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China Makes a Big Play In Silicon Valley (npr.org)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from NPR: The Chinese government has been forming global partnerships with Western think tanks, recruiting key talent at networking events sponsored by the Chinese government and working with U.S. universities, says Michael Brown, managing director of the Pentagon's Defense Innovation Unit in Mountain View, Calif. The unit was set up in 2015 to help the U.S. military capitalize on emerging commercial technologies. And, he notes, there is serious concern in Washington that China could acquire too much sensitive U.S. technology and transfer it back home.

Adam Lysenko, a senior analyst at Rhodium Group, an economic research firm, says American entities represent the largest venture capital investment in startup technology companies, but Chinese investment accounts for about 15 percent of the deals. In the past eight years, there were more than 1,300 rounds of funding for U.S. startups with at least one Chinese investor, Lysenko says, totaling about $11 billion of Chinese investment. After a record 2017, Rhodium Group predicts 2018 will be another record year for Chinese venture capital into U.S. startups. Lysenko says this has become a concern in national security circles because the nature of emerging technology is inherently dual-use: The artificial intelligence algorithms that help speed up your smartphone could also be applied to weapons on the battlefield.
China's quest for innovation and know-how can best be illustrated by the offices of Baidu -- China's largest internet provider and Google's rival -- which is located right next to a Google complex. "Baidu opened its innovation center, called the Institute of Deep Learning, four years ago, with a focus on a self-driving vehicle called Apollo," reports NPR. "Other Chinese tech powerhouses -- Alibaba, Tencent and Huawei -- also have Silicon Valley research and development centers. Instead of buying an existing U.S. business, these Chinese tech giants come to the U.S. and build new companies from the ground up, in what's known as 'greenfield' investments. [T]hese Chinese tech companies hire away a lot of U.S. employees who might otherwise work for American businesses."

7 of 72 comments (clear)

  1. As the maxim goes... by Berkyjay · · Score: 2

    ...the U.S. innovates while China steals.

  2. Re:Good journalism because by dcw3 · · Score: 3, Informative

    Speaking to the US here more than China that has never conducted a foreign war

    Never conducted a foreign war?
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

    --
    Just another day in Paradise
  3. Re:Good journalism because by Koreantoast · · Score: 2

    Bah! The Korean War was conducted by 1.4M armed "volunteers" who were showing solidarity with a fellow socialist state. The invasion of India was a land grab... err... merely self defense of our borders. The invasion of Vietnam was a punitive self defense expedition to help prop up a regime so bloodthirsty that even other Communist nations wanted to dispose of... err... protect the innocent Khmer Rouge from bullying by pseudo-socialist Soviet imperialists and their Vietnamese puppet lackeys! :P /s

  4. Dateline CHINA: Interpol Chief Disappeared! by sgt_doom · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Dateline CHINA: Interpol Chief Disappeared!

    Evidently I am one of many in North America who was unaware of the status of the Interpol chief, incorrectly assuming when I heard his name that he was a Chinese-European --- and appalled to learn he was a Chinese national and member of the Chinese Communist Party who had been number man at their intelligence organization, the Ministry of Public Security!
    Holy Mother of God !!!!!
    And there are still fools --- and minions of the oligarchy --- who question and criticize Brexit!
    The devil with those jackals!
    The government of China is a vile, despicable totalitarian capitalist state full of corruption of the princelings, the spawn of the founders of the Communist Party in that country and it is obvious that the Interpol chief, Meng, was with the competitor political faction to Xi Jinping's political gang --- Xi Jinping being China's self-appointed emperor. (Jinping's daddy was the author of the original Chinese constitution which Xi amended.)
    This is a most blatant and public insult from China to the EU --- suggestive of China's bellicose and warlike stance against the democracies of the world!
    Let us not forget the many recent disappearances performed by China: against pro-democracy academic critics, journalists, and the wholesale disappearance of most --- if not all --- of China's human rights attorneys of several years ago!
    In America, those jackals of the Business Roundtable, National Association of Manufacturers, Cato Institute, American Enterprise Institute and too many other viper nests, assured us that if all the jobs, technology and investment were offshored to China they would have long since morphed into a democracy by now.
    So much for the feckless self-serving assertions of jackals!
    With China's program of "soft" intelligence penetration by way of their Confucius Institutes (from a decidedly anti-Confucius government) coupled with their Trojan horse of foreign property acquisition through debt warfare (their One Belt One Road (One Ruler) Initiative) --- and their militarization of artificial islands in the seas of the Pacific, especially the South China Sea, of which two-thirds of the oil shipments traverse --- their global martial strategy is evident.
    Add to that their insidious implementation of an ultra-Orwellian control system: their Social Credit System, to further subvert any possibility of human rights in China and the future is obvious and cannot be disputed! Supporters of China's government spew nothing more than red dragon droppings: giant piles of crap! Suggested reading:
    https://www.nchrd.org/2018/07/...
    https://www.nchrd.org/2018/07/...
    https://www.scmp.com/video/chi...
    https://www.rfa.org/english/ne...
    https://www.theguardian.com/wo...
    https://foreignpolicy.com/2018...
    https://www.hrichina.org/en/pr...
    https://qz.com/1129837/human-r...
    https:/

  5. Steal technology and sabotage by mi · · Score: 2

    The Chinese tech is a few generations away from the artificial intelligence capable of controlling weapon-systems. So, while some arms of their government are busy trying to steal as much know-how as possible to replicate it, other arms — through paying "thinktanks", "community outreach", and infiltrating government — are planting the idea, that "AI is unethical" — both, in general and particularly in military applications.

    And Silicon Valley's "best" are falling for it...

    --
    In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
  6. Re:Lots of people by mi · · Score: 2

    distinction between a private company and a gov't-influenced/controlled organization there is fuzzy and difficult to ascertain

    Actually, it is very easy to ascertain: there no distinction. Every Chinese abroad, who still has relatives in China, is subject to blackmail. And many — though not all, of course — are willing to help their government voluntarily.

    --
    In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
  7. Re:Lots of people by kaatochacha · · Score: 2

    This. I get my haircut at a place down the street, cheap place run by Chinese immigrants, been going there for years. Employees hardly talked to me, but I didn't care since I just wanted a haircut.
    When I last changed my job, I played a little trick- I'd been reading about this spying. Told them I was working out at Edwards AFB in the network security. It's near my job now.
    Suddenly, they started trying to "introduce" me to women they knew, and being ever so nice.
    It was seriously odd. It only stopped once I told them I'd changed back to my old job.