". I don't know what you thought we were discussing, puff the magic dragons perhaps? Lol. Seriously though, take a hike if you can't be bothered to read things.

dzonga 5mo ago

people might not wanna admit it because it feels politically incorrect - but that belief is massively due the idea of "western (white) supremacy". cz if you're smart & pragmatic - then you will know innovation can come from anywhere - but western elites choose to continually bury their heads in the sand.

HerbManic 5mo ago

The one major area they are still behind in is CPU tech, but they are hungry and thus moving quick. Looking at Loongsons processors for instance. About 15 years ago they coudl barely compete with a Pentium 2. Now they are about 4-5 years behind Intel/AMD. Further behind on some more specific work loads (SSL decoding for example) Not great but that is a decent jump. The jumps between generations are pretty decent. LA446 was a decent enough processor core but had an awful memory controller that held it back as soon as it needed to reach outside of cache. As such it was SLOW. But they learned the lesson and now the LA664 almost entirely fixed that issue. I think a big part of performance issues is that they are working domestic 5 to 7nm processes, so a good 5-7 years behind. They are launching the LA864 later this year and are touting some decent performance gains. That is just marketing so far but something to keep an eye on. Considering that these chips are using their own ISA, own designs, domestic manufacturing and they aren't terrible is a big thing. I suspect in the next 5 years they have the chance of completely closing the gap. But it can also go the other way that they end up stalling as smaller nodes get much more difficult to attain.

TedDoesntTalk 5mo ago
How much does corporate espionage help them?
- shimman 5mo ago
  Probably the same amount it helped the US in the late 1800s/1900s, a substantial amount.
- HerbManic 5mo ago
  Who knows but any 'answer' anyone could give is pure speculation. You could be right! But I do see this claim come up every time Chinese tech comes up. It might be a valid concern but it might also just be folks attempts to try and undermine the technology gains of the nation. The ISA they have developed with based off years of with with MIPS and RISC V, so it isn't entirely new but they are definitely pushing it forwards. I have no idea if any of their developments could be back ported down the RISC V.