4 ms·

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 l

by 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.
api 5mo ago
The US committed massive IP theft in the 19th century when we industrialized.
- ceejayoz 5mo ago
  As did the big AI providers.
- falcor84 5mo ago
  I would appreciate some reading pointers about this.
  - imjonse 5mo ago
    'usa ip theft 19th century' in your fav search engine
    - falcor84 5mo ago
      Well, I did, and to save others the time, the most relevant resource I found appears to be the book "Smuggler Nation: How Illicit Trade Made America” (2013) by Peter Andreas
  - victorbjorklund 5mo ago
    dig into https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Håkan_Lans https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Håkan_Lans for example
    - falcor84 5mo ago
      What? How is someone born in 1947 relevant to ip theft in the 19th century?
      - victorbjorklund 4mo ago
        Because USAs military literally stole his IP? He had patents for GPS systems that US military took (by making his very expensive US lawyer making a silly ”mistake” and oops he lost against US companies and they suggested ”let’s forget about the money if you just hand us over that patent that the US military wants”
toddmorey 5mo ago
Ok, not my favorite narrative, but assume asymmetric application of intellectual property rights was a big factor. Wouldn't the US exploiting asymmetric labor wages, rights, and conditions be the even bigger story? It still feels like a short-sighted own goal. The US abandoned its ability to manufacture. Maybe dark factories and robotics can bring it back, but manufacturing supply chains are just so much more advanced in Asia than in the US.
- smallmancontrov 5mo ago
  > Wouldn't the US exploiting asymmetric labor wages, rights, and conditions be the even bigger story? Yes, but "the US" is reductive. The exploitation wasn't done by the towns having their tentpole industries shipped overseas, it was done by the people shipping them overseas and pocketing the profit. US capital owners made a deal with the Chinese Communist Party that was good for both of them and bad for the US.
  - airstrike 5mo ago
    That's really well said. The promise was always to get cheaper goods and services in the US, so long as the Chinese firms never competed. Guess what, they compete now.
  - tmnvix 5mo ago
    And good for the people of China presumably.
swasheck 5mo ago
IP theft may only be part of the story though. it’s a question of priorities. US optimizes for profit which can place limits reinvestment. China seems to optimize for ubiquity and dominance, and has the capital to throw at those goals. when you’re beholden to the shareholder/ceo/investor, you make concessions to stay within their will. when you’re beholden to the state, you do the same.
- gmerc 5mo ago
  Talking about IP theft with a straight face in context of AI. lol. Not that kind of IP theft, that doesn’t count.
- yogthos 5mo ago
  this is a great read on the whole dynamic incidentally https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2021/08/the-value-of-nothing-capital-versus-growth/ https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2021/08/the-value-of-noth...
palata 5mo ago
> The massive straight up IP theft helps a lot here I think this is vastly underestimating what "catching up" means. All my life, people have been saying "China copies". Now they are objectively better at many things (including robotics), and... well it seems that we cannot "just copy". I saw western companies trying to "copy" superior Chinese technology, talking to brilliant engineers explaining how much they were learning by actually trying to copy. The lesson I got from that is that China did not "copy"; they learned. And it took time, and now they are better. Now the western world has to learn from them, I guess.
- Projectiboga 5mo ago
  China is out producing us at new scientists and engineers.
- whatshisface 5mo ago
  Producing great products is a game at which every player wins, because sellers must find willing buyers. It only fails if one participant panics and jumps out of the window, or if a significant number of people are not participating (this is always the case when wealth inequality is involved).
- aucisson_masque 5mo ago
  It's ip theft when the Chinese do it but when it's the American copying on Chinese it's called learning.
- jubilanti 5mo ago
  Growing up moving around both conservative and liberal parts of the US, from middle school to college, I distinctly remember several US history classes where I was taught the exact same narrative about Samuel Slater. About how he was an American hero and the Father of the American Industrial Revolution because he memorized a bunch of industrial patent blueprints and brought them over to the US. It got told as: the evil English made it illegal to even import blueprints for factory machinery, to keep the colonies in resource-extractive poverty, so they'd have to send raw materials overseas to get processed, then import the finished goods. (My other history teacher, the Anno / Dawn of Discovery video game series, also cemented this bit about resource extraction in my head at a young age.) But then thanks to heroic ingenuity and cunning, I was told, the US was able to outwit the colonizers and process its own raw materials, eventually gaining full economic, military, and political supremacy. Sounds familiar.
FpUser 5mo ago
>"IP theft" Can we stop this crying baby already. Every country has stolen from the other. Did you really expect countries to settle on sewing closes and ship all profits to foreign companies for eternity? The IP is just an artificial concept that participants follow for so long as it benefits all parties.
xbmcuser 5mo ago
Lol it was not ip theft it was American and European companies building factories in China themselves teaching them how to manufacture use their cheap labour. Well they learned and as they were the dong the manufacturing got better at it. I believe the current aerospace industry which the US leads in is also result of IP theft from the British then out innovating them.
- defrost 5mo ago
  > I believe the current aerospace industry which the US leads in is also result of IP theft from the British then out innovating them. Jet engines, proximity fuzes, radar, how to make a nuclear weapon, etc. are all examples of British / Commonwealth technology "gifted" or "traded" to the USofA during the WWII years in exchange for production. So, not IP theft .. but absolutely foreign ideas taken in by the US and built upon.
  - olalonde 5mo ago
    [dead]
  - xbmcuser 4mo ago
    [dead]
- expedition32 5mo ago
  HN hates non competition clauses in contracts unless it involves Chinese workers. But I think we underestimate the Chinese diaspora. They had been running factories, shops and banks from Singapore to Suriname for generations and answered the call from the PRC to share that knowledge base.

by fridder 5mo ago

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.

api 5mo ago

The US committed massive IP theft in the 19th century when we industrialized.

ceejayoz 5mo ago
As did the big AI providers.
falcor84 5mo ago
I would appreciate some reading pointers about this.
- imjonse 5mo ago
  'usa ip theft 19th century' in your fav search engine
  - falcor84 5mo ago
    Well, I did, and to save others the time, the most relevant resource I found appears to be the book "Smuggler Nation: How Illicit Trade Made America” (2013) by Peter Andreas
- victorbjorklund 5mo ago
  dig into https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Håkan_Lans https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Håkan_Lans for example
  - falcor84 5mo ago
    What? How is someone born in 1947 relevant to ip theft in the 19th century?
    - victorbjorklund 4mo ago
      Because USAs military literally stole his IP? He had patents for GPS systems that US military took (by making his very expensive US lawyer making a silly ”mistake” and oops he lost against US companies and they suggested ”let’s forget about the money if you just hand us over that patent that the US military wants”

toddmorey 5mo ago

Ok, not my favorite narrative, but assume asymmetric application of intellectual property rights was a big factor. Wouldn't the US exploiting asymmetric labor wages, rights, and conditions be the even bigger story? It still feels like a short-sighted own goal. The US abandoned its ability to manufacture. Maybe dark factories and robotics can bring it back, but manufacturing supply chains are just so much more advanced in Asia than in the US.

smallmancontrov 5mo ago
> Wouldn't the US exploiting asymmetric labor wages, rights, and conditions be the even bigger story? Yes, but "the US" is reductive. The exploitation wasn't done by the towns having their tentpole industries shipped overseas, it was done by the people shipping them overseas and pocketing the profit. US capital owners made a deal with the Chinese Communist Party that was good for both of them and bad for the US.
- airstrike 5mo ago
  That's really well said. The promise was always to get cheaper goods and services in the US, so long as the Chinese firms never competed. Guess what, they compete now.
- tmnvix 5mo ago
  And good for the people of China presumably.

swasheck 5mo ago

IP theft may only be part of the story though. it’s a question of priorities. US optimizes for profit which can place limits reinvestment. China seems to optimize for ubiquity and dominance, and has the capital to throw at those goals. when you’re beholden to the shareholder/ceo/investor, you make concessions to stay within their will. when you’re beholden to the state, you do the same.

gmerc 5mo ago
Talking about IP theft with a straight face in context of AI. lol. Not that kind of IP theft, that doesn’t count.
yogthos 5mo ago
this is a great read on the whole dynamic incidentally https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2021/08/the-value-of-nothing-capital-versus-growth/ https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2021/08/the-value-of-noth...

palata 5mo ago

> The massive straight up IP theft helps a lot here I think this is vastly underestimating what "catching up" means. All my life, people have been saying "China copies". Now they are objectively better at many things (including robotics), and... well it seems that we cannot "just copy". I saw western companies trying to "copy" superior Chinese technology, talking to brilliant engineers explaining how much they were learning by actually trying to copy. The lesson I got from that is that China did not "copy"; they learned. And it took time, and now they are better. Now the western world has to learn from them, I guess.

Projectiboga 5mo ago
China is out producing us at new scientists and engineers.
whatshisface 5mo ago
Producing great products is a game at which every player wins, because sellers must find willing buyers. It only fails if one participant panics and jumps out of the window, or if a significant number of people are not participating (this is always the case when wealth inequality is involved).
aucisson_masque 5mo ago
It's ip theft when the Chinese do it but when it's the American copying on Chinese it's called learning.
jubilanti 5mo ago
Growing up moving around both conservative and liberal parts of the US, from middle school to college, I distinctly remember several US history classes where I was taught the exact same narrative about Samuel Slater. About how he was an American hero and the Father of the American Industrial Revolution because he memorized a bunch of industrial patent blueprints and brought them over to the US. It got told as: the evil English made it illegal to even import blueprints for factory machinery, to keep the colonies in resource-extractive poverty, so they'd have to send raw materials overseas to get processed, then import the finished goods. (My other history teacher, the Anno / Dawn of Discovery video game series, also cemented this bit about resource extraction in my head at a young age.) But then thanks to heroic ingenuity and cunning, I was told, the US was able to outwit the colonizers and process its own raw materials, eventually gaining full economic, military, and political supremacy. Sounds familiar.

FpUser 5mo ago

>"IP theft" Can we stop this crying baby already. Every country has stolen from the other. Did you really expect countries to settle on sewing closes and ship all profits to foreign companies for eternity? The IP is just an artificial concept that participants follow for so long as it benefits all parties.

xbmcuser 5mo ago

Lol it was not ip theft it was American and European companies building factories in China themselves teaching them how to manufacture use their cheap labour. Well they learned and as they were the dong the manufacturing got better at it. I believe the current aerospace industry which the US leads in is also result of IP theft from the British then out innovating them.

defrost 5mo ago
> I believe the current aerospace industry which the US leads in is also result of IP theft from the British then out innovating them. Jet engines, proximity fuzes, radar, how to make a nuclear weapon, etc. are all examples of British / Commonwealth technology "gifted" or "traded" to the USofA during the WWII years in exchange for production. So, not IP theft .. but absolutely foreign ideas taken in by the US and built upon.
- olalonde 5mo ago
  [dead]
- xbmcuser 4mo ago
  [dead]
expedition32 5mo ago
HN hates non competition clauses in contracts unless it involves Chinese workers. But I think we underestimate the Chinese diaspora. They had been running factories, shops and banks from Singapore to Suriname for generations and answered the call from the PRC to share that knowledge base.