(The technological areas where the US does seem ahead (i.e., say, quiet nuclear submarine technologies) are areas where the US has been manufacturing actively for 80 years, and where we don’t have a history of manufacturing in China; but even this isn’t a guarantee, as a handful of smaller, cheaper unmanned subs sidestep this advantage, in the same way they can sidestep other things.)
I thought the U.S. was also ahead in fighter jet manufacturing, missile manufacturing, aircraft manufacturing, aircraft carrier design and capacity, and many other things that seem like they would more directly translate into drone manufacturing. In as much as I am wrong about that, that would be a substantial update, but my sense is despite its pathologies, the U.S. is really where a huge fraction of cutting edge military technology gets developed and built, in basically every domain.
In general this story of “most new cutting-edge stuff comes from refinement and so if you make a lot you will also make the best” really doesn’t seem true to me. The U.S. produces the best software for approximately every single domain, even if the industry in which that software is used is much smaller in the U.S. than anywhere else. A far better predictor of whether you will produce the cutting edge stuff is whether you have an industry specialized in producing the cutting edge stuff. China and India have been copying American innovation for decades in dozens of industries, from software, to medical, to manufacturing, to construction, and they have not generally been the drivers of innovation in those domains, despite their markets for those things being much larger than the U.S.
I think whether you have a healthy industry that incentivizes innovation and can build new things will be much more indicative of who will be at the frontier here (as it’s been in basically every other industry). The strongest argument against this mattering in the drone case is that volume of production is more important, but my guess is the U.S. is in a better position to incentivize large volume production of drones than China, because the U.S. has a functioning market economy where the U.S. can incentivize things by paying for them, in a way that China cannot reliably.
U.S. has a functioning market economy where the U.S. can incentivize things by paying for them, in a way that China cannot reliably.
I think your model of the world is just flat wrong if you think this. Like—China interferes in China’s economy a lot. The US interferes in the US’ economy a lot. But—surely—China has a functioning market economy, where you can incentivize things by paying for them? Sure it’s “Communist” but it’s not communist like that.
Like Russia didn’t have a functioning market economy. A sign of this was that the Russian cars sucked and found little traction as exports. That’s because non-market economies produce bad products at high prices.
On the other hand, BYD sells more cars than Tesla (but competes against many other EV makers inside china). DJI sells more drones than the rest of the world combined (but also competes against other Chinese companies like Autel, etc). Huawei is the world’s largest smartphone manufacturer since ~2020 or so, I think (and competes against other Chinese companies, and Apple, and Samsung). In general, many Chinese products are of high quality, to the degree that people in countries like Germany want to ban them from their markets because they are taking too much market share. And that’s because—unlike Russian cars—they come from something that’s at least a reasonably functioning market economy.
The Chinese government has surely subsidized this for various reasons, just like the US has subsidized the soybean farmers. They’ve surely made it less efficient in many ways. But these companies nevertheless compete on an marketplace internal to China, compete on marketplaces external to China, and have their success largely because they make products that are excellent while doing so efficiently.
And so it appears to me it would be much easier for China to scale drone production from a base that is ~20x higher than the US’ production to continue to maintain absolute and overwhelming numerical superiority.
But—surely—China has a functioning market economy, where you can incentivize things by paying for them? Sure it’s “Communist” but it’s not communist like that.
I have lots of uncertainty about this! For example, it does appear that China basically gutted its software startup industry a few months ago, and this is really costly, and it wouldn’t surprise me if this will have large negative effects on Chinese drone effectiveness, since software seems like a non-trivial fraction of the difficulty, especially for coordinating drone swarms.
My current model is that overall, all things considered, the Chinese market economy is a lot weaker. This doesn’t mean there are no domains where China excells at building great products in their market economy, but I have a much higher likelihood that something will mess up their efforts to do something in the market than I have for the U.S.. IDK, I am at like 65% that the US market economy is sufficiently stronger here to produce a long-run advantage in drone manufacturing if the US government decides to spend heavily on it, which really isn’t that confident.
Since I feel like these kinds of discussions can often feel thankless, I felt like I wanted to write an explicit comment saying I am grateful for @1a3orn’s, @JohnofCharleston’s, @Thomas Kwa’s and @Alexander Gietelink Oldenziel’s comments on this thread. I disagree with many of you, but you presented a bunch of good arguments evidence on a thing that does actually seem quite important for the future of the world.
You might be interested in my old shortform on the military balance of power between US and China too. It’s a bit dated by now—the importance of drones has become much more clear by now [I think the evidence that we are in a military technological revolution on par with the introduction of guns] but you may find it of interest regardless.
I thought the U.S. was also ahead in fighter jet manufacturing, missile manufacturing, aircraft manufacturing, aircraft carrier design and capacity, and many other things that seem like they would more directly translate into drone manufacturing. In as much as I am wrong about that, that would be a substantial update, but my sense is despite its pathologies, the U.S. is really where a huge fraction of cutting edge military technology gets developed and built, in basically every domain.
In general this story of “most new cutting-edge stuff comes from refinement and so if you make a lot you will also make the best” really doesn’t seem true to me. The U.S. produces the best software for approximately every single domain, even if the industry in which that software is used is much smaller in the U.S. than anywhere else. A far better predictor of whether you will produce the cutting edge stuff is whether you have an industry specialized in producing the cutting edge stuff. China and India have been copying American innovation for decades in dozens of industries, from software, to medical, to manufacturing, to construction, and they have not generally been the drivers of innovation in those domains, despite their markets for those things being much larger than the U.S.
I think whether you have a healthy industry that incentivizes innovation and can build new things will be much more indicative of who will be at the frontier here (as it’s been in basically every other industry). The strongest argument against this mattering in the drone case is that volume of production is more important, but my guess is the U.S. is in a better position to incentivize large volume production of drones than China, because the U.S. has a functioning market economy where the U.S. can incentivize things by paying for them, in a way that China cannot reliably.
I think your model of the world is just flat wrong if you think this. Like—China interferes in China’s economy a lot. The US interferes in the US’ economy a lot. But—surely—China has a functioning market economy, where you can incentivize things by paying for them? Sure it’s “Communist” but it’s not communist like that.
Like Russia didn’t have a functioning market economy. A sign of this was that the Russian cars sucked and found little traction as exports. That’s because non-market economies produce bad products at high prices.
On the other hand, BYD sells more cars than Tesla (but competes against many other EV makers inside china). DJI sells more drones than the rest of the world combined (but also competes against other Chinese companies like Autel, etc). Huawei is the world’s largest smartphone manufacturer since ~2020 or so, I think (and competes against other Chinese companies, and Apple, and Samsung). In general, many Chinese products are of high quality, to the degree that people in countries like Germany want to ban them from their markets because they are taking too much market share. And that’s because—unlike Russian cars—they come from something that’s at least a reasonably functioning market economy.
The Chinese government has surely subsidized this for various reasons, just like the US has subsidized the soybean farmers. They’ve surely made it less efficient in many ways. But these companies nevertheless compete on an marketplace internal to China, compete on marketplaces external to China, and have their success largely because they make products that are excellent while doing so efficiently.
And so it appears to me it would be much easier for China to scale drone production from a base that is ~20x higher than the US’ production to continue to maintain absolute and overwhelming numerical superiority.
I have lots of uncertainty about this! For example, it does appear that China basically gutted its software startup industry a few months ago, and this is really costly, and it wouldn’t surprise me if this will have large negative effects on Chinese drone effectiveness, since software seems like a non-trivial fraction of the difficulty, especially for coordinating drone swarms.
My current model is that overall, all things considered, the Chinese market economy is a lot weaker. This doesn’t mean there are no domains where China excells at building great products in their market economy, but I have a much higher likelihood that something will mess up their efforts to do something in the market than I have for the U.S.. IDK, I am at like 65% that the US market economy is sufficiently stronger here to produce a long-run advantage in drone manufacturing if the US government decides to spend heavily on it, which really isn’t that confident.
Since I feel like these kinds of discussions can often feel thankless, I felt like I wanted to write an explicit comment saying I am grateful for @1a3orn’s, @JohnofCharleston’s, @Thomas Kwa’s and @Alexander Gietelink Oldenziel’s comments on this thread. I disagree with many of you, but you presented a bunch of good arguments evidence on a thing that does actually seem quite important for the future of the world.
Much appreciated Habryka-san!
You might be interested in my old shortform on the military balance of power between US and China too. It’s a bit dated by now—the importance of drones has become much more clear by now [I think the evidence that we are in a military technological revolution on par with the introduction of guns] but you may find it of interest regardless.