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NSA, DOE Say China's Supercomputing Advances Put US At Risk (computerworld.com)

dcblogs quotes a report from Computerworld: Advanced computing experts at the National Security Agency and the Department of Energy are warning that China is "extremely likely" to take leadership in supercomputing as early as 2020, unless the U.S. acts quickly to increase spending. China's supercomputing advances are not only putting national security at risk, but also U.S. leadership in high-tech manufacturing. If China succeeds, it may "undermine profitable parts of the U.S. economy," according to a report titled U.S. Leadership in High Performance Computing by HPC technical experts at the NSA, the DOE, the National Science Foundation and other agencies. The report stems from a workshop held in September that was attended by 60 people, many scientists, 40 of whom work in government, with the balance representing industry and academia. "Meeting participants, especially those from industry, noted that it can be easy for Americans to draw the wrong conclusions about what HPC investments by China mean -- without considering China's motivations," the report states. "These participants stressed that their personal interactions with Chinese researchers and at supercomputing centers showed a mindset where computing is first and foremost a strategic capability for improving the country; for pulling a billion people out of poverty; for supporting companies that are looking to build better products, or bridges, or rail networks; for transitioning away from a role as a low-cost manufacturer for the world; for enabling the economy to move from 'Made in China' to 'Made by China.'"

130 comments

  1. So fix it for $diety sake by Snotnose · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Instead of billions on a stupid wall, invest billions in supercomputing tech. Hell, invest billions in semiconductor tech, cuz China is trying to take the lead in semiconductors big time.

    Fucking Trump, trying to bring back manufacturing when he doesn't understand the concept of "robot".

    1. Re:So fix it for $diety sake by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      That wall is going to be tall and absolutely beautiful. Powerful. Secure, with underground sensors and towers with guards packing automatic weapons and night vision it'll be world class U! S! A! U! S! A! state of the art National Park tourist attraction for 2000 miles and worthy of the Donald J Trump logo in gold letters at the top. Bigger and BETTER than the Berlin Wall and the Great Wall of China.

    2. Re:So fix it for $diety sake by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Indeed. China already took the lead in wall technology a few thousand years ago...

    3. Re:So fix it for $diety sake by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      doesn't understand the concept of "robot".

      "Robot" means "slave." Aren't you old enough to pine for the days when you would rape your slaves on the plantation?

    4. Re:So fix it for $diety sake by fluffernutter · · Score: 1

      Yeah! Make MEXICO pay for the supercomputing tech!

      --
      Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
    5. Re:So fix it for $diety sake by fluffernutter · · Score: 1

      And they could do it again, seeing as the slavery situation hasn't changed much since then.

      --
      Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
    6. Re:So fix it for $diety sake by sit1963nz · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Hell, cut back on your military spending, the US already spends more than the next 10 nations combined. Even if you halved spending you would still spend more than any other nation. Those trillions could be used for health, education, R&D, infrastructure, welfare, etc etc etc

    7. Re: So fix it for $diety sake by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Stephen Bannon, why are you hanging out on /.?

    8. Re: So fix it for $diety sake by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      But it's the only thing we can think of to employ Americans. The private sector just doesn't employ as many people at good wages with benefits. It's pretty much the only way for many of us as our cities have had anything they were known for automated. You /. people love to blame the victim and tell them evolve or die, learn new skills but its not about any individual when entire cities have their economy ripped out. People coming up in this environment don't thrive unless they come from money, get a break or enlist. And none of that is guaranteed.
      The road to hell is paved with good intentions, automation is one of those intentions.

    9. Re:So fix it for $diety sake by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The wall is a start to reduce the bleeding. eVerify is next to reverse it.
      Every country in the world except the USA puts their citizens first. It's a nice change to finally start to catch up with them.

    10. Re:So fix it for $diety sake by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If we cut back that far, the EU would shit itself and raise taxes 20% on their own people to make up for what the US has been spending on keeping the ever hungry Russia from taking back what they once owned.

      I'd like to see that happen. Let countries pay for their own defense. Then the US can finally afford universal healthcare. Poland and Finland wont anymore, but why should we put their people above our own families?

    11. Re: So fix it for $diety sake by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah, he's been here since Dice sold /. to him. It's like when Cartman bought the amusement park and then had to let other people back in to pay the bills.

    12. Re:So fix it for $diety sake by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I don't understand why people use the "robots" argument as a reason not to attempt to bring back manufacturing to the US. Where do you think China gets some of the money to fund this research?

      Who cares if robots end up doing most of the monotonous work? You still need a skeleton crew to maintain the robots which provide jobs. Not to mention other products and services you need to support the robots. Services that provide jobs like electricity, water, networking, HVAC, janitorial, security, construction, etc. Yes, there will likely be less jobs than without robots but some is better than none. You also aren't (likely) shipping money off to foreign countries either if you pay for people to produce said services in the US.

      Wouldn't you rather see a maintained factory building full or robots rather than an empty dilapidated husk?

    13. Re:So fix it for $diety sake by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      China's advances are dependent on how fast they can steal their technology from others. Every now and then you will see someone warning about China catching up or overtaking the US but these claims are exaggerated. China's continued growth are heading towards brick wall. Their economic success has created higher incomes which has started to erode China's cheap labor. Other economically fragile countries can provide cheaper labor which is under cutting China's only strong point. Their military is dwarfed by the US. China has one refurbished aircraft carrier while the US is sitting on 11 with new models to come. China laid off 300,000 army personnel so they could fund other areas. The only reason this is even known to the outside world is that the soldiers laid off actually protested in the public and China's censors could not prevent the information from being released. GDP comparisons are not a true indicator of when comparing economies. The most relevant indicator is per capita income and China barely makes the top 20 when compared to other countries. And China buys US Securities and Bonds because they make safe and stable investments. They also know if US-China relations turn bad the US will just seize Chinese assets and refuse to honor Chinese investments. And the world only really knows what the Chinese want the outside world. Every form of media and communication in China operate under censors. They can't stop everything but that is not from a lack of effort.

    14. Re:So fix it for $diety sake by Applehu+Akbar · · Score: 1

      Yeah! Make MEXICO pay for the supercomputing tech!

      Actually we are by default making China pay for it. The downside of which is that we will have to beg for time on it on their terms.

    15. Re:So fix it for $diety sake by banjonz · · Score: 1

      What does my diet have to do with this issue?

    16. Re:So fix it for $diety sake by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Because all your military companies/contractors would go broke. All those people in the defense industry along with a massive number of soldiers will now be unemployed. Your economy would crater.
      America decided a long time ago that universal fighting was more beneficial to the economy than universal healthcare.

    17. Re:So fix it for $diety sake by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      let's be honest here, they saved our asses 2 times in the last century lol...

    18. Re: So fix it for $diety sake by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      But we need white people here they cool people and eat lots of cheese.

    19. Re: So fix it for $diety sake by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The country won't stop bleeding til we deport ALL the White nationalist Nazis. Then we can get back to making Murica the beautiful melting pot beacon of freedom to the world again.

    20. Re:So fix it for $diety sake by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The people who pull Trump's strings understand the concept of "robot" alright.

    21. Re: So fix it for $diety sake by Kiuas · · Score: 4, Insightful

      But it's the only thing we can think of to employ Americans.

      The problem in my view (as a non-american) with the military spending is that the military then has to be used to justify the gigantic cost of it. It creates a situation in which you pretty much have to be involved in perpetual conflicts because otherwise having 10 aircraft carrier groups, hundreds of bases outside the US and other tools designed to project insane amounts of force anywhere on the globe cannot be justified. Orwell had a point about this:

      The essential act of war is destruction, not necessarily of human lives, but of the products of human labour. War is a way of shattering to pieces, or pouring into the stratosphere, or sinking in the depths of the sea, materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable, and hence, in the long run, too intelligent. Even when weapons of war are not actually destroyed, their manufacture is still a convenient way of expending labour power without producing anything that can be consumed. A Floating Fortress, for example, has locked up in it the labour that would build several hundred cargo-ships. Ultimately it is scrapped as obsolete, never having brought any material benefit to anybody, and with further enormous labours another Floating Fortress is built. In principle the war effort is always so planned as to eat up any surplus that might exist after meeting the bare needs of the population. In practice the needs of the population are always underestimated, with the result that there is a chronic shortage of half the necessities of life; but this is looked on as an advantage. It is deliberate policy to keep even the favoured groups somewhere near the brink of hardship, because a general state of scarcity increases the importance of small privileges and thus magnifies the distinction between one group and another.

      --
      "It is the business of the future to be dangerous" -Alfred North Whitehead
    22. Re:So fix it for $diety sake by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      If we cut back that far, the EU would shit itself and raise taxes 20% on their own people to make up for what the US has been spending on keeping the ever hungry Russia from taking back what they once owned.

      I'd like to see that happen. Let countries pay for their own defense. Then the US can finally afford universal healthcare. Poland and Finland wont anymore, but why should we put their people above our own families?

      I don't know why you call Poland on that. It's one of 5 countries that spend 2% or more of GDP on military [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Member_states_of_NATO#Military_expenditures] (2% is what NATO states agreed for 11 years ago). Poland is also on the 5th place in military expenditures as % of GDP while having 8th population. Go whine about France or Germany if you must.

    23. Re:So fix it for $diety sake by Kiuas · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Poland and Finland wont anymore, but why should we put their people above our own families?

      As a Finn: fuck you. We are not, and have never been, in NATO. We already pay for our own defense, every cent of it. We have compulsory military service for all men due to the size difference between us (5,4 million) and Russia (140 million). If push comes to shove we can muster nearly a trained million men into arms.

      The strategy of defense for us is not to compete with Russia in a direct conflict. But when you scatter 800 000 soldiers to the woods with guns and (modern) equipment hidden all around the vast countryside, it's going to make Afghanistan look like a a walk in the park. The Russians have around 30 000 troops that they can mobilize rapidly across the border. That's nowhere near enough to take us on. An invasion would require them to start moving large amounts of troops from elsewhere, something they have very limited capacity to do at the moment because of funds and the ongoing conflicts in both Ukraine and Syria.

      Which is to say: while we cannot singlehandedly defeat Russia, we can make occupying this country so costly to them in terms of lives and resources that they will have to think hard whether or not the benefits outweigh the costs. That's been the corner stone of the Finnish Defense Forces ever since the 2nd world war and so far the Russians have not desired to test just how serious we are about maintaining our independence, probably because they have some bad memories from the way the Winter War went for them.

      --
      "It is the business of the future to be dangerous" -Alfred North Whitehead
    24. Re:So fix it for $diety sake by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Know how i know you do not have a passport and have never been there?

    25. Re: So fix it for $diety sake by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      God forbid someone should have to make informed decisions in order to succeed.

      Some of us paid attention in school, found careers that we are good at and allow for continual employment even through hard economic times. Others want to play victim and cry about misfortune when it's been pretty clear for the last 20 years which way the world is shifting.

      Hint: those coal jobs still aren't coming back. Get a job installing solar or wind instead.

    26. Re:So fix it for $diety sake by MachineShedFred · · Score: 1

      So let's work a deal - they can outsource their defense needs to the US, and only raise their taxes by 10% to pay for it.

      We'll happily keep a carrier battle group parked in the Mediterranean. The EU's GDP was around $16T in 2016, so the invoice for $1.6T is on it's way, payable Net 30.

      --
      Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
    27. Re:So fix it for $diety sake by Ozrius · · Score: 1
      We shall meet at the market square!
      Here is an official video demonstrating the awesome capabilities of the Finnish Defence Forces. Every finnish reservist is ready to defend our ice hockey players and swans, if the call comes!

      https://youtu.be/FJvrY04r8io

    28. Re:So fix it for $diety sake by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      China's advances are dependent on how fast they can steal their technology from others.

      No, Chinese advances are dependent on how fast they can leverage the American university system to bootstrap their own industries and universities.

      I work for a non-profit affiliated with a top-tier university, and for at least the last 10 years the above-average number of Chinese and other Asian nationals attending the school has been blatantly obvious. I wouldn't be surprised if 1/3 of the student body was from China/Taiwan/Korea/etc. If other universities are comparable, that is a huge number of people being educated in the US.

      Where do these people go after finishing school? Some stay in the US for sure, but most probably go back to their home country. And what are they doing there? Research, engineering, etc. And while 10 years ago you rarely saw researchers form these countries participating in science, in the last couple of years there hass been a big uptick in their participation and visibility. So all that education is now bearing fruit. I would predict that within 10-15 years you will start to see that Chinese universities reach a level comparable to top-tier US schools, at which time you'll see the number of Asians coming to the US for school start to decline. Job complete.

      What I'm saying is that this really should not be a surprise if anyone bothered to look. The US entered the 21st century with a budget surplus and and a prosperous economy. We've spent the ensuing 17 years pissing away our gold on useless wars and setting the country up to be pillaged by corrupt idiots, and all the while China has been steadily exploiting opportunities and building on them. The world is moving forward while we consign ourselves to a second-tier future.

    29. Re: So fix it for $diety sake by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You ignorant fool! Every country? Yeah I'm sure Assad puts his citizens first.

      Oh and look at the British.... wait... they don't have citizens.... they're subjects.

    30. Re: So fix it for $diety sake by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That's some nice backwater ignorance you have there.

      Go fluff your nuts... whatever that means

    31. Re: So fix it for $diety sake by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah I like bacon in a pot. Delicious!

    32. Re: So fix it for $diety sake by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Depends who you are. The many countries that US started wars on doesn't think so.

      Let's face it US fight wars for its own benefit. It created UN and the world order for its benefit.

      It's money well spent actually. Being purely the riches and most powerful isn't good enough when a few other big boys gang up on you. Being rich, powerful and influential is important.

    33. Re: So fix it for $diety sake by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No, the UK has citizens, not subjects. It changed about 50 years ago, apart from a few people who moved to the UK from Hong Kong at that point.

    34. Re: So fix it for $diety sake by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Oops.. 20 not 50

    35. Re:So fix it for $diety sake by lsatenstein · · Score: 1

      Instead of billions on a stupid wall, invest billions in supercomputing tech. Hell, invest billions in semiconductor tech, cuz China is trying to take the lead in semiconductors big time.

      Fucking Trump, trying to bring back manufacturing when he doesn't understand the concept of "robot".

      I think it's too late to look at being ahead. The USA does not have exclusivity on intelligence, but the USA handicaps itself by having exhorbitantly high cost "for profit" universities. The pentium was designed in Israel, much of your supertech stuff is being done in Asia, or India or Israel.
      The number of university grads in the states as a percentage of the population is 15 percent less than most of the industrialized world. Canada, per capitia, has 15% more grads than the USA. Its because we say "low cost education and free healthcare is not for profit", but for country.

      --
      Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
  2. It's all made in China by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Almost all computers are manufactured in China or Taiwan nowadays.

    http://ctacs.weebly.com/news--articles/will-your-next-laptop-be-quanta-compal-wistron-or-clevo

    Perhaps the US should start manufacturing computers again?

    1. Re:It's all made in China by HornWumpus · · Score: 0

      Assembled in China out of parts from all over the world.

      --
      John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
    2. Re:It's all made in China by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Apple makes their Mac Pros in the U.S.A. but I don't know if it's from A to Z or only the assembly and the case.

    3. Re:It's all made in China by fluffernutter · · Score: 0

      I assumed that meant that was where they put the English documentation in the box and sealed it.

      --
      Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
    4. Re:It's all made in China by AHuxley · · Score: 2

      China is taking a lot of very slow consumer chips and making a fast networked computer system.
      Only the USA has the university graduates to design a real super computer with super computer ready CPU designs.
      China is doing what contractors sold the NSA in the 1980's. A lot of desktop CPU's on a really fast network can do some super computer like work on a lot of data.
      Great for the contractors selling a support service to the NSA.
      An easy hardware solution for China to get fast results if the question can be worked on with a more limited set of maths on a networked system.
      If the US wants to win the supercomputer race, just redefine what a real super computer is again.
      A fast network of consumer cpu's is not a real supercomputer anymore.
      With a new ranking standard the USA is number one again.

      --
      Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
    5. Re:It's all made in China by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes, if you start losing, just change the rules or redefine winning. Why not do both. You're sounding like best korea again.

    6. Re:It's all made in China by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No. They are not. Skim the linked report. It discusses the latest Chinese machine; In summary, it is not "a stunt" as it's predecessors were.

      The U.S. has no monopoly on intelligence. What it does have is a lead and the report claims that is becoming dangerously narrow.

    7. Re:It's all made in China by serviscope_minor · · Score: 5, Insightful

      China is taking a lot of very slow consumer chips and making a fast networked computer system.

      That's not right. It's not even wrong.

      You don't seem to understand what modern supercomputers are, what China are doing or what the hard bit is.

      The Tianhe-2 (current #2) uses Xeon and Xeon Phi chips like many of the other top 500. Xeon Phi is the Xeon equivalent of a GPU which is more or less a large bunch of rather slow, FP heavy cores connected on die with a good interconnect. They couple the whole show together with their own custom interconnect, which is one of the hard bits. Intel spent $125 million to buy a previous generation interconnect from Cray, because that was easier than rolling their own.

      But anyway the Tianhe-2 is like many (the majority) on the top 500, COTS CPUs, COTS coprocessor cards and some sort of cool interconnect.

      And then there's Sunway TaihuLight, the current #1. That's another ball of wax. That's a bit more like the K-computer (#7) which has a large number of custom CPU dies with relatively low clocking, high floating point density cores with a networking interconnect right there on the die for extra low latency. The Sunway CPUs are a bit like the Cell in archiecture. Either way, they've got a huge amount of floating point grunt and are not remotely consumer chips.

      Only the USA has the university graduates to design a real super computer with super computer ready CPU designs.

      Actual verifiable facts disagree with you. The #1 position is a custom design made in China. The former #1 (now #7) is a custom design made in Japan, and has the best peak to max ratio on the list.

      The US currently dominates the list, but is not the only player. Your claim is nothing but mindless jingoism fuelled by an ignorance of how supercomputers work.

      A fast network of consumer cpu's is not a real supercomputer anymore.

      A very fast, low latency network of CPUs is the *only* thing a supercomputer is anymore.

      With a new ranking standard the USA is number one again.

      Right so if y'all simply define yourselves to be #1, then youre #1. What does that achive?

      --
      SJW n. One who posts facts.
    8. Re:It's all made in China by MachineShedFred · · Score: 1

      Nope - they've published video of the factory creating the trash can case and everything. They built a very expensive facility to do it.

      It's a shame they aren't using it to make a computer that anyone actually wants to buy.

      --
      Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
  3. unless the U.S. acts quickly to increase spending by turkeydance · · Score: 1

    copy paste

  4. To Quote The Late Buck Turgidson: by DoktorMidnight · · Score: 3

    "Mr. President we must not allow a mineshaft gap!"

  5. Or quit slurping our data.. by xxxJonBoyxxx · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Alternatively, you could stop spying on everything everyone does, and use some of that money to cover your new toys.

    Out here in the real world, we're about done writing blank checks for "national security" and "them terrists". No one would ever notice if you cut your mission in half.

    1. Re:Or quit slurping our data.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      Out here in the real world, we're about done writing blank checks for "national security" and "them terrists".

      Evidently not, given that the US President is pushing for a massive _increase_ in defense spending.

    2. Re:Or quit slurping our data.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Out here in the real world, we're about done writing blank checks for "national security" and "them terrists". No one would ever notice if you cut your mission in half.

      Ha! That would require voting out enough Congressional incumbents, which doesn't happen nearly as much as it should given how low Congressional approval rates always are. Strange.

  6. Put us at risk? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Who is he talking about? Who's "us"?

    1. Re:Put us at risk? by BitterOak · · Score: 1

      Who is he talking about? Who's "us"?

      Well, since it's the NSA and DOE saying this, I'd guess us=U.S.

      --
      If I can be modded down for being a troll, can I be modded up for being an orc, or a balrog?
    2. Re:Put us at risk? by AHuxley · · Score: 1

      The revolution for the NSA contractor was to offer the NSA desktop computer CPU's on a fast network.
      The US collect it all policy resulted in data that needed to be sorted. A huge new network of desktop CPU's packaged to look like a classic super computer was a great idea to win a long term contract with.
      The hardware was cheap, the new network support needed was expensive. Win, win for a private sector contractor.
      The other emerging issue for the NSA is Australia, Canada and the GCHQ can buy the same methods and do not need NSA staff to help other 5 eye nations with bespoke US branded NSA export grade super computers.
      So other nations are collecting all, breaking codes and using low cost computer networks regional that no longer need constant direct NSA oversight and support.
      The other issue for the NSA is US universities are just giving every US CPU design away as its created by US graduates.
      A lot of other nations university students get to study into the USA. Some hold over cold war State department policy to make the US look nice?
      The US university system is addicted to the profits from such students? The CIA hopes to turn some of the students from Chain in the USA so that spy policy is worth the total loss of decades of US super computer plans?

      Only the NSA can see the epic fail in giving decades once secret US CPU plans to any other nations students who attend a top US university.
      Did the CIA actually turn a few students from China over the decades and the results from a few very well placed US spies in China that counter the NSA/GCHQ digital collection results?
      The more public question of a super computer gap will restore a funding balance. Think of the Army and Navy code breaking of the 1930's. Two sides of the US gov/mil working on the same issue and not sharing.
      The super computer gap news is just the public face of such issues.

      --
      Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
    3. Re:Put us at risk? by serviscope_minor · · Score: 1

      The revolution for the NSA contractor was to offer the NSA desktop computer CPU's on a fast network

      Stop banging that drum: it's just not true. I think the last single CPU supercomputer was the Cray 1. Even Cray himself who rather disliked multiple CPUs (would you rather have 1024 chickens or a strong ox) had to put 8 in the Cray-2.

      From then the number only went up. Even Mr Cray started going the massive parallelism route before he died. The problem is that you can't cram the power dissipitation or memory bandwidth into a really really small space. And you can't get the clock speed up that high so you have to do stuff in parallel as well. Once you start going wide you hit the wall after a while and need multiple streams of execution otherwise too many dependencies build up.

      There's no grand conspiracy from the NSA here, just a mix of physics and computer science. The first #1 to start going to large numbers of CPUs (still vector) was IIRC a Japanese machine. The last gasp of mega CPUs was also incidentally Japanese, the Earth Simulator which used Vector processors, pushing out an RS/6000 system, though even that had tons of CPUs. Just not as many (each vector CPU was about 6-10x faster than the RS/6000 server/desktop processors).

      After that it was clusters all the way. The next time Japan hit the #1 spot was with the K-computer which had piles and piles of SPARC CPUs, customised with extra floating point, but the big thing was the interconnect on die to make the network extra extra fast.

      So, this is no NSA conspiracy unless you think they've managed to persuade Japan to ignore the "true path", even though they clearly had and have cutting edge supercomputer tech there. It's a combiation of physics and computer science.

      --
      SJW n. One who posts facts.
    4. Re:Put us at risk? by AHuxley · · Score: 1

      re "Stop banging that drum"
      I was thinking more of what the NSA learned around the Project THOTH decade, 1984-88.

      --
      Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
  7. Hype by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    This is such crap. If the Chinese build a super computer that is twice as fast as our fastest one, it isn't going to be a national security crisis. We'll just have to run ours twice as long, or build two of them. It isn't like a 2x or even 10x speed difference makes any real difference in the problems you can solve. Let me know when they get to 1000x.

    1. Re:Hype by hey! · · Score: 1

      That's often the case, but not always. In some applications you have a deadline -- or a deadline/precision trade off (e.g. weather prediction).

      --
      Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
    2. Re:Hype by Imrik · · Score: 1

      I don't know of any such applications that would be best described as a national security issue.

    3. Re:Hype by hey! · · Score: 1

      I don't know of any such applications that would be best described as a national security issue.

      I certainly can, although I don't know whether they're what the author has in mind. The two applications that come immediately to mind are naval: high precision weather forecasting; and submarine identification from sensor data.

      --
      Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
    4. Re:Hype by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I don't know of any such applications that would be best described as a national security issue.

      You could, I dunno, maybe look? Here, let me help; A bullet item from page 6 of the US Department of Energy budget request for FY'17:

      $95 million for exascale computing, $31 million above FY 2016 Enacted, to improve the performance of the nuclear weapons computer codes needed to ensure the safety, security, and reliability of the nuclear stockpile without conducting nuclear tests, as well as increased funds for enhanced subcritical experiment capabilities.

      There ya go! Now you know there are more than one if the bullet used the plural properly.

    5. Re:Hype by EvilSS · · Score: 1

      I don't know of any such applications that would be best described as a national security issue.

      One of the biggest government uses for super computers is modeling nuclear weapons. These models are used to create smaller, more powerful warheads and in the absence of actual tests (due to treaty bans) these are how we now maintain and upgrade our nuclear stockpile. Since the DOE is mentioned in the article, I'd imagine that is the national security issue they are concerned with.

      --
      I browse on +1 so AC's need not respond, I won't see it.
  8. Fear mongers by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    "We have to spend more money on this project or we will all die"

  9. Spying on citizens or supercomputing advances by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Spying on citizens or supercomputing advances.

    The TLAs made their choice, so they should shut the fuck up or change course.

    1. Re:Spying on citizens or supercomputing advances by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You know that most of the US Government's supercomputing is at DoE labs, and has nothing to do with the NSA or the CIA, right?

      Hint: high performance computing got it's start in calculating yields of nuclear weapons designs.

  10. if your strength relies on the weakness of others by dAzED1 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    if your strength relies upon the weakness of others, then it isn't really strength. I know, "without light there is no dark" "without up there is no down" "without weakness there is no strength" - no. China is just 1 country, and has 6x the number of people. There are plenty of other countries that are in poor shape, if we (in the US) really feel we need to be "superior" to someone else. Until then, this kind of crap is a waste of tax dollars, under the thinly veiled cover of nationalism

  11. Stop crippling crypto then... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    If they didn't force the next crypto standard to be $whatever_they_can_crack+1 and instead actually raised the key sizes and rounds to future proof things we'd be fine.

    But they like to serve dual purposes like the current issue with AES, key derivation.... Design a nice weakness into the keyspace with only a small portion of the space having strong security guarantees and then of course create a single focal-point for all government agencies to ask for secure keys. Nice way to have a system that can be provably secure if anyone ever complains, you just say they choose a bad key and toss out a strong keyed example for the math proofs to calm the fears of any backdoors.

    This lovely setup they use is at risk now because another country may just do a +2 or more increase in computing power and they only hardened us against a +1 increase.

    Time to use stronger keys, more rounds, multiple sources of randomness, and clusters of computers each performing small chunks of the work to thwart any single system attack using homomorhic verifiable crypto. Patch GPG to allow larger key sizes (it's very easy and documented online) and only use these larger sizes. Start monitoring your system entropy levels when using lots of SSL sites since they all do now....

    Wise up your OpSec.....

  12. At risk? by Zemran · · Score: 4, Insightful

    US incompetence is portrayed as being a victim. As if China is a threat because the US has not done anything for decades. China deserves respect for getting their fingers out of their arses while the US is too busy wasting its money invading innocent counties. If we are to talk about risk discuss the real problem if we are talking about Chinese advances have the balls to show some respect.

    --
    I love stacking my barbecues in the shed at the end of summer - you can't beat a bit of grill on grill action.
    1. Re:At risk? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Protesting the wars was last decade. This decade you should be protesting the oligarchy and whining about how your wallet is empty and you have been out of work for years.

    2. Re:At risk? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I think this raises an interesting question: if China's success poses a threat to the US, doesn't, conversely, US success pose a threat to China? Or is US success a "universal good" in nature, one that doesn't have any negative side effects to other superpowers?

      This is a good starting point in understanding why other superpowers act as they do. A US missile shield or nukes in Europe provoke similar thoughts in Russia as Russian nukes in Cuba provoke in the US. It's a game of balance and when you tip the balance to one's favor, the other one reacts. You can't have your cake and eat it too.

    3. Re:At risk? by thunderclees · · Score: 1

      It was more desperation than genius. The CPC realized that their survival was at stake when the PLA refused to remove the protesters out of Tienanmen Square because they had not been paid in a year. There had long been an implied relationship between the CPC and the Chinese people in that their antics would be tolerated only as long as a majority of the people could be fed.

    4. Re:At risk? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The often untold story about Russia wanting to put missiles in Cuba, is that it was a reaction to the US putting Jupiter IRBMs in Turkey. The end of the crisis came about when the USSR removed the missiles and strategic bombers from Cuba, and the US scheduled to decommission the Jupiters. Of course, by the time that happened, Titan missiles were available and Polaris was deployed undersea, so they were completely redundant.

    5. Re:At risk? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah, gotta agree with the parent on this one. Some thoughts off the top of my head:

      1). China is investing money and time in improving itself. They ought to be applauded for this, especially considering how backwards China was for a very long time;

      2). I see no particular signs that China is "doing this" against the US or anyone else;

      3). The US can do this too you know, it's not a zero sum game;

      4). Ultimately, that's probably the political motivation for the DoE and NSA phrasing the issue in these terms. It's a whole lot easier to get funding and support when you cast the issue as a race to the death with an opponent. Remember the bad old days of the Bomber Gap, the Missile Gap, the Nukulur Weapons Gap, the Submarine Gap, ...

      IMO, turning inwards under a Trumply administration is far more of a threat to US leadership, than anything China is likely to do.

  13. Coming back to haunt us... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The Clinton administration authorized the sale of Cray computers and other computer technology to China in the 1990's as a "good will" gesture. China appears to have figured them out.

    1. Re:Coming back to haunt us... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Bill Clinton was the dick who signed the DMCA and we all know the DMCA is pure evil.

  14. spend more, not get more by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    China saves money on military equipment because they can buy stuff made in China. The soldiers are also cheaper, for the same reason: they are made in China.

    We're stuck with the high cost.

    We also throw weird crap into our military budget, like healthcare and education for veterans. Military spending is partly socialized medicine.

  15. What does this mean? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Bring in the overclockers! Then outsource their jobs! Let them train their replacements: robots who will work overtime for half the price! Give them incentives, like more money! Or more A.I. So that these robot replacements will unionize, after 3D printing guns and ammo Let them go and hire robot lawyers, who get to work in self-driving cars, while they watch the news and text their robot BFFs!

  16. millions of raspberry pi by dslmodem · · Score: 1

    I plan to snatch back the leadership back by assembling a few millions of raspberry pi. YEAH!

    --

    ^(oo)^pig~

  17. Inside Trump's mind by manu0601 · · Score: 1

    Since Donald Trump thinks China is the problem, claiming a lack of fund is going to let China overtake US seems a very good strategy to get funds.

    1. Re:Inside Trump's mind by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Trump's businesses are big importers from China and Mexico.

  18. 2020? How about 2016 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative
    1. Re: 2020? How about 2016 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Shhh, dont rock the boat. At least let Trump finish building the wall to keep the Americans in before telling them how much better the rest of the world is.

    2. Re: 2020? How about 2016 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The derp is strong in this one.

  19. to be like China? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It seems you want government to run industry. That is, you seek communism. You can have it faster if you move to a communist country. Maybe you should move to China... though they have a wall that might upset you.

    Walls generate tourism and thus bring in income: China's wall is mostly in bad repair, but the tourists still love it. The pope has a wall around his country. The wall in Jerusalem is busy with tourists praying. Even the little remaining bits of the London wall (from the Romans) and the Berlin wall are getting tourists. We need to compete, building a "Great Wall of America".

    Walls work. Israel has built several, causing huge reductions in deadly attacks. Mexico even built one to the south, since Mexico doesn't like illegals. (Mexico deports them. Mexico also checks ID for voting. Mexico doesn't allow anchor babies or "dreamers" or hand out benefits to the children of illegals.)

    Obama has a wall around his house. It's OK for him, but not for us regular people?

    1. Re:to be like China? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      China is hardly Communist, which is evidenced by the unequal distribution of wealth in the country.

      What they do have is pretty effective central planning that they have spiced up with a lot of Chinese Capitalism (TM) to kind of hide the underlying power structure that goes back to the old days when the party and army owned everything.

      Wall-wise, the Great Wall of China, really wasn't

      It wasn't a barrier (it was a series of signal posts and garrisons), it wasn't very effective and it wasn't even visible from orbit. As far as Israel's and Mexico's walls go, we have plenty of them too. Just look at the beautiful walls south of San Diego, CA and Nogales, AZ.

      And just like Israel we have people digging tunnels, and throwing stuff over them all the time. What we DO have that Israel does not is vast tracts of land that only serve to jack up the cost and limit the effectiveness of any barrier. There are great reasons that we currently have walls in populated areas and little more than rusty wire in remote areas, and that is the normal process of applying cost-benefit analysis before sinking a ton of money into work that does not provide adequate return.

    2. Re: to be like China? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Mexico doesn't allow undocumented immigrants because of its agreement with the US. The US makes Mexico secure it's southern border to try to reduce migration through Mexico to the US. I'm sure in the Breitbart pedobear talking points you had to do some Googling yourself to discover this by now.

    3. Re:to be like China? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Anything is visible from orbit, depending on the orbit and what optics are being used.

    4. Re:to be like China? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Pedantic much?

      https://www.nasa.gov/vision/space/workinginspace/great_wall.html

    5. Re:to be like China? by hattable · · Score: 1

      Hit it on the nose. Even in Mandarin, (typically) when you speak of communism as the M.O. of the country, you refer to it as "Chinese style communism" (loosely translated).

      The kicker is, as you mentioned, the centralized planning. With a five-year plan--which can fluctuate to extreme degrees responding to acute problems--one can obfuscate earmarked spending and hide actual power structures holding up the government, hide failures/give the party momentum to spin those failures into neutrals or successes.

      I find 'Chinese-Style Communism' quite fascinating.

      --
      OMG facts!
  20. Not gonna happen by 93+Escort+Wagon · · Score: 1

    All non-military, non-entitlement budget entries are going to be dramatically slashed in the current president's upcoming budget.

    --
    #DeleteChrome
    1. Re: Not gonna happen by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And of course, by slashed, you mean "won't grow as fast as they want." But, but, our 2018 budget is supposed to be $3.9B. You only gave us an increase to $3.8B. That's a $100M cut. Ignore that it's still $50M over last years budget, not a cut at all.

  21. Ploy to fund boondoggle HPC projects by roca · · Score: 0

    "HPC leadership" by itself is pointless. China owning big computers doesn't put the USA at risk. It's what they do with them that matters, and whatever *that* is, you likely won't neutralize it just by building even bigger computers in the USA.

    These HPC people are also glossing over the issue that for most important problems, parallelizing over commodity CPUs connected by commodity networks (i.e. the cloud) is far more cost-effective than the "big iron" shared-memory HPC systems, and via Google, Amazon and Microsoft, the USA completely rules that space.

    If the USA needs to build really big shared-memory HPC systems to solve some specific problem connected to China, by all means propose that. General scare-mongering about "HPC leadership" is just an invitation to waste taxpayers' money.

    1. Re:Ploy to fund boondoggle HPC projects by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      These HPC people are also glossing over the issue that for most important problems, parallelizing over commodity CPUs connected by commodity networks (i.e. the cloud) is far more cost-effective than the "big iron" shared-memory HPC systems, and via Google, Amazon and Microsoft, the USA completely rules that space.

      That's what HPC people do, minus the part about doing it in the cloud. Well, that and commodity networks (i.e. Ethernet) are not good for the applications that need low latency interconnects like Infiniband. The benefit is easily quantifiable. Why spend all that money of the computing power if the CPUs and GPUs are starved due to a higher latency network?

      Trust me, as someone who has worked in HPC a long time, there's no way cloud can be cost-effective compared to housing your own system. These clusters tend to run at 100% 24x7x365 and that is not a use case that "the cloud" is good at. Additionally they tend to have petabytes or dozens of petabytes of storage in parallel file systems, also not something you can pay someone else to do cheaply. I could easily compare "the cloud" to burning large stacks of money every day.

      I agree that "HPC leadership" is mostly meaningless.

    2. Re:Ploy to fund boondoggle HPC projects by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You know there is nothing in the protocol that makes infiniband lower latency or higher bandwidth than ethernet right?

    3. Re:Ploy to fund boondoggle HPC projects by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "HPC leadership" by itself is pointless.

      It's what they do with them that matters.

      I think this Male stereotype, Testosterone fulled attitude is the problem.

    4. Re:Ploy to fund boondoggle HPC projects by serviscope_minor · · Score: 1

      These HPC people are also glossing over the issue that for most important problems, parallelizing over commodity CPUs connected by commodity networks (i.e. the cloud) is far more cost-effective than the "big iron" shared-memory HPC systems,

      Nope there's a ton inaccurate about that. Firstly, supercomputers haven't been shared memory for decades. They're built with commodity (usually) CPUs with phenomenally expensive interconnect hardware. Sometimes expensive off the shelf, sometimes proprietary. Occasionally built right into the same die as the CPU.

      A super computer lives and dies on the quality of the interconnect. Using someone else's server with normal networking hardware simply won't work well for many HPC problems because they'd spend most of the time waiting for events.

      Ethernet first appears at position 94 on the top 500, with a machine using 10G Ethernet. It so happens that it has the dame gen xeons, running marginally faster. It has over 3x the number of CPUs to reach the same speed on the LINPACK benchmark, one known for not stressing the interconnects all that well.

      Not that Google sms Amazon use entirely normal networking hardware, but their datacenters are optimized got throughout, not for machine to machine latency and bandwidth.

      --
      SJW n. One who posts facts.
    5. Re:Ploy to fund boondoggle HPC projects by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Infiniband has RDMA. This allows you to access memory on another node in the cluster directly on a hardware level: the NIC will do a busmasterring DMA, the OS is normally not involved (unless security is enabled, then the transaction is verified by the OS before starting it, this gives some latency). Configured correctly you can literally pass a pointer to memory on a certain node to another node that can use it basically like local memory.

    6. Re:Ploy to fund boondoggle HPC projects by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Good ethernet network cards have RDMA as well. You can even choose at which level of the Ethernet/IP/UDP stack you want this to happen.

  22. $400 million deal by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "...Kushners, Trump In-Laws, Weigh $400 Million Deal with Chinese Firm "

    The problem here is the conflict of interest as much as the poor grasp of science in our fake President.

    http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/kushners-trump-in-laws-near-dollar400-million-deal-with-chinese-firm/ar-AAolWTh?li=BBnbcA1

    A New York real estate company owned by the family of President Trump’s son-in-law has been negotiating to sell a $400 million stake in its Fifth Avenue flagship skyscraper to a Chinese insurance company with ties to leading families of the Communist Party.

    1. Re:$400 million deal by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Anyone who has that kind of money in China has "ties to leading families of the Communist Party" - that's how they got the fucking money, or at least got to keep it.

      Also, you're showing us a story about a real estate holding company doing a real estate deal. I'm overwhelmed.

    2. Re:$400 million deal by Impy+the+Impiuos+Imp · · Score: 1

      Anyone who has that kind of money in China has "ties to leading families of the Communist Party" - that's how they got the fucking money, or at least got to keep it.

      Well, duh. That's why they went into power in the first place, and continue to do so in most, if not all, countries. Even the west they throw out tidbits to the population, but behind closed doors, money changes hands (unofficially, or officially through donations) and this or that regulatory burden or law gets changed. That's why they go into power everywhere.

      This worldview has yet to fail in its massive explanatory and predictive power.

      --
      (-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
  23. Where's the risk? by MSTCrow5429 · · Score: 1

    The article, accurately summarized and absent any clickbait titles: "They have a faster supercomputer than we do. That means they are ranked higher, and are faster than ours. We want the fastest supercomputers. Whoever has the fastest supercomputer can solve all our problems, but that person only. It should be us, so we need the fastest supercomputer."

    --
    Slashdot: Playing Favorites Since 1997
  24. But "we" have Nvidia by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Our secret weapon

  25. Trump understands by Okian+Warrior · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Fucking Trump, trying to bring back manufacturing when he doesn't understand the concept of "robot".

    Perhaps, but I'm pretty sure he understands the concept of unemployment.

    In your opinion, is supercomputing more important than bringing back jobs?

    What's your stance on H1B then?

    1. Re:Trump understands by AmiMoJo · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Supercomputing WILL bring back jobs! Far more so than manual labour that will be quickly automated away.

      Supercomputing is how you develop new materials, new drugs, new high end manufacturing. All the good jobs are in services now, not labour that a machine could do if it were only very slightly cheaper than a human.

      That's what the Chinese recognize and why they will overtake the US if things don't change. You can't hang on to the jobs of the past, you have to adapt and change with the times and invest in your future. China is absolutely brutal about advancement and putting the good of the country before individuals who want to keep living their same lifestyle. The US doesn't need to go that far, but it can't be too luddite about it either.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
  26. Fat nibber bitches & bangerboiz cost too much by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    So productive white folks get hyper-taxed for nibber-welfare & can't afford to spend on computer/machine tek and subtle creative meditations. Gotahavethatbling ... when the bootyshakesthatthing. Fuck! Chi.comz when they take over USA will just let the nibbers/narco.MEX & snow-whiteflakes starve-to-death.

  27. Crocodile Leather and its Benefits by conected · · Score: 0

    craftsmen of a very famous crocodile skin from indonesia. Entrepreneur chandra ekajaya was the owner. https://mychandraekajaya.com/c...

    1. Re:Crocodile Leather and its Benefits by hyades1 · · Score: 1

      Go suck a crocodile cock, spamhole.

      --
      I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
  28. Extry! Extry! Read all about it!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    This bulletin just in: "Supercomputing experts say, 'Spend more money on us!''

  29. "Build better bridges" by tlambert · · Score: 2

    "Build better bridges".

    Not really. The better we've become at engineering, the more we cut the bridge designs from "massively overbuilt, in such a way as to endure they never fall apart" to replace them with "barely overbuilt, in such a way as the first storm slightly out of the overage tolerance we've allowed will cause everything to be destroyed".

    Seems stupid.

    Rather than trying to figure out how to cut our tolerances as close to the bone as possible, we should probably go back to massively overbuilding things -- and then use our knowledge of tolerances to *ensure* they are massively overbuilt.

    If we did that, we wouldn't have things like the 2007 I-35W bridge collapse happening. The bridges might sink into the ground under their own weight, but they wouldn't be collapsing.

    1. Re:"Build better bridges" by Gilgaron · · Score: 1

      The flip side of that coin is that if you overbuild the bridges, you may only be able to afford to fix half of them.

    2. Re:"Build better bridges" by tlambert · · Score: 1

      The flip side of that coin is that if you overbuild the bridges, you may only be able to afford to fix half of them.

      The flip side of that is that there are Roman aqueducts still in service, because the Romans overbuilt as well. So you won't *need* to fix the other half of them.

    3. Re:"Build better bridges" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If you think the Roman's wouldn't have built just slightly over spec if they knew as much about engineering as we do, I've an aqueduct to sell you. The reason old structures appear over-engineered is two-fold: ancients (and even Victorians to a lesser extent) didn't know a great deal about structural design compared to modern engineers so they overengineered basically because they didn't know what was actually required, and the other is good old-fashioned selection bias.

    4. Re:"Build better bridges" by tlambert · · Score: 1

      I'm pretty sure the Romans thought their empire was going to last forever, and built based on that eventuality.

      So what you're arguing is that the Romans would have build just as ephemerally as we do, even though they didn't expect to be ephemeral, had slaves, and didn't have labor unions that needed make-work contracts to keep the workers happy.

      By "selection bias", you are referring to the Romans killing engineers and architects who built things that fell down, leaving only non-dead engineers and architects to design and build new things, right?

    5. Re:"Build better bridges" by Gilgaron · · Score: 1

      Selection bias in this sense is similar to looking at other artifacts. For example, ancient furniture sure was better built than modern stuff! Look at the pieces in museums holding together for hundreds of years! (The poorly built stuff already fell apart). If I don't know how to calculate load, I might have to build a chair using the strongest joinery I know how to make. If I can calculate load, I can save time and materials by making it to spec. Same thing.

  30. Dissolve the TSA. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The budget freed by that should suffice. And, oh, the DEA too.

  31. A cry from a fascist and oppressive government by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "the security of the nation is at risk", because some other country, that happens to be peaceful, has made advancements that we haven't.

  32. Duh... by thunderclees · · Score: 1

    That is what happens when you educate foreign nationals in your universities and make all of your stuff in their country.

    1. Re:Duh... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If it wasn't for those pesky foreign nationals, the U.S. tech sector would crumble. Also, the majority of them are not educated in the failure that is U.S. education, they are already educated and highly skilled engineers by the time the brain-drain program, a.k.a H1B visa program, lets them come to the U.S. to help out.

  33. how is that even possible? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    China has all of its top engineers trained in the US.

    The time to worry about China taking over supercomputing is when they announce the opening of a major university and they start recruiting top talent from around the world. Even then it will take at least a generation for a new institution, percolated in a cozy bath of Chinese cultural values, to produce more than the next generation of script kiddies.

  34. Chickens, meet roost by AutodidactLabrat · · Score: 1

    Capitalists spent the better part of a half-century driving out skills based work
    Not surprisingly, hundreds of thousands of highly educated people decided to go home with their training after their individual H1-B indentures expired and compete with their old bosses
    With EVERY product being offshored, the design work of man-millennia has become Chinese property
    Thank you very much Capitalists, for making America wilt
    The next generation of 'enemies' will now have superior tech to ours...and will win wars, unlike our Pentagon.

  35. TLDR by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    NSA wants more money

  36. Outsourcing by TJHook3r · · Score: 1

    What do you expect, when you outsource hi-tech and manufacturing? Of course they are going to surpass you someday.

  37. Translation: by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "NSA, DOE want more money"

    Every time I see one of these stories, I know it must be budget time.

  38. Just tell Trump by CanadianMacFan · · Score: 1

    Tell him that you need all these new supercomputers to make his tweets the bestest, and most read. If that doesn't get you a $10B or so then nothing will.

  39. Re:if your strength relies on the weakness of othe by Rozzin · · Score: 1

    if your strength relies upon the weakness of others, then it isn't really strength. I know, "without light there is no dark" "without up there is no down" "without weakness there is no strength" - no. China is just 1 country, and has 6x the number of people. There are plenty of other countries that are in poor shape, if we (in the US) really feel we need to be "superior" to someone else. Until then, this kind of crap is a waste of tax dollars, under the thinly veiled cover of nationalism

    Except it's not about some vague notion of the "strength" (whatever that means) of the US or the "weakness" of everyone else, or being "superior" in terms of some sort of abstract `virtue'. It's about security vs. vulnerability, which are in fact appropriate to define in terms of the capacity of others to do you harm.

    The concerns here are things like:

    * China being more capable than the US of running the sort of simulations involved in developing advanced weapons systems, such that China could become invulnerable to US weapons tech while simultaneously meaning that the US is would become increasingly vulnerable to Chinese weapons tech.
    * China being more capable than the US of running analytics such that they can circumvent US surveillance capabilities while simultaneously surveilling the US and its allies in ways that the US cannot circumvent.

    We're not talking about being on the beach and being jealous of the guy with the big muscles because all of the girls are fawning over him, and figuring that if he'd just leave and let you be the only guy there then surely all of the girls would be fawning over you. It's more like thinking "that guy with the attitude problem has been working out and turning into a real bruiser; pretty soon I might not be able to keep him from kicking my dog anymore".

    --
    -rozzin.
  40. Re:if your strength relies on the weakness of othe by dAzED1 · · Score: 1

    China is nearly half a century behind us in military tech. And currently, their budget is a quarter that of the US. I'm not exactly sure what you think they're going to do to us in this or the next generation, but by the time they actually catch up - even if we merely matched their budget - we'd be back to where we were 50 years ago with Russia - neither defensively able to counter the other's offensive capabilities, thus "mutually assured destruction" being the deterrent. On the other hand, maybe the US doesn't need to project military force across the entire farking planet? What craziness could we accomplish if we were just using our military to defend ourselves, not police the planet? (prior military, btw)

  41. Re:if your strength relies on the weakness of othe by Rozzin · · Score: 1

    I'm not exactly sure what you think they're going to do to us in this or the next generation,

    You seem to have mistaken me for one of the people in the article. I was merely explaining to article to someone who had misunderstood it (actually, a apparently a number of people who had misunderstood it--seeing as the mistaken comment was highly rated).

    I have not done my own analysis of Chinese vs. US capabilities, and even if I had it wouldn't have been based on whatever these people supposedly saw at the conference (since I wasn't there). Maybe the observations expressed in the article were correct, maybe they were mistaken, or maybe they were even lies.

    When you write...:

    China is nearly half a century behind us in military tech.
    [...]
    by the time they actually catch up - even if we merely matched their budget - we'd be back to where we were 50 years ago with Russia - neither defensively able to counter the other's offensive capabilities, thus "mutually assured destruction" being the deterrent

    Considered that perhaps the people behind the statements in the article may simple not agree with your premise that cold war is actually a desirable state of affairs. And that's probably in some part due to the fact that "mutually assured destruction" only works as a deterrent on people who aren't suicidal or otherwise find with their victories being pyrrhic; consider, for example, the conversation that Robert McNamara says he had with Fidel Castro in `The Fog of War'--something like:

    I asked him 3 questions. One, "did you know there were nuclear warheads in Cuba?" Two, "would you have recommended to Khrushchev to use nuclear missiles in the event of an American invasion of Cuba?" And three, "what would have happened to Cuba?" He said, "One, I knew the missiles were there. Two, I would not *have* recommended it, I *did* recommend it! And three, we would have been totally obliterated"

    Another consideration is that 50 years can actually be either an incredibly short or incredibly long period in terms of political relations, military technology, and military capabilities (where "capabilities" isn't actually quite the same thing as "technology"). And part of that consideration is that you may actually not get to choose whether 50 years is `short' or `long'.

    And yet another is that, once you get to that `equilibrium' of mutually-assured destruction, even if you assume that everyone else with heavy arms is perfectly sane, it's still not a stable state. e.g.: what if the other if both you and the other guy have enough nuclear ICBMs to ensure mutual destruction given current launch- and early-warning technology, and current levels of strategy and tactics..., and you're not actually at the absolute pinnacle of all of those things yet? What if ICBMs aren't actually the quickest way of obliterating your enemy that will every be possible, and if there are new breakthroughs in strategy or tactics possibly just around the corner?

    --
    -rozzin.