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by lenerdenator 2 hours ago
That's not necessarily a good thing for everyone else, mind.

Yes, you get your free model, but the cost of this is not developing your own capability and tying your fate to a country which may or may not have your best interests as a nation in mind.

This is just the deindustrialization that occurred in my home region (the American Midwest) playing out on a global scale in different sectors. It was originally driven by the Japanese, who, to their credit, acted more as partners than competition. Eventually that desire for larger margins went to China, and now you basically can't build anything of consequence without at least some Chinese parts, because there's "no economic case" for it. This means that you have to play Beijing's game if you want access to any sort of modern market.

You see this happening with Volkswagen's restructuring, next you'll see it with non-American, non-Chinese AI.

2 comments

So... how's that any different from using American stuff for those of us in the rest of the world?

Over the last decade, the US has been way more unreliable than China. There's been a near constant negative impact from the US doing something.

At least with China, we are very good at winning trade wars with them here in Australia.

You might feel differently if you were a Filipino or Vietnamese fisherman whose family relied on the income from the stocks of the South China Sea, or a Uighur person living in Western China, or a Ukrainian soldier who has to deal with drones built with Chinese components, or a democracy advocate in Hong Kong, or arguably, a person who had plans for 2020-2021.

Or, on a more local note, an Australian automotive worker who worked for a company that figured out 10 years ago that they wouldn't be able to pay him a decent wage, compete with the then-upcoming Chinese EVs, and remain profitable.

It's not really the same because we already have the model. If China stopped letting us have it tomorrow I'd doesn't matter because... We have it already