Elsa Kania on Lawfare notes the world is changing, and old wisdom about China may need to be discarded:
It is clearly a mistake to underestimate China’s competitiveness in this space based on the problematic, even dangerous assumption that China “can’t” innovate and only relies upon mimicry and intellectual property theft. That is an outdated idea contradicted by overwhelming evidence. It is true that China has pursued large-scale industrial espionage, enabled through cyber and human means, and will likely continue to take advantage of technology transfers, overseas investments, and acquisitions targeting cutting-edge strategic technologies. However, it is undeniable that China’s capability to pursue independent innovation has increased considerably. This is aptly demonstrated by China’s cutting-edge advances in emerging technologies, including artificial intelligence, high-performance computing, and quantum information science.
I’d add that the vast majority of the Chinese population can be below average in creativity, and it doesn’t matter. Remember, computers are multipliers; if the right team of Chinese researchers is brought together by, say, the People’s Liberation Army, their work can be spread quickly through the replication automatically associated with computers.
And Elsa’s article is vastly unsettling. Consider this:
Indeed, China aspires to lead the world in artificial intelligence. Under the Thirteenth Five-Year Plan, China has launched a new artificial intelligence megaproject. “Artificial Intelligence 2.0” will advance an ambitious, multibillion-dollar national agenda to achieve predominance in this critical technological domain, including through extensive funding for basic and applied research and development with commercial and military applications. In addition, China has established a national deep learning laboratory under Baidu’s leadership, which will pursue research including deep learning, computer vision and sensing, computer-listening, biometric identification, and new forms of human-computer interaction.
And now consider who’s in charge in Washington – a bumbling, weak fool in the White House, an ideologically driven Islamophobe (or two) as his advisor, and Congress controlled by such power-hungry folks that they’ve shattered the political norms which have kept this nation going for 200+ years, and appear certain that however they stumble and screw around, all will be well because they think of themselves as the chosen ones.
U.S.S. Oklahoma, capsized after the Pearl Harbor Attack.
Source: PBS.org
Meanwhile, China has its own problems, but its government / governing Party is a forward looking group fixated on technological advancement in service to their own national mythos of superiority – and a determination to prove it in the future. Indeed, their pursuit of technological innovation as a pathway to world domination has some unpleasant reminders in my understanding of the run up to World War II, wherein the Japanese worked hard on developing naval air power, while the American and British navies disregarded the potentialities of naval air power in favor of the old standbys of the great battleships. This failure to look into the future nearly cost both nations their futures.
I do not think the War Department Department of Defense has that problem – but I think the GOP has lost its focus on the outside world. I do not think they perceive other nations accurately, and I think their flawed understanding of governance is leading them to believe they can fund the US government on the cheap without regard to the expenses of defending the nation against future threats on future battlefields. They do call for greater spending on war materiel (but not diplomacy, which is another indicator of their foolishness), not because of forward thinking or innovative new approaches, but because building a new aircraft carrier group brings a lot of cash to Congressional districts. Do we really need so many aircraft carriers today?
Or someday will they constitute the new & disastrous Battleship Row of Pearl Harbor?
These incompetencies could be covered up so long as the Democrats held the Presidency and had qualified people to fill it, but with the rejection of Clinton in favor of Trump, we’re left with a leadership of extraordinarily dubious quality.
And an external challenge our leadership may have trouble recognizing, much less meeting.
