China's Gains in Technology show A.I. Supremacy is Ahead
The world isn't ready for what China becomes in the 21st Century.
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I’m covering Dystopian situations that civilization must face to avoid extinction.
In the Cold-war of technology between the U.S. and China it’s hard to find objective sources. I recently came across a report that has me very worried.
I will cover this in a brief overview here. Who is leading the emerging tech race? According to the Australian Think Tank, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, China is further ahead in more areas than the world has been admitting.
The report, published on Thursday, has the potential to change our entire outlook about the future of the 21st century. China is ahead in more and more category and not just in Artificial Intelligence.
"Western democracies are losing the global technological competition, including the race for scientific and research breakthroughs," the report said, urging greater research investment by governments.
Emerging Technology
The report states: China had established a "stunning lead in high-impact research" under government programs.
Artificial Intelligence
All of this means everything from AGI and the Technological Singularity will likely be led by China in the decades ahead.
A key area in which China excels is defence and space-related technologies. China’s strides in nuclear-capable hypersonic missiles reportedly took US intelligence by surprise in August 2021.
The study makes some good conclusions, many of which I share and have been aware of for quite some time.
You don’t need Quantum simulations to tell who will win the Cold-Tech war when it comes to emerging tech. China’s lead is growing across essential sectors including retail, energy, A.I. research, 6G, smart city infrastructure and supersonic and drone technology. Given a military conflict with the U.S., China is well positioned to “endure more pain”, if necessary.
But without a military intervention, China is naturally pulling ahead due to smarter and strategic investments in actual innovation in a more sophisticated long-term plan.
Energy
The report called for democratic nations to collaborate more often to create secure supply chains and "rapidly pursue a strategic critical technology step-up".
Unfortunately this sort of rhetoric is about a decade too late. While the U.S. has enjoyed monopoly capitalism and global influence, China has developed its innovation ecosystem differently with more centralized incentives without letting the talent bottlenecks of BigTech to cloud its long-term vision.
China won’t just lead in 6G, EV makers and a few isolated areas of A.I.
China leads in 37 of 44 technologies tracked in a year-long project by thinktank the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. The fields include electric batteries, hypersonics and advanced radio-frequency communications such as 5G and 6G.
China will basically have advantages in synthetic biology, robotics, hydrogen, and key areas of Quantum tech like Quantum sensing and quantum communications that could give them an edge in space-technology and other areas of innovation.
ASPI tracked the most-cited scientific papers, which it said are the most likely to result in patents.
Military and Emerging Tech
The State of A.I. Report in 2022 had this to say: (see slides 47 to 49)
The China-US AI research gap has continued to widen, with Chinese institutions producing 4.5 times as many papers than American institutions since 2010, and significantly more than the US, India, UK, and Germany combined. Moreover, China is significantly leading in areas with implications for security and geopolitics, such as surveillance, autonomy, scene understanding, and object detection.
The ASPI study is therefore pretty good data:
"Over the past five years, China generated 48.49% of the world's high-impact research papers into advanced aircraft engines, including hypersonics, and it hosts seven of the world's top 10 research institutions," it said.
Unlike the U.S., Australia has more incentives to be honest about China’s nearing super-power status in emerging tech and A.I. The U.S. National Defense community dropped the ball a long time ago.
The decline of the American empire is in proportion to the rise of the New China empire. By 2040, we’ll be living in a vastly different world if China’s lead in all of these domains comes to pass.
Cybersecurity and Military Intelligence
In the fields of photonic sensors and quantum communication, China's research strength could result in it "going dark" to the surveillance of western intelligence, including the "Five Eyes" of Britain, the United States, Australia, Canada and New Zealand, it said.
The report is a treasure chest of observation in the cold-war tech race.
The global race for future power is on, and China has the lead. I believe Silicon Valley’s approach to advertising and cloud monopolies is to blame, creating a bottleneck of real innovation. The U.S. monopoly capitalism structure is just very inefficient, lacking regulation or even basic protections for people online.
China was likely to emerge with a monopoly in 10 fields including synthetic biology, where it produces one-third of all research, as well as electric batteries, 5G, and nano manufacturing.
The reality according to my research is China will become dominant in many more fields than those that were stated in the report.
The U.S. has been on the decline for quite some time, but have hid it well. China’s focus however is not replicable by the West, for political and economic reasons. Nor is Europe or India able to easily follow.
To give you an example of why this is:
The Chinese Academy of Sciences, a government research body, ranked first or second in most of the 44 technologies tracked, which spanned defence, space, robotics, energy, the environment, biotechnology, artificial intelligence (AI), advanced materials and quantum technology.
China’s academic institutions and brand of nationalism is all consuming and its society its younger in its ambition.
American companies like Microsoft have also contributed (The Dispatch) to China’s leading edge. China was bolstering its research with knowledge gained overseas, and the data showed one-fifth of the top Chinese researchers were trained in a Five Eyes country, it said. Microsoft Research is mostly compromised by ethnic Chinese researchers.
Ironically the greed of Silicon Valley has led to its own eventual downfall. American Capitalism has deteriorated into monopoly capitalism, where a few companies with the deepest pockets suck up all the talent, mostly just innovating in their own walled gardens and corporate empires. Not a great recipe for real innovation to take place. At least, not where it matters most.
China is the future of A.I. Supremacy
ASPI’s snapshot is not unique but a telling story as geopolitical rivalry heats up in 2023. Of course it’s been barely mentioned in the U.S. and Silicon Valley media in March, 2023 when it was announced. That’s not a good sign. The average American citizen would not even believe ASPI’s critical tech tracker is real. Such is the propaganda of the American people and it’s half-hearted free media.
GenZ couldn’t care less than TikTok is spying on them in a systematic way and alerting their ideology to be against capitalism and democracy. TikTok is likely to get banned, and they are likely to get upset by the censorship.
Even as YouTube, Instagram and Snap are being disrupted by ByteDance’s TikTok, American seems to view the threat as an overbearing National Security risk, or at least that’s the current narrative. So much for free market capitalism I guess? If China disrupts you, just ban them.
TikTok is highly likely to have been used as mental health weaponization device against Western youth. Behavior modification by foreign entities is real. But when you look at how Instagram and others have copied their “entertainment” model, you have to wonder.
The U.S. will be tempted to lure China into a military conflict, while it still may have an edge. Given the data in this report, perhaps we can understand why. The entire world will just be a hostage to this war for power over these two superpowers in the years ahead. Both are using nefarious tools for influence and control at their disposal. But shooting down air baloons? Wow.
Companies like Google, Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft invented “Surveillance Capitalism”, that China has gotten better at it is just evolution. No empire lasts for very long. China has a better relationship with the majority of the developing world in Africa, South America and the Global South. The U.S. won’t give up its economic, cultural, national and digital power so easily.
“China’s lead is the product of deliberate design and long-term policy planning, as repeatedly outlined by Xi Jinping and his predecessors.”
China is a more deliberate country, with perhaps even more problems than the U.S. Both super-powers could realistically collapse as well in the 21st century putting the world into a state of global chaos. That scenario would indeed be disorganized. Others believe that Western democracies will seek to rally together to “defeat” the Eastern bloc and adversaries such as China, Russia, Iran, North Korea and perhaps Saudi Arabia. However, that is quite likely unless you believe in World War III. If India sides with China, it will be game over for the U.S. in the long-run.
China a Monopoly Power?
China has its own advantages over Silicon Valley in key areas.
The ASPI institute said China was at high risk of establishing a monopoly in eight technologies, including nanoscale materials and manufacturing, hydrogen and ammonia for power, and synthetic biology.
ASPI even outlines a “solution” to the threat? But evolution works in mysterious ways. One part of the world has its turn on the global stage, and then another must take its place. This isn’t good or bad, it’s simply how history pushes the species forward.
China will have A.I. supremacy in the EV sector, Space-tech, E-commerce, robotics and many other fields globally in easily 15 years. Frankly this will include more dangerous things like killer drones, synthetic biology and the behavior modification at scale of foreign countries including mass-influence of developing nations that will become more important. Let’s just call it tactical cybersecurity efforts.
China’s Drone Tech, Superconsic and A.I. Fight Jet Superiority
The report said China’s strides in nuclear-capable hypersonic missiles in 2021 should not have been a surprise to US intelligence agencies “because, according to our data analysis, over the past five years, China generated 48.49% of the world’s high-impact research papers into advanced aircraft engines, including hypersonics, and it hosts seven of the world’s top 10 research institutions in this topic area”.
I believe that China has a number of military advantages including:
Quantum sensing and communications
Drone technology dominance, drone swarm automation.
Parity in supersonic missiles and Space-weapons, eventual supremacy.
Parity in A.I. fight jet and autonomous weapons capabilities, eventual dominance.
The U.S. would fair a lot better in a military confrontation with China pre 2032, than post 2032. But China is not ignorant, they are patient. The Cold-war of emerging tech is real in the century which we may witness ahead.
The institute disclosed that its research was funded by the US state department’s global engagement center and a grant from the Special Competitive Studies Project, a foundation that aims to strengthen America’s long-term competitiveness. Ironically, I don’t see much American can do to stop China’s evolution. America’s crisis of leadership runs deeper than people realize.