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Notes -
China's fragile treasure
Tl;DR: after months of observation, I am convinced that DeepSeek has been an inflection point in Chinese AI development and probably beyond that, to the level of reforming national psyche and long-term cultural trajectory, actualizing the absurd potential they have built up in the last two decades and putting them on a straight path to global economic preeminence or even comprehensive hegemony. It is not clear to me what can stop this, except the idiocy of the CCP, which cannot be ruled out.
Last time I wrote on this topic I got downvoted to hell for using DeepSeek R1 to generate the bulk of text (mostly to make a point about the state of progress with LLMs, as I warned). So – only artisanal tokens now, believe it or not. No guarantees of doing any better though.
The direct piece of news inspiring this post is The Information's claim that DeepSeek, a private Chinese AGI company owned by Liang Wenfeng, is implementing some very heavy-handed measures: «employees told not to travel, handing in passports; investors must be screened by provincial government; gov telling headhunters not to approach employees». This follows OpenAI's new Global Policy chief Chris Lehane accusing them of being state-subsidized and state-controlled and framing as the main threat to the West, popular calls on Twitter (eg from OpenAI staff) to halt Chinese AI progress by issuing O1 visas or better offers to all key DeepSeek staff, and the sudden – very intense – attention of Beijing towards this unexpected national champion (they weren't among the «six AI tigers» pegged for that role, nor did they have the backing of incumbent tech giants; what they did have was grassroots attention of researchers and users in the West, which China trusts far more than easily gamed domestic indicators).
I am not sure if this is true, possibly it's more FUD, like the claims about them having 50K H100s and lying about costs, claims of them serving at a loss to undercut competition, about compensations over $1M, and other typical pieces of «everything in China is fake» doctrine that have been debunked. But China does have a practice of restricting travel for people deemed crucial for national security (or involved in financial institutions). And DeepSeek fits this role now: they have breathed new life into Chinese stock market, integrating their model is a must for every business in China that wants to look relevant and even for government offices, and their breakthrough is the bright spot of the National People’s Congress. They are, in short, a big deal. Bigger than I predicted 8 months ago:
Seems like this is no longer in the cards.
Recently, @ActuallyATleilaxuGhola has presented the two opposite narratives on China which dominate the discourse: a Paper Tiger that merely steals, copies and employs smoke and mirrors to feign surpassing the fruit of American genius born of free exchange of ideas etc. etc.; and the Neo-China coming from the future, this gleaming juggernaut of technical excellence and industrial prowess. The ironic thing is that the Chinese themselves are caught between these two narratives, undecided on what they are, or how far they've come. Are they merely «industrious» and «good at math», myopic, cheap, autistic narrow optimizers, natural nerdy sidekicks to the White Man with his Main Character Energy and craaazy fits of big picture inspiration, thus doomed to be a second-tier player as a nation; with all cultural explanations of their derivative track record being «stereotype threat» level cope – as argued by @SecureSignals? Or are they just held back by old habits, path-dependent incentives and lack of confidence but in essence every bit as capable, nay, more capable of this whole business of pushing civilization forward, and indeed uplifting the whole planet, as argued by Chinese Industrial Party authors – doing the «one thing that Westerners have been unwilling or powerless to accomplish»?
In the now-deleted post, me and R1 argued that they are in a superposition. There are inherent racial differences in cognition, sure, and stereotypes have truth to them. But those differences only express themselves as concrete phenotypes and stereotypes contextually. In the first place, the evo psych story for higher IQ of more northern ancestral populations makes some sense, but there is no plausible selection story for Whites being unmatched innovators in STEM or anything esle. What is plausible is that East Asians are primed (by genetics and, on top of that, by Confucian culture and path dependence) towards applying their high (especially in visually and quantitatively loaded tasks) IQ to exploitation instead of exploration, grinding in low-tail-risk, mapped-out domains. Conformism is just another aspect of it; and so you end up with a civilization that will hungrily optimize a derisked idea towards razor-thin margins, but won't create an idea worth optimizing in a million years. Now, what if the calculus of returns changes? What if risk-taking itself gets derisked?
And I see DeepSeek as a vibe shift moment nudging them in this direction.
And to be clear, DeepSeek is not alone. Moonshot is on a very similar level (at least internally – their unreleased model dominates LiveCodeBench), so are StepFun, Minimax and Alibaba Qwen. Strikingly, you see a sudden formation of an ecosystem. Chinese chip and software designers are optimizing their offerings towards efficient serving of DeepSeek-shaped models, Moonshot adopts and builds on DeepSeek's designs in new ways, Minimax's CEO says he was inspired by Wenfeng to open source their LLMs, there are hundreds of papers internationally that push beyond R1's recipe… the citation graph is increasingly painted red. This, like many other things, looks like a direct realization of Wenfeng's long-started objectives:
BTW: I know @SecureSignals disagrees on the actual innovativeness of all this innovation. Well suffice to say the opinion in the industry is different. Their paper on Native Sparse Attention, pushed to arxiv (by Wenfeng personally – he is an active researcher and is known to have contributed to their core tech) just the day before Wenfeng went to meet Xi, looks more impressive than what we see coming from the likes of Google Deepmind, and it has a… unique cognitive style. They have their very distinct manner, as does R1. They had nowhere to copy that from.
Maybe all of it is not so sudden; the hockey-stick-like acceleration of Chinese progress is a matter of boring logistics, not some spiritual rebirth, much like the hokey stick of their EV or battery sales. For decades, they've been mainly a supplier of skilled labor to America, which masked systemic progress. All the while they have been building domestic schools to retain good educators, training new researchers and engineers without entrusting this to Microsoft Asia and Nvidia and top American schools, growing the economy and improving living conditions to increase retention and have businesses to employ top talent and give them interesting enough tasks… so at some point it was bound to happen that they begin graduating about as much talent as the rest of world combined, a giant chunk goes to their companies, and that's all she wrote for American incumbents in a largely fake, sluggish market. DeepSeek, or Wenfeng personally, is not so much a crown jewel of Chinese economy as a seed of crystallization of the new state of things, after all pieces have been set.
The boost of confidence is visible outside the AI sphere too. I find it remarkable that He Jankui is shitposting on Twitter all the time and threatening to liberate the humanity from the straitjacket of «Darwin's evolution». A decade earlier, one would expect his type to flee to the West and give lectures about the menace of authoritarianism. But after three years in Chinese prison, he's been made inaugural director of the Institute of Genetic Medicine at Wuchang University and conspicuously sports a hammer-and-sickle flag on his desk. The martyr of free market, Jack Ma, also has been rehabilitated, with Xi giving him a very public handshake (alongside Wenfeng, Unitree's Wang Xingxing, Xiaomi's Lei Jun and other entrepreneurs).
…but this is all fragile, because China remains a nation led by the CCP, which remains led by one boomer of unclear sentience and a very clear obsession with maximizing his control and reducing risk to himself. In that, Wenfeng is similar – he's bafflingly refusing all investment, from both private and state entities, because it always has strings attached, I suppose.
But you can't just refuse the CCP forever. Reports that he's been told not to interact with the press seem credible; perhaps the story about passports will come true too, as DeepSeek's perceived value grows. In that moment, China will largely abandon its claim to ascendancy, vindicating American theory that Freedom always wins hearts and minds. People, even in China, do not acquire world-class skills to be treated like serfs.
…If not, though? If China does not just shoot itself in the foot, with heavy-handed securitization, with premature military aggression (see them flexing their blue water navy they supposedly don't have in Australian waters, see their bizarre landing ships designed for Taiwan Operation, see their 6th generation aircraft…), with some hare-brained economic scheme – where does this leave us?
I've been thinking lately: what exactly is the American theory of victory? And by victory I mean retaining hegemony, as the biggest strongest etc. etc. nation on the planet, and ideally removing all pesky wannabe alternative poles like Russia, China and Iran. Russia and Iran are not much to write home about, but what to do with China?
The main narrative I see is something something AGI Race: the US builds a God-level AI first, then… uh, maybe grows its economy 100% a year, maybe disables China with cyberattacks or nanobots. I used to buy it when the lead time was about 2 years. It's measured in months now: research-wise, they have fully caught up, releases after V3 and R1 show that the West has no fundamental moat at all, and it's all just compute.
In terms of compute, it's very significant to my eyes that TSMC has been caught supplying Huawei with over 2 millions of Ascend chip dies. This could not have been obfuscated with any amount of shell companies – TSMC, and accordingly Taipei, knew they are violating American decree. Seeing Trump's predatory attitude towards TSMC (them being forced to invest into manufacturing on American soil and now to fix Intel's mess with a de facto technology transfer… as an aside, Intel's new CEO is a former director of SMIC, so literally all American chip companies are now headed by Chinese or Taiwanese people), I interpret this as hedging rather than mere corruption – they suspect they will not be able to deter an invasion or convince the US to do so, and are currying favor with Beijing. By the way, Ascend 910c is close to the performance of Nvidia H800. R1 was trained on 2048 H800s; So just from this one transaction, China will have around 500 times more compute, and by the end of the year they will be able to produce another couple million dies domestically. So, it is baked in that China will have AGI and ASI shortly after the US at worst, assuming no first strike from the latter.
In terms of cyberattacks for first strike, AIs are already good enough to meaningfully accelerate vulnerability search; coupled with the vast advantage in computer-literate labor force (and to be honest, actual state-backed hackers), China will be able to harden their infrastructure in short order, and there's no amount of cleverness that gets past provably hardened code. So this is a very uncertain bet.
In terms of economic growth, this is usually tied to automation. China seems to be on par in robotics research (at least), controls almost the entire supply chain, and has an incomparably bigger installed automated manufacturing base (see their EV factories, which are now also producing robots). They will have OOMs more humanoids and probably faster compounding growth. This more than covers for their workforce aging, too.
Then I hear something about Malacca strait blockade. Suffice to say this seemed more convincing when they really didn't have a «blue water navy», which they now clearly have, contra Peter Zeihan. They're also making great progress in weaning their civilian economy off oil (high speed rail instead of planes, normal rail for freight, EVs again, nuclear and renewable buildouts…) and have stockpiled giant reserves so oil cutoff won't really deter them. They are not quite food-secure but likely won't starve without imports. So blockade is no solution.
Lastly, I've seen this theory that Starship (once it's ready for prime time) provides the US with insurmountable advantage in mass to orbit, thus all the old Star Wars plans are back in action and Chinese nuclear deterrence is neutralized. This doesn't seem feasible because they're working on their own economical reusable rockets – across multiple companies as usual – and are very close to success, and there are signs that this project has very favorable scalability, to the point the US will lose its mass to orbit lead in under three years, or at least it will be diminished. (Personally I think Zhuque-3 is a more sensible design than Musk's monstrosity, though it's just a tasteful interpolation between Falcon and Starship. Learning from mistakes of others is a common late mover advantage).
Sector by sector and attack vector by attack vector, it's all like that.
So… what is left?
As far as I can tell, at this trajectory only China can defeat China – the hidebound, unironic Communists in control, fulfilling the mawkish Western prophecy they try to avoid, bear-hugging to death the young civilization that grew around their mandate and is now realizing its destiny. Confiscating passports, banning open source that widens the talent funnel, cracking down on «speculative investments», dragging them back into the 20th century at the brink of the long-coveted «national rejuvenation».
…Parallels to the US are probably clear enough.
A few destroyers (or even a lot of destroyers) aren't enough to break a blockade supported by aircraft. The 055 (which is really a cruiser) has 112 VLS cells and an extra 24 point defense missiles. That means with 100% of its VLS cells loaded with interceptors and a 100% interception rate, it gets sunk by a mere six B-1s carrying 144 LRASM. China probably needs aircraft cover to make a breakout there against bombers (properly supported by ISR assets) work.
However, I tend to agree with you that the blockade is not a solution (outside of putting economic pressure on China). China's navy can't be in two places at once, but I am not sure it would even try to bust a blockade, because I think they will be able to get vital imports (food, oil) from Russia. Xi would have been foolish not to secure this in his meeting with Putin over the war in Ukraine.
Watching DJT & Company, I think that they are comfortable with the US being "first among equals" in a multipolar world. In that state, there is no "theory of victory" – America slims down its hegemony to a more traditional sphere of influence and coexists with China, Russia and possibly India as peer states. But I think you are too quick to write off robotics as a replacement for China's aging population. I don't know that it's impossible, but a destabilized population pyramid can cause problems besides merely economic ones. I think we've seen sufficient evidence in the United States that domination of the political sphere by older generations can cause "lag" in apprehending new geopolitical developments (or an overemphasis on relitigating old ones!) So I do think one American theory of dominating China is just letting it fall apart of its own inertia.
But, if America wanted to be more aggressive, I think you are correct that baiting China into overreaching militarily is an easy option. Perhaps not a safe or smart one, because once the dogs of war are loosed there's no telling where they will run. But the US could probably bait China into invading Taiwan within a year at any given time. If the US believed it could win a war – and I've been trending pessimistic about China's capabilities in this regard – it would wait until it had sufficient LRASMs and Taiwan had adequate sea mines and Harpoons, and spring the trap. If the US does this, I imagine it will do it in the next decade, and probably once it gets its newer hypersonic anti-ship missiles to actually work.
Xi was perhaps foolish; China hasn't been willing to (publicly?) sign (further) long term deals (necessary to finance more pipelines) and instead enjoys limited flows from older contracts while with most Russian production capacity lacks a way to reach China. Further, they're reducing consumption due to new sanctions.
I have a pet theory that Chinese green hydrogen will cause a $80BOE ceiling on gas. N.b. heavy vehicles now consume over half of LNG in China. Now, it's just a theory and I am bullish on gas in the short term, but the financials on new projects are breathtaking.
@Magusoflight this, you see, is my "motive: trading commodities for a profit. As a long believer in some commodities supercycle to raise the next 2 billion people out of poverty, we're not seeing the same growth drivers but rather a decrease in Chinese construction aligned with long term government policy etc. I was rather shocked to realize that the CCP literally announces its policies in 5 year plans, which it actually does, enriching investors positioned to enable it. You jump to accusing me of "lying" instead of digging a bit deeper into something "well known". How do you know this? Do you agree with the same sources when they e.g. preached diversity, immigration etc.? It's particularly perplexing that @Dean claims my "economic narrative waves aside the property bubble" when I specifically wrote about it. Isn't OP's very point that we, the West, have lost, because we can't get our heads out of our asses, honestly look at the world and act? Hell, I'm not pushing the technological envelope and seeking transcendence either, I'm just seeking alpha in society's delusions.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/wadeshepard/2018/03/19/ghost-towns-or-boomtowns-what-new-cities-really-become
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-09-01/chinese-ghost-cities-2021-binhai-zhengdong-new-districts-fill-up
@phailyoor I know the government takes passports in general (particularly for people working on financial infrastructure) but DeepSeekers have said in the last days that this is not happening. I asked OP if he has proof for it, because it would really solidify his narrative.
Perhaps it perplexes you that you were not the subject of that comment?
Your own comment on the subject of the property bubble was certainly wrong- the overproduction of buildings and ghost cities were not issues that were resolved by 'filling them up'- but I did not make a claim about your specific argument because I was not addressing your specific argument.
Is it? I've known the poster formerly known as Ilforte for years, and the fact that he defined 'theory of victory' in terms of-
-strikes me as both characteristic enough of him and disconnected enough from American political paradigm to move on without further engagement or consideration, had you not invoked me by name.
The OP certainly has enough viewpoint differences with members of this forum and broader political coalitions that I would doubt his ability to characterize, let alone speak for 'we' or 'the west,' let alone defer to his judgement or assessments on the world. For example, it is certainly a common enough perspective to believe the American end-state is hegemony as a goal in and of itself. But that perspective demonstrates a general lack of cultural awareness of how dominant American political conceptions often view American geopolitical power as a means to an end, rather than an end in and of itself. There are certainly elements of American politics which value geopolitical power for power's own sake, but the reason that the American electorate has gone for the domestic-priorities President for every election for the last 30-odd years is because those foreign-affairs interests are not dominant. It is a cultural inclination which almost only the Americans get to afford thanks in no small part due to geography and geopolitical separation from revanchist and ethnic-solidarity cultural paradigms.
At which point, consideration of what that the goal of US policy and thus 'victory' would be needs to be something 'the West' would agree upon. Whether that is Americans in a comfortable isolationism even if the world burns, or America ensuring other states don't get devoured by blobbing neighbors, or any other American paradigm of what the American goal is- would be rather relevant to what a theory of victory would be.
Put another way-
IF American victory is being the hegemon, then lack of hegemony is failure and China wins by being individually strongest.
However-
IF American victory is China not establishing military domination of eastern Eurasia, then raising potential costs of Chinese intervention to degree that China doesn't engage in territorial conquest on revanchist grounds against its regional neighbors / military intervention spree in east asia is victory, regardless of whether China or the US is individually the strongest.
It could even be regardless of a Taiwan scenario outcome. A loss over Taiwan / successful Chinese conquest over American objection would certainly be a defeat, but if the Chinese experience is bad enough that the next 50 years are spent on Chinese internal stability issues rather than trying to blob like Russia when it thinks it has a shot against the former soviet sphere, that would still be a begrudged 'victory' by a 'China doesn't dominate eastern asia' standard. It would be a victory even if the Americans are globally considered a secondary power compared to the glorious China. It would be victory even when people who insist that the American position is just cope for having lost hegemony weigh in.
Victory conditions are typically pre-defined if they are to be useful. Pre-definition requires accurate characterization of a party's goals or objectives.
This is the distinction from judging victory by a relative power relationship paradigm rather than an outcome paradigm, and more specifically which outcome. And this distinction, in turn, leads to different considerations- such as whether the US needs to be Number 1 at all times, or just be close enough for China's long-term issues to constrain its middle kingdom ambitions.
Now, presumably OP believe more of the former- it's hist standard that requires hegemony. However, it is not clear at all to me that 'the West,' or at least the Americans and their Asian allies who matter in Asia, do not believe the later. And if the OP believes one way, and 'the West' believes another, it is not obvious that it is only heads-in-asses to blame for not deferring to the OP's paradigm.
Which will probably be taken as some hostile insult by the OP, when it is not, since we get along like that.
(I love you too, Ilforte, and I'm glad you're safe and still writing even if I am unconvinced by you.)
Ah, ok.
I read this as him coming to terms (at least starting to) with there not being a West qua actor with concrete goals etc. similar to whoever, a few weeks back, noted alt right thoughts about the deep state were all wrong, since it didn't resist Trump and just ...let itself and its consensus be dismantled. This is why, in my original comment, I mentioned Western traditionalists' growing support of China. Aschenbrenner et al. are case in point, self important little men plotting how to play the wrong game. I believe, in the past, OP simply feared Western actors might flip the board before we achieve the cosmicists' dream, but now believes the US lost the ability to stop it and only China still has the ability (by error).
I sure see power as mere means (and believe OP does too). I like the spirit of this exchange, although I think it's built on a fundamentally unstable foundation (assumptions about what the author means instead of just asking him) and there are more constructive things than building it. What is your telos? What do you think the CCP's is (or at least Xi's)? Dito for any other relevant actors.
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