alt Hacker NewsIs this how the US falls behind? Missing technological improvements due to blind disagreements with Chinese/etc, combined with inability to update infrastructure? (Unclear how/why but datacenters being stood up so quickly seems like an exception to US’s bad construction)
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Not a single country can excel at everything, and China heavily subsidizes their auto industry to undercut competition. It is not a fair game.
Data centers are (a) private not public and (b) throwing money at the problem on the assumption of being able to capture a significant chunk of all white collar incomes.
And they're running into the public issues already, such as lack of large power transformer availability and noise complaints from trying to generate their own power.
It’s not even “falling behind”, it’s willfully jamming heads in sand and actively blocking innovation so the legacy US OEMs can fall further behind and become less relevant.
The country is doing the same thing on multiple fronts as fast as possible
I mean if you really think about it china already has or is on the verge of:
- energy independence
- ASML level microchip production
- the SOTA of AI
- citizens that accept surveilence and lack of privacy
- strong local manufacturing
- eastern world support
- yuan recognized as a stable world currency
But they do suffer from issues as well:
- Aging population
- Autocracy (or well, one party system)
- Brain drain (better funding and security in the US and Europe, US has managed to alienate a lot of very promising figures so it's closer to just Europe, but capital markets in Europe are still hit and miss)
It's completely understandable why US is freaking out, china's future still looks a lot more promising than the one US find themselves in.
Data Centre builds are being managed by the tech bro companies aren't they? Don't they follow a much different set of rules than 'public' construction? (for better and worse).
China is what happens when you put scientists and engineers in charge [1][2].
20 years ago China had a single high speed rail link in Shanghai going to the airport. Now they have more than 30,000 miles of high speed rail where they've bootstrapped all the civil engineering, they make their own trains, etc. The system handles over 4 billion trips annually and they built the entire thing for an estimated $900 billion [3], which is now less than the US spends on the military in a single year.
Every $1 you spend on the military is $1 you don't spend on housing, healthcare, education, roads, trains and other infrastructure. Eisenhower warned about this 60+ years ago [4].
[1]: https://en.clickpetroleoegas.com.br/All-of-China%27s-preside...
[2]: https://www.economist.com/china/2023/03/09/many-of-chinas-to...
[3]: https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/2152581/huge-668bn-high...
[4]: https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/president-dwigh...
It’s a purposeful hamstringing of EV so the GOP’s oil and gas supporters can make 3-5 more years of money.
For the majority of Americans, “the US falling behind” is not something they care about. The principal thing they care about is not whether the whole is ruined but whether they have an appropriate portion.
An American would prefer that a field make 1 unit of rice if everyone got 1/n units. This is different from cultures where the preference is that you maximize your wellbeing (older America) so that if someone could figure out how to make the field make 10 units of rice, it’s okay if he makes 8 units and everyone else gets 2/n units.
The modern American cultural optimum aims to minimize |x_i - x_j| while growth cultures attempt to maximize x_i. An ironic reversal of roles.
It's how Europe falls behind, you mean.
Why do they always get left out of the comparisons? Because they're so far behind anything it would be an insult to include them?
In a word, yes. In a few words, yes that's the entire situation summary. No long term strategy exists for the entire country.