[echelon]

We should have known that if we limited China from accessing our tech, they'd just grow their own.

The game is afoot, and China knew to de-risk and decouple. I don't think that it can be stopped at this point.

HarmonyOS, RISC-V, DeepSeek, domestic EUV, etc. China is standing up its own tech pillars.

So I suppose American lawmakers see this as a game of slowing down the competition rather than fully impeding it. China will eventually route around every road block, so the question is whether or not any of this will help America keep an edge, or if that edge will even matter.

In the meantime, we're holding up our own tech giants up to antirust scrutiny (and rightly so). But does that also hinder America's lead on China? And, if so, what will that mean for the tech/AI race?

Europe is also hell-bent on slowing down American tech. Again, rightly so - data sovereignty is important, and anti-competitive, monopolistic behaviors have long stifled domestic industry and talent. American giants shouldn't be allowed to behave that way as guests in other peoples' homes.

[Havoc]

Big part of anti trust is because it crushes healthy competition so don’t think that is necessarily incompatible with winning tech races.

> China will eventually route around every road block, so the question is whether or not any of this will help America keep an edge

I’d say the lead is so slim it’s basically already gone. At least in the practical sense. If you were to isolate both right now. Cut them both off from the outside. One would be able to produce a modern cellphone the other would not.

Any sort of residual technical lead in the pure IP/knowledge sense is good for 3 years max I reckon.

[h4kunamata]

When you prevent somebody from accessing what is out there, they release their own. The problem with that?? Well, only they mastered it since it was developed with local tech, by the time the goods are sent worldwide, you are blindfolded.

Still, I would never buy a Chinese tech device, you are buying a surveillance system to allow its government to spy on you.

[supermatt]

> I would never buy a Chinese tech device, you are buying a surveillance system to allow its government to spy on you.

There is no public evidence that Chinese consumer tech has ever been used to spy for the Chinese government. None. Meanwhile, the USA has been caught running mass surveillance programmes like PRISM and tapping the phones of its own allies. That is confirmed. And yet it is the USA making the most noise, spreading fear about Chinese tech. People only seem to worry when the device doesn’t have a US brand on it. You can be a patriot, but don’t be naïve. Believing unproven claims while ignoring confirmed facts is not critical thinking.

[bitsage]

https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/climate-energy/ghost-...

[FooBarWidget]

The sources are anonymous US government personnel who refuse to give any details, so nothing can be verified. Anybody can make baseless accusations.

[supermatt]

Wait until you learn how many off-the-shelf consumer devices contain a wifi capable microcontroller like the esp8266 and dont need or declare wifi capabilities...

[the_third_wave]

O you sweet summer child, think of why there is no public evidence on Chinese espionage while you can easily rattle off a laundry list of Western espionage programs and you'll realise your mistake: China is a closed society without public inquiry while most of the West hangs its dirty laundry out for all to see and comment upon. Look under the cover of that Xiongmai camera, that Huawei base station or those Chinese inverters and you'll find plenty of remote access and control facilities which no doubt were left there purely by accident.

[supermatt]

That sounds clever, but it dodges the core issue. You're treating suspicion as proof. Yes, China is less open, but that doesn't justify assuming guilt without evidence. Both Western and Chinese tech have had security flaws - whether truly accidental or not is up for debate. As you mentioned, Xiongmai cameras had hardcoded credentials and poor default security, and Huawei routers have had vulnerabilities - like many western alternatives. But none of these have been proven to be intentional or used for state spying.

In contrast, the West has been caught with INTENTIONAL backdoors - many of which have been directly linked to government and intelligence services. Juniper firewalls had a secret access mechanism tied to compromised cryptography. Trustwave issuing subordinate certificates to facilitate MitM snooping on all TLS traffic. Netgear and Cisco devices including undocumented public-facing remote access features. These were not speculative or theoretical. They were discovered, documented, and in some cases quietly patched without disclosure.

None of these were revealed out of transparency. They were found by researchers or whistleblowers. If there is no public evidence against Chinese devices, there is no case. Assuming intent without proof is not analysis. It is projection.

And let’s not ignore the obvious: many of these devices are manufactured in the same Chinese factories. But once a US brand name is stamped on the box, the fear seems to vanish. Somehow, they stop being a threat...

[phantompeace]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Eyes

[andrekandre]

  > Still, I would never buy a Chinese tech device, you are buying a surveillance system to allow its government to spy on you.

i would tend to agree in general, but more and more this seems less the sole domain of chinese tech the way things are going (though maybe im just paranoid)

[betaby]

> you are buying a surveillance system to allow its government to spy on you

And yet the audit of the Huawei routers fond no backdoors.

[tpoacher]

> you are buying a Chinese surveillance system to allow the Chinese government to spy on you

ftfy

[Teever]

> We should have known that if we limited China from accessing our tech, they'd just grow their own.

It was known and was accounted for.

The idea is to make them spend resources developing their own technology on our terms instead of their own.

They were always going to do this, they just had to do it faster than they otherwise wanted to, which has an opportunity cost.

[echelon]

> opportunity cost

What was the opportunity cost in this equation? A substantially smaller bailout for their commercial real estate market?

> [The idea is to make them spend resources developing their own technology] on our terms (emphasis added)

What terms did we dictate? Timelines? Trade?

How does America or the West emerge ahead here?

[Qem]

> They were always going to do this, they just had to do it faster than they otherwise wanted to, which has an opportunity cost.

It will pay itself and offset those costs once they reach breakeven and start selling their equal or better tech in the international market, displacing the incumbents.

[Teever]

If that was the case then they would have done this work without impetus from external policy.

[zamadatix]

Not necessarily. That would imply competing with the multinational incumbents during the first trillion dollars of investment is just as easy and profitable as having the market cleared out for you because the US placed tech export bans, caps, or pricing pressures to parts of the world market (not just China alone).

Of course this doesn't automatically mean China wouldn't eventually pull ahead without the external pressure either. I'm just not as convinced it was so clearly a forced opportunity cost loss as much as something which provided a washed mix of both friction and acceleration despite assuredly preventing the US from making more money while its tech was farther ahead.

[snapcaster]

Won't claim to be an expert but there were many high profile stories of china breaking up or otherwise limiting their biggest tech companies. Why would the US not propping theirs up hinder america's lead?

[andrekandre]

what a lot of people don't get about china is their tech sector is build on intense internal competition; its a specific goal of the industrial policy....

[01HNNWZ0MV43FF]

I hope Europe figures it out too