competitiveness

A Meeting in China

/ ontheoutside / Leave a comment

Let’s talk about the basics of the Trump-Xi meeting.

What does Trump think about the situation?

He’s one of the smartest people who has ever lived and can only be compared to historical predecessors such as Julius Caesar or Alexander the Great.  His perfect intuition means that he has never made a mistake.  He is happy to be meeting with one of his only two peers on the planet—Xi and Putin.  And he has brought a bunch of his underlings (i.e. executives) as symbols of his power.  So he is there to glory in shared power and to bring back something he can tout as an achievement.  Glory is the thing.

What does Xi think?

On both ideological and racial grounds he is meeting with a representative of an old elite that is well past its prime.  Furthermore it is an elite that used its power to despoil China–Xi remembers the Opium Wars and the West’s abiding confidence in racial superiority. As for Trump, he actually started a trade war when the Chinese (with superior planning) held all the cards–i.e. complete control of “rare earth” resources required even for the military.  The Iran war is another sign of undisciplined impulsiveness—wasting enormous resources to achieve more damage than benefit.  So the challenge is how to take advantage of the opportunity. Strategy is the thing.

We can be more specific about objectives.  Trump wants some kind of big splash.  That can mean many things, but Trump’s weak position limits options. He’s not going to get a solution to Iran or a permanent relief from rare earths. One prediction has been a major new commitment of Chinese investment in the US.  That’s what he demanded from Japan and the EU. It’s true those are allies—as opposed to China—but Trump’s strategy document is more positive toward his two bros than toward them. That of course fits with Trump’s much-repeated story of all the new foreign-financed factories in the US that will make everyone rich.  On the Chinese side there are two objectives: opening the US market (e.g. for cars) and weakening of US resolve on Taiwan.  Both are useful near-tern and consistent with Xi’s longer-term goal of world economic dominance.

The scary thing is that those US and Chinese objectives could match up!  A big Chinese investment satisfies both—but only one outcome is real.  “Foreign-financed factories will make everyone rich” was always a fairy tale based on the world of the 1950’s.  It’s a mismatch with the world of today and even more so with coming AI and robotics. But Chinese involvement in US markets and technology could be very real.  Competing with the Chinese industrial machine is a challenge at best, and that would give them inside access to US markets and new means to get at US intellectual property.

The Iran war showed that Trump was ready to spend hundreds of billions of dollars and deplete US military inventories, so that he could imagine himself Napoleon.  (He’s given us every other possible explanation as well.) We may be on the verge of surrendering competition to China, so that he can imagine filling the country with 1950’s factories.

We’re so used to normalizing Trump, that we’ve become numb to consequences. This isn’t playacting; it can be real.

Climate Change is Jewish Physics

/ ontheoutside / 1 Comment

It goes with the territory. Fascist leaders are convinced they are always right and therefore empowered to make judgments about anything that comes their way. As often noted, for Hitler that meant denial of most of 20th century physics, especially relativity and quantum mechanics, as “Jewish physics”. There was a direct line from that to the Germans’ inability to mount any significant challenge to allied development of nuclear weapons. In the end the Germans were defeated without such weapons, but it was only a matter of luck that it happened in time. Hitler in effect defeated the entire German war machine, because he was always right.

The parallels to climate change are exact. Climate change is real, and the technological underpinning for the rest of the world is being built about combatting it. We’re either part of that future or we’re not. It affects not only how energy is generated and distributed but also how major applications (transportation, construction, steelmaking. heating and cooling) use it. We sit around talking about how to “win” our competition with China when we have ceded all of that to them. It was an accident that Jewish Physics didn’t lose the war for Germany–we’re choosing to have our version of it lose our dominance to China.

Our power network gives one example. The many new mega-datacenters demand vast increases in electrical power to run them. We could use that opportunity to upgrade our (outdated and insecure) electrical infrastructure nationwide in a way that would serve the datacenters, the public, and the evolution to new energy sources. That would buy benefits for the datacenters themselves, and would certainly improve public attitudes about their construction–and that’s in addition to the benefits as we address climate change and new energy sources come online. (See what China is doing here.) In fact we have refused to do any such thing, leaving the implementation as a bunch of point solutions based primarily on fossil fuels and an outright prohibition on wind and solar.

We the human race may or may not succeed in avoiding real climate disaster, but any successes we achieve will be despite Trump’s sabotage. Whatever international order comes out of it all will reflect the interests of those who build it. And the status of the US will recognize that Trump’s sabotage was in literal terms a crime against humanity.

Our President of China

/ ontheoutside / 7 Comments

There has been a lot of talk recently about China’s growing presence on the world stage and how the US as predominant power should react to it.  With that in mind we go to China, just outside the Forbidden City, where the Chinese are planning their strategy…

Xi Jinping: There are many factors we need to consider, economic and political.  Today we are an economic servant to the West, building their iPhones and other toys.  We need to learn to take their place.

Planner: The Americans have many advantages.  They have excellent universities and their pick of talent from all over the world.  They have an interlocking system of university, government, and private research labs.  It’s hard enough to catch up, much less to lead.

Xi: We have to go step by step.  I’ve heard that many of their new companies are led by foreigners.  We can cut into that and certainly lure our own people home–a little xenophobia would help.   As for education and research, we know that government money is critical both in government labs and in the universities.  We have to find a way to slow down that money and then duplicate their system here.

Planner: Sounds like a lot of work, but we’ll start on it.  They’ve been working for decades to get where they are.

Xi: We need to get more specific now.  What are the lead technologies we can use to establish our dominance?

Planner: It’s hard to answer that question.  Software is always there; the particular new twist seems to be Artificial Intelligence.  That ties in with robotics.  Biotech.  Probably the biggest thing is energy–climate change means the whole world will have to convert.

Xi: The Americans are big players in all of those, but progress is very international.  If we can get them to isolate their people we can win.  Energy is too big–we need to limit their role.

Planner: They were a driving force behind the Paris Climate Agreement.  Maybe we can sabotage that.

Xi: Great.  Good first step!

Xi: The next subject is politics.  The Americans have been leading the so-called ‘free world’ forever.  Everybody works with them; no country wants to be left out.  All major international agreements of any kind go through them.  They’ve done very well that way–they are the richest, most dominant country in the world.  Our presence is tiny compared to theirs–how can we match their influence?

Planner: The only way I can think of is to get them just to quit. Get out of our way so we can take over.

Xi: I don’t understand.

Planner: It seems that over the years the Americans have come to believe their own propaganda–that all of their international agreements and institutions were setup out of pure beneficence!  Nothing to do with remaining the richest, most dominant country in the world.  They even think that about foreign aid.

Xi: You’ve got to be kidding.  No one else thinks that.

Planner: All we’ve got to do is push them over the brink:  No international institutions, no foreign aid–all unaffordable charity and a foreign plot.

Xi: You really think you can pull that off??

Planner: Well, just a minute.  We need some kind of slogan.  Something catchy…

Planner: I’ve got it!!  AMERICA FIRST.

Xi: Welcome to the Chinese Century.