Comment by chriselles | Hacker News Reader

Comment by chriselles | Hacker News Reader

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I think it’s because it is a legitimate problem.

A problem in the respect that China appears to have an integrated strategy, while the US does not.

China’s Government, communist party, and PLA possess deep integration with it’s BATH(Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent, and Huawei) superplatforms.

The US government is in perpetual conflict with it’s domestic FAANG+(Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Google, others) tech leaders. As FAANG+ are in constant conflict with each other.

Think of China/BATH and US/FAANG+ akin to respective military services.

China’s operate in an integrated “combined arms” fashion, while US’s are in perpetual conflict with each other.

Compounding this is the spying issue.

During the Cold War, the Soviets and their Warsaw Pact proxies worked hard to steal western tech, with some success.

But a few chips can’t be fully exploited without the manufacturing supply chain to go with it. Stealing a semiconductor assembly line is next to impossible.

Stealing atoms can be hard, stealing bits is much easier.

In 1946 90% of R&D was military. In 1989 50% of R&D was military, 50% commercial In 2019 90%+ of R&D is commercial with duel use potential.

The US has been focused almost exclusively for 18 years on enhancing lethality against insurgents at massive expense.

Meanwhile, China has been building a global platform.

Innovative Strategy > Innovative Technology

And Lethality is not Strategy.

One Belt, One Road description should be expanded to include One Platform, One Network.

I think the US is in a different “war” than what it has been preparing to fight.

Platform “warfare”.

A battle between geodigital operating systems instead of the battle between ideologies as during the Cold War.

The best competing value proposition wins, and the US is not offering a strong value prop at the moment.

The Aus has been focused on Clausewitz when it should have been focused on Metcalfe and Zipf.

Just a political “scientist” and veteran who knows just enough about computers to be dangerous to myself and others within the blast radius.

Platform warfare indeed, and this is completely overlooked as a concept. Bratton (2015) described this new geopolitical architecture in detail, and we ignore it at our peril.

Thanks for that, I’ll check out the Bratton(2015) reference.

> China’s operate in an integrated “combined arms” fashion, while US’s are in perpetual conflict with each other.

I get what you're saying, but ironically for the analogy, China just reorganized their military forces a few years ago along US lines, with both administrative and operational theater commands for any given unit.

Agreed on the point the PLA is increasingly reorganising along professional military model lines.

However, the PLA possesses at its core the General Political Department allows the PLA the ability to conduct warfare well outside the scope of the US military(Title 10) versus CIA(Title 50).

And PLA doctrine includes the Three Warfares:

Public opinion Psychological Legal

While the US is focused on lethality.

Lethality doesn’t enhance your country’s integrated network effects.

Just my $0.02!

i dont think the US government has any meaningful “conflict” with US companies (netflix??) beyond the flashy one about unlocking apple phones. the state dept and DoD have been deeply involved in SV since the beginning

Agreed on uS DOD being at the very founding core of SV(per Steve Blank’s Secrets of Silicon Valley).

However, the current administration has directed increasingly sharp criticism at Google, Amazon, Apple, and Twitter to name a few.

Previous administrations have gone after Microsoft when it was at its market share apex.

While I think it is a good idea to retain and utilise anti-monopoly regulation, at the same time we run the risk of foreign government integrated hybrid commercial entities that can be weaponised in the global geodigital realm.

Are the differences really anything more than capitalism vs. communism though?

Sure, the US gov is going to drop some fines on Facebook, but those companies cooperate with some US gov agencies too. Does the conflict get in the way of military contracts/capacity of the US gov? I doubt there's any significant impact. If so, then there's a problem. Most of the conflict seems consumer-focused though. I feel certain there is cooperative spying efforts going through FAANG+ just as much as China/BATH. China just indirectly advertises its cooperation with companies, while the US denies it completely.

Is China still communist operationally and economically?

I would classify them as authoritarian capitalism or mercantilism.

I do see a relative difference between the two.

BATH have integration and alignment with China’s government and PLA strategy and objectives.

They have near 100% market share in China and have begun to export their model at both the citizen user level as well as the sovereign enterprise level.

The US government is unlikely to incorporate enhancing FAANG+ network effect within its trade partners, while it’s far more likely that China could/would use One Belt, One Road initiative to nudge trading partners into the digital BATH equivalent.

The massive amount of bilateral trade between the US and China doesn’t allow for a traditional Cold War adversary model.

So how does one develop leverage over the other, build the biggest and most integrated geodigital network.

Focused on Metcalfe rather then Clausewitz.

With a destination described by an analog to Zipf’s Law.

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