US Weighs Restricting Chinese Investment In Artificial Intelligence (reuters.com)

An anonymous reader shares a Reuters report: The United States appears poised to heighten scrutiny of Chinese investment in Silicon Valley to better shield sensitive technologies seen as vital to U.S. national security, current and former U.S. officials tell Reuters. Of particular concern is China's interest in fields such as artificial intelligence and machine learning, which have increasingly attracted Chinese capital in recent years. The worry is that cutting-edge technologies developed in the United States could be used by China to bolster its military capabilities and perhaps even push it ahead in strategic industries. The U.S. government is now looking to strengthen the role of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), the inter-agency committee that reviews foreign acquisitions of U.S. companies on national security grounds. An unreleased Pentagon report, viewed by Reuters, warns that China is skirting U.S. oversight and gaining access to sensitive technology through transactions that currently don't trigger CFIUS review.

Comments

Re:Last time the US tried

[Guspaz]

It's a shortsighted policy: instead of the Chinese investing money in US research, they'll invest money in Chinese research.

The end result is they'll get the technology they want, and the US won't get the benefits of the research. That's how we ended up with China having manned spaceflight capabilities while the US doesn't, and how we ended up with China having the most powerful supercomputers.

Re:Last time the US tried

[religionofpeas]

I think NASA, SpaceX, and Blue Origin would disagree with you.

SpaceX isn't man-rated. BO can't even get to orbit, and NASA doesn't have rockets.

Chinese strategy since mid-200x

[fubarrr]

Chinese strategy since mid-200x: seal new economic opportunities, let the enemy run out of possible moves.

Rare earth metal mining, and all of new industries orbiting it - nuked mid 200x
"Big solar" - went throught "slash and burn" acquisition
Battery tech - again, all worthy companies got sold to Chinese before they had an opportunity to make a dent on Chinese battery monopoly
"New nuclear" - in Chinese pocket since 2015
The entire field of bioinformatics eaten by China before it even had a chance to emerge

This list can go on for few pages

Re:Chinese strategy since mid-200x

[mspohr]

I agree.
The US has fallen behind and is now a "has been" country like (formerly) Great Britain.
China is the leader in innovation and technology.
Now that Trump has taken us out of the renewable energy business, the Chinese takeover of that field is complete. They already produce 2/3 of the world's solar panels and half the windmills plus almost all of the new nuclear.
We're toast.

Re:Chinese strategy since mid-200x

[gweihir]

Well, to be fair, the UK was already a "has been" before it joined the EU and got propped up. Apparently they now think they were on the right path back then and want to continue the downward way. The US is a bit newer in the club of "has beens", but this has been obvious for at least a decade or so as well.

I don't think China is the leader though. They are pretty mediocre in most areas. That puts them vastly ahead of the US, but behind the EU. (And no, the EU is not being overrun by barbarian hordes at the moment, the problem has been blown vastly out of proportion by the usual political profiteers...). In the end, I think it comes down to education. The US education system is pretty bad, but until 9/11, that could be compensated by importing well-educated foreigners. What the US now sees is the result of its more restrictive (and ultimately, suicidal) immigration policies. Now, a vast problem that China has is that its education system is also not really good. In particular it restricts independent thinking and that is a real killer for advancement in science and technology. Sure, they have money now and are buying a lot of companies, but ultimately, that has limited effect if you do not get the people that had the good ideas in the first place as part of the deal.

It will be interesting to see how this pans out, and the only important aspect is the long-term one. My prediction is that long-term, Europe and China will have a lot of mutual cooperation to get both the economic power (China) and the "tinkerer mindset" (Europe) combined. The US will become a backwater.

Maybe don't scare off scientists?

[king neckbeard]

I think it would be much more practical for he US to get rid of policies that undermine America's scientific capabilities, such as denial of basic scientific fact.

Re:Last time the US tried

[religionofpeas]

A lot more horsepower, deeper network, better algorithms, and better understanding.

Re:Last time the US tried

[taustin]

You think wrong. Currently, neither NASA nor any private launch company in the US has the ability to launch people into space. SpaceX is closing in on it, but they need a number of successful launches before their rockets are man rated, and probably even more to get the capsule man rated. That's why we rely on Russian rockets to put our astronauts into space right now.