The China Smart, US Dumb Push Is Working
August 7, 2025
This blog post is the work of an authentic dinobaby. Sorry. No smart software can help this reptilian thinker.
I read “The US Should Run Faster on AI Instead of Trying to Trip Up China.” In a casual way, I am keeping an eye open for variations on the “China smart, US dumb” information I spot. The idea is that China is not just keeping pace with US innovation, the Middle Kingdom is either even or leading. The context is that the star burning bright for the American era has begun collapsing into a black hole or maybe to a brown dwarf. Avoidance of the US may be the best policy. As one of Brazil’s leaders noted: “America is not bullying our country [Brazil]. America is bullying the world.”
Right or wrong? I have zero idea.
The cited essay suggests that certain technology and economic policies have given China an advantage. The idea is that the disruptive kid in high school sits in the back of the room and thinks up a better Facebook-type system and then implements it.
The write up states:
The ostensible reason for the [technology and economic] controls was to cripple China’s AI progress. If that was the goal, it has been a failure.
As I zipped through the essay, I noted that the premise of the write up is that the US has goofed. The proof of this is no farther than data about China’s capabilities in smart software. I think that any large language model will evidence bias. Bias is encapsulated in many human-created utterances. I, for example, have written critically about search and retrieval for decades. Am I biased toward enterprise search? Absolutely. I know from experience that software that attempts to index content in an organization inevitably disappoints a user of that system. Why? No system to which I have been exposed has access to the totality of “information” generated by an organization. Maybe someday? But for the last 40 years, systems simply could not deliver what the marketers promised. Therefore, I am biased against claims that an enterprise search system can answer employees’ questions.
China is a slippery fish. I had a brief and somewhat weird encounter with a person deeply steeped in China’s somewhat nefarious effort to gain access to US pharma-related data. I have encountered a similar effort afoot in the technical disciplines related to nuclear power. These initiatives illustrate that China wants to be a serious contender for the title of world leader in bio-science and nuclear. Awareness of this type of information access is low even today.
I am, as a dinobaby, concerned that the lack of awareness issue creates more opportunities for information exfiltration from a proprietary source to an “open source” concept. To be frank, I am in favor of a closed approach to technology.
The reason I am making sure I have this source document and my comments is that it is a very good example of how the China good, America dumb information is migrating into what might be termed a more objective looking channel.
Net net: China’s weaponizing of information is working reasonably well. We are no longer in TikTok territory.
Stephen E Arnold, August 6, 2025
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