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There is also the push by Post-Enlightenment Progressives (“the woke”) to subordinate science (allegedly patriarchal, heteronormative, colonialist …) to diversity-inclusion-equity activism. How much the humanities (including the training of university administrators) are now compatible with a healthy science culture is an open question.

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One point you make is the importance of a rational immigration policy. The manpower supporting a 60+ year epoch of US scientific supremacy originated with refugees from WW II and has been maintained with a steady flow of high-skill immigrants. The two most important sources of scientific immigration to the US are now India and China. Current US visa policies are bonkers and urgently need to be revised.

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Aug 21, 2022Liked by Noah Smith

The wake up call was 5G and Huwai. I think that for the first time in the history of telecoms, the US was not in the lead.

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Aug 21, 2022Liked by Noah Smith

This is sobering reading, Noah.

Given your use of the present continuous in the title of your article, I'd (reluctantly, to be sure) probably answer "yes" (ie, we're in the PROCESS of falling behind). But I agree it's doubtful the US (or the West writ large) has fallen behind yet.

That said, I think there's a fair chance the folks who run that country will yet eff things up...

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Wokeness is destroying STEM in our universities. I completely agree, more gov research spending, better aim with our money, less identity politics.

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Aug 21, 2022Liked by Noah Smith

Our overall failure to do this, and the other things needed to maintain technological leadership is so depressing.

This should be priority number #1 for American politicians. Maintaining scientific and industrial hegemony is a goal that basically every politician can get behind.

And yet instead of boosting research investment, pursuing deregulation needed for technological deployment (NEPA renewable reviews, nuclear, etc) , and focusing on attracting and retaining immigrant talent, most politicians and commenters talk about how Chinese innovation isn't "real", how the Chinese system isn't going to make it past [insert obstacle], and whine and worry about immigrants stealing jobs.

Just a total waste of potential for the dumbest possible reasons.

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Aug 21, 2022·edited Aug 21, 2022Liked by Noah Smith

It's Elisabeth "Bik" not "Bilk"

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Aug 21, 2022Liked by Noah Smith

The pandemic showed us that we need to become more self-sufficient. The new CHIPS bill is definitely a step in the right direction. The baby formula shortage was/is a perfect example of what can happen in a monopolized manufacturing system. And the tariffs on formula, and the USMCA restriction exacerbated the situation even more. I'm not totally against tariffs, but I am against stupid tariffs.

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Aug 21, 2022Liked by Noah Smith

The wake up call! I hope among your subscribers are people with influence over federal appropriations & immigration reform! While some might dispute your conclusions, if you’re right, the US will suffer (and also the free world).

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Education in America has been strangled by political infighting and corruption. The dumbing down of Americans has been going on for a few decades and the results are becoming more obvious day by day. The most brilliant students I’ve encountered are from Finland and China. In the 90’s, I heard two 10 year old boys in Hong Kong intelligently discussing the stock market. America is strangling its future by denying everyone the right to a decent education. Not to mention the dangers of being a teacher there.

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Aug 22, 2022·edited Aug 22, 2022

The first paper in the first section on quantum computing ("Solving the sampling problem of the Sycamore quantum supremacy circuits") doesn't say what you think it does. The researchers showed they could outperform Google's quantum computer using a *classical* supercomputer.

More generally, while some research groups in China have made good progress in quantum technology, it's not correct to imply that any of their results have "blown away" what US-based groups have achieved. It also misconstrues the way in which quantum technology scales. By their very nature, the performance of quantum computers scales exponentially in the number of qubits, so adding a few qubits (modest technological progress) can make things look a lot more impressive. I would also add there is a much richer ecosystem around quantum computing and quantum technology more broadly in the North America and Europe than in China. While not so apparent in simple comparisons about "who is winning the race" now, this will be critical in scaling up and applying the technology (overcoming errors using error correction, for example) over the longer term.

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During the period of 2000-2017, the United States grew our R&D spending by 4.3% a year while China grew 17% in the same period. Spending trillions on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan instead of productive uses really gave China the chance to catch up, in this and many other areas.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00084-7

The graph is particularly instructive.

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yes on the DARPA model which is already being applied more broadly (ARPA-e, ARPA-H) but far too complacent about the value of the National Labs. There remains a Bell Labs shaped hole in the U.S. R&D ecosystem, and FFRDCs are no substitute. Nor are research universities and their ally the NSF. Incremental, disciplinary-based basic science research is indispensable, but in isolation yields breakthroughs only slowly. We need new institutional designs and new funding models.

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Folks should be very skeptical of Quantum Communication claims of relevant applications. Realistic versions of this system are actually just doing cryptographic key distribution (as the linked article mentions), which is largely a solved problem for military applications without needing any fancy Quantum hardware (you physically exchange symmetric keys, and maintain physical security of the device, like you have to anyway).

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Maybe not a topic for polite conversation but we ought to also be discussing defection.

i.e. how to attract top Chinese researchers to the West, make them want to come & stay and, especially, refuse to participate to the military build-up of this new China.

And, sure, if we make this a concerted effort, we'll have to deal with a few provocateurs or spies but the more difficult part, I suspect, would be to get researchers in China agreeing with us that they are working for the new Evil Empire and that is not a good thing.

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Despite the first reported cases of COVID-19 coming from China, there were no significant vaccine advances (in fact all the Chinese vaccines have done quite poorly in conferring immunity) or therapeutics. I've not seen any significant new drug and biologic development from China even though there are a significant number of well trained scientists there. The Chinese seem to do well in applied sciences such as engineering yet they still have not built a commercial passenger plane with their own technology.

China has been a low cost manufacturer of a lot of different things but even that is changing as companies are constantly looking to move manufacturing once lower costs areas are found.

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