Comparing to China is tricky because Chinese investment is almost by default bubbley in the sense of misallocating capital. That's what heavily state-directed economies tend to do and China's still a communist country. Especially they tend to over-invest in industrial capacity. China's massively overbuilt electricity grid and HSR network would be easily identified as a bubble if it were in the west, but when it's state officials making the investment decisions we tend to not think of it as a bubble (partly because there's often never a moment at which sanity reasserts itself).
I read an article today in which western business leaders went to China and were wowed by "dark factories" where everything is 100% automated. Lots of photos of factories full of humanoid robots too. Mentioned only further down the article: that happens because the Chinese government has started massively distorting the economy in favor of automation projects. It's widely known that one of the hardest parts of planning a factory is figuring out what to automate and what to use human labour for. Over-automating can be expensive as you lose agility and especially if you have access to cheap labour the costs and opportunity costs of automation can end up not worth it. It's a tricky balance that requires a lot of expertise and experience. But obviously if the government just flat out reimburses you 1/5th of your spending on industrial robots, suddenly it can make sense to automate stuff that maybe in reality should not have been automated.
BTW I'm not sure the Kuppy figures are correct. There's a lot of hidden assumptions about lifespan of the equipment and how valuable inferencing on smaller/older models will be over time that are difficult to know today.
All fair points, and it's hard to know exactly how robust the Chinese system will turn out to be, however I would argue that their bets are paying off overall, so even if there is some capital misallocation, overall their hit rate in important areas has been good, while we've been dumping capital in "Uber for X, AirBnB for X, ..."
Well, their bets haven't been paying off, Chinese government is in huge amounts of debt due to a massive real estate bubble, and lots of subsidies that don't pay back. It's a systematic problem, for instance their HSR lines are losing a ton of money too.
It's easy to think of Uber/AirBnB style apps as trivialities, but this is the mistake communist countries always make. They struggle to properly invest in consumer goods because only heavy industry is legible to the planners. China has had too low domestic spending for a long time. USSR had the same issue, way too many steel mills and nowhere near enough quality of life stuff for ordinary people. It killed them in the end; Yeltsin's loyalty to communist ideology famously collapsed when he mounted a surprise visit to an American supermarket on a diplomatic mission to NASA. The wealth and variety of goods on sale crushed him and he was in tears on the flight home. A few years later he would end up president of Russia leading it out of communist times.
> […] because the Chinese government has started massively distorting the economy in favor of automation projects. It's widely known that one of the hardest parts of planning a factory is figuring out what to automate and what to use human labour for.
… or it is an early manoeuvre – a pre-emptive measure – to address the looming burden of an ageing population and a dearth of young labour that – according to several demographic models – China will confront by roughly 2050 and thereafter[0]. The problem is compounded by the enforced One-Child Policy in the past, the ascendance of a mainland middle class, and the escalating costs of child-rearing; whilst, culturally and historically, sons are favoured amongst the populace, producing a gender imbalance skewed towards males – many of whom will, in consequence, be unable to marry or to propagate their line.
According to the United Nations’ baseline projection – as cited in the AMRO report[1] – China’s population in 2050 is forecast at approximately 1.26 billion, with about 30 per cent aged 65 and over, whilst roughly 40 per cent will be aged 60 and over. This constitutes the more optimistic projection.
The Lancet scenario[2] is more gloomy and projects a 1 billion population by 2050, with 3 out of 10 being of the age of 65+.
It is entirely plausible that the Chinese government is distorting the economy; alternatively, it is attempting to mitigate – or to avert – an impending crisis by way of automation and robotics. The reality may well lie somewhere between these positions.
Robots installed now will be obsolete and broken by 2050. Demographic change is the sort of thing where market mechanisms work fine. You don't build out assets like those ahead of demand, you wait until you need them at which point you get the latest tech with economies of scale as demand ramps up everywhere.
The most optimistic reading of this move is that it's just more of the same old communism: robotic factories seem cool to the planners because they're big, visible and high-tech assets that are easily visitable on state trips. So they overinvest for the same reason they once overinvested in steel production.
The actually most gloomy prognosis is that they're trying to free up labour to enter the army.
Serious question, why load up the army with people? Drones and autonomous weapons are 100% here now. We don't need a mass of general infantry, the new pattern is spec-ops spotting and targeting for autonomous kinetic munitions. Think ghosts in starcraft.
The only way to genuinely control captured territory on the ground is with infantry, and it'll remain that way for a while yet. America demonstrated the limits of what you can do with Predator drones in Afghanistan; the tech worked great and posed a huge threat but the Taliban was never truly defeated and continued training and recruiting at scale.
For something like an invasion of Taiwan or (gulp) other territories beyond that, the only way to completely subdue the captured population is with lots of soldiers.
That was true 10-20 years ago, but in a world with "terminators" I don't think it's true anymore.
Regarding effective conquest, we can look at the historical lesson of Rome. Conquest is effective when you can co-opt local leaders and cultures to cause them to identify with the conquering culture. Conquest that doesn't cause integration is historically unstable.
At no juncture did I suggest that the machines presently entering commission in the year 2025 would remain unaltered in perpetuity. Technological progress proceeds with unrelenting velocity — it is both natural and inevitable that subsequent refinements and augmentations will be introduced. The systems deployed today, in all likelihood, represent but preliminary trials and iterations — a proving ground — for capabilities yet to be fully revealed.
China, indeed, possesses a longstanding tradition of curating information to satisfy the sensibilities of its ruling class — a practice traceable to the dynastic courts of antiquity. Yet, to dismiss a potential adversary solely upon the architecture of its political order is — at best — ill-advised, and at worst, a grave miscalculation. The probability of threat must be judged on capacity, not narrative. Whether such an adversary proves formidable or farcical is immaterial at present — the truth will emerge within the span of a decade or so.
I read an article today in which western business leaders went to China and were wowed by "dark factories" where everything is 100% automated. Lots of photos of factories full of humanoid robots too. Mentioned only further down the article: that happens because the Chinese government has started massively distorting the economy in favor of automation projects. It's widely known that one of the hardest parts of planning a factory is figuring out what to automate and what to use human labour for. Over-automating can be expensive as you lose agility and especially if you have access to cheap labour the costs and opportunity costs of automation can end up not worth it. It's a tricky balance that requires a lot of expertise and experience. But obviously if the government just flat out reimburses you 1/5th of your spending on industrial robots, suddenly it can make sense to automate stuff that maybe in reality should not have been automated.
BTW I'm not sure the Kuppy figures are correct. There's a lot of hidden assumptions about lifespan of the equipment and how valuable inferencing on smaller/older models will be over time that are difficult to know today.