My read is that the US has over-indexed heavily on "intellectual property" and that position is profitable, but an overall net drag on innovation and research.
China is much less indexed on IP, and often outright ignores it. This allows them to be much more competitive in innovation over the long term, but at short term reputational damage.
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From the US side - if you're a company operating in a restrictive, patent encumbered space... it absolutely feels like an unfair field. Those other companies are able to ignore the restrictions you're hemmed in by (steal).
From the China side - if you're a company operating outside of compliance with licensing and IP, you get a reputation for "just stealing" even when your research is novel and impactful.
Of the two - I believe the US is "more incorrect". The current IP laws feel a lot less like encouraging innovation and a lot more like government enabled and funded rent-seeking.
For example, let's not pretend the frontier AI labs aren't violating copyrights on a massive scale.
There have been other subtle examples of US companies being cavalier as to IP over the years, but courts (and the US government) have pretty much allowed companies to do so without so much as a wrist slap.
I think LLMs are going to be (are) excellent at skirting IP law - 'make me something that does the exact same thing, but is sufficiently different that it can be considered novel'
I think IP is the type of thing where countries that benefit from enforcing it will do so while those who get more benefit from ignoring it will ignore it. China has reached a point where they greatly benefit from IP now and may really start enforcing it. That said, I wouldn't bet on it. China has a tendency to act in ways that defy Western understanding of the world. (BTW, I love it when they do because it's one of those moments that make you go "huh?" and prompts you to investigate more. I usually end up learning something in the process. It's fun if you're into that kind of thing.)
I want to give grace to people who have outdated perspectives on China. China's journey in development is extraordinarily compressed. It's gone through more stages within a single generation than countries do in a century. People's perception will take time to catch up. Unless you're an avid China watcher, the changes in China can really surprise people.
It doesn't even make sense. Huawei has R&D centers all over the world. Their largest outside of China is actually in India. But they also have research centers in Japan, Russia, Brazil, Sweden, Germany, Turkey, the UK, and many more. They help drive research all across the globe. They and the countries they invest in mutually benefit from this partnership
how does them partnering with some Canadian R&D facilities contradict anything in GP's post? They also have a ton of R&D in Sweden, Russia, Brazil, Japan, etc. Their largest R&D center outside of China is actually India
Google "Huawei Nortel Networks". The fact is that Nortel has an enormous volume of R&D stolen from them and the allegation is that Chinese telecom providers were the main beneficiaries.
Edited: To reply to a child post, this is about the allegations referred to in the parent, not a statement of what I think is true now
My mom worked at Nortel in the 1990s at their Ottawa R&D campus. As a teenager visiting, I asked about corporate espionage, hoping for a story about Cisco or something. Every one of her co-workers just belted out "China" at the same time. It was apparently an open secret that the Chinese were hoovering up IP and management didn't care. It's a bit of a shame as Nortel's telecom kit was considered top-notch (especially the cellular stuff), but it gave the Chinese an enormous amount of help catching up.
That being said, the Chinese then went off and innovated off of it and Nortel imploded, mostly due to other poor management reasons. My mom was at least smart enough to cash out most of her equity as she got them, though. Lotta people lost everything.
Charitable interpretation is Huawei actually had R&D + academic linkages in Canada (was expanding aggressively globally), but Canada still drop in bucket, Canada R&D headcount peaked ~1k vs ~100k in PRC. Post sanction, Canada basically siloed from doing crown jewel work anyway.
Terminally stupid cannucks still butt and misattributing Nortel primary fell to HW stole muh secrets, not that Nortel grossly mismanaged (and outright fraud). Hint PRC stole lots of shit back then... but Nortel fucking exploded spectacularly. Why didn't CISCO explode because HW copied some homework... because unlike CISCO, Nortel was mismanaged to shit. NVM HW wasn't even state champion at the time, that was ZTE, they didn't juicy state level industrial espionage perks. Meanwhile allegations against HW vs Nortel was over optical routing, i.e. niche shit to HW overall portfolio. It's just Canadian cope.
This not mentioning Nortel basically brought this on themselves by bamboo ceiling the shit out of Chinese employees in PRC (both international/PRC nationals). Nortel HQ/Ottawa -> North PRC/Guangzhou, i.e. from Canadians to Chinese Canadians basically all defected Nortel (and poached entire R&D teams), because North PRC wasn't giving them their dues... and not just to PRC SOEs, but western competitors like lucent/acatel etc. Defectors were bitching / organizing in my local Counter Strike server, their AFKs very disruptive, so in a sense I was just as much victim as Nortel.
HN is enamored with the reddit-style of thought that China can only ever steal from Western research.
I think it's a more complicated discussion.
My read is that the US has over-indexed heavily on "intellectual property" and that position is profitable, but an overall net drag on innovation and research.
China is much less indexed on IP, and often outright ignores it. This allows them to be much more competitive in innovation over the long term, but at short term reputational damage.
---
From the US side - if you're a company operating in a restrictive, patent encumbered space... it absolutely feels like an unfair field. Those other companies are able to ignore the restrictions you're hemmed in by (steal).
From the China side - if you're a company operating outside of compliance with licensing and IP, you get a reputation for "just stealing" even when your research is novel and impactful.
Of the two - I believe the US is "more incorrect". The current IP laws feel a lot less like encouraging innovation and a lot more like government enabled and funded rent-seeking.
Everyone is selectively ignoring IP.
For example, let's not pretend the frontier AI labs aren't violating copyrights on a massive scale.
There have been other subtle examples of US companies being cavalier as to IP over the years, but courts (and the US government) have pretty much allowed companies to do so without so much as a wrist slap.
You ignore IP to get ahead, and then demand respecting it to defend your moat.
100+ years ago, US built its own empire on IP from the mainland Europe, so it's all turntables turning.
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I think LLMs are going to be (are) excellent at skirting IP law - 'make me something that does the exact same thing, but is sufficiently different that it can be considered novel'
I think IP is the type of thing where countries that benefit from enforcing it will do so while those who get more benefit from ignoring it will ignore it. China has reached a point where they greatly benefit from IP now and may really start enforcing it. That said, I wouldn't bet on it. China has a tendency to act in ways that defy Western understanding of the world. (BTW, I love it when they do because it's one of those moments that make you go "huh?" and prompts you to investigate more. I usually end up learning something in the process. It's fun if you're into that kind of thing.)
I want to give grace to people who have outdated perspectives on China. China's journey in development is extraordinarily compressed. It's gone through more stages within a single generation than countries do in a century. People's perception will take time to catch up. Unless you're an avid China watcher, the changes in China can really surprise people.
1 reply →
It doesn't even make sense. Huawei has R&D centers all over the world. Their largest outside of China is actually in India. But they also have research centers in Japan, Russia, Brazil, Sweden, Germany, Turkey, the UK, and many more. They help drive research all across the globe. They and the countries they invest in mutually benefit from this partnership
how does them partnering with some Canadian R&D facilities contradict anything in GP's post? They also have a ton of R&D in Sweden, Russia, Brazil, Japan, etc. Their largest R&D center outside of China is actually India
Huawei 20% of its annual revenue back into R&D
Like nortel?
what are you implying here ??? they steal it from Canada RnD ??
Google "Huawei Nortel Networks". The fact is that Nortel has an enormous volume of R&D stolen from them and the allegation is that Chinese telecom providers were the main beneficiaries.
Edited: To reply to a child post, this is about the allegations referred to in the parent, not a statement of what I think is true now
My mom worked at Nortel in the 1990s at their Ottawa R&D campus. As a teenager visiting, I asked about corporate espionage, hoping for a story about Cisco or something. Every one of her co-workers just belted out "China" at the same time. It was apparently an open secret that the Chinese were hoovering up IP and management didn't care. It's a bit of a shame as Nortel's telecom kit was considered top-notch (especially the cellular stuff), but it gave the Chinese an enormous amount of help catching up.
That being said, the Chinese then went off and innovated off of it and Nortel imploded, mostly due to other poor management reasons. My mom was at least smart enough to cash out most of her equity as she got them, though. Lotta people lost everything.
That was two decades ago. Things have changed a lot since then.
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Charitable interpretation is Huawei actually had R&D + academic linkages in Canada (was expanding aggressively globally), but Canada still drop in bucket, Canada R&D headcount peaked ~1k vs ~100k in PRC. Post sanction, Canada basically siloed from doing crown jewel work anyway.
Nortelstans: You took everything from me.
Huawei: I don't even know who you are.
Terminally stupid cannucks still butt and misattributing Nortel primary fell to HW stole muh secrets, not that Nortel grossly mismanaged (and outright fraud). Hint PRC stole lots of shit back then... but Nortel fucking exploded spectacularly. Why didn't CISCO explode because HW copied some homework... because unlike CISCO, Nortel was mismanaged to shit. NVM HW wasn't even state champion at the time, that was ZTE, they didn't juicy state level industrial espionage perks. Meanwhile allegations against HW vs Nortel was over optical routing, i.e. niche shit to HW overall portfolio. It's just Canadian cope.
This not mentioning Nortel basically brought this on themselves by bamboo ceiling the shit out of Chinese employees in PRC (both international/PRC nationals). Nortel HQ/Ottawa -> North PRC/Guangzhou, i.e. from Canadians to Chinese Canadians basically all defected Nortel (and poached entire R&D teams), because North PRC wasn't giving them their dues... and not just to PRC SOEs, but western competitors like lucent/acatel etc. Defectors were bitching / organizing in my local Counter Strike server, their AFKs very disruptive, so in a sense I was just as much victim as Nortel.
https://ottawacitizen.com/news/national/defence-watch/the-my...
Are you saying Huawei will collapse if their Canadian R&D centers shutdown?