Compute is definitely important for experiments. The limits undoubtedly slow China’s progress, but what’s more difficult to determine is whether global progress is slower or not. In the toy scenario where China’s research focus is exactly parallel and duplicative of Western efforts, they contribute nothing to global progress unless they are faster. More realistically, research space is high-dimensional, and you are likely correct that the decreased magnitude of their research vector likely outweighs any extra orthogonality benefits, but I don’t know how to apply numbers to that tradeoff.
Compute is definitely important for experiments. The limits undoubtedly slow China’s progress, but what’s more difficult to determine is whether global progress is slower or not. In the toy scenario where China’s research focus is exactly parallel and duplicative of Western efforts, they contribute nothing to global progress unless they are faster. More realistically, research space is high-dimensional, and you are likely correct that the decreased magnitude of their research vector likely outweighs any extra orthogonality benefits, but I don’t know how to apply numbers to that tradeoff.