US Will 'Do Whatever It Takes' To Curb China Tech, Raimondo Says (bloomberg.com) 106
The US could further tighten controls on China's access to sophisticated semiconductor technologies, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said, signaling Washington may intensify its campaign to prevent Beijing catching up in military capabilities. From a report: "We cannot allow China to have access for their military advancement to our most sophisticated technology," she told reporters in Manila on Monday. "So yes, we will do whatever it takes to protect our people including expanding our controls."
Raimondo, who is leading a trade delegation to the Philippines and Thailand, was asked if the US is planning to add new restrictions on the sale of semiconductors to China. The Biden administration is mulling fresh sanctions on several Chinese tech companies, including memory chipmaker ChangXin Memory Technologies Inc., while pushing allies to do more to curb the export of advanced tech to China, Bloomberg has reported in recent days. Washington has taken aim at China's chip industry for years, imposing sweeping controls on the export of advanced semiconductor-making machines and sophisticated chips like those used to develop artificial intelligence. Japan and the Netherlands, the two key countries where chip-making equipment is developed, joined the US effort last year.
Raimondo, who is leading a trade delegation to the Philippines and Thailand, was asked if the US is planning to add new restrictions on the sale of semiconductors to China. The Biden administration is mulling fresh sanctions on several Chinese tech companies, including memory chipmaker ChangXin Memory Technologies Inc., while pushing allies to do more to curb the export of advanced tech to China, Bloomberg has reported in recent days. Washington has taken aim at China's chip industry for years, imposing sweeping controls on the export of advanced semiconductor-making machines and sophisticated chips like those used to develop artificial intelligence. Japan and the Netherlands, the two key countries where chip-making equipment is developed, joined the US effort last year.
too little too late (Score:5, Insightful)
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We Train Their Engineers (Score:2)
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What systems do you know how to hack? The ones you work with a lot or ones you only just heard of?
What machine can you sight read? x86, MIPS? or some obscure Soviet thing?
Frankly making the world a little bigger and bit less inoperable would be a boon for national security.
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Before we can have any discussion, does your argument include Taiwan as being part of China?
(Clearly Taiwan is neither relevant in chip manufacturing or geopolitically controversial, please mark as off topic.)
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The actual China the one with its capital in Taipei is an ally, occupied China captured territory part of an illegal coup is an enemy.
That is the lens US-Sino relations should be viewed.
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Eventually the people of Taiwan managed to get themselves free of the brutal dictatorship too, but not before several tens of thousands of them have been murdered.
Taiwan is not taking over in mainland China any time soon.
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>> perfectly capable of building their own chips
Yeah, with Western technology. Otherwise they are at least 10 years behind. At some point China may catch up to where we are now but by then the West will have moved far beyond.
Restrictions aren't a matter of trying to 'suppress' China just out of spite, they are because China poses a clear military threat in many ways.
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So far the only effect of shutting off China's access to advanced lithography devices has been to push Chinese companies to develop their own technology. Breakdowns of the newest phones coming out of China show them using 10 nanometer chips of unique design. This is almost always the effects of sanctions and embargoes, they don't work and they never have.
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>> to push Chinese companies to develop their own technology
China doesn't appear to make fab hardware at present, they use elderly gear purchased from the West to fabricate their chips. And sure, now they will try to steal whatever they can grab to make the gear domestically but it will take many years.
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> China doesn't appear to make fab hardware at present
Not sure how to interpret all this.
"According to statistics from TrendForce, China currently operates 44 fabs (25 of which are 12-inch fabs, 4 are 6-inch fabs, and 15 are 8-inch fabs/lines). Additionally, there are 22 fabs under construction (15 of which are 12-inch fabs, and 8 are 8-inch fabs). Furthermore, companies including SMIC, Nexchip, and Silan Micro are planning to construct 10 additional fabs (9 of which are 12-inch fabs, and 1 is an 8-inch
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>> Not sure how to interpret all this.
You state that China "currently operates" fabs. No doubt they do, but did they make the hardware they are using in those fabs? And are 28nm and 16nm devices competitive with 2nm? Intel recently announced plans for 1.4nm.
https://www.techpowerup.com/31... [techpowerup.com]
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> You state that China "currently operates" fabs. No doubt they do, but did they make the hardware they are using in those fabs?
From what I can tell they are building 28nm lithography equipment and they might be building some 16nm machines.
> And are 28nm and 16nm devices competitive with 2nm? Intel recently announced plans for 1.4nm.
This is more a guess, but from what I've read for 28nm chips and larger from China are very competitive, and of course for smaller sizes they're just not in the race.
So I
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>> building 28nm lithography equipment and they might be building some 16nm machines
Possible of course, but what makes you think they are?
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> Possible of course, but what makes you think they are?
It's not easy to know for sure, none of the chip makers seem to be very open about whose lithography equipment they're using.
Some of what I found was:
"Shanghai Micro Electronics Equipment (SMEE) ... Currently, its most advanced product is the SSA600, with a resolution of 90 nm. SMEE is developing the SSA800, with a resolution of 28 nm, which will be followed up by the SSA900, with a resolution of 22 nm" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
"Back in 20
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Thanks for the info about the Chinese fab hardware.
From your wikipedia link it looks like China can domestically make devices with a resolution of 90 nm at present. That's fine for commodity parts that sell for pennies but a long long way from state of the art.
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> China can domestically make devices with a resolution of 90 nm at present.
If you follow the reference, when the Wikipedia editor uses "currently" it refers to an article written a bit more than two years ago in February 2022:
"Founded in 2002, SMEE is developing its second-generation DUV immersion lithography system, which could produce down to 7nm chips with multiple patterning. Currently [February 2022], SMEE lists its SSA600/20 on its website as capable of 90nm resolution. When I wrote the article on
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>> If you follow the reference
I did see that, but I haven't seen any evidence that China is able to get 28nm resolution at present.
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> I haven't seen any evidence that China is able to get 28 nm resolution at present.
Neither have I.
But I'm sure SMEE is capable of it and have maybe already gotten past there to even smaller pitches. But as far as more tangible evidence, all we seem to have today is that SMEE was promoting, selling and making 90 nm chips on their "home build" equipment at the start of 2022 and that those machines can be used to make chips down to 7nm with some work. I also think it's credible SMEE started hiding their p
Re: too little too late (Score:2)
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>> China is just so much better at actually using the western technology
Show evidence for your empty claim. China hires engineers from Taiwan to do their design work.
"Engineers From Taiwan Bolstered China’s Chip Industry. Now They’re Leaving."
https://archive.ph/LKeXv#selec... [archive.ph]
Re: too little too late (Score:2)
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>> only a very few countries accept it
Lol, utter bullshit. Taiwan is independent and everyone knows it. Even mainland China. It is objectively obvious.
China is a military threat to Taiwan and to every country in its near vicinity.
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>> i love seeing yanks get nervous
And what makes you think China is a military threat only for yanks? Why are you eager to see China " naming the tune"?
"Within just a few hours, the window of one Philippine boat would be shattered by water cannon and four sailors aboard would be injured."
https://www.cnn.comhttps//slas... [www.cnn.comhttps]
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>> i doubt theyll be forgetting all your shit
They sure won't be getting our advanced chip technology, right? "we will do whatever it takes to protect our people including expanding our controls".
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>> they already have it with TSMC
Regardless of what you may imagine, China does not own Taiwan or TSMC.
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>> its on their doorstep
Confirming that China is a military threat, and should not get advanced tech from anyone.
Not really. (Score:3)
China is perfectly capable of building their own chips,
To a certain extent, yes. However, they are constantly about a decade behind cutting-edge microfabrication technology. As for design, they are far behind the rest of the world. Their best designs are currently just modified versions of externally designed chips.
this will just further divide technology across the globe.
Sounds good to me. I don't know about you but I'm in favor of a higher level of diversity in micro-architectures.
What this is going to do is temporarily slow down development of certain technologies. The big concern is presently AI development and it
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As ever, we are underestimating China and will be trying to ban Chinese CPUs in a few years when they have caught up.
It's already happening in the microcontroller world. Chinese MCUs used to be a joke, but now they offer unrivalled performance at their price point. It's sparked a little revolution where you can sprinkle sub-10 cent MCUs liberally into your design instead of logic or big 100+ pin controllers now. They run RISC-V cores, so some people dismiss them as "modified versions of externally designed
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As ever, we are underestimating China and will be trying to ban Chinese CPUs in a few years when they have caught up.
You didn't read the entirely of my comment as I wrote, "They know they are merely buying time and that's the point of it."
As for misusing AI, I'm far more concerned about the UK and US misusing it.
I'm not talking about simple corporate abuse, I'm talking about nation-state level abuse where they utilize it enforce their authoritarian agenda, crushing dissent absolutely everywhere and increasingly disappearing people for "re-education". I'm talking about freely selling the technology to create other authoritarian nations. They have stated verbatim many times that "China only cares
Re:too little too late (Score:4, Informative)
Riiiight... (Score:3, Insightful)
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> China has a serious corruption problem and theft.
And US doesn't? They are laughing at our F-35 bill, for one.
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The fact that new F35s are coming off the line at a marginal cost of $80 million a unit implies that if the development was corrupt, it's since been stamped out.
Even if I take your premise for granted,
fighter jet development cost more than it should have and a Lockheed Martin exec bought a yacht
has a very different (I argue, smaller) impact on a fighting force than:
find out on the road to Kyiv that the low-ranking officer that was maintaining these vehicles sold the nice tires, bought knockoffs, and pocketed the difference.
The sort of rank-and-file corruption that is alleged to take place in Russia/China has pernicious, easily-overlooked effects.
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As your article notes, it lead to a purge, i.e. Xi fixed it in his own brutal way.
The UK currently can't fire Trident nuclear tipped ICBMs. The last two attempts failed, the most recent one being due to "damp". Something of an issue for a submarine launched weapon. Turns out that's not all that uncommon for military stuff - half of it barely works as intended. Remember during the Iraq war when troops were told "we go to war with the army we have, not the army we want"?
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Oh, and which has a larger, and probably stronger military. Riiight...
Ehhh, TBD on that.
No blue water navy
Barely any 5th gen fighters (the US has hundreds and thousands more 4th gen)
Nowhere near the global logistics capability, at least demonstrated (The US militaries #1 advantage)
Yeah China has a lot of troops and a lot of ships and a lot of stuff in general and a big manufacturing advantage but logistics, training and focus of capability makes a big difference, a lesson the US has learned many times. There is also a 0% chance of the US engaging in a land invasion in China
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They do, however, have the advantage
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You know they said thing about the US having Ice Cream barges in WWII [wikipedia.org] and dropping fully functional Burger King restaurants [quora.com] into Iraq and recently people were commenting on the fact that there are cookies and Starbucks on CV69 Eisenhower [twitter.com] while it conducts textbook air operations against the Houthi's.
Same answer to all of those, morale and logistics are key, a well fed high morale army tends to win the day no matter how many machismo propaganda ads or masturbatory military parades the other countries put up.
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tends to win the day
Is this why despite a couple dozen attacks the Houthi's offensive capabilities are still capable of stopping US, UK and Israeli traffic out of the Red Sea?
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Sure if you want to play the game of "victories now always means victory in the end" but also the aspects of a pirate insurgency don't fully map onto a potential global superpower military war which is what's being discussed.
Can you explain how China would be dealing with this better if they were the hegemon tasked with it? They are certainly not helping now.
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Why on Earth would China want to be a global hegemon? That's a Western European/American mindset, it's never been in the mindset of Asia. China is interested in controlling everything that can directly affect it, that has always been their interest. Sure, they might make moves against the Central or Southeast Asian countries if they were to be stupid enough to threaten Chinese interests, but they all mostly learned that lesson centuries ago so it's unlikely at best.
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This is an answer to a question nobody asked and even it is still wrong. Do better.
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Not an actual answer.
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Yes, because conscripts are so reliable.
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China doesn't need a blue water navy if they're not interested in international conquest, and they don't seem to be. Throughout its history China has never been interested in conquering territories that don't adjoin its central population areas, they prefer trade over long distances. And I've seen no sign that our supposed "5th generation" fighters are worth the powder to blow them up, and not a one is capable of operating from forward air bases (for that matter neither are most of our 4th gen). The Chin
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And I've seen no sign that our supposed "5th generation" fighters are worth the powder to blow them up
Other than the fact that countries are lining up to buy them by the hundreds?
The F35 is the most-produced stealth fighter by an order of magnitude. Some people (namely, people who have access to its actual list of capabilities) seem to think it's worth something.
The Chinese and Russians have concentrated on reliability, flexibility and manufacturability rather than flash and marketing, and while they may not have the numbers their manufacturing is capable of ramping up much faster than ours, as the Russians have recently demonstrated.
Their marketing seems to have gotten to you, at least! The Russians have produced fewer fifth generation fighters ever than Lockheed Martin will produce in the next quarter.
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Countries "line up to buy them by the hundreds" for a couple of reasons, bribery being the primary and trying to fix the balance of payments being another. The UAE for example has absolutely no use for 50 F-35s, a dozen of them would have been more than adequate for any possible foe they might have except Israel, and aren't enough to deal with that threat. (At least that's what I would have thought a few months ago, but their performance in Gaza has been abysmal.)
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>> produced half your tech
Who told you that?
>> probably stronger military
Another rumor someone passed along to you?
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LOL, stronger military. That's what they want to APPEAR as. China is great at putting on appearances. They are still a third world country in many regards. Most of that population you speak of is living below the poverty level. The rest are cheating and stealing to get by. Corruption is a way of life in the CCP.
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China is graduating something like 10 times as many engineers every year as the United States.
Russia apparently is currently producing 3 times as many shells as Europe and the United States have the combines capacity to produce.
The United States has many more nuclear weapons than China, so it is clear Chine is not stronger militarily. But it may well be able to defeat the United States in its own backyard like Taiwan if the United States can't effectively use its nuclear arsenal. What China lacks in ad
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Wow, the Kool-Aid is strong with you.
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[1] The USA spends more than the next ten countries combined: 3X #2 China and 10X #3 Russia, according to my own review. China hasn't fought a real war successfully since the 18th century or b
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and a lot of Chinese military tech is based on the same general family add the Russian stuff. We've seen in Ukraine that it's very much bit as good as western military tech.
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China wasn't successful in Korea? They sure kicked the US/UN forces out of North Korea. The United States hasn't fought any other near-peer war in 80 years. And we lost most of those anyway. Grenada and Panama being the exceptions.
The problem with using budgets to compare military force is being demonstrated in Ukraine. Ukraine has been using million dollar missiles against thousand dollar drones/bombs and we lack the capacity to keep supplying them. The Abrams tanks are expensive and have been taken out b
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The USA has been involved in some kind of overseas large-scale deployment since the early 90s. I didn't say anything about fighting peers, which isn't necessary to keep experience levels up. You're nuts if you think the first Gulf War or the invasion of Iraq was a "loss". We even "won" in Afghanistan and then had the usual garrison issues everyone has the
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Ukraine has been using cheap drones bought of AliExpress too.
The real issue in Ukraine is that Russia has mined half the country, and there is no good way to clear mines. It is a slow process, and only produces a narrow corridor, so both the mine clearers and anyone using the corridor are easy targets.
It's become a war of attrition.
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The world has been watching "how Israel is handling the Palestinians" for 75 years, and it's pitiful. No matter how many atrocities they commit, how badly they starve,torture, murder, and deprive the Palestinians of the very basics of life they continue to hang in there and periodically manage to slap the IDF in the face yet again. And yet despite their techniques failing again and again they refuse to attempt any other tactic, bringing to mind the old saw about trying the same thing over and over and exp
Re: Riiiight... (Score:2)
China's military is more limited than the US when it comes to supply lines for maintaining multiple conflicts globally. China's Navy is very large and of a similar size to the US, although less technically capable. They currently are only capable of applying overwealming force on a regional scale. If we don't wish to engage China then we simply need to stay out of the South China Sea. But the converse is not true, there is no where that Chinese ships can travel that the US cannot intercept in a time of our
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China has a much thinner line between public/private abilities. While the US military has to rely on its own logistical network the Chinese government would have no hesitation to utilize the facilities of its corporate citizen, which currently supply the world with products and supplies China with the materials to make them.
China hasn't shown any interest in foreign conquests that don't adjoin their immediate territory since the 15th century, and they don't seem to be interested now. They learned long ago
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While we currently enjoy the benefits of industry being in a peacetime mode. The US is capable of doing this through economic mobilization, but it has not done this since the Korean War [wikipedia.org] and WW2 [wikipedia.org]. After WW2, in response to the Cold War, the US has much more elaborate plans on how to mobilize private industry for a war effort. With the DPA of 1950 being the biggest, but the sole, piece of the legislative and executive authority to mobilize.
China hasn't shown any interest in foreign conquests that don't adjoin their immediate territory
Sure. but India, everyone in the South China Sea, etc find this behavio
Re:Riiiight (Score:2)
Military use is just a pretext (Score:3)
Military use is just a pretext. Just saying. US just don't want competition in the technological field and are playing dirty.
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No, China is a real threat to all the nations of the world, not just the US.
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Oh, really? What threat does China pose, compared to the US?
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Sharing weapons technology with unstable regimes for one.
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Sharing weapons technology with unstable regimes for one.
Isreal shares weapons tech with China.
https://www.military.com/defen... [military.com]
https://www.scmp.com/news/chin... [scmp.com]
https://www.cfr.org/blog/us-ch... [cfr.org]
And I understand some of that is derived from weapon tech US shared with Isreal. Wonder when that will get looked into seriously.
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The US has been supplying weapons to Israel for decades, and continues to do so even as it commits genocide.
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You are either a CCP shill or live under a rock (or both).
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This doesn't answer my question. I know what the USA does to keep its hegemonic position. China is tame compared to that.
Re: Military use is just a pretext (Score:2)
Everything? Even going nuclear? (Score:2)
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Wrong it should be escalated as rapidly as possibly while we might yet have some advantages to press.
Washington's primary focus should be regime change for the CCP, just like it was for the Soviet Union.
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Washington's primary focus should be regime change for the CCP, just like it was for the Soviet Union.
Sorry, but this is insane. They have nukes. There is no guarantee that regime change will not result in worse leadership. Potential for refugees and regional instability is also a big deal.
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There is no guarantee that regime change will not result in worse leadership.
You're right. There is a war on Ucrania now.
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There is no guarantee that regime change will not result in worse leadership
NO! NO! All you have to do is look at Afghanistan, Libya and Iraq to see that regime change is a wonderful gift from America that frees people. WIthout our intervention they would be destabilizing the entire region. The middle east would not be the peaceful, conflict-free region it is today. And Ukraine is another example of where our successful efforts at regime change has provided benefits to its people.
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"Washington's primary focus should be regime change for the CCP, just like it was for the Soviet Union."
Because that worked out so well for the world in the long run.
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At the time the US was able to outspend the Soviets, we haven't had that advantage over the Chinese for most of two decades.
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2 easy suggestions would work (Score:5, Insightful)
second - perhaps the US should actually invest in education rather than pushing those who wish to get educated into debt peonage.
invest in workers now, and the future. That's how you stay ahead.
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I love the sentiment but that's going to be a hard pass for most Congress-critters. Our politicians are so heavily influenced by the oligarchy that the very idea of trying to curb greed is a non-starter. We also have half of Congress actively trying to sabotage education, so that's going to be hard sell as well.
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Too late (Score:2)
The US lost its technological and industrial edge decades ago during the very active efforts to globalize our economy. China can develop any technology we have today in a matter of 5 years, and in some cases they are on the virge of leap frogging past us. Now is the time to invest in our own R&D and education programs. Our ability to brain drain Asia for STEM students is nearing a close. And our young citizens are completely inadequate for the tasks we will need them to take on in 10 years.
Useless (Score:2)
Anything except fix section 274 to get tech hiring (Score:3)
The tech industry in America is currently dead because nobody is hiring for software development engineers.
That is why you see people with twenty years of experience unable to find anything.
When you trace the lack of investment in technology that's happening right now, you wind up at section 174(c)(3) of the IRS tax code, which has redefined all forms of software development as a form of research and development that cannot be written off in the same year, which means venture capitalists no longer have the desire to invest in it because it's now a normal business and does not represent the same tax breaks.