NASA Banned From Working With China 284
astroengine writes "In the wake of the Chinese cyber-threat and claims of espionage, a clause included in the US spending bill approved by Congress to avert a government shutdown a few weeks ago has prohibited NASA from coordinating any joint scientific activity with China. The clause also extends to the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy."
ha ha ha (Score:2, Insightful)
Yeah, if China was actually interested in hurting USA in one place, it would really hit hard, they'd just stop buying US bonds and also stop rolling over the ones they have already, and never mind NASA, US wouldn't even have money to run its military.
Re:ha ha ha (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:ha ha ha (Score:5, Insightful)
And the Chinese economy would collapse as the $1.4 trillion of US debt that China currently holds would quickly become worthless. Sort of like ripping off the nose to spite the face.
- what a huge misunderstanding of economics, that the education systems of the West have perpetrated upon their population. Very sad.
Chinese economy is not about the cash, the money. Chinese economy is an actual real economy - producing economy.
You see, when the Keynesian gods tell you that economy is about consumption, they are full of it, completely wrong. Consumption is a trivial consequence of production. If nothing is produced, nothing will be consumed. Production IS economy.
When USA borrowed money in 19 century, it borrowed the money to build factories and infrastructure, and when it used the money to build, it started producing, and the products it built were then sold to pay off the debts. Today, when USA borrows money, it only uses the money to consume, and it consumes foreign made products.
Irony is of-course that it borrows money from China and buys the Chinese made products, and the population of USA is convinced by their useless 'economists', who are really charlatans, that the US consumer is the actual engine behind this entire economic activity.
No. What China needs to do is to let their currency appreciate, so that it becomes cheaper for Chinese to both: buy raw materials (as they are hit hard with price inflation, which in the case of producers follows immediately after the self inflicted money inflation) and it becomes cheaper for the Chinese to buy foreign products and their own manufactured products as well, and China has plenty of potential for consumption, they do have over a billion people after all.
What is funny, is how Geithner calls China to let their currency appreciate, and it looks like he is just trying to play reverse psychology game (if he understands anything about economics at all), because either US dollar can be strong or Chinese currency can be strong, but they both cannot be strong at the same time.
If China lets the currency appreciate, it will become nearly impossible for the US consumers to buy Chinese products. That's good for USA in the long run, because USA has to be hit with very high interest rates on their money, Americans need to start saving and creating capital that can be applied for building things again, so that it starts producing again. But in the short term it's going to be disastrous for USA, not for China.
Sure, China will lose that debt. But it's going to lose that debt ANYWAY!
Do you think USA can pay that debt back? EVER? :)
USA doesn't produce anything of any value except for the raw materials, that Chinese would want to buy. USA can NEVER pay the debts back. These particular debts need to be restructured, but instead US Fed will keep printing, and all that useless paper, that ends up in Chinese banks, and causes the Chinese to print their currency as well only is hurting China right now.
USA has it great as long as other countries keep buying its debt and keep printing their own currencies into oblivion and keep price inflation inside their own economies and don't export it back to US.
However this will stop. Sure, many manufacturers in China and other exporting nations will cry murder, but they will have to deal with this, as their own currencies appreciate, they will start selling in the country rather than exporting so much. There will be some pain for China as well, but they have the production - which is what matters.
Do not be mistaken - US debts will never be repaid in anything that's valuable. US can print the dollar and 'repay' in worthless paper, but that's just as much of a default as a real bankruptcy would be.
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Sigh... There are to many statements in this that are way to true. I miss the day when the US was a production powerhouse. If you wanted something then you got it at your local store and it was stamped Made in America. Of all the times to not have any mod points....
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Sigh... There are to many statements in this that are way to true. I miss the day when the US was a production powerhouse. If you wanted something then you got it at your local store and it was stamped Made in America. Of all the times to not have any mod points....
America still produces more, both in raw materials and finished goods, than China (though this will likely be reversed in the next two years or so). What we don't produce here are the cheap consumer-level goods that places like China and Vietnam are currently specializing in, because we don't pay our workers $5 a day here.
As China continues to modernize and the US continues to decline this dynamic will shift; their one-child policy will greatly increase labor costs in the coming decades, and the US's focus
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Re:kool aid (Score:5, Insightful)
US technology doesn't originate from the US government. It originates from bright individuals that live in the US. They can migrate to other countries, just like they have all their technology mass produced in other countries.
Lumber is available from Russia. As for technology, you have South Korea, Japan, Great Britain, and Germany to name a few. I think you don't grasp the gravity of the situation.
Re:kool aid (Score:4, Insightful)
Up until some bright spark in the legislature realises what's happening and then suddenly people who are deemed to be a National Resource find themselves unable to travel out of the country.
After all you've already been softened up to the idea of people being on a list that they don't have the right to know if they're on (and asking about it will get you on said list) that means you are basically denied the right of free travel.
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You rant as if this is something new. "Deadbeat dads" (and moms, and it's very easy to become one) have been denied that right since the Clinton administration. If you owe child support, you get no passport. This works especially well when one has opportunity to work abroad (and, thus, to pay that child support) but cannot work abroad because one is denied rights explicitly granted under the 14th amendment.
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[i]US technology doesn't originate from the US government. It originates from bright individuals that live in the US. They can migrate to other countries, just like they have all their technology mass produced in other countries. [/i]
Yes, and we see that happening now in droves. I'm sure that will happen in even greater numbers when the economy of china has stagnated.
I think you just want something to worry about.
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They have demonstrated a great ability to produce but little in the way of useful original ideas when it comes to those gadgets and geegaws.
... little in the way of quality control.
There is huge variation. Some of their industries like consumer electronics can give the legendary Japanese a run for their money, some industries like Chinese machine tools and especially related consumables are pretty much a laughingstock.
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Name a Chinese technology that has become a world standard. Who are the power players in blu ray? HDTV? Operating systems?
Look at all the game clones. Great at copying, lousy at innovating.
re: no quality control (Score:2)
Yeah... the lack of quality control is a huge problem in Chinese factory production today, but that's bound to improve. Japan used to have the exact same issue, and back then, Americans kept using that as the reason why "Japan won't be relevant!". Within less than 10 years though, they got their act together and started selling cars to us that were better than anything our U.S. factories could produce, quality-wise.
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Two decades is nothing. If you don't think the Chinese can deal with a little economic pain, you need to read up on "the Great Leap Forward". Death toll estimates range from 16 to 46 MILLION people from that little project. Compared to that, some economic squeezing is nothing.
Look at where China was in 1950, 1970, 1990 and where it is today, and tell me you feel comfortable with them being "two decades away" from anything.
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"The fact is without US technology and US raw materials China would have a LOT less to produce"
That's why China currently has a stranglehold on the rare-earth materials market, yes?
No, not even close.
Perhaps you should actually look into China's natural resources.
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Wow, more kool aid for you.
The US long ago STOPPED mining those rare metals because it was "cheaper to buy them from china." IOW they adopted the wal-mart mentality and treated selenium and barium like air conditioners and tube socks.
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They have demonstrated a great ability to produce but little in the way of useful original ideas when it comes to those gadgets and geegaws.
That's the same thing people said about Japan. I think it amounts to wishful thinking. People are people. Ultimately the Chinese are just as smart (or dumb) as the rest of the human race.
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Japan isn't governed by a totalitarian regime that explicitly enforces conformity. So I guess when China finally undergoes that NEXT revolution (that would be their sixth in less than two centuries) I'm sure they'll then be a force to be reckoned with...
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Sure, China will lose that debt. But it's going to lose that debt ANYWAY!
That's not the point. All those "cheap" products that China produces aren't actually so cheap. Without buying huge numbers of debt with imported US dollars, the dollar would fall in value.
What do you think the Chinese would do with all of that "production" if they couldn't sell it overseas?
The US and China are linked economically. There's no shame in that. China placates their population with jobs and develops their country and the US is happy to get physical goods in exchange for otherwise worthless paper.
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What do you think the Chinese would do with all of that "production" if they couldn't sell it overseas?
- oh, oh, can I, can I?
They will consume the stuff they produce themselves, because they have over a fifth of the planet's human population.
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They will consume the stuff they produce themselves, because they have over a fifth of the planet's human population.
Maybe they will someday be able to consume the stuff the produce, but today that is not realistic. They need the US and Europe as markets for their goods right now. If the US were to tank economically, so would Europe. With the US and Europe down, the Chinese would find themselves in possession of the worlds largest collection of idle factories.
So let's stop with all of the nationalistic bravado and just admit that any economic war between the US and China would bring everyone pain and misery.
IMHO, the curr
Re:ha ha ha (Score:4, Insightful)
You see, when the Keynesian gods tell you that economy is about consumption, they are full of it, completely wrong. Consumption is a trivial consequence of production. If nothing is produced, nothing will be consumed. Production IS economy.
I'd like to see how well an economy works when nobody buys anything it's producing.
Currently, China holds power because of the gap between [how cheap they can make a product], and [how much we rich folk will pay for said product]. If we weren't around to buy their stuff, or if we didn't spend an order of magnitude more to buy it than they paid to have it made, their economy as we know it wouldn't exist either.
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I'd like to see how well an economy works when nobody buys anything it's producing.
- yeah, because people are spirits and they are not physical beings who actually need real physical things to survive.
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Contrary to many people's belief otherwise, I do not need a new smartphone to survive.
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Standard of living, standard of living.
US will survive this, I never said it wont, but the standard of living will be diminished severely, as Chinese consume more and more of what they produce, their currency strengthens and the rest of the world is left without all those cheap products (until they are forced into saving and rebuilding their manufacturing themselves.)
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I don't need anything from china to survive. My food, water, shelter, and basic medical aid is all right here.
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When you're producing, you're also selling, which means you have money to buy and consume with.
When you're only consuming, you lack income and you eventually run out of credit, and then you can't even pay off your debt because you're not producing anything to sell.
That's the current positions of China and the U.S., in their respective nutshells. (It used to be the U.S. and Europe in those same nutshells.)
And as I've said before, when that debt comes due, my guess is that D.C. will roll over and offer China
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But, but, roman-mir said that consumption is not required; just production. I mean, China's building all those empty towns and malls and stuff and there's no consumers and they're doing well so Roman-mir must be right and Paul Krugman and other economists are all stupid.
Re:ha ha ha (Score:4, Interesting)
USA doesn't produce anything of any value except for the raw materials, that Chinese would want to buy.
From a consumer point of view, yes, absolutely. Aside from plastic trash from walmart, we vary from complete utter domination to merely being major players in aerospace, heavy construction, and especially weapons. There are still plenty of plants that OSHA and EPA and NAFTA have not managed to shut down yet, although our govt is trying their hardest to destroy our middle class.
One Very important point you missed, is the US is the "saudi arabia" of food... we stop exporting and hundreds of millions will starve, probably mostly in Africa rather than China, but still... practically every nation either directly eats our food, or benefits secondarily from other folks eating our food instead of us. Its a simplification, but block the Mississippi river, or do the same thing by screwing up the economy so we can't export, and about 2 billion of the world's poorest will pretty much starve to death as a result... How that benefits China is not entirely clear, it might even be mostly neutral.
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utter domination to merely being major players in aerospace, heavy construction, and especially weapons.
- I grant you weapons. But aerospace and heavy construction?
Boeing is heavily subsidized and helped via political power by US government, it's not standing firmly on the ground with both feet, and heavy construction is done around the world. Maybe you didn't notice, but China actually builds rail roads, skyscrapers, bridges, roads, tunnels... As to weapons - yes. As long as USA has Chinese footing the bill that is.
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Boeing is heavily subsidized and helped via political power by US government, it's not standing firmly on the ground with both feet
You're right, they aren't standing on the ground at all. $2.6 billion from NASA for research that the WTO is complaining about, and Boeing is flying high with in order backlog of $329 billion [reuters.com]. Seems like chump change compared to the 20 billion [wsj.com] in below-market-interest loans you EU folks gave to Airbus ;)
Jibes aside, are you really going to go with a "but the government helps them!" argument against a US company when comparing our industry to China's? I'm trying to come up with an analogy that would be hyp
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One Very important point you missed, is the US is the "saudi arabia" of food.
- only because it's subsidized... guess with whose money at this point?
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You realize that China relies on artificial currency manipulation - which it achieves by buying up tons and tons of US dollars, right? How well do you think China's production economy would fare when suddenly its goods are as expensive in Europe and America as European and American goods?
Without the US dollar, China's economy implodes. That's why they're panicking about QE2; they're terrified the US dollar will weaken.
PS: Almost all of our debt is from the economic recession and the wars. These are all temp
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What China REALLY needs to do is let yuan appreciate, let the market set the interest rate and the exchange rate, and China will see incredible rise in standard of living for its people and the prices for commodities will go down in yuan.
Yes, I'm sure those Keyenesian fanbois in the Chinese government are completely ignorant of what the impact of a strong yuan would be. Why don't you tell them? I'm sure they'd fete you as a hero on the level of Mao and Sun-Tzu. How does it feel to be that superior to the rest of the world?
Oh, and how is Switzerland, your favorite political and social utopia faring on the production side of things? Last time I checked, they produced alpine milk, watches, snow and bank secrets. Yep, economic powerhouse right
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I have an account with Excellent karma to garner a karma bonus. I just don't like posting under it
- so which account is it? Why aren't you comfortable posting from it? See, I post my opinions consistently, at least my stand is clear. As to /. moderation and other problems, I actually said something about it just a bit earlier. [slashdot.org] - I think it's wrong to have a moderation system that allows group think to down-mode certain unpopular opinions (just like my comment, that was a response to yours is now down-moderated with a 'flamebait', which it is not.
China is manipulating its currency, while the US allows the dollar to float.
- it's a floater alright. US Fed prints trillions, US
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You see, when the Keynesian gods tell you that economy is about consumption, they are full of it, completely wrong. Consumption is a trivial consequence of production. If nothing is produced, nothing will be consumed. Production IS economy.
China accounts for 19.8% of world manufacturing. The US is at 19.4%. We still produce a shit ton of stuff.
Irony is of-course that it borrows money from China and buys the Chinese made products, and the population of USA is convinced by their useless 'economists', who are really charlatans, that the US consumer is the actual engine behind this entire economic activity.
I certainly have no love for the consumer lifestyle of endless debt that seems to pervade American culture, but production without consumption is a waste of time. If you produce 10 times more frying pans than people could possibly ever or buy, you're not contributing extra to the economy.
No. What China needs to do is to let their currency appreciate, so that it becomes cheaper for Chinese to both: buy raw materials (as they are hit hard with price inflation, which in the case of producers follows immediately after the self inflicted money inflation) and it becomes cheaper for the Chinese to buy foreign products and their own manufactured products as well, and China has plenty of potential for consumption, they do have over a billion people after all.
I agree that China needs to let their currency appreciate, but the Chinese culture doesn't have the appetite for cons
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China accounts for 19.8% of world manufacturing. The US is at 19.4%. We still produce a shit ton of stuff.
- US 'manufacturing' is a fancy way for assembly lines of parts, made elsewhere.
If you produce 10 times more frying pans than people could possibly ever or buy, you're not contributing extra to the economy.
- and that's the manufacturer's problem, who is forcing him to produce 10 times more frying pans than can be sold? Clearly that manufacturer is in the wrong business and will go out of business. Production without use - that's government job. Real production obviously has consumers in mind.
However consumption without production is 0% likely.
but the Chinese culture doesn't have the appetite for consumption that exists in the West (and the US especially). Not to mention, a lot of those billion people can't afford a lot of the things China produces.
- oh boy, what are you saying, that Chinese do not like to buy stuff.
Are we talking [time.com]
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You do realize that the U.S. is the largest producer in the world [wisegeek.com], even ahead of China?
But yeah, are totally spot on with consumption being a red herring. The more production there is, the more sales there are, regardless if any consumers are actually purchasing anything. Anything that's not actually consumed can be written down and then rolled into a psudo-security and sold a profit. Turns out, you don't actually have to produce anything in order to profit; just have to know how to spin the deal.
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China's GDP is propped up by its constant construction projects that have no one to use them.
http://finance.fortune.cnn.com/2010/12/21/ghost-town-mongolia-inside-chinas-empty-cities/ [cnn.com]
China tells its districts/provinces/cities to increase GDP, so they do it the easiest way possible: Build more stuff.
It's a problem of having something, but no one to use it. No one's visiting shops in these empty malls. No ones' buying these apartments in cities that have no jobs.
It may implode, it may fix itself, but it can't
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Here, in Phoenix the land of the popping bubble, there are tons of empty store fronts... But most of these weren't empty until a couple years ago when things when bust. They wouldn't have empty either if the bubble didn't pop. People were building at the rate of estimated future demand, that demand dropped, so now we have a glut of space, more space than we can use. The cost of moving to a better location is very cheap now, so a lot of companies who were shackled by high prices have moved to better plac
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Another economic idiot hiding under AC. Ben, is that you? How is the helicopter doing?
The reason Chinese are not buying as much as they need to is due to their government printing their money into oblivion, and since they are a producing nation, which imports raw materials, they are hit with higher prices immediately, which is not the case for USA, who is not a producer, only imports ready goods and energy, and exports inflation (printed dollars and t-bills) to others, who are willing to import it.
China doe
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I'd like to note that the Chinese are accustomed to living below their means and can adapt to disruption far better than the US economy.
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Except that debt has nothing to do with their economy. Having it devalued to $0 in the next five minutes would do exactly nothing to the Chinese economy.
There is no factory that would suddenly shut down because an asset owned by the Chinese government dropped in value. Just as if it suddenly trippled in value in the 5 minutes it would be exactly nothing to the Chinese economy.
Of course the follow on effects of the US not being able to fund their government defecit and either having to print money the more o
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Of course the follow on effects of the US not being able to fund their government defecit and either having to print money the more old fashioned way or dramatically raise taxes would destroy the US economy. That in turn would be a significant issue for Chinese exporters - but they do export to countries that are not America and the American economic destruction would see world demand (and hence prices) on their imports drop significantly, so while triggering a large recession would not be a complete collapse.
All of the models I've seen paint an extremely dire picture if the US folds in on itself. It would be a ripple effect- you can't just say "oh, it would only effect China a little bit because they can sell their product elsewhere". Those other places would be hit hard too. The small shops that are the majority would die first, which would create huge layoffs, which would in turn impact the large shops.
You can't look at something as huge and interlinked as the world economy one small slice at a time- you n
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US not being able to fund their government defecit and either having to print money the more old fashioned way
What exactly do you think the recent "quantitative easing" programs have been, if not that?
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If you have a loan with a bank for $100K, the bank owns you.
If you have a loan with a bank for $10M, you own the bank.
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ha ha ha is right. China is not paying for our military.
- no? 40% of US gov't spending comes out of foreign debt.
The U.S.'s economy is still MUCH larger than China.
- really? Is that what the 50 billion/month trade deficit with China telling you? That, and all the money Fed prints monthly to buy 30% of all new debt that the US Treasury is issuing?
The U.S. still manufacturers more than China and unlike China, manufacturing is a very small part of the U.S. economy.
- again, trade deficit is 50 billion. US economy is not manufacturing anything, it's assembling parts made in other places. US even has trade deficit with CANADA, forget China.
As far as the bonds, the U.S. could make those almost worthless in seconds crushing China.
- what are you talking about, dog? US bonds ARE worthless today. Nobody can sell them with
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>>>US even has trade deficit with CANADA, forget China.
Everyone in the US would be a lot better off if they were more like me (anti-consumer, anti-spending). Rampant borrowing and spending is destroying america. In fact I think it already has (hence the housing depression of 2007-09).
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Doubt it. Who is the manufacturer? There was a story on 60 minutes last year - they couldn't find American made socks, and some AC on /. did?
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And if you want to talk about trade deficits, that just means we buy more crap from other countries than we export.
- no. It means USA is not producing ANY of those things it buys from foreign countries, because it is clearly impossible to compete for US internal manufacturers due to heavy government regulations, taxation, various laws and inflation of investment capital and high labor costs.
Whatever there is WalMart, if it's made in China, you won't find an equivalent made in USA anymore.
Having a large trade deficit with China simply means they depend on us to buy their crap.
- what a stupid statement. CHINA does not depend on you buying anything. CHINA should let their currency rise, so that Chinese peopl
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Trade and production are two different things...
- the trade deficit with China and other countries shows one thing: USA is not manufacturing much of anything except bailouts for banks and aircraft carriers.
The trade deficit of 50 billion with only China means that the products that are imported into US are absolutely not manufactured in USA, as it is impossible for a US based company to compete with Chinese manufacturer due to the rules and regulations and taxes and subsidies and monopolies and inflation by money printing, all the problems, all of which
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Thanks for the video in your blog, it would be a comedy if it wasn't so tragic.
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As far as the bonds, the U.S. could make those almost worthless in seconds crushing China.
Something tells me China is the one player in this game that stands to win no matter how it plays out. They could take those bonds and burn them in a bonfire right now and still be better off than the USA.
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Tienanmen Square meant nothing.
This actually hurts NASA more than China (Score:5, Insightful)
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As long as you don't try to post to the web anything containing the word "Jasmine." Or try to go to a park which is the site of an attempted protest. Or...
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Hardly an answer to the qurestion (Score:2)
Does it look trying to give an "answer"? (Score:2)
Then if the money's good...
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Because there is re-election potential in prolonging the Cold War paradigm?
My first thought was the same as yours; This hurts NASA.
However, I'm not sure this is really a hindrance to NASA. If we were to create a partnership with China, what would they bring to that partnership, that NASA doesn't already have? I'm having a hard time coming up with something other than "Money".
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>>>really do not understand why some in politics are trying to replay the end of the cold war and get the USA to play the part of the crumbling USSR.
Because they want the US to be replaced by the EU or China as the new #1 player. They want to "spread the wealth" around the world, rather than have it all concentrated in North America. It makes logical sense to weaken the US, if that's your goal.
Vice-versa, I think the politicians are targeting the wrong product. Space is trivial. If they really
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forget about it hurting NASA, what does "also extends to the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy" mean for everything else under the executive branch? or is it just one particular executive branch office?
a bit of googling:
from Forbes.com [forbes.com]:
"Although the ban will expire at the end of the current fiscal year in October, Wolf will seek to make the prohibition on any scientific collaboration between U.S. research agencies and China permanent.... the Obama Administration has taken the position that
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This actually hurts NASA more than China, and as NASA gets hurt and sheds jobs where do you think the best are going to go if they want to get paid? I really do not understand why some in politics are trying to replay the end of the cold war and get the USA to play the part of the crumbling USSR.
Yes, I don't understand how ideology has trumped reality in the United States. I feel politics in this country has steadily become more partisan and ideological because we do not have an external "enemy" any more and we have turned on ourselves instead. We are so self-involved now that we don't see the rest of the world passing us by.
Too late for that... (Score:5, Insightful)
The US already made china the next superpower. It doesn't need to steal US research, it can do everything on its own in probably a more efficient manner.
This way the US cripples its research, and we'll cut off another reason for the US to exist for this economy.
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[China] doesn't need to steal US research....
Then, why does it? For shits and giggles?
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For the same reason the US spies on Chinese industry - to see where the competition is at.
Re:Too late for that... (Score:5, Insightful)
US research could certainly be better but China for the most part is in the position of "steal and copy" rather than producing original research. I have to grudgingly admit that costs are probably a lot lower if you just let the US develop it and pay someone to spy and send you the information so you can create a knockoff later.
Re:Too late for that... (Score:5, Interesting)
How long can the US count on this though? The education system in China isn't THAT horrible, they are bound to produce some brilliant minds, and China has proven time and time again that they can apply themselves to a problem when faced with it. If anything, limiting collaboration with China may be what causes China to start a major shift towards research and innovation. If they have the ability to come up with the ideas, and we already know they can implement them, what does that leave for the US?
The US has for the past few years been betting everything on "Intellectual Property" because in a lot of ways it's the only export the US has left, but if China decides it no longer needs US "IP" then what does the US have left? And if the only answer is "consumers" then the US is in a worse position than most people want to believe.
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You can say they don't 'need' to steal the research, but the evidence of Chinese born espionage in the US is blatant. And if you follow corporate and government level espionage in the news you would know that you would bet China if betting your life on who did it.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/spy/spies/ [pbs.org]
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/11/19/national/main5708534.shtml [cbsnews.com]
http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/military/news/3319656 [popularmechanics.com]
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/foremski/chinese-spies-use-cyber- [zdnet.com]
And so (Score:4, Insightful)
Why should anyone be surprised? (Score:2, Insightful)
NASA's "science" has always been heavily politicized. The same sort of thing went on with the Russians back during the Cold War. They even used to coordinate their launches with anniversaries of Soviet space accomplishments just to try to show up the Russkies (they even held the first space shuttle launch back just so they could have it coincide with the 20th anniversary of Yuri Gagarin's first man in space flight). NASA has ALWAYS been more about politics than science. And now China are the new "bad guys."
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Great Idea (Score:2)
Lots of Weasel Words (Score:2)
I don't remember this level of exclusion even in the bad old days of the USSR. I would also remind
I wonder, though, what this will actually stop ? For example, the Chinese are apparently expressing some interest in participating with the ISS (the space station). Is that a " bilateral policy, program, order, or contract" ? No, it isn't. It is multinational and multilateral. Any Mars mission (the Chinese have an orbiter, Yinghuo-1, on Phobos-Grunt), likewise. And, who decides whether a visitor is "official" ?
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"I don't remember this level of exclusion even in the bad old days of the USSR."
I do. Maybe not to the letter, but in the general relationship, certainly. The US relationship with China is downright cuddly compared to that.
The US and USSR both did some of the silliest episodes of, at best, tit for tat, and at worst raw spite throughout the cold war.
ASTP changed some of that in the space area when Nixon was using it as part of his general detente with the USSR.
This is pretty much symbolism in its effect on C
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Yes, as to the lack of cuddliness. However, we both participated in IGY, we shared data through COSPAR, we went to each other's meetings, we even shared lunar samples (and ranged the Lunakhod LLR retroreflectors). Later, when things warmed a little, there was also the US tracking of the VEGA mission and the VEGA balloon.
So, while there was lots of tit-for-tat, some very stupid (my favorite was denying Kruschev a visit to Disneyland, ostensibly for security reasons!), I am not aware of any blanket ban on sci
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Oh, I was just responding to his quote about Stalin, reminding him (on the off chance he reads Slashdot), that we did have programs in place with Stalin, when they suited our purposes.
I live in Virginia, and know (distantly) Frank Wolf. He may be many things, but he is no tea-bagger. In fact, he got a primary challenge from a tea-bagger. Now, as to whether that has softened his brain, I wouldn't know.
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Things change. We also fought wars against Britain, Spain, put Saddam in power etc... If the Chinese truly wish to advance science we should clearly be working with them scientifically. If they want to steal secrets now to screw us in 10 years then we shouldn't be working with them. And if this policy is truly a disaster put in place by "teh TeaBaggerz" then we'll get it sorted out during the vote on the debt ceiling...or the next presidential race...or whenever.
True enough. And this is just one paragraph stuck in a completely orthogonal bill that can be nullified by another paragraph in another irrelevant bill. I hate when they do that but it's mostly a tale told by an idiot, full of sound an fury, signifying nothing.
when fell the ban on the USSR? (Score:2)
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There was a joint Soyuz-Apollo project. Mostly symbolic, but it had some practical value -- it standardized docking equipment and procedures, made it possible at least in theory, for USSR and US spaceships to be used to rescuing crew from each other in case of emergency... Too bad, US ended Apollo soon after that, and placed all its effort into that fat Concorde-shaped thing.
Uhm, not much standard about Soyuz-Apollo (Score:2)
There was a joint Soyuz-Apollo project. Mostly symbolic, but it had some practical value -- it standardized docking equipment and procedures, made it possible at least in theory, for USSR and US spaceships to be used to rescuing crew from each other in case of emergency... Too bad, US ended Apollo soon after that, and placed all its effort into that fat Concorde-shaped thing.
I probably need to read some more history books, but as I recall this mission was totally political/symbolic. There was no standarization of anything. A specially made dongle was made to connect the spacecrafts (the APAS or the so-called Androgynous Peripheral Attach System). The apollo-soyus mission was flow w/o the lunar module and the APAS was stored in it's place. This also meant that like the lunar module, the dongle/dock wasn't connected at launch, but needed to be extracted from the base of the last
How about a project like Openstack? (Score:2)
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Irrelevant (Score:2)
There are two things that are really worrisome to me. First is the power that individual senators have over NASA. Senator Hatch dictated that NASA had to use solid rockets, much to the delight of the so
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There are two things that are really worrisome to me. First is the power that individual senators have over NASA. ...
...
The second thing that worries me is this whole concept of riders.
Exactly. This is the sort of sausage politics that gets everyone nowhere. Even though the committees do have to vote to get these idiot concepts on the bill and the bill has to be cleared by both houses (and often gets further amended) the practice of putting in bits that have nothing to do with the original bill really should just be banned. Unfortunately, everybody does it so no one is particularly interested in stopping the practice.
Laugh... (Score:2)
I'm pretty sure the Chinese have whatever secrets they want already, at least those that are stored and accessible via the Internet.
Space Race 2 (Score:2)
And the new space race officially begins.
Their commies are better than our commies (Score:2)
The USA's commie bureaucracies, such as NASA, don't actually have to work in order for society to function, so they can just run pursuing uneconomic launch systems like the Shuttle for decades, generally leaching off the taxpayer, putting private launch service companies out of business while claiming to "help" them, etc.
Marx actually had some insights into capitalism's weakness and it may very well be that China has been exploiting those weaknesses quite ef
And? (Score:2)
We long lost the ball on the notion that exporting capitalism would induce democracy. The Chinese have done one thing too well, managing to hold capitalism in a box and make it produce nice things for
Banning Space Science with China (Score:2)
LoL!!!
Yeah, the Chinese are just so missing out. They are reconstructing a space program around a very generous budget, and the same sorts of goals and ambitions they are using with the building projects in their own country, many of them of a size and scale never before done by mankind.
Yeah, I bet they are just wailing in the streets over there.
By the time the Chinese get done with us, they will own half the moon and our private industry the USA is working on will still be sending up tinker toys.
The only
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Well this is institutionalize racism not individual racism.
Why is it as a culture we accept immigrants from Europe much more favorably then from China or India?
I have seen commercials where they say in pride they they got some guy from Europe to work on this.
While if they are from China or India, they give them americanized names and make sure their accent is a clean as possible, as well as people debating if we should let these people immigration or not.
Done fool yourself racism is still here. It has chan
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I am guessing you live in the Midwest because on the coasts Indian and Chinese food, culture, religion, etc is very much accepted and embraced.
And the US doesn't Americanize names anymore. The people choose to do that themselves to make their lives easier.
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It would be racism if they didn't allow Chinese-Americans work for NASA either. This is about politics - not race.
And Chinese isn't really a race anyway. It's a nationality.
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And Chinese isn't really a race anyway. It's a nationality.
Indeed. Chinese is a race about as much as Norwegian is a race.
There's too many -ism's floating around today anyways. It's gotten to the point where if you dislike any group for any reason someone else is ready to strike at you with an accusation of some -ism. In the real world there ARE real reasons to dislike certain groups, and a country spying on you or engaging in sabotage is a perfect reason to start disliking them.