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Export Controls And The R&D Question
I suppose you could say I'm sympathetic to export controls aimed at curbing Xi Jinping's access to a
For the past 5 or so years the Right has been disparaging PhD’s and college education while right-wing propaganda has been pushing for more plumbers and roofers. Nothing wrong with the trades, but be careful what you wish for.
If you have a bit of patience and want to kill the seed of 21st century American exceptionalism and set the country back decades you destroy the NSF by cutting off funds, driving scientists out of the country and, for good measure, attack university research. Trump didn’t run on this, most of his base probably hasn’t even heard of the NSF. There have to be some medium sized brains in the administration who understand this. So wtf could possibly be going on?
One possibility, for which I have no proof but can’t seem to get out of my head, is that these actions were either ordered by Putin or are being willfully carried out as payback for electoral assistance. Perhaps when Trump has his colonoscopy the case of Putin’s missing Patek Philippe will be solved.
application of Occam’s razor yields only one answer: Trump & his minions want America to lose. Even when taking into account that “tariff man” himself might be too dense to comprehend the implications of his actions, there are more than enough people in his administration who DO understand this and do nothing.
We’re constantly being told that the keys to future prosperity are innovation, with a big component of that coming from the tech sector. Cheap labor will no longer be enough.
In response, our friends in the GOP are happily cutting funding for basic R&D at the federal level and slashing spending on education at the state level. All in an effort to reduce corporate tax rates, supposedly because US companies, being patriotic citizens, will funnel the savings into R&D of their own rather than share buybacks.
Brings to mind an occasion almost 25 years ago when I delighted some friends by encouraging their son & daughter to consider careers as prison guards: “It’s a job that can’t be outsourced to India plus you get to wear a unform and boss people around!” Well, thanks to El Salvador, perhaps that argument is starting to be undermined.
Trump is just basically just keeping Biden’s AI Diffusion Rule in place earlier than it’s 5/15 start date. They both own it.
You don’t need a PHD or an NSF grant to screw in those little screws on an iPhone.
The future is scary enough as it is with the way technology is developing (AI, quantum computing). The future in the hands of Xi and the Chinese, with the US left behind, takes things to another level.