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I'm very skeptical that China has played a meaningful role in the US data center backlash
The subjects this post names, from the same vocabulary the directory files beliefs under, and the word it uses that this site has seen least often elsewhere. Posts are matched on those words alone — nothing here is a summary of this one.
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20 September
19 September
From one piece Economic Size and Economic Power 2 beliefs · paulkrugman.substack.com
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Their words
China is not yet big enough to be the hegemon, but the United States truly is not big enough to be the hegemon. So we are just not in that world anymore.
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Their words
actually, there are three economic superpowers in the world by this measure. There’s the United States, there’s China, which is clearly number one, and then there’s the EU, which are roughly co-equal.
18 September
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korrents.com
China is the world's most cyberpunk country.Their words
China is definitely the world's most cyberpunk country at this point.
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korrents.com
Export controls work, and claims that they merely make Chinese companies work harder or catch up are propaganda.Their words
Export controls work. "Export controls just make Chinese companies work harder or catch up" is propaganda ass shite
17 September
16 September
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Their words
Jensen is a maximally cynical commercial and political actor whose one and only goal is to sell Nvidia chips to whoever he can, especially China.
Trump Goes Full Hoax on AI Existential Riskthezvi.substack.com
From one piece When discussing AI policy, start with China 3 beliefs · marginalrevolution.com
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korrents.com
AI policy discussions should start with China rather than treating it as an afterthought.Their words
Whatever your ideas for regulating AI, I say start with China. Do not put China as an afterthought at the end of your proposal, mentioned in a vague wish that something good ought to happen and that maybe the future of humanity can be secured.
When discussing AI policy, start with Chinamarginalrevolution.com
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Their words
If you are reading proposals or for that matter tweets for AI regulation, and the writer does not deal with these China issues in a forthright and very specific manner, you should be very suspicious indeed.
When discussing AI policy, start with Chinamarginalrevolution.com
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korrents.com
China declined U.S. nuclear-talk proposals in 2023 and broke off meaningful arms control talks.Their words
During the 2023 U.S.-China nuclear talks, America proposed missile-launch notifications, a nuclear crisis hotline, and processes to limit the use of outer space for military conflict. China declined all of those. Blame the U.S. if you wish (do we always keep our word?), but that is what happened. China also broke off meaningful arms control talks.
When discussing AI policy, start with Chinamarginalrevolution.com
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Their words
the fact that they're flying so quickly shows that Xi is unpopular in China.
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korrents.com
Nervous credit-market sentiment around the AI datacenter buildout could suddenly reverse and collapse the boom.Their words
And when market opinion is nervous, it might turn and collapse the boom at any moment.
15 September
From one piece The Two Horsemen, Riding in Formation 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there
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Their words
it was a chance to stand up to the oligarchs and this technology they've staked their future on.
The Two Horsemen, Riding in Formationbillmckibben.substack.com
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Their words
one way to understand a data center is that it's a device for burning natural gas, the latest excuse (after Ukraine and Iran) for the fuel that Big Oil is counting on to keep its business model afloat even as the world turns away from internal combustion cars and crude demand begins to drop.
The Two Horsemen, Riding in Formationbillmckibben.substack.com
14 September
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Their words
The winner would then be the AIs, not us. That is not to say that the China issue is not real, hence the export controls and attempted international agreement.
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Their words
Now if they get scared of AGI, they'll slow down their own models.
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Their words
We need the CCP to realize that AI can bring them down from within.
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Their words
AI data centers resulting in lower electricity prices for consumers
13 September
12 September
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Their words
Next in regulatory capture will be banning open source and/or Chinese models, mark my words
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Their words
nobody was willing to do it because it had been seen as kind of against the norms of the economic system. And as actors like the United States and China do this, it becomes more acceptable.
11 September
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korrents.com
Since 2024, the leading open-weight AI models have come from Chinese labs rather than American ones.Their words
The leading open models have all come from Chinese labs since ~2024.
10 September
From one piece @paulg on X 2 beliefs · x.com
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korrents.com
American labs leading is good because Chinese lab employees would be unable to warn the public about threats.Their words
This is why it's a good thing that American labs are in the lead. If Chinese labs were, their employees wouldn't be able to warn us about threats.
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Their words
But Chinese labs will encounter the same threats within a year, in complete silence.
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korrents.com
AI features that passively listen to and record a user's surroundings will provoke public backlash.Their words
But still! It's sort of wild that Apple is pushing forward with this given the obvious backlash it will garner.
9 September
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Their words
data centers are nowhere near the biggest climate problem with artificial intelligence.
8 September
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korrents.com
Frontier Chinese AI labs are moving toward more restrictive licensing terms for their open models.Their words
Chinese model makers at the frontier, however, are becoming more restrictive
7 September
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korrents.com
All of AI engineering is involution: a system that demands ever more effort and competition without improving output.Their words
I’m more and more convinced that all of AI engineering is Neijuan (内卷, meaning curl inwards). In China it describes a system that demands ever more effort and competition without improving output.
Astra for Coding: Why Are We Doing This Again?lucumr.pocoo.org
6 September
5 September
4 September
3 September
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Their words
We are going to keep doing this ‘omg the new Chinese model is so good, America is cooked’ cycle for a while. Best get used to it.
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open sourceAnthropicOpenAIChina
Their words
in this whole USA vs China thing OpenAI and Anthropic aren't relevant because they're positioned differently them building better models doesn't hurt china at all the competitor has to be - american - open source - enough compute to do inference at scale that can shift things
2 September
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Their words
the Trump administration's deferential posture towards Russia and China has alienated allies. But on the other hand, it has gained the United States nothing in the way of strategic stability.
So How Is The Concert of Trump Going?danieldrezner.substack.com
1 September
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korrents.com
Stoke's reusable launch vehicles will be shipping Starcloud's data centers into orbit within a few yearsTheir words
In a few years, Stoke's reusable launch vehicles are going to be shipping Starcloud's data centers into orbit.
31 August
30 August
28 August
27 August
26 August
25 August
From one piece I think the data center backlash is mostly about data centers 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there
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Their words
I have a long separate post here looking at the evidence we have, and I come away thinking the data center backlash is basically entirely homegrown.
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korrents.com
The data-centre backlash is about the buildings themselves, not about what people think of AI.Their words
All this combined with the survey data on Americans’ stated reasons for opposing data centers makes me think that attitudes toward AI are probably a meaningful factor for a minority of people opposed to data centers, but I don’t think the backlash overall is driven by people’s thoughts on AI.
24 August
22 August
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Their words
Preventing companies from building data centers in America wouldn't slow down the rate of progress in AI. It would merely slow down the rate of progress in AI in America.
21 August
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Their words
Frontier Labs are incented to be fearful as it provides a moral justification for staying closed. Chinese Labs take the consistent position of doing what’s good for all and being open. So the little guys find themselves in the uncomfortable position of rooting for the Chinese…
From one piece A year in, the data center/AI battle starts to clarify 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there
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korrents.com
The buildout of AI data centers is part of a broader extension of oligarchic control over people's lives.Their words
It's clear by now that this is all part of the extension of oligarchic control over our lives.
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korrents.com
AI and the data-center buildout underlying it pose real and significant dangers to society.Their words
Its's clear by now that AI, and the data center development underlying it, pose real and significant dangers.
20 August
19 August
18 August
From one piece The United States is about to wake up to the threat from China’s space program 3 beliefs, in the piece's order there
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korrents.com
A Chinese crewed landing on the Moon before America returns would be a defeat for the free world.Their words
If China can land humans on the Moon before the United States returns, it will represent a huge geopolitical win.
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Their words
This will likely serve as a wake-up call to those not paying attention to the US-China space race—which, to be clear, is the vast majority of Americans.
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Their words
In all of NASA’s and China’s plans for long-term settlement on the Moon, relatively few square miles at the South Pole of the Moon matter the most.
16 August
15 August
14 August
13 August
12 August
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Their words
they found that Big Oil's use of AI to produce more oil and gas could create 3.3 to 13.3 times more climate pollution than powering AI's data centers.
11 August
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korrents.com
AI risk is probably a totally manageable problem that will be brutally mismanaged, the way pandemic response was.Their words
it's just so easy for me to imagine the situation being like totally manageable but brutally mismanaged in practice in the same way as like maybe CO could have been avoided in the first place if the like Chinese response to CO was less of like a cover up and more of a like pandemic response and similarly like I could imagine a world where like the US response to CO was like way more functional but just like sometimes the the the response to societal problems is extremely dysfunctional.
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Their words
The fastest-growing political movement in America is dead-set on stopping the construction of data centers, which are critical to the growth of the fastest-growing industry in America.
10 August
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korrents.com
Data centre opposition only pushes construction to the parts of America that regulate energy and pollution least.Their words
It seems pretty clear that the only thing data center opposition is doing is pushing data center construction to the (many) places in America that won't regulate energy or pollution. Weird thing to pat oneself on the back for.
9 August
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korrents.com
Opposition to data center buildouts is fundamentally driven by public anger about money in politics.Their words
His Lansing rally with Bernie and AOC, more than anything else, crystallized the connection between data center opposition and voters' anger about money in politics.
8 August
7 August
6 August
5 August
4 August
3 August
1 August
From one piece Real talk about the exchange rate 3 beliefs, in the piece's order there
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korrents.com
China's real exchange rate should appreciate through higher domestic inflation, not currency revaluation.Their words
My view is that an appreciation of China's REER is very much to be desired, but the real (haha) way to get there is through higher inflation domestically, and that means different macro policies.
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korrents.com
Complaining about China's trade surpluses and excess capacity has not worked and will not work.Their words
I think complaining about trade surpluses and excess capacity has not worked, and is not going to work.
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korrents.com
China's tolerance of deflation has caused widespread underemployment and unemployment among its youth.Their words
Policy decisions have condemned a generation of Chinese youth to widespread under- and un-employment.
30 July
29 July
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korrents.com
The West's biggest blindspot is repeatedly underestimating China's speed and capabilities.Their words
The West's biggest blindspot is repeatedly underestimating China's speed and capabilities
From one piece Chartbook 462: China shocked - beyond 1.0 and 2.0 to the "Big One". 5 beliefs, in the piece's order there
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Their words
The original point of the China Shock 1.0 discourse was not to foreground the unfairness of Chiense competition, so much as the malfunctioning of US policy and societal institutions in the face of concentrated globalization shocks.
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Their words
It wasn’t just the West that drew conclusions from China shock 1.0. Beijing learned from China Shock 1.0 too.
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Their words
China shock 2.0 threatens high status manufactured goods: European cars and engineering.
+ 2 more
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korrents.com
The second China shock is landing on Europe, where the first one landed on the United States.Their words
In China shock 1.0 the key target was the US. In China shock 2.0 it is Europe.
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korrents.com
China's industrial lead was manufactured by deliberate state industrial policy rather than by market forces alone.Their words
What China is delivering in the 2020s is an industrial policy shock of global scale.
28 July
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Their words
it it won't work to try to repatriate uh the the manufacturing that left the US. Um that's a uh you you don't you don't beat China at its own game. What you do is invent the future, invent the next wave of manufacturing uh and build that here.
25 July
24 July
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Their words
For Chinese-based consumer electronics like this, the hardware is usually a lot better than the software.
23 July
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Dislikedrcmnd.app
RoombaTheir words
matic vacuum (they gave me one so I have to disclose but it's GREAT, all the Roomba and Chinese ones suck)
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Lovedsponsoredrcmnd.app
Matic vacuumTheir words
matic vacuum (they gave me one so I have to disclose but it's GREAT, all the Roomba and Chinese ones suck)
22 July
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korrents.com
France and Germany will ban Tesla's full self-driving to protect their own car industry.Their words
The French and Germans will ban Tesla FSD to protect their car industry that's being decimated by Chinese EVs and Tesla Allowing Tesla full self driving would make it so popular that it'd probably the end of their car industry Because no French or German car has self driving like Tesla, many customers would probably flock to Tesla
21 July
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Recommendsrcmnd.app
Remembering Indonesia from My GrandpaTheir words
What stands out about Hsieh's version is that her roots occupy such a unique spot in history: her grandparents were Chinese born in Indonesia, which means they got caught between the rock of the Cultural Revolution and the hard place of anti-communist backlash.
20 July
18 July
17 July
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korrents.com
Restricting US AI models does not work: China builds better ones and everyone switches to them.Their words
US: restricts US AI model because too dangerous China: builds better Chinese AI model Everyone: switches to Chinese AI model This is why restricting models probably doesn't work, it's much more preferable (for US) to have everyone on US AI models so at least they can monitor what everyone is doing
14 July
12 July
From one piece A self-absorbed giant 4 beliefs, in the piece's order there
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korrents.com
Chinese writers' preoccupation with China alone is what limits China's soft power abroad.Their words
To come to my key point: this self-concentration limits China’s ideological influence in the rest of the world and its soft power.
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korrents.com
China had more ideological influence in the world during the Cultural Revolution than it has today.Their words
Paradoxically, China might have had more soft power when it followed self-destructive policies of Maoist Cultural Revolution.
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korrents.com
China's economic success has produced no transferable blueprint that other poor countries could follow.Their words
China’s tremendous success had not resulted in a blueprint that could be followed from Afghanistan to Zambia on how to become rich in four decades.
+ 1 more
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korrents.com
China's cultural and intellectual output to the world is far smaller than its economic weight.Their words
It surely does not “produce” one quarter of world culture or intellectual activity (if the latter is defined as influential books, of fiction and non-fiction, politics, history; films, plastic arts, music, theater etc.)
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Their words
Today's world is becoming tripolar. It is NYT vs CCP vs BTC. That's the American Establishment vs the Communist Party of China vs the Global Internet.
11 July
7 July
29 June
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Their words
Well, PRC HSR construction costs relative to the amount of tunneling aren't particularly low. France's are lower; Germany's are inconsistent, depending on whether money is wasted on excessive tunneling or on other things.
18 June
10 June
9 June
From one piece Sarah Paine - Why Putin and Xi can't escape geography 5 beliefs, in the piece's order there
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Their words
And what's fascinating is today when China claims whatever its historical lands are, they either choose the Mongol Yuan Dynasty or the Manchu Qing Dynasty when the Han were subjugated people.
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Their words
And also, for China, with its geographical setup as it is, uh the seas are going to be open to it only in peacetime. In wartime, this has nothing to do with anyone doing anything to them. It's just facts.
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Their words
One, you're surrounding yourself by failing states. You can look at Russia and China and they're surrounded by some of the most dysfunctional places on the planet and you go, "Gee whiz, are they unlucky or they complicit?"
+ 2 more
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Their words
And Russia's never had a commerce-driven economy. China much more so under Deng Xiaoping, but recently Xi Jinping has been privileging the crony sector over the private sector and neither one has stable government institutions.
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Their words
So, China and Russia certainly have maritime ambitions, but I'm not clear they actually understand what goes into a full maritime paradigm.
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Their words
the competitive dynamic in China is more intense because it's more intense. Everyone's chosen to go open source and that creates a system that in my mind is capable of innovating far faster than the competitive system we have here. All the models learn from one another.
7 June
27 May
26 May
14 May
13 May
From one piece Why Anthropic’s ultra-dirty deal shouldn’t surprise you at all 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there
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Their words
there is nothing fundamentally inherent to the concept of a building full of computers that causes choking air pollution, water impacts and climate change.
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Their words
The fundamental drivers of this change are panic and impatience, and that is what is behind the worst impacts of data centre growth, including a material risk to decarbonisation and climate action.
10 May
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Their words
Europe, along with China and the United States, is an economic superpower. And, at this point in time, it is arguably the world’s only democratic superpower.
8 May
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Their words
So we just could not see a way this could happen by chance and once we saw that we really felt quite convinced that this was a real signal and that really somehow there has been natural selection to increase the genetic changes that today manifest themselves as more years of school at predicting more years of schooling.
5 May
2 May
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Their words
This post is about whether data centers waste the land they’re on relative to what they compete with, and my claim is that they mostly don’t compete with things we need more of (housing) and mostly compete with things we need less of (farmland).
1 May
From one piece The exact wrong lesson to learn from data centre infrasound fears 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there
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korrents.com
AI data centres cannot be meaningfully reformed without a fundamental change of course and ideology in the industry.Their words
Reformation is impossible for AI data centres, at least, not without a massive change of course and an ideological reckoning.
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korrents.com
Data centres are being built in such number, size and speed that the industry cannot realistically be reformed.Their words
There are simply too many data centres being built, and they're too big, being built too fast.
30 April
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korrents.com
Data centres will become the majority driver of electricity demand growth in Australia's National Electricity Market.Their words
Even if a small fraction of this pipeline ends up operational, data centres will drive far more than 50% of demand growth in the NEM.
16 April
15 April
From one piece Jensen Huang – Will Nvidia’s moat persist? 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there
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Their words
And so you just have to first realize that chips exist in China. They manufacture 60% of the world's mainstream chips, maybe more. It's a very large industry for them. They have some of the world's greatest computer scientists.
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Their words
We have got to acknowledge that most of the advanc advances in AI came out of algorithm advances not just the raw hardware. Now if most advances came from algorithms and computer science and programming tell me that their army of AI researchers is not their fundamental advantage.
13 April
From one piece 🌻 AI populism's warning shots 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there
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Their words
Backlash is also the inevitable consequence of AGI-pilling the nation.
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Their words
That's why I don't think accelerationist steamrolling will work. The only way this conflict resolves peacefully is some kind of grand bargain: a flagship policy plan that directly addresses the public's top fears about AI and meaningfully redistributes the gains.
9 April
23 March
From one piece Jensen Huang: NVIDIA - The $4 Trillion Company & the AI Revolution | Lex Fridman Podcast #494 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there
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Their words
So you get this rapid, incredible great talent, rapid innovation because of open source and just, you know, the nature of friends, and, and insane competition. Among the company, what emerges is incredible stuff. And so this is the fastest innovating country in the world today
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Their words
Now, the second thing is we have to build data centers that gracefully degrade.
18 March
13 March
From one piece Dylan Patel — The single biggest bottleneck to scaling AI compute 5 beliefs, in the piece's order there
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Their words
oh 50 gigawatts of economic you know sort of capex in in the data center and what gets built on top of that in terms of tokens is even larger right it might be hundred billion dollars worth of AI value into the supply chain is held up by this $1.2 two billion dollars worth of tooling that simply just cannot expand its supply chain quickly.
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Their words
Um, just shipping out all the engineers and blowing up the fabs means China has a stronger semiconductor supply chain than the rest of the world, right?
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korrents.com
Getting a data centre permitted in the empty middle of America is far easier than putting one in orbit.Their words
And so I think people are figuring out how to build these things and permitting like I I just like ultimately like permitting and red tape in middle of nowhere Texas or middle of nowhere Wyoming or middle of nowhere like New Mexico is probably a hell of a lot easier than sending stuff into space
+ 2 more
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Their words
So, space data centers effectively are not li limited by, you know, hey, we have this energy advantage. It's actually just limited by the same contended resource. We can only make 200 gawatts of chips a year by the end of the decade.
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Their words
I think they'll have working tools. I don't think that they'll be able to manufacture a bunch yet, right? You know, there's they're sort of having it work and then there's production hell, right?
5 March
28 February
22 February
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korrents.com
Third-party frontier AI auditing is urgently needed and would help prevent extreme concentration of power.Their words
I think frontier AI auditing (covering both safety and security) is both urgently needed and doable, and can help avoid extreme concentration of power, since it introduces external oversight into the decision-making of people with a "country of geniuses in a datacenter" at their disposal.
We're in Triage Mode for AI Policymilesbrundage.substack.com
18 February
13 February
From one piece Dario Amodei — “We are near the end of the exponential” 5 beliefs, in the piece's order there
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Their words
on the basic hypothesis of you know, as you put it, within 10 years we'll get to, you know, you know, what I call kind of country of geniuses in a data center. I'm at like 90% on that. Um and it's hard to go much higher than 90% cuz the world is so unpredictable.
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Their words
The counterarguments against it are I'll politely call them fishy. Um, uh and yet it doesn't happen and we sell the chips because there's there's so much money. There's so much money riding on it.
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Their words
I actually think profitability happens when you underestimated the amount of demand you were going to get and loss happens when you overestimated the amount of demand you were going to get because you're buying the data centers ahead of time.
+ 2 more
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Their words
but it's not an infinitely compelling product, and I don't think even AGI or powerful AI or country of geniuses in a data center will be an infinitely compelling product. It will be a compelling product enough maybe to get three or five or 10x a year growth even when you're in the hundreds of billions of dollars, which is extremely hard to do and has never been done in history before, but not infinitely fast.
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Their words
on the basic hypothesis of you know, as you put it, within 10 years we'll get to, you know, you know, what I call kind of country of geniuses in a data center. I'm at like 90% on that. Um and it's hard to go much higher than 90% cuz the world is so unpredictable.
12 February
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Their words
But then you actually sit down and do the maths, and then for most people if you just skip one burger per month, that compensates the, the CO2 output, or, like, the water use in equivalent of tokens.
From one piece Speed Can Reindustrialize America 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there
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Their words
It has a surplus of STEM graduates that are often underemployed, while "Hukou" residency restrictions complicate hiring hourly labor in coastal factories.
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Their words
Second, technologies and market structure are contextual, where the US can't simply emulate China's manufacturing.
10 February
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Their words
The economics of orbital “datacenters” or essentially glorified Starlink satellites with a bunch of GPUs attached are likely to be even better than Starlink.
Space AI: I guess we’re doing Moon factories nowcaseyhandmer.wordpress.com
6 February
From one piece Why I joined OpenAI 3 beliefs, in the piece's order there
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Their words
I've realized that performance engineering as we know it may not be enough - I'm thinking of new engineering methods so that we can find bigger optimizations than we have before, and find them faster.
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korrents.com
eBPF, Ftrace, and hardware performance counters are proven tools for finding datacenter performance wins.Their words
given those technologies are proven for finding datacenter performance wins, it seems likely
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korrents.com
AI datacenter growth makes performance engineering critical for saving the planet, not just cutting costs.Their words
The staggering and fast-growing cost of AI datacenters is a call for performance engineering like no other in history; it's not just about saving costs - it's about saving the planet.
1 February
13 January
1 January
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Likedrcmnd.app
The Chinese Tragedy of King LearTheir words
Nan Z. Da’s The Chinese Tragedy of King Lear also has an experimental form. Da is a professor of literature at Johns Hopkins who emigrated from Hangzhou before she was 7.
29 December 2025
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Lovedrcmnd.app
BreakneckTheir words
Wang argues that the US & China each have a dominant form of government problem-solving
25 December 2025
From one piece Chinese Labor Isn't Just Cheaper; It’s Better. We Need to Fix That. 3 beliefs, in the piece's order there
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Their words
Between 2015 and 2025 US manufacturing wages rose 40%, while the cost of purchasing a home rose 93%.
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Their words
Yes, the labor is cheaper, but that’s not really why.
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korrents.com
Rebuilding American manufacturing is a decades-long educational and cultural project, not something tariffs can do.Their words
America needs an educational and cultural transformation to compete with China and reverse the decline in living standards that Americans have suffered over decades.
21 December 2025
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Recommendsrcmnd.app
Breakneck: China's Quest to Engineer the FutureTheir words
It's powerful because it's simple without being simplistic and, like Rogoff's book, is interspersed with engaging personal stories that deepen the substantive argument.
18 December 2025
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Their words
the UAE's tech aspirations are clearly downstream of a deeper affinity with the West.
16 December 2025
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Likedrcmnd.app
I Deliver Parcels in BeijingTheir words
Perhaps the best of the various gig-worker memoirs published in recent years.
13 December 2025
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Dislikedrcmnd.app
Google MapsTheir words
Google Maps essentially really doesn't work in China, the location of our hotel Aman in Beijing for example was completely wrong
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Lovedrcmnd.app
AmapTheir words
But Amap is great! Especially since it can be used in English and I think it transliterates your searches to Chinese and the Chinese place names back to English
12 December 2025
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Their words
But I do believe that the story in Mesopotamia owes its inception to a disastrous flood, but nothing global. Nothing that touched America or China or Birmingham.
8 December 2025
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Their words
On the flip side, these captive solar power plants will be curtailing approximately 75% of their generated power and will be able to provide net power on all but a few days per year.
23 November 2025
From one piece China bows to de-industrialization 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there
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Their words
There's even a case to be made that those policies actually depressed the manufacturing share of GDP: by boosting output and capacity above where they would have been otherwise, subsidies probably contributed to the sustained decline in prices for China's manufactured goods over the past few years, weighing on their share of nominal output.
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korrents.com
A declining manufacturing share of GDP as an economy matures reflects economic success rather than decline.Their words
Both of these trends are a consequence of economic success, in terms of higher output and productivity: at least some of what is decried as "de-industrialization" is good actually. It is also good for China's planners to recognize that reality and not distort the economy in pursuit of an impossible outcome.
17 November 2025
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korrents.com
Only the US and China have substantial startup activity left; the rest of the world cannot really do startups.Their words
I just realized the only 2 countries left with actual substantial startup activity now are literally only the US and China The rest of the world can't really do startups, doesn't have the funding, can't grow them and it's more like performative hobby projects for their governments Which might tell us where the future wealth will be concentrated in the world
16 November 2025
15 November 2025
31 October 2025
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korrents.com
A Chinese crewed landing on the Moon before America returns would be a defeat for the free world.Their words
I am far from certain that NASA can regain anything like the vigor necessary to respond decisively to the Chinese threat, but I am determined that the free people of Earth not live under a Red Moon
NASA’s Orion Space Capsule Is Flaming Garbagecaseyhandmer.wordpress.com
27 October 2025
24 October 2025
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korrents.com
Young children learn a new language through immersion far more effectively than adults do.Their words
If I took my daughter to China for a year, and we just lived there with no language instruction, I'd come back knowing approximately six Mandarin words and she'd be fluent.
19 October 2025
14 October 2025
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Mixed onrcmnd.app
GLM 4.6Their words
I keep an eye on China’s open models, and it’s impressive how quickly they catch up. GLM 4.6 and Kimi K2.1 are strong contenders that slowly reach Sonnet 3.7 quality
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Mixed onrcmnd.app
Kimi K2.1Their words
I keep an eye on China’s open models, and it’s impressive how quickly they catch up. GLM 4.6 and Kimi K2.1 are strong contenders that slowly reach Sonnet 3.7 quality
11 October 2025
From one piece The AI water issue is fake 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there
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korrents.com
A data centre earns its county far more tax revenue per gallon of water than a golf course does.Their words
Data centers are so much more efficient with their water that they generate 50x as much tax revenue per unit of water used than golf courses in the county:
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Their words
It’s very common that I’m told that data centers poison the water around them.
30 September 2025
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korrents.com
Telegram has never shared a single private message with anyone, governments and intelligence services included.Their words
No, never. Telegram has never shared a single private message with anyone, including governments and intelligence services. If you try to access any server in any of the data center locations, it's all encrypted.
9 September 2025
4 September 2025
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Their words, before
There are obvious pricing problems in this scenario. With a new fab, a company can’t turn a profit selling a lagging-edge chip at the price that was previously dictated by a fully depreciated fab. Prices have to go up.
Their words now
The COVID super-cycle, plus a new China supply line that does not care about capacity economics, points to a forever glut.
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Their words
Why don't Chinese dragons look like Mexican dragons or equivalent thunderbirds or whatever? Well, because it probably wasn't influencing them. If they were all seeing the same skeleton, they'd probably all produce the same kind of mythical animals.
30 August 2025
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korrents.com
American data centres consume about 66 million gallons of water a day, a small fraction of what they withdraw.Their words, before
Taking this into account, actual water consumed by data centers is around 66 million gallons per day.
Their words now
So to wrap up, I misread the Berkeley Report and significantly underestimated US data center water consumption.
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Their words
However, the methods used to produce these estimates are debatable, and seem to have been chosen to give the maximum possible value for data center water consumption.
I Was Wrong About Data Center Water Consumptionconstruction-physics.com
29 August 2025
24 August 2025
15 August 2025
From one piece China is killing the US on energy. Does that mean they’ll win AGI? — Casey Handmer 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there
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Their words
so the mainstream view would say, well, China has cheaper labor, which is no longer true, uh, say compared to Mexico, and it's got lower environmental regulations, uh, which is true, and that it is more businessfriendly, which is absolutely crazy.
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Their words
But then all you need to connect that to the outside world is like an optical fiber, right? An optical fiber cable which you can string up on poles, you can run underground, you could even use microwave links if you really wanted to.
13 August 2025
From one piece Keyu Jin: China's Economy, Tariffs, Trade, Trump, Communism & Capitalism | Lex Fridman Podcast #477 5 beliefs, in the piece's order there
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Their words
One interesting point is that, in China, you ask the companies to innovate first, and then you regulate after, right? So, that has led to things like P2P platforms. It’s led to lots of kind of financial innovations, some of which has actually been very helpful and good, some of which had been disastrous, but the intention to regulate after the fact is to really not slow down or hinder the innovation. This is a very different approach from Europe. You regulate first, and then companies have to work around that.
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Their words
Another big misunderstanding, and a fundamental one, is that people somehow think that the state suppresses the private sector. It’s not at all as simple as that. For the most part, if we look at the local government’s incentive system, they want to help the best, private companies, which are the most promising, because it makes them look good.
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Their words
And what’s more, you use your leverage once, and that leverage has a half-life. It becomes a lot less effective the second time around because other countries, other companies are going to try to substitute away. If China uses the rare earth leverage, which I think it is now a little bit, there will be alternatives and substitutes.
+ 2 more
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Their words
Maybe on the good side, it’s actually a golden age for Chinese women because the Chinese girls never had as much education investment apportioned to them as they’ve had after being the only child in the family. And you raised a daughter like a son. And if we look at all the skill gaps and the education gaps and the returns to education, actually girls fared better.
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Their words
I’ve rarely seen a more capitalist society than China, from the pure economic side. I’ve rarely seen companies that are as competitive as Chinese companies. People as ambitious and obsessed with making money as Chinese people. Kind of ruthless actually. And look, consumers shop, firms invest. If you invest well financially, you’ll get great returns. What is not capitalistic about the Chinese economy? At the same time, the social fabric is highly socialist.
31 July 2025
From one piece Jack Weatherford: Genghis Khan and the Mongol Empire | Lex Fridman Podcast #476 5 beliefs, in the piece's order there
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Their words
Well, they raised the status of merchants very high. This was particularly a problem in the Chinese world. It wasn't so much in the Christian or the Muslim world, but certainly in the Chinese world, where merchants were considered extremely low. And all of a sudden he raises them up above scholars.
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korrents.com
Genghis Khan's army was the greatest military force in history, and no power will ever repeat what it did.Their words
No other power in the history of the world has conquered Russia and China and Persia and Central Asia and Turkey and Korea. No power in the world has done that. Not Alexander, not the Romans. Nobody will ever do it again.
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Their words
But this great system that united, it's called the Yam or Ortogh, that had united everything, people could move back and forth quickly that it could also take the plague out of Southern China into all parts of the world. And I do think that's what happened. And the plague destroyed the Mongol system.
+ 2 more
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Their words
Mongols produced nothing. They could produce felt to make their tents, but they were not craftsmen. And so they had to get these items from somewhere, and it was through raiding.
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Their words
But there actually, I think there's a very, very good reason for invading Japan. Several. The main one was to cut off the supply of sulfur. They needed it for gunpowder in the South Song. They lost their sources in northern China when they were driven out. They got it from Japan. It was a great source.
25 July 2025
30 June 2025
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Recommendsrcmnd.app
China TalkTheir words
When this is good and on point, it is very, very good, and provides essential perspective I couldn’t have found elsewhere, especially when doing key interviews.
23 June 2025
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Mixed onrcmnd.app
DeepSeek r1Their words
r1, a Chinese model, is very capable and free to use, but is missing a few features from the other companies and it is not clear that they will keep up in the long term.
15 May 2025
From one piece Why are solar panels and batteries from China so cheap? 4 beliefs, in the piece's order there
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korrents.com
A country cannot fund its own industrial strategy and call the same policy cheating when China does it.Their words
But you cannot support these programs while calling out China for “cheating” for doing the same.
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korrents.com
Forced labour in Chinese clean-energy supply chains is real, and it is not why the goods are cheap.Their words
But my point is that this is still not the reason (or is only a very small reason) why these goods from China are cheaper than elsewhere. The main driver of lower labour costs has been automation; not having a human worker at all.
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Their words
That’s because most clean energy jobs are in deployment and maintenance rather than manufacturing, and since higher costs slow down the rollout of renewables, increasing prices reduces the total number of people working in clean energy (even if the number working in manufacturing increases).
+ 1 more
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Their words
But, China mainly dominates these markets because it has produced a long-term industrial strategy for these technologies and has honed an optimised, modern supply chain as a result.
12 May 2025
6 May 2025
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Their words
Unless you’re an extreme power user, asking AI questions every day is still a rounding error on your total electricity footprint.
What's the carbon footprint of using ChatGPT?hannahritchie.substack.com
29 April 2025
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korrents.com
The US-China trade imbalance is driven mainly by capital flows, not tariffs or trade deficits.Their words
Tariffs and trade deficits are a distraction from the deeper source of the US-China current account imbalance, namely capital flows.
7 April 2025
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Their words
Persistent U.S. trade deficits are an epiphenomenal mirror to our persistent capital account surpluses, which are in turn downstream of the beggar-thy-neighbor industrial policies of countries like China and Germany.
6 April 2025
From one piece America Underestimates the Difficulty of Bringing Manufacturing Back 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there
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Their words
When the United States applied tariffs to China, it shifted huge amounts of manufacturing to Vietnam, which did not have tariffs applied to it.
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Their words
Since the year 2000, US electricity generation per person has been flat.
3 February 2025
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Their words
There's not many worlds where China cannot train AI models. I think export controls are decapping the amount of compute or the density of compute that China can have.
2 February 2025
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Their words
AI competition needs to be tempered with a recognition that China isn’t going away as a player in AI, and that coexistence must also be a part of America’s strategy.
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Recommendsrcmnd.app
When Money DiesTheir words
A New Idea of India, China's Political Model, Seeing Like a State, Tomorrow the World, From Third World to First, When Money Dies, Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China, Collapse: The Fall of the Soviet Union
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Recommendsrcmnd.app
Seeing Like a StateTheir words
A New Idea of India, China's Political Model, Seeing Like a State, Tomorrow the World, From Third World to First, When Money Dies, Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China, Collapse: The Fall of the Soviet Union
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Recommendsrcmnd.app
China's Political ModelTheir words
A New Idea of India, China's Political Model, Seeing Like a State, Tomorrow the World, From Third World to First, When Money Dies, Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China, Collapse: The Fall of the Soviet Union
+ 2 more
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Recommendsrcmnd.app
Collapse: The Fall of the Soviet UnionTheir words
A New Idea of India, China's Political Model, Seeing Like a State, Tomorrow the World, From Third World to First, When Money Dies, Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China, Collapse: The Fall of the Soviet Union
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Recommendsrcmnd.app
A New Idea of IndiaTheir words
A New Idea of India, China's Political Model, Seeing Like a State, Tomorrow the World, From Third World to First, When Money Dies, Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China, Collapse: The Fall of the Soviet Union
26 January 2025
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Likedrcmnd.app
DeepSeekTheir words
if you want a very good all-around model with excellent reasoning. As an open model, you can either use it hosted on the original Chinese DeepSeek site or from a number of local providers.
13 January 2025
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korrents.com
If the AI build-out does become a bubble, power and data centres are the assets that will carry it.Their words
In today’s world, I think the increase in self-fulfilling asset prices will be due to power and data centers.
31 December 2024
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Their words
There’s still plenty to worry about with respect to the environmental impact of the great AI datacenter buildout, but a lot of the concerns over the energy cost of individual prompts are no longer credible.
20 December 2024
From one piece Will all our drugs come from China? 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there
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korrents.com
China now starts about a quarter of the world's new clinical trials, more than Europe does.Their words
Chinese companies are now responsible for about a quarter of new trial starts — more than Europe.
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Their words
I don’t think many in the West have yet fully internalized a mental model of China as a source of genuine innovation.
1 December 2024
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korrents.com
A backlash against women's economic rise is not automatic; it happens only where politicians choose to mobilise it.Their words
So even though women’s economic advancement did displace some men, and triggered some private hostility, it was never actually catapulted into social antagonism. This is primarily because it was never leveraged by political entrepreneurs!
30 September 2024
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korrents.com
Maya hieroglyphs must have been readable across several spoken languages, the way Chinese characters or Latin were.Their words
There must have been a way that multiple languages understood the same writing system. Or maybe there was something like Latin. You know how there was a period in Europe where most people were illiterate and there was this priesthood who all understood Latin and they wrote in Latin? Maybe the hieroglyphs represent a kind of Latin in the ancient Maya world.
5 September 2024
From one piece Why Can't the U.S. Build Ships? 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there
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Their words
The U.S. Navy estimates that China’s shipbuilding capacity is 232 times our own.
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Their words
Shipbuilding is labor intensive, and we see a repeated pattern of it moving to countries with low-cost labor: from Britain to Japan, then to Korea, then to China.
3 July 2024
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Mixed onrcmnd.app
The Broken IceTheir words
The Broken Ice (China) 3.2 A few decades ago, I would have been more impressed by this film, which is roughly in the style of Jia Zhangke. Now it seems a bit derivative.
10 June 2024
From one piece How to Build an AI Data Center 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there
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Their words
But there's also reason to believe that data center power consumption will nevertheless rise substantially.
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Their words
Utility companies see major electrical infrastructure as a long-term investment to be built in response to sustained demand growth.
25 April 2024
18 April 2024
From one piece How to Make Off Grid Data Centers Affordable 3 beliefs, in the piece's order there
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Their words
Deleting the UPSs could knock off ~$750/kW after considering equipment, installation, and square footage reduction.
How to Make Off Grid Data Centers Affordableaustinvernon.site
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Their words
The 100-megawatt facility might have ten 10-megawatt blocks served directly by a 1500V DC feeder line without connections to other blocks that would require extra switches and routing.
How to Make Off Grid Data Centers Affordableaustinvernon.site
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Their words
Some efforts, like nuclear-powered data centers, are reminiscent of Toyota's hydrogen push.
How to Make Off Grid Data Centers Affordableaustinvernon.site
4 April 2024
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Their words
The copper backplane in the data center rack is effectively the new advanced packaging in the system-level Moore’s Law race.
25 March 2024
From one piece Preventing a “Space Pearl Harbor”: Rep. Turner leads the charge 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there
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Their words
If a Chinese spacecraft can dock with a friendly satellite to refuel, repair, or transport it, the same robotic arm can also disable a US satellite’s solar panels and antennas. Alternatively, China can use these spacecraft to tow satellites into locations where they can, at best, only sub-optimally perform intended duties such as early warning, surveillance, or geolocation.
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Their words
Based on public commercial data that tells a lot about the military potential of these dual-use robotic spacecraft, we have shown that China can manufacture and deploy 200 such spacecraft as early as 2026, enough to cripple critical US satellites in geosynchronous, highly elliptical, and other orbits, and thus severely degrading space support to wartime operations.
10 March 2024
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Likedrcmnd.app
China’s World ViewTheir words
Senior academic advisor to the Chinese Communist Party feels most political tensions come from a misunderstanding of China’s world view, hence the subtitle “demystifying to prevent global conflict”, and his intrinsic desire to explain. I love its insights and historical context, especially around “Respect-centered diplomacy” and how the CCP is structured.
23 January 2024
From one piece 2023 letter 5 beliefs, in the piece's order there
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Their words
While 50 percent of China’s economy might be dysfunctional, the 5 percent that’s going spectacularly well is pretty dangerous to American interests.
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Their words
And Xi Jinping has formally de-prioritized economic growth as China’s top task.
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korrents.com
China will not fade away, so America has to reform itself for a protracted contest with a peer competitor.Their words
It is that China will not fade away, meaning that America must reform itself for a protracted contest with a peer competitor.
+ 2 more
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Their words
As I’ve written in each of my previous letters, the party’s strangling of free expression has rendered China into a pitiful underperformer relative to Japan and South Korea in the creation of cultural products.
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Their words
Though companies are relocating production to India and Vietnam, China is going to remain the world’s largest manufacturer for many more years to come.
3 January 2024
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Readrcmnd.app
The Opium WarTheir words
I’ve started to do a China history deep dive and this was on the list
27 November 2023
17 November 2023
From one piece John Mearsheimer: Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, China, NATO, and WW3 | Lex Fridman Podcast #401 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there
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Their words
A lot of people think that to make deterrence work, you have to be able to beat the Chinese and therefore, you need a much bigger military. And I don't think over time that's possible. I think it's probably not even possible now to beat the Chinese in a war over Taiwan or in a war in the South China Sea.
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korrents.com
China's leaders think in realist terms and America's do not, which is the more dangerous half of the pairing.Their words
The Chinese are my kind of people. They're realists, right? They speak my language. It's the United States that is not very realist. American leaders have a very powerful liberal bent and tend not to see the world in realist terms.
12 November 2023
9 November 2023
From one piece Elon Musk: War, AI, Aliens, Politics, Physics, Video Games, and Humanity | Lex Fridman Podcast #400 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there
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korrents.com
China will incorporate Taiwan, peacefully or militarily, and from its own standpoint that outcome is not in doubt.Their words
Yes, China has been very clear that they’ll incorporate Taiwan peacefully or militarily, but that they will incorporate it from their standpoint is 100% likely.
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korrents.com
China's history says it is not an acquisitive power: it is not going to go out and invade a whole bunch of countries.Their words
The good news, the history of China suggests that China is not inquisitive, meaning they’re not going to go out and invade a whole bunch of countries.
18 July 2023
6 June 2023
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Their words
The single greatest risk of AI is that China wins global AI dominance and we – the United States and the West – do not.
15 March 2023
4 March 2023
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Their words, before
My view is that it’s going to take more than this regulatory campaign to defeat dynamism in China.
Their words now
What I did not sufficiently appreciate is that a state that would so casually decapitate a sector like online tutoring would also have the will to visit catastrophe upon whole cities.
1 January 2022
17 August 2021
Nothing matches.
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