No exec would make that investment in this country because we 'don't even want to build it'? Or because it's just been prohibitively expensive to do so here?

Don't conflate game theory over price point with desire. We absolutely want to build this stuff.

Volume is still not necessarily the strongest indicator. It's difficult to see if this is a direct outcome of a 'more innovative economy' or if it's just the sheer volume. As we've seen in the US, academia is experiencing mass publication spam and cross-references between low-impact papers. It's entirely possible to see mass citation of a very meaningless paper.

As far as them being a major hub for high end/'deep tech', they just aren't to our level. I'm not sure how to quantify the gap other than in production numbers (and in the volume of business activity in adjacent/prerequisite supply chains) and they just aren't there yet with that stuff.

US/EU. China's economy is experiencing a period of burnout. We have chief control over the most cutting edge AI, which is expanding and improving by orders of magnitude, which drives insane network effects for all participating and adjacent industries.

China's certainly maintaining threat status, and their constant IP theft could certainly drive sudden leaps in progress, but we'll see.

I'm more concerned about China's global Imperialism, laying claim to natural resources/mineral rights across Africa, LatAm, etc, than I am about their ability to catch up to our leading edge of tech.

Hell, they've been trying for like 20 years now to catch up to our offshore/oil tech (which is very low tech stuff compared to this semiconductor shit) and they're still at best making janky knock-offs.

Edit-- lol you're the guy claiming China's 18 trillion dollar economy is larger than America's 25 trillion. If you honestly think every single competitive edge of ours is 'legacy' then you're really just playing the doomer.

If we had legitimate evidence that we could hold against them, this might make sense. But if you're referring to the outcome of the DOE investigation, the outcome provided no actionable evidence. It's the 'best guess theory' based on investigation by the DOE. The rest of the Intelligence community has differing views on this, and no one has the evidence we'd need to credibly pursue remunerations.

And no way would China pay it. And no way would anyone lift a finger to make them pay it. The best thing we can do is work overtime to install Intelligence assets in China's scientific community to better monitor what's going on so we can prepare for or avert stuff like this. They do the same to us, only we have proven that we have far more effective safety measures and systems to keep our public safe at the scale we're discussing. And they have shown (not just with COVID-19), they can't be trusted with a lot of this shit. The majority of epidemics/pandemics in recent times (human and non-human) have come from them and their inability to manage public and livestock health, as well as dangerous research containment. So we just do the best we can to stay apprised/invested in those activities, and we plan courses of action/response if needed when we smell danger.

This is an important step to do that. It's often hard to be independent without being #1. We do this with our military, with our energy grid, and more. If we can be #1 then we have no need to rely on others.

People who are "ahead" usually get there by going through intense refining of supply chains, talent pools, infrastructure establishment, and more...the kinds of things that promote independence. When others take the lead, countries usually don't go all-in on independence because it's just cheaper/easier/better to rely on others.

People who shit on globalism are as uninformed/economically illiterate as those who thing globalism is a fix-all. The web is complex and independence is, depending on the subject, as useful as it can be foolish/destructive.

This just isn't the case. China's operating model (esp. with regard to R&D) has immense inertia thanks to its state-controlled mandates and investment decisions. They aren't the ones pushing the envelope here. They are, still, a mass production economy of low/medium tech. And even that they are losing an edge on, as more and more shifts to Vietnam and Mexico (which they are trying to get a slice of through direct and indirect (shell) company takeovers). For all the tech blueprints they're stealing, they still don't have the advanced fabrication facilities, the laser tech, or many of the raw capabilities and resources needed.

I'm trying to find the deck from a great JP Morgan analysis on this that I attended a while back, but suffice to say China's main threats are their military pressure on key regional allies/supply partnerships, and their constant theft of technology polluting the market with vastly inferior (but highly consumed) goods.

Economically and strategically are they a threat? Yes. Technologically? Not yet, and with less and less concern the more we re-shore and lock down this advanced stuff. Grinding simple laborers into dust for mass production only really helps them churn cheap and shitty plastic widgets that consumerist Americans gobble up via Amazon, Etsy, and eBay. Future tech (military, processing/computing/AI, energy, etc) will be governed by things China simply doesn't yet have an edge on.

This is great for the US and Europe, because as we monopolize the development of AI and true next-gen automation, we can re-shore production and 'buy American', as our robo army of crazy neural network 'brains' will increasingly provide for us. Our one hurdle (beyond pro-competitive AI rollout/availability) is then the supply chain partnerships we develop. Steel, etc we still rely on China, so we'd need to find a way to patch in a new middle man...which we're trying with Vietnam where possible.

Also, Mighty's response isn't the most useful. Patent spam isn't a great metric for true quality of invention. China can churn hundreds of thousands of throw-away patents while the US might only file for 1/4 as many but put forth far more meaningful/impactful innovations.

Cutting edge semiconductor technology. We are very ahead, and China is still struggling to access the means (resources, blueprints/patents, skilled labor, etc) of high-tech production and R&D that we have.

Their pseudo-capitalism under a controlled state lugs immense inertia and they're paying for it. Theft of IP has so far been their only valuable card, and we're trying very hard to make that harder for them.