WEBVTT - How China’s engineering mindset won the clean-tech race 0:00:00.800 --> 0:00:12.840 Welcome to zero. I'm akshatrati. This week lawyers Versus engineers. 0:00:16.560 --> 0:00:19.800 China is a country of superlatives. It makes the most 0:00:19.840 --> 0:00:23.520 number of solar panels, wind turbines, batteries, and electric cars. 0:00:24.000 --> 0:00:27.040 It also is the largest builder of new coal power plants, 0:00:27.160 --> 0:00:30.080 the largest builder of new nuclear power stations, and the 0:00:30.080 --> 0:00:33.840 country with the longest high speed rail network. The list 0:00:34.040 --> 0:00:39.320 goes on and on. Because China builds, builds, and builds. 0:00:40.640 --> 0:00:43.200 It's one reason why the country has become the fascination 0:00:43.360 --> 0:00:46.800 of the green movement. China now has a huge lead 0:00:46.920 --> 0:00:50.400 in all types of climate technologies, and it is using 0:00:50.440 --> 0:00:55.560 that to electrify its economy at a breakneck speed. But 0:00:55.720 --> 0:00:58.920 why has China been able to build while many far 0:00:59.040 --> 0:01:03.280 richer countries have fallen behind. It's not just because China 0:01:03.320 --> 0:01:07.600 is a dictatorship, argues technology analyst and author Dan Wong. 0:01:07.959 --> 0:01:11.480 In his new book Breakneck. He paints a vivid picture 0:01:11.560 --> 0:01:15.360 of the social, cultural, and governance differences that have turned 0:01:15.440 --> 0:01:19.160 China into a nation of builders. Dan says that China 0:01:19.200 --> 0:01:22.360 is a country with an engineer's mindset, while the US 0:01:22.560 --> 0:01:25.880 has a lawyer's mindset. I spoke with Dan a few 0:01:25.880 --> 0:01:29.280 weeks ago as part of the SOSV Climate Tech Summit 0:01:29.680 --> 0:01:32.520 to learn what China gets right, where it's going wrong, 0:01:32.880 --> 0:01:36.720 and what lessons other countries can take from China's extraordinary 0:01:36.880 --> 0:01:45.360 green tech buildout. Welcome to the SOSV Climate Tech Summit, Dan, 0:01:45.680 --> 0:01:48.800 and welcome also to the Zero podcast for Bloomberg Green. 0:01:49.200 --> 0:01:50.800 Great to be here at chot SO. 0:01:50.880 --> 0:01:53.680 I learned a lot about China from your book, Breakneck 0:01:53.960 --> 0:01:57.600 Congrades on its success. We are talking on a climate 0:01:57.640 --> 0:02:01.080 podcast and a climate tech summit, so there is a 0:02:01.120 --> 0:02:03.840 lot of interest from the climate crowd on what China 0:02:03.840 --> 0:02:09.040 has been able to achieve on its dominance in green tech. 0:02:09.400 --> 0:02:12.440 But before we come to that, let's start out with 0:02:12.680 --> 0:02:15.880 the main thesis of the book that you lay out, 0:02:16.440 --> 0:02:19.480 which is that China is an engineering state while the 0:02:19.600 --> 0:02:23.440 US is a lawyerly state. You have first time experience 0:02:23.520 --> 0:02:27.280 living in both countries and at interesting times. Could you 0:02:27.320 --> 0:02:31.760 briefly give examples that are illustrative to these two frames. 0:02:32.240 --> 0:02:35.760 The time that I lived in was between twenty seventeen 0:02:35.880 --> 0:02:38.600 to twenty twenty three in China, and which I felt 0:02:38.639 --> 0:02:42.639 like it really was a momentous period in which Donald Trump, 0:02:42.680 --> 0:02:45.519 in his first administration had launched his first trade war. 0:02:46.200 --> 0:02:49.959 China was growing ever more capable in all sorts of technologies, 0:02:50.040 --> 0:02:53.679 including clean tech. I also lived through zero COVID, which 0:02:53.720 --> 0:02:57.079 was the centerpiece of my experience. And the China is 0:02:57.080 --> 0:02:59.960 a country I call the engineering state in my book 0:03:00.160 --> 0:03:04.200 because various points it has been ruled entirely by engineers 0:03:04.200 --> 0:03:07.400 at the senior most levels of the Communist Party. The 0:03:07.480 --> 0:03:11.600 engineers in China treat the physical environment as a giant 0:03:11.680 --> 0:03:15.360 engineering exercise. They build a lot of homes and hyperscalers, 0:03:15.360 --> 0:03:18.800 and solar and wind and coal plants as well. China 0:03:19.000 --> 0:03:22.440 also treats the economy as a big engineering exercise, in 0:03:22.440 --> 0:03:26.280 which they tend to shuttle young people here and there 0:03:26.360 --> 0:03:30.000 in order to work on more strategic industries. And they 0:03:30.040 --> 0:03:33.360 also treat society as a big engineering exercise, as I 0:03:33.440 --> 0:03:36.640 show through the examples of zero COVID as well as 0:03:36.680 --> 0:03:39.240 the one child policy, which the number is right there 0:03:39.240 --> 0:03:41.480 in the name, and there's no ambiguity about what sort 0:03:41.520 --> 0:03:44.640 of engineering projects these are. I contrast that with the 0:03:44.720 --> 0:03:47.680 United States, which I call the lawyerly society. I mostly 0:03:47.720 --> 0:03:49.920 wrote this book out of the Yale Law School. It's 0:03:49.960 --> 0:03:52.480 still kind of surprising to me that every president needs 0:03:52.480 --> 0:03:54.440 to earn a degree from Yale Law before they can 0:03:54.480 --> 0:03:57.600 be in the White House. And the Democratic Party is 0:03:57.640 --> 0:04:00.680 especially lawyerly, but the Republicans are pretty lawyer as well. 0:04:01.080 --> 0:04:03.520 The issue with lawyers is that they block everything good 0:04:03.560 --> 0:04:06.000 and bad, so you don't have stupid ideas like the 0:04:06.120 --> 0:04:09.960 one child policy, so don't have very functional infrastructure anywhere, 0:04:10.000 --> 0:04:12.720 and it is really difficult to build clean technology on 0:04:12.840 --> 0:04:14.400 par with China in the US. 0:04:14.720 --> 0:04:18.719 And this framing of engineers versus lawyers, why do you 0:04:18.720 --> 0:04:22.520 think that was the important framing that people needed to 0:04:22.600 --> 0:04:27.520 know now versus say, what's dominated US China discourse, which 0:04:27.560 --> 0:04:31.400 is free market capitalism versus state led capitalism, or democracy 0:04:31.520 --> 0:04:35.159 versus authoritarianism, or academic terms like leninism. 0:04:35.760 --> 0:04:38.640 Yeah, all of these terms have a place, and I 0:04:38.680 --> 0:04:41.800 think that the US and China are both really important 0:04:41.800 --> 0:04:44.599 countries that are in competition and have a lot of 0:04:44.600 --> 0:04:47.960 frictions with each other. Most of these terms come from 0:04:48.800 --> 0:04:54.200 nineteenth century political scientists, so terms like capitalists socialist only 0:04:54.360 --> 0:04:58.000 Leninist comes from perhaps the twentieth century. And I just 0:04:58.040 --> 0:05:00.800 wanted to be inventive and playful and coming up with 0:05:00.880 --> 0:05:04.159 a new term for understanding these two countries. I think 0:05:04.160 --> 0:05:08.680 that what distinguishes China right now is construction, a lot 0:05:08.720 --> 0:05:12.719 of construction of homes hyperscalers again, coal, wind, solar, nuclear, 0:05:12.800 --> 0:05:16.240 or whatever it is. And the United States excels at obstruction, 0:05:16.400 --> 0:05:19.520 which is that it cannot build homes where it is needed, 0:05:19.760 --> 0:05:22.320 especially in big cities like New York and San Francisco 0:05:22.360 --> 0:05:25.400 and Boston. It is not building solar and wind or 0:05:25.440 --> 0:05:29.120 transmission lines at a fast enough pace. There are now 0:05:29.160 --> 0:05:33.159 thirty three nuclear plants under construction in China. There's zero 0:05:33.320 --> 0:05:36.200 under construction in the US. Maybe we can debate about 0:05:36.200 --> 0:05:38.279 whether there should be more nuclear, but I think there 0:05:38.320 --> 0:05:41.680 just should be more clean technologies of all sorts, and 0:05:41.800 --> 0:05:43.640 right now China is doing that. And I think that 0:05:43.760 --> 0:05:45.960 is just one of several frameworks that we can use 0:05:46.000 --> 0:05:48.400 to understand a lot of what has been happening in 0:05:48.440 --> 0:05:50.480 the US as well as a lot of what's been 0:05:50.480 --> 0:05:51.520 happening in China. 0:05:51.600 --> 0:05:54.599 And if we take the historical frame here for a 0:05:54.640 --> 0:05:57.960 little bit, we do know that America has built in 0:05:58.000 --> 0:06:01.600 the past, and it did so when there were lawyers around. 0:06:01.920 --> 0:06:07.240 So what has changed in America's mindset to build now? 0:06:07.360 --> 0:06:10.719 Because maybe the number of lawyers has increased, but it's 0:06:10.760 --> 0:06:14.599 not like lawyers were a rare commodity at that time. 0:06:15.279 --> 0:06:18.120 Absolutely, I think that the US has always been loyally 0:06:18.240 --> 0:06:21.159 among the founding fathers, most of them were lawyers. For 0:06:21.279 --> 0:06:24.920 sixteen US presidents from Washington to Lincoln, thirteen of the 0:06:25.000 --> 0:06:28.279 more lawyers. But the United States had been a proto 0:06:28.320 --> 0:06:31.520 engineering state. It built a lot when it was a 0:06:31.800 --> 0:06:35.080 mostly empty country where there were a lot of especially 0:06:35.200 --> 0:06:39.400 European immigrants drifting into mostly the East Coast, and there 0:06:39.520 --> 0:06:42.560 was a consensus among the elites that this big country, 0:06:42.680 --> 0:06:45.479 a vast empty space, really needed to build. And so 0:06:45.520 --> 0:06:47.920 the US used to be a proto engineering state when 0:06:47.960 --> 0:06:54.000 it built canal systems, train systems, skyscrapers in Chicago and Manhattan, 0:06:54.520 --> 0:06:57.400 and then in the twentieth century major projects like the 0:06:57.440 --> 0:07:01.440 Hoover Dam or the Manhattan Probably Checked Apollo missions or 0:07:01.480 --> 0:07:04.880 the Interstate Highway system. And what changed, I think, essentially, 0:07:05.120 --> 0:07:08.640 was the nineteen sixties in which the American engineering state 0:07:09.120 --> 0:07:12.480 made too many mistakes and that has to be frankly conceded, 0:07:12.680 --> 0:07:16.160 in which urban planners like Robert Moses had completely overrun 0:07:16.360 --> 0:07:19.400 a lot of dense neighborhoods in New York City in 0:07:19.440 --> 0:07:22.920 which the US Department of Agriculture was spraying DDT and 0:07:23.000 --> 0:07:26.800 other pesticides throughout the country, and in which people had 0:07:26.800 --> 0:07:30.000 grown really tired of a role by technocrats which were 0:07:30.280 --> 0:07:33.239 a little bit too cozy with the industrial companies, especially 0:07:33.240 --> 0:07:35.960 the automotive companies as well. And so I think the 0:07:36.080 --> 0:07:39.160 United States turned into a lawyer le society throughout the 0:07:39.240 --> 0:07:43.080 nineteen sixties for excellent reasons. A lot of the lawyers 0:07:43.120 --> 0:07:47.320 turned away from being creative deal making types of the 0:07:47.360 --> 0:07:50.520 sort that are most obvious on Wall Street, in which 0:07:50.560 --> 0:07:53.360 the lawyers were working with the railroad barons to raise 0:07:53.400 --> 0:07:56.440 bonds for them, or eminent domain people out of their way, 0:07:57.040 --> 0:07:59.080 and for good reason, a lot of the lawyers turned 0:07:59.080 --> 0:08:03.119 into were litigators and regulators, led by people like Ralph Nader. 0:08:03.880 --> 0:08:07.240 But I think the challenge right now is that a 0:08:07.280 --> 0:08:09.320 lot of the law schools, a lot of the law students, 0:08:09.320 --> 0:08:12.440 a lot of lawyers are still obsessed with solving the 0:08:12.480 --> 0:08:15.680 problems of the nineteen sixties. Rather, I say, let's solve 0:08:15.680 --> 0:08:18.240 the problems the twenty twenties, which is in sufficient homes, 0:08:18.280 --> 0:08:22.280 in sufficient mass transit, and insufficient solar wind and transmission lines. 0:08:22.680 --> 0:08:27.040 So the loyally society has swung too hard towards obstructionism, 0:08:27.120 --> 0:08:30.720 is the case you make. So one place where the 0:08:30.840 --> 0:08:33.560 US has been able to build has been when it 0:08:33.640 --> 0:08:36.439 has a perceived enemy. A lot of the successes in 0:08:36.480 --> 0:08:39.960 the twentieth century come during the Cold War, for example, 0:08:40.040 --> 0:08:43.200 where you talk about the Apollo Mission. These are driven 0:08:43.280 --> 0:08:45.400 because there's an enemy and the US wants to be 0:08:45.400 --> 0:08:48.400 in a race where it wants to win. Now, many 0:08:48.400 --> 0:08:51.720 in the US see China as the enemy or want 0:08:51.760 --> 0:08:55.480 to try and compete with China. But if you flip 0:08:55.840 --> 0:08:58.720 that side of the narrative and look at it from 0:08:58.760 --> 0:09:03.880 the Chinese perspective, is the driving force behind the Chinese 0:09:04.000 --> 0:09:07.960 engineering mindset, the building mindset the same as it is 0:09:07.960 --> 0:09:10.680 in America to try and beat America. 0:09:10.760 --> 0:09:13.360 I think it is the same as America throughout the 0:09:13.520 --> 0:09:16.760 nineteenth century, in which there was a lot of need 0:09:16.840 --> 0:09:21.080 for infrastructure and not so much necessarily motivated by the 0:09:21.160 --> 0:09:23.680 external threat. Although that is a part of it, I 0:09:23.720 --> 0:09:26.440 think that we can also frankly acknowledge that there is 0:09:26.480 --> 0:09:31.000 an external component to China's building. The highway systems in 0:09:31.120 --> 0:09:34.880 Tibet are pristine not so much because the Tibetans really 0:09:35.000 --> 0:09:38.079 desperately needs excellent highways, but it is to prepare for 0:09:38.440 --> 0:09:42.640 military eventualities around the Himalayas. But I would say that 0:09:42.679 --> 0:09:47.959 in general, China's construction is mostly to meet domestic political goals, 0:09:48.320 --> 0:09:51.559 which is to demonstrate to the people that the Chinese 0:09:51.600 --> 0:09:55.319 government is able to deliver for their material welfare. If 0:09:55.320 --> 0:09:58.240 you are a resident of Shanghai, every year you're getting 0:09:58.280 --> 0:10:01.760 more and more parks every year. There is generally expansions 0:10:01.800 --> 0:10:03.760 of the subway lines, such as you're able to get 0:10:03.800 --> 0:10:06.880 around much more easily. If you're more rural in more 0:10:06.960 --> 0:10:09.800 rural areas, maybe you're getting new bridges, maybe you're getting 0:10:09.800 --> 0:10:12.600 connected to the high speed round network, and so that 0:10:12.800 --> 0:10:14.920 is also very real as well. 0:10:15.640 --> 0:10:16.840 And I think there's. 0:10:16.679 --> 0:10:20.640 Also a domestic political need for some degree of sovereignty. 0:10:21.080 --> 0:10:25.640 So I think that China has electrified very substantially, just 0:10:25.720 --> 0:10:29.480 as a share of electricity and total energy production only 0:10:29.520 --> 0:10:32.360 slightly behind Japan, which is the only other major economy 0:10:32.400 --> 0:10:35.920 that is more electrified, but China will overtake Japan soon enough. 0:10:36.600 --> 0:10:38.880 One out of every two cars sold by the end 0:10:38.920 --> 0:10:41.680 of this year will be electric in China. I think 0:10:41.679 --> 0:10:44.280 that is mostly due to the fact that it is 0:10:44.320 --> 0:10:48.040 pursuing some degree of energy sovereignty, such that they're reading 0:10:48.080 --> 0:10:50.280 all of these reports from the Americans to say that 0:10:50.679 --> 0:10:53.520 China has these choke points. The USS these choke points, 0:10:53.679 --> 0:10:56.240 China is very dependent on Middle East oil and gas, 0:10:56.600 --> 0:10:58.920 and so they can stop the flow of these ships 0:10:59.480 --> 0:11:02.559 in China's saying Okay, well, let's not be powered by 0:11:02.640 --> 0:11:05.679 Middle East oil and gas. Let's be powered through our 0:11:05.720 --> 0:11:10.120 cars with domestic solar, domestic wind, domestic nuclear, and domestic coal. 0:11:10.600 --> 0:11:14.000 And so I think that the primary target for China 0:11:14.120 --> 0:11:16.480 in terms of a lot of energy production is more 0:11:16.480 --> 0:11:19.280 about the sovereignty than about climate, although in this case 0:11:19.320 --> 0:11:21.360 there are a lot of happy agreements between the two. 0:11:21.640 --> 0:11:23.760 And let's stick with that, because if we take the 0:11:23.880 --> 0:11:28.320 race framework, which definitely dominates American way of thinking, you 0:11:28.320 --> 0:11:31.800 could take four or five areas where the US is 0:11:31.840 --> 0:11:37.559 trying to compete with China AI chip making, trade, biotech, 0:11:37.920 --> 0:11:41.040 soft power. But then when it comes to green tech, 0:11:42.040 --> 0:11:46.800 America is happy to let China go ahead and dominate, 0:11:47.120 --> 0:11:49.360 whereas it's going to push fossil fuels. They are on 0:11:49.400 --> 0:11:52.640 two different lanes, so to speak. On the energy equation, 0:11:53.280 --> 0:11:56.080 and China as a result, has become the largest exporter 0:11:56.160 --> 0:11:58.520 of these technologies we've talked about. I mean, it's not 0:11:58.600 --> 0:12:02.280 just about Chinese products made in China going out, it's 0:12:02.320 --> 0:12:05.880 Chinese products made in other parts of the world. Almost 0:12:06.080 --> 0:12:12.400 every continent has some form of Chinese green tech manufacturing. Now, So, 0:12:12.559 --> 0:12:16.120 say at some point America realizes that climate change is 0:12:16.120 --> 0:12:18.560 real and the future is going to be powered by green, 0:12:18.600 --> 0:12:23.800 cheap electricity, what kind of strategic areas should America look 0:12:23.880 --> 0:12:27.920 to start to build in because it certainly cannot overcome 0:12:28.200 --> 0:12:31.320 all this lead that China has in every sector in 0:12:31.360 --> 0:12:32.280 green tech, right. 0:12:32.600 --> 0:12:36.120 Yeah, No, I think the challenge with America really is 0:12:36.160 --> 0:12:39.880 that I think that it did not necessarily make any 0:12:39.920 --> 0:12:43.440 strategic decision that it will not pursue clean technology. Is 0:12:43.480 --> 0:12:45.719 it's just something that sort of happened. In the same 0:12:45.760 --> 0:12:48.760 way that there was not necessarily any high level strategic 0:12:48.800 --> 0:12:52.440 decision to have a lot of manufacturing move to the 0:12:52.440 --> 0:12:55.800 Asian Pacific and to China in particular. There's just something like, 0:12:55.920 --> 0:12:59.400 you know, a million and one business decisions, let's simply 0:12:59.520 --> 0:13:03.600 let it happen. I think one American superpower is wishful thinking. 0:13:03.760 --> 0:13:05.960 That they will never acknowledge that they are so behind 0:13:05.960 --> 0:13:09.040 in any technologies, because I think that still there's a 0:13:09.040 --> 0:13:12.720 lot of discourse from the American elites to say China 0:13:12.880 --> 0:13:16.000 is not at all a technology innovator. They are only 0:13:16.000 --> 0:13:18.960 capable of stealing, not innovating. This is something that a 0:13:19.000 --> 0:13:21.840 lot of American senators, for example, like Senator Tom Cotton 0:13:21.920 --> 0:13:24.720 is able to tweet that the Chinese are not actually 0:13:24.800 --> 0:13:28.920 economically competitive, they're just held afloat through industrial subsidies, which 0:13:28.960 --> 0:13:31.720 I think is at this point not true any longer. 0:13:31.720 --> 0:13:33.920 Perhaps it was true some earlier point in the past, 0:13:34.400 --> 0:13:36.600 and so I think this is going to be pretty challenging. 0:13:36.640 --> 0:13:40.439 I think, especially under the peculiarities of President Donald Trump, 0:13:40.520 --> 0:13:43.360 who is really against wind turbines, in particular, calling it 0:13:43.400 --> 0:13:45.760 the scam of the century. I find that quite interesting 0:13:45.800 --> 0:13:48.320 and strange. Perhaps if we want it to be very 0:13:48.320 --> 0:13:52.800 optimistic about US clean energy going forward, it seems like 0:13:52.840 --> 0:13:56.320 the Trump administration is much more friendly towards nuclear power generation, 0:13:56.760 --> 0:13:58.959 and so maybe at least for the next three and 0:13:59.000 --> 0:14:01.040 a half years, it seems like it is going to 0:14:01.200 --> 0:14:03.439 we're going to have to count on nuclear for generating 0:14:03.559 --> 0:14:04.600 most of the answers here. 0:14:04.920 --> 0:14:08.080 Yeah, Advance geothermal is the other one that Secretary Chris 0:14:08.120 --> 0:14:11.320 Wright talks a lot about because America has strengths to 0:14:11.360 --> 0:14:15.240 try and build on what it has through shale oil 0:14:15.720 --> 0:14:17.920 drilling that's been done in the oil and gas industry, 0:14:17.920 --> 0:14:21.800 but could be applied to geothermal, which is a much lower, 0:14:22.000 --> 0:14:26.160 almost clean source of electricity. But you brought up Wall 0:14:26.200 --> 0:14:28.920 Street there, and it's worth making a note that a 0:14:28.920 --> 0:14:33.400 lot of America is driven by Wall Street because your 0:14:33.800 --> 0:14:38.360 big massive pension funds are managed in Wall Street, and 0:14:38.400 --> 0:14:41.920 they vote with shareholders to try and decide where corporate 0:14:41.960 --> 0:14:47.040 America is going. And that program has very much voted 0:14:47.120 --> 0:14:52.720 for an asset light profit maximizing opportunity for American companies. 0:14:52.720 --> 0:14:56.520 So when you say that manufacturing sort of moved to Asia, 0:14:56.680 --> 0:15:00.400 not through government decision, but because of things like Wall 0:15:00.440 --> 0:15:03.680 Street saying, well, making it cheaper in Asia is better 0:15:03.760 --> 0:15:08.880 for profits, whereas in China the system that exists is 0:15:09.000 --> 0:15:12.800 okay with inefficiency. They do want profits and they do 0:15:12.920 --> 0:15:17.440 want market dominance, but that can come later. Initially, the 0:15:17.440 --> 0:15:20.640 goal is to build, especially when it comes to companies. 0:15:21.360 --> 0:15:25.360 So if we want to go to a point where 0:15:25.360 --> 0:15:29.640 America starts to build. Wall Street is looking for efficiency. 0:15:30.480 --> 0:15:34.040 How do you make the two work, because initially a 0:15:34.080 --> 0:15:38.320 lot of the building will have to be inefficient, government subsidized, 0:15:38.720 --> 0:15:42.680 be strategic, and that doesn't seem like the flavor of 0:15:42.680 --> 0:15:43.040 the month. 0:15:43.840 --> 0:15:45.880 Absolutely, I think that is going to be one of 0:15:45.920 --> 0:15:49.400 these cultural challenges that the US needs to face. That 0:15:49.480 --> 0:15:52.040 it's not just the lawyers. I agree that Wall Street 0:15:52.080 --> 0:15:55.000 has a lot to answer for itself, that the Wall 0:15:55.040 --> 0:15:57.800 Street along with the corporate sector. There is this quote 0:15:57.880 --> 0:16:02.480 attributed to Tim Cook that is evil, that what Apple 0:16:02.520 --> 0:16:05.680 really wants is just in time production, the Toyota method, 0:16:05.760 --> 0:16:08.240 whatever it is. And so there is just this general 0:16:08.320 --> 0:16:12.800 drift in America towards some measure of efficiency, which could 0:16:12.800 --> 0:16:16.680 also be understood as considerable degree of brittleness, in which 0:16:17.480 --> 0:16:21.000 the US actually was not able to be very efficient, 0:16:21.240 --> 0:16:24.600 for example, in the production of masks and cotton swabs 0:16:24.960 --> 0:16:28.560 during the early days of the pandemic. That the US 0:16:28.640 --> 0:16:31.560 is not very efficient at producing something like munitions after 0:16:31.600 --> 0:16:34.160 it shipped a lot of shells to Ukraine and its 0:16:34.200 --> 0:16:37.480 self defense against Russia. So there are all sorts of 0:16:37.480 --> 0:16:40.280 ways in which the US is broken down. A lot 0:16:40.280 --> 0:16:44.320 of my book is about the cultural views of the elites. 0:16:44.400 --> 0:16:46.920 This is not a policy prescription book. I do not 0:16:47.000 --> 0:16:50.600 say which statutes and regulations really need to be changed. 0:16:50.880 --> 0:16:53.760 What I really really like is for the Americans to 0:16:54.600 --> 0:16:57.200 have a little bit of a better sense of valuing 0:16:57.360 --> 0:17:01.440 technology production, valuing communities of engine doing practice, and to 0:17:01.520 --> 0:17:05.359 be quite a lot better at being able to manufacture 0:17:05.400 --> 0:17:09.439 important things, value the circulation of process knowledge, and not 0:17:09.600 --> 0:17:13.679 be so much held back by these efficiency concerns and 0:17:13.760 --> 0:17:15.159 profitability concerns. 0:17:18.640 --> 0:17:21.119 After the break, I asked Dan what his vision for 0:17:21.160 --> 0:17:24.520 the US is and whether AI robots are the answer 0:17:24.640 --> 0:17:27.600 to the Malays. If you're enjoying listening to Zero, please 0:17:27.640 --> 0:17:29.359 take a moment to rate and review the show on 0:17:29.400 --> 0:17:34.280 Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Recently, Gwyneth Fries wrote, thank you, Akha. 0:17:34.480 --> 0:17:37.560 I always learned so much from how you structure the conversation. 0:17:38.160 --> 0:17:56.879 Thank you, Gwinnett. You're saying there is a vision that 0:17:56.960 --> 0:18:01.040 exists in China where the Chinese communist power is trying 0:18:01.040 --> 0:18:04.000 to meet the material needs of its people, and that's 0:18:04.000 --> 0:18:07.320 the social contract it has, and it's delivering on that 0:18:07.400 --> 0:18:11.520 contract so far, and so it's worked. Whereas America feels 0:18:11.520 --> 0:18:14.440 a little adrift. You know, there isn't a Cold War 0:18:14.600 --> 0:18:18.600 style enemy waiting. China sometimes is made to look like one, 0:18:18.680 --> 0:18:21.000 but really, you know a lot of people are still 0:18:21.000 --> 0:18:24.880 in the Francis Fukayama end of history. You know, liberalism 0:18:24.880 --> 0:18:28.480 has won, liberal democracies have won. Is there a new project? 0:18:28.680 --> 0:18:31.840 If you were to give Americans a vision for what 0:18:31.880 --> 0:18:34.400 they should aim for to be able to deliver on 0:18:34.600 --> 0:18:36.960 the things that you talk about, what kind of vision 0:18:37.280 --> 0:18:38.879 would you want Americans to grab. 0:18:39.320 --> 0:18:42.240 I think that the vision of America that I would 0:18:42.280 --> 0:18:44.760 like to see would be self motivated, and there would 0:18:44.800 --> 0:18:48.440 not be through treating China as an adversary, And it 0:18:48.480 --> 0:18:51.520 is to simply meet a lot of what it's people 0:18:51.560 --> 0:18:55.040 demand in terms of people complain quite a lot about 0:18:55.119 --> 0:18:57.959 cost of living, for example, cost of living in bigger 0:18:58.000 --> 0:19:01.240 cities like New York and Sanria, Cisco and Boston where 0:19:01.240 --> 0:19:05.480 housing is quite unaffordable. That people to some degree want 0:19:05.720 --> 0:19:09.320 mass transit, and people want a lot more public investments. 0:19:09.800 --> 0:19:12.840 And I want the US to be the best version 0:19:12.920 --> 0:19:15.199 of itself, and I want the Chinese to be the 0:19:15.200 --> 0:19:17.240 best version of themselves as well. And the way that 0:19:17.280 --> 0:19:19.680 I think that we can get here a little bit 0:19:19.680 --> 0:19:22.520 better is for the US to become let's say, twenty 0:19:22.560 --> 0:19:25.200 percent more. Engineering does not have to be very high, 0:19:25.240 --> 0:19:27.520 but let's just build a little bit more of the 0:19:27.560 --> 0:19:31.000 things that the people want. For example, California high speed rail, 0:19:31.040 --> 0:19:34.040 which was approved by referendum now nearly twenty years ago, 0:19:34.400 --> 0:19:36.679 and very little of it has been built. This is 0:19:36.840 --> 0:19:40.840 kind of just I believe, a national embarrassment that California, says, 0:19:41.000 --> 0:19:43.080 one of the richest entities in the world, wants to 0:19:43.119 --> 0:19:45.600 build this and is simply unable to build very much 0:19:45.640 --> 0:19:48.439 of it at all. And I wish that China can 0:19:48.480 --> 0:19:52.080 be fifty percent more loyally. I would really love for 0:19:52.720 --> 0:19:56.080 the Chinese people to feel like they can be in 0:19:56.160 --> 0:19:59.119 a country where they can flourish in which the state 0:19:59.240 --> 0:20:02.920 does not feel need constantly to strangle their creative impulses, 0:20:03.280 --> 0:20:06.399 that the state actually learns to value individual rights and 0:20:06.440 --> 0:20:09.040 actually means it, and that I would also really love 0:20:09.119 --> 0:20:12.359 if the Communist Party could just one day learn to 0:20:12.440 --> 0:20:15.080 leave the people alone rather than trying to engineer them 0:20:15.119 --> 0:20:16.880 towards some measure of national greatness. 0:20:17.440 --> 0:20:20.720 Well, that's a good place to come from a vision perspective, 0:20:20.760 --> 0:20:22.680 but I do want to hit on one dark side 0:20:22.720 --> 0:20:25.360 of the engineering state that you'd referred to earlier in 0:20:25.400 --> 0:20:28.520 the conversation, but also you spend a bunch of time 0:20:28.560 --> 0:20:30.760 in the book looking at the one child policy, the 0:20:30.920 --> 0:20:34.480 zero COVID policy, you know, the one child policy which 0:20:34.880 --> 0:20:38.840 your parents and the friends that they had back home experienced, 0:20:39.000 --> 0:20:41.679 the kinds of brutality that you note in the book, 0:20:41.880 --> 0:20:44.879 plus the zero COVID policy that you know, half of 0:20:44.920 --> 0:20:47.160 it was pretty great for you, but then the other 0:20:47.240 --> 0:20:51.920 half was pretty brutal. What is it about the engineering 0:20:51.960 --> 0:20:56.760 mindset that leads to that kind of brutality. 0:20:57.280 --> 0:21:01.399 I think that the engineering state is made up not 0:21:01.480 --> 0:21:05.800 only of hydraulic engineers. Fundamentally, the problem with the engineering 0:21:05.880 --> 0:21:09.720 state is that they are fundamentally also social engineers, and 0:21:09.800 --> 0:21:13.280 they cannot stop themselves from treating society as if it 0:21:13.320 --> 0:21:17.199 were just another vast hydraulic system to be shifted this 0:21:17.280 --> 0:21:20.280 way and that through a series of valves. And I 0:21:20.320 --> 0:21:23.000 think a lot about, you know, for example, the detention 0:21:23.160 --> 0:21:27.399 of ethno religious minorities, especially in qing Tiang region. I 0:21:27.400 --> 0:21:29.480 think a lot about zero COVID, and I think a 0:21:29.520 --> 0:21:32.800 lot about the one child policy, which they treat people 0:21:32.880 --> 0:21:35.879 as yet another building material to be torn down and 0:21:36.040 --> 0:21:39.280 remolded as they wish. And I think the problem with 0:21:39.720 --> 0:21:42.560 some of China is that living in China made me 0:21:42.600 --> 0:21:45.000 realize that a state could be too efficient, that you 0:21:45.320 --> 0:21:48.480 could have too much state capacity if people are unable 0:21:48.480 --> 0:21:51.800 to resist something like the one child policy, which, over 0:21:51.960 --> 0:21:54.800 the course of its thirty five year existence, according to 0:21:54.880 --> 0:21:59.040 China's official statistics, they conducted about three hundred million abortions, 0:21:59.160 --> 0:22:02.399 which is roughly the population of the United States. And so, 0:22:02.480 --> 0:22:05.080 you know, to have these sort of national traumas being 0:22:05.160 --> 0:22:09.199 visited by a highly efficient state against the people, I 0:22:09.240 --> 0:22:11.600 think that this is something that we don't want to see, 0:22:11.680 --> 0:22:14.160 which is why I wish that China could be fifty 0:22:14.200 --> 0:22:17.959 percent more loyally to have to some extent a federal 0:22:18.040 --> 0:22:21.119 traditionary that is separate from the executive that is able 0:22:21.200 --> 0:22:23.800 to protect the rights of the people. I don't think 0:22:23.840 --> 0:22:26.480 we'll ever get there so long as the Communist Party 0:22:26.520 --> 0:22:28.640 is in charge, but I would really love for there 0:22:28.680 --> 0:22:32.240 to be actually substantive legal protections for Chinese to be 0:22:32.240 --> 0:22:36.080 able to resist some of the worst impulses of social engineering. 0:22:36.440 --> 0:22:38.240 And in the last few minutes I've left, I want 0:22:38.320 --> 0:22:41.560 to try and look a little bit forward, because AI 0:22:41.640 --> 0:22:45.080 features in your book briefly to try and tell sort 0:22:45.119 --> 0:22:46.960 of a little bit of the history where it comes 0:22:46.960 --> 0:22:50.600 from cybernetics that was developed in Soviet Union. The goal 0:22:50.720 --> 0:22:52.879 was to try and figure out whether you could actually 0:22:52.920 --> 0:22:58.000 create a society using these hydraulic engineering type methods to 0:22:58.040 --> 0:23:01.720 create that perfect socialist society. Well, we are now in 0:23:01.760 --> 0:23:04.760 an age where AI is way more powerful than the 0:23:04.800 --> 0:23:08.320 computers that existed in the past, and there is this 0:23:08.520 --> 0:23:12.160 temptation to try and use it for all sorts of things. 0:23:12.200 --> 0:23:16.440