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The problems facing the US in competing with China are structural. No Amount of mergers between giant monopolies is gong to fix structural problems. On a cyni

The problems facing the US in competing with China are structural. No Amount of mergers between giant monopolies is gong to fix structural problems. On a cynical level, it maybe that "China" is used as an excuse to push through a merger for profits, but lets assume some innocence. The execs. realize how costly 5G is going to be, and the only way they know to borrow that amount of money is increasing their underlying capital assets. The problem is that Huawei became successful in 5G through massive government investment, currency arbitrage ( supported by the US ), cheaper land, cheaper engineer, ... Just a side note, have a look at how Huawei operates. They build a giant 60,000 engineer city for their employees ! Is the US ready to create a giant 60,000 engineer city to compete in 5g ? where engineers are paid a fat salary with low rent ? ( in PPP terms ) 5G maybe the reason why the US has to finally confront the structural reasons why they have become so uncompetitive in electronic hardware in relation to East Asia.

soup10 7y ago
Let's not forget that our government is mostly run by people with law degrees while china has a large amount of technocrats. Making it much harder to get state-scale large engineering and software projects going in the U.S..
- dnautics 7y ago
  There was a time when the us was led by a technocrat. His name was Herbert Hoover.
- skinnymuch 7y ago
  We have had a leader being a technocrat/rich businessman only once before in US history. That was Herbert Hoover. Now Trump. Neither have done anything amazing for business and/or innovation.
  - soup10 7y ago
    yea trump has no idea how a computer works...
  - hhmartin 7y ago
    The list of Trump's attempted businesses is hilariously sad (except the Fraud which is just sad). Don't even get me started on his Snazzle Snacks pyramid scheme.
    - selimthegrim 7y ago
      Or Trump: The Game
mehrdadn 7y ago
A little confused how China has "succeeded" in 5G to begin with. Has 5G already been deployed in China? Are 5G phones out over there? Is it actually what it was claimed to be in the past few years? In what way has it been already successful?
- panny 7y ago
  http://archive.is/pVwbM http://archive.is/pVwbM
  - mehrdadn 7y ago
    > The NSA’s ‘Tailored Access Operations’ unit broke into Huawei’s corporate servers and by 2010 was reading corporate emails and examining the source code in Huawei’s products.“We currently have good access and so much data that we don’t know what to do with it,” boasted one NSA briefing. Slides also disclosed that the NSA intended to plant its own backdoors in Huawei firmware. In 2014 the New York Times, Time and Reuters revealed that the NSA had infiltrated Huawei headquarters, monitored all of its executives and gone through the company’s entire data infrastructure. Well this is quite the eye opener. Thanks for sharing. Can I ask what the original website is though? Why is it down?
adventured 7y ago
I'm not sure what you're talking about. Why would anybody need to build a city of 60,000 engineers to compete in 5G? Europe's leading 5G makers are not doing that so that they can compete with Huawei, because it's obviously entirely unnecessary. The US doesn't need to change anything to compete with China. It has been successfully out-competing China in nearly every field for decades, save for low value manufacturing. China poses no greater competitive threat in the middle and upper tiers of economic competition than Western Europe does (presently far less in fact). The US also didn't need to entirely alter itself to compete with Western Europe. > the US has to finally confront the structural reasons why they have become so uncompetitive in electronic hardware in relation to East Asia No it doesn't need to do that at all. The US leads the world by a large margin when it comes to the semiconductor industry - the most important components of electronics today. Manufacturing electronic hardware is a low value economic segment, which is why it's outsourced. It can be pushed from China to a dozen other countries instead (see Foxconn's statement that they're prepared to move Apple's manufacturing out of China any time, that's how weak China's value proposition really is). Samsung - the world's leading phone maker - has already done that, moving a lot of their phone manufacturing to Vietnam.
- michaelvoz 7y ago
  Agreed. There’s a reason the most educated and capable Chinese move the the US and become Americans. America’s cultural and technological dominance comes from its flexibility borne from a willingness to take in hard working immigrants from anywhere. America is exceptional in that it is a country of immigrants.
  - theturtletalks 7y ago
    Yep it’s called brain drain. Many people come to the US to pursue school with intentions to go back home and make things better there, but just fall into life and work and never look back.
    - wolco 7y ago
      Or just find the opportunities better/easy than trying the same back home.
rashkov 7y ago
Wait, why are we in a race to get to 5G? Why are we in a competition with China over 5G? This is nothing but spin, and this kind of talk was probably originated by the telcos themselves, who benefit from this sort of high pressure tactic to cut regulation and receive major subsidies. Not my original idea, but it has been a great question to ask. https://www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2019/5/23/18637213/5g-race-us-leadership-china-fcc-lte https://www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2019/5/23/18637213/5g-...

soup10 7y ago

Let's not forget that our government is mostly run by people with law degrees while china has a large amount of technocrats. Making it much harder to get state-scale large engineering and software projects going in the U.S..

dnautics 7y ago
There was a time when the us was led by a technocrat. His name was Herbert Hoover.
skinnymuch 7y ago
We have had a leader being a technocrat/rich businessman only once before in US history. That was Herbert Hoover. Now Trump. Neither have done anything amazing for business and/or innovation.
- soup10 7y ago
  yea trump has no idea how a computer works...
- hhmartin 7y ago
  The list of Trump's attempted businesses is hilariously sad (except the Fraud which is just sad). Don't even get me started on his Snazzle Snacks pyramid scheme.
  - selimthegrim 7y ago
    Or Trump: The Game

mehrdadn 7y ago

A little confused how China has "succeeded" in 5G to begin with. Has 5G already been deployed in China? Are 5G phones out over there? Is it actually what it was claimed to be in the past few years? In what way has it been already successful?

panny 7y ago
http://archive.is/pVwbM http://archive.is/pVwbM
- mehrdadn 7y ago
  > The NSA’s ‘Tailored Access Operations’ unit broke into Huawei’s corporate servers and by 2010 was reading corporate emails and examining the source code in Huawei’s products.“We currently have good access and so much data that we don’t know what to do with it,” boasted one NSA briefing. Slides also disclosed that the NSA intended to plant its own backdoors in Huawei firmware. In 2014 the New York Times, Time and Reuters revealed that the NSA had infiltrated Huawei headquarters, monitored all of its executives and gone through the company’s entire data infrastructure. Well this is quite the eye opener. Thanks for sharing. Can I ask what the original website is though? Why is it down?

adventured 7y ago

I'm not sure what you're talking about. Why would anybody need to build a city of 60,000 engineers to compete in 5G? Europe's leading 5G makers are not doing that so that they can compete with Huawei, because it's obviously entirely unnecessary. The US doesn't need to change anything to compete with China. It has been successfully out-competing China in nearly every field for decades, save for low value manufacturing. China poses no greater competitive threat in the middle and upper tiers of economic competition than Western Europe does (presently far less in fact). The US also didn't need to entirely alter itself to compete with Western Europe. > the US has to finally confront the structural reasons why they have become so uncompetitive in electronic hardware in relation to East Asia No it doesn't need to do that at all. The US leads the world by a large margin when it comes to the semiconductor industry - the most important components of electronics today. Manufacturing electronic hardware is a low value economic segment, which is why it's outsourced. It can be pushed from China to a dozen other countries instead (see Foxconn's statement that they're prepared to move Apple's manufacturing out of China any time, that's how weak China's value proposition really is). Samsung - the world's leading phone maker - has already done that, moving a lot of their phone manufacturing to Vietnam.

michaelvoz 7y ago
Agreed. There’s a reason the most educated and capable Chinese move the the US and become Americans. America’s cultural and technological dominance comes from its flexibility borne from a willingness to take in hard working immigrants from anywhere. America is exceptional in that it is a country of immigrants.
- theturtletalks 7y ago
  Yep it’s called brain drain. Many people come to the US to pursue school with intentions to go back home and make things better there, but just fall into life and work and never look back.
  - wolco 7y ago
    Or just find the opportunities better/easy than trying the same back home.

rashkov 7y ago

Wait, why are we in a race to get to 5G? Why are we in a competition with China over 5G? This is nothing but spin, and this kind of talk was probably originated by the telcos themselves, who benefit from this sort of high pressure tactic to cut regulation and receive major subsidies. Not my original idea, but it has been a great question to ask. https://www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2019/5/23/18637213/5g-race-us-leadership-china-fcc-lte https://www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2019/5/23/18637213/5g-...