Inside Asian Gaming

INSIDE ASIAN GAMING JANUARY 2018 36 THE DISMAL OPTIMIST “Through initiatives such as the Made in China 2025 program, China has clearly indicated that its principle objective for its economy is to become number one in technology.” robotics, drones, the cloud, blockchain – the list goes on – that is driving new technology. These are all global non-military industries. Listen to any top tech company’s earnings call and the conversation always covers how the company is doing in global markets including China. Gamers are more important than generals in the explosion of global tech! Nvidia for example was driven to improve its GPU (Graphic Processing) chips by the insatiable demands of gamers, not the Pentagon. The GPU later became indispensable in AI and autonomous cars and now data mining for bitcoin. The Pentagon probably didn’t know any of this was coming even though now it may wish it had. To be fair, there is DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency. DARPA has played a role in developing robotic and autonomous car technology. But the primary tech drivers have been civilian. The Chinese and American companies are working on this. Cut the flow of technology and consumers everywhere will lose. A recent report sponsored by the Department of Defense lamented that so much of civilian technology has dual military-civilian uses. The report, written by Michael Brown and Pavneet Singh, has the governmentalese super-long title of China’s Technology Transfer Strategy: How Chinese Investments in Emerging Technology Enable a Strategic Competitor to Access the Crown Jewels of US Innovation. The report takes particular issue with Chinese investments in US start-ups, viewing these investments as a national defense problem. The report may have a point. But if implemented it would smother US innovation and ensure there were no new crown jewels. Technology today is being driven globally by markets, not the US government. It is being driven by nerdy teenagers playing computer games, by busy women who want Amazon’s Alexa to do their chores and select and deliver their clothes and their meals and by aging fogies who need help driving their cars. The military adds nothing to this new civilian knowledge economy. Yes, these civilian technologies may have huge military uses. But cut off the civilian side and there will be nothing for the militaries. Cutting off the flow of technology to China will prove futile The Chinese tech rise will be unstoppable unless the Chinese government follows really restrictive and stupid policies. It all starts with education. The Chinese can’t get enough. The reality is that so-called STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering, math) are a major focus of Chinese education. In 2016, according to the World Economic Forum, 4.7 million Chinese students graduated in STEM subjects versus 568,000 in the United States. Some might take issue regarding quality but Alphabet Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt, who should know, has been quoted as saying about Chinese STEM graduates, “If you have any kind of concern that somehow their system is not going to produce the kind of people that I’m talking about (qualified scientists), you’re wrong.” Interestingly, two Chinese institutions, the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Tsinghua University, placed in the top 10 on the Nikkei list for most quoted AI-related research papers over 2012-2016. (Microsoft was first). The government report mentioned above states that one quarter of US STEM graduate students are Chinese foreign nationals who then are not allowed to stay in the US to work after graduation. This reflects a big flaw in American immigration policy as the report somewhat surprisingly admits.