So there has been some stuff in the media about the international element of American corporations. In particular, Billionaire Peter Thiel to Google CEO Sundar Pichai: 3 questions on China that need answers. Thiel has been throwing broadsides at Google due to his participation in a conference on nationalism.
During the period of Chimerica, as documented in Niall Ferguson’s The Ascent of Money, there was a sort of synergistic detente between the USA and China. That is obviously over. Part of it is Donald Trump’s stance, but there is a broader American suspicion, from the Left to the Right, toward the emergent muscularity of Chinese power abroad and its authoritarianism at home. Though it is clear that I am broadly sympathetic to many aspects of Chinese culture and happy that the average Chinese is wealthier and healthier than they were in the 20th-century, it seems advisable for the American state to engage with the Chinese state in a wary manner.
Which brings me to Thiel’s comments, and one aspect of the demographics of Silicon Valley which might be a major headache: over 70% of employees are foreign-born. And many of these are Chinese nationals (over 50% of the engineering workforce at Google in the USA is now “Asian”). Obviously, most of the Chinese nationals are not engaging in espionage. But the relationship between China and the USA is now shifting to one of rivalry, rather than partnership, so it’s going to put many of these employees in a strained position.
You meant NOT engaging in espionage.
I work with a lot of Chinese at a tech company. Most of the Chinese I talk to about politics hate the communists and are happy and grateful to be in the US (somehow the NYT doesn’t hire them as columnists).
I am sure the Chinese can put spies in our tech industry though. Wasn’t Theil sued by the Obama Justice department for not having enough Chinese working for this company Palantir which is in the national security industry?
“The Thucydides Trap: When one great power threatens to displace another, war is almost always the result — but it doesn’t have to be.” By Graham Allison | June 9, 2017
https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/06/09/the-thucydides-trap/
“But as China challenges America’s predominance, misunderstandings about each other’s actions and intentions could lead them into a deadly trap first identified by the ancient Greek historian Thucydides. As he explained, “It was the rise of Athens and the fear that this instilled in Sparta that made war inevitable.” The past 500 years have seen 16 cases in which a rising power threatened to displace a ruling one. Twelve of these ended in war.”
“Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap?”
https://www.belfercenter.org/thucydides-trap/overview-thucydides-trap
“Obviously, most of the Chinese nationalists are engaging in espionage”
In addition to missing a “not”, I think you intended to write “nationals” instead of “nationalists”.
agree with u larry. (also, some of the ppl who commit espionage may do so to protect family back home).
Chinese science and engineering is more or less on a par with America’s. They have more supercomputers than the US, most home built, and until last year they had the two fastest, entirely home built from chips to architecture to operating system. Huawei is developing its own software to run its 5G systems, and it will be compatible with all the apps for Android.
China is the second most prolific producer of refereed journal papers, and they appear in American and European journals. Perhaps a third of the graduate students enrolled in America’s STEM programs are Chinese nationals, and they produce about a third of the scientific and engineering discoveries attributed to the US.
The point is that while many Chinese nationals in the US do steal everything they can, they also produce a lot of original stuff. The idea that they can’t is racist in the extreme. It is also foolish, because it diverts attention from real issues like the inability of America to produce STEM graduate students or the inability (refusal?) of American corporations and government agencies to protect their sensitive data.
thiel points to two issues: identity politics on the left, and american exceptionalism on the right.
both are rooted in the same thing.