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Comment by Nokinside | Hacker News Reader

We are not talking about stealing here. They are hiring senior people with the know-how, both engineers and executives, by offering them huge compensation packages. They are hiring from both Taiwan and South Korea btw.

Huawei does the same in mobile. Their know-how comes from hiring good people. They have R&D centers outside China where they employ people they hired from Qualcomm, Nokia, Ericsson and others to design their new 5G SoC and mobile technologies.

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> They have R&D centers outside China where they employ people they hired from Qualcomm, Nokia, Ericsson and others to design their new 5G SoC and mobile technologies.

Then it is time to kick Huawei out. Dissolve or nationalize their local entities, ban banks from dealing with their money.

China does not allow foreign companies to operate in China, so why should Western countries do the same? It's either a level field for all - or no field at all. The Western world has appeased China for too long in the hope China would democratize itself. This has evidently failed, it's time to pull the plug.

Nobody plays by the "level playing field" rules. The US likes to pretend it does, but as soon as there's an industry where it's not competitive (like agriculture for example), that goes out of the window. And IMO for good reason. Unfettered markets work in some cases. But in many cases they have lead to "winner takes all scenarios" where a single player (or 2/3 players) become dominant and the market is no longer competitive. We need a system that works against this over the long term, and some level of protectionism seems like a decent way of doing that.

Name one.

You are just repeating protectionist propaganda to justify overcharging customers to benefit protected corporations.

Well I was thinking of agriculture subsidies, which are substantial in both the US and the EU. The US also puts significant subsidies into the Oil&Gas and Aerospace industries.

Right. When the 2010 Haiti earthquake hit, it wasn't a natural disaster that killed. It was an infrastructure disaster that killed. For a country that went from self-sufficiency in food to having its domestic agriculture wiped out from dumping from subsidized US agricultural products.

Then there are the more overt attacks like on Alstom, Toshiba etc.

Agricultural subsidies are the clearest form of theft from consumers there is. There is zero chance of monopolies in an unrestrained agricultural, oil, or gas markets.

Your better example is Aerospace, but there is no proven reason we need those colossal companies, and a big part of the merger drive that created them us to monopolize access to government contracts. ULA is a perfect example of that.

I think what you miss here is that in addition to efficiency, resilience is important in agricultural (and arguably other industries). Depending on foreign supply is all well and good until there's a shortage. Then you're screwed.

Arguably China have just found this with semiconductors. It was all well and good depending on TSMC, until the US blocked their supply.

Agriculture isn't the best example. Agriculture provides for people's livehood. It's the actual industry that national security depends upon. Which is why so many countries subsidize agriculture, it's not a economical decision at all in any regard.

Technology isn't the best example. Technology provides for people's livelihood. It's the actual industry that national security depends upon. Which is why so many countries subsidize technology. It's not an economical decision at all in any regard.

You literally die without food in at max 21 days. Suppose food supply chain got cut because of war or pandemic, you have to be able to supply food locally.

This is not a pure economical issue because it's not about efficiency, it's about have some redundancy so when things get hard, one won't just be starved to death. Afterall, it takes time for the market to adjust itself and without food, there won't be time.

Without control over your technology, you will literally die immediately of an invasion. Besides, it's easier to import food than nuclear bombs.

If we are talking about End of the World level conflict, then yeah no preparation would mean anything, but that's not the case for most of the conflicts, if any since WWII, aren't they?

And TBH, following that reasoning, that there is nuclear bomb, ground force should be cut to save cost and tax money too.

Yes, if you are a country that only wants to protect their homeland, cutting your ground forces as a result of nuclear bombs and ICBMs is perfectly rational.

Say that you are a citizen of a country endlessly threatened by invasion from a foreign power. Is it more important for you that your country has the nuclear bomb, which means your likelihood of being turned into glass falls from 50% to 0.1%, or that your country has greater control of agricultural production, meaning that in case of disaster you won't have to pay fortunes for imported food and cut your consumption? I'd say in this case the nuclear bomb is more important.

Also, we didn't see End of the World level nuclear destruction of any country because all the great world power developed the Nuke. The US Army very seriously considered using nukes in the Korean War as well as had plans for the invasion of the USSR (See : Operation Unthinkable and Operation Dropshot). The only reason these plans weren't carried out is because the USSR and China sacrificed very heavily in order to develop their technology and achieve technological parity with the West.

Tell that to the Lebanese. After the Beirut explosion took out the nation's largest grain depot (half of it got blasted to shreds by the explosion, the other half was contaminated) and the entire infrastructure of their dominant port, they're squarely fucked.

If a country loses access to state of the art tech, they might as well become a third world country within 5-10 years.

Microsoft has R&D centers in China where they employ graduates of China's top universities to work on cutting-edge research. https://www.msra.cn/

Kicking Huawei out because they fund research in Western countries would be just as stupid as China kicking out Microsoft because they fund research in China.

Pardon my ignorance, but has MSR China produced something good? I have seen a lot of interesting stuff come out of MSR but mostly it has been from the US.

Also, are top talent joining MSR China? From what I know, many Chinese companies beat MS in compensation easily and these new companies will have the lure of quick growth as well.

ResNet https://arxiv.org/abs/1512.03385 came out of Microsoft Research Asia. I think that's a pretty good thing they produced.

Evidently they managed to hire the top talent behind that work at some point. Looks like Kaiming He works at Facebook now, though. http://kaiminghe.com/

Ah, interesting to know that. Thanks.

Research institutions generally have lower salary then industry. That doesn't mean it's not a good place to go.

Apple operates in China. ARM operates in China. Tesla operates in China.

Even Facebook operates in China. Their social network is banned (for refusing to comply to censorship laws), but the company is still allowed to do business. Facebook has quite a few advertisement deals in China.

Heck, walk down the street in China for 10 minutes and you'll see more McDonalds and StarBucks than you've ever seen in your life.

Since 2014 legal reforms, many foreign companies are no longer required to form joint ventures in China, and so own 100% of the shares (and technology).

Saying that "China doesn't allow foreign companies" is... unnuanced, to say the least.

Not to mention the NBA, too.

ccp propaganda. Facts are Tesla was the first company allowed fully private ownership of ip in china. No other company has had that before.

Lucent and GM had WFOE arrangements (certain plants) in the mid 90s.

Artcile from 1997. https://hbr.org/1997/03/entering-china-an-unconventional-app...

I did say that the reforms a pretty recent, didn’t I?

>Heck, walk down the street in China for 10 minutes and you'll see more McDonalds and StarBucks than you've ever seen in your life.

Also KFC, I've been to China and Asia many times and I'm still surprised at just how many KFCs there are.

Where they serve absolutely delicious local meals that you cannot get here!

Yea, KFC has been extremely successful in Asia, even though their US home market has been shrinking.

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