击败中国
大卫·P·戈德曼 04.12.2022
美国需要积极的产业政策来赢得第四次工业革命。
编者按
以下是克莱蒙特研究所华盛顿研究员 David P. Goldman 在全国保守主义会议上的评论记录。 可以在此处找到原始视频。
我们需要重建美国经济，而我们只能通过激发美国人想象力的有远见的战略来做到这一点，例如肯尼迪登月计划或里根战略防御计划。
简而言之：数据表明特朗普的对华政策是灾难性的失败。 恕我直言，如果我们得到更多这样的结果，我们将会遭遇更多灾难性的失败。 我们现在从中国的进口比 2018 年 1 月特朗普征收关税时多了 30% 以上。 关税是处理此类问题的一种非常糟糕的方式：它们对微观经济倾销问题很有帮助，但在宏观层面上却非常无效。 在技术压制方面，中国建设了全球70%的5G网络，并正在第四次工业革命的基础上继续建设应用。
我们可以比中国做得更好。 我们比中国更有能力创新。 但我们并没有这样做，因为我们被技术官僚精英压垮了，他们榨干了美国经济的精髓，创造了巨大的财富，但所做的事情在很大程度上损害了我们的利益。 只有联邦政府的干预，即产业政策，才能扭转这一局面。
这不是一个典型的自由主义解决方案。 产业政策是危险的——它们会导致寻租行为、腐败和国家权力过多。 但在战争中它们就变得必要了，而我们的经济状况相当于一场战争。
最让我担心的是，那些花费 6 万亿美元进行永久战争并通过浪费我们的资源来摧毁我们军队的傻瓜将引导我们与中国发生对抗，这将导致一场没有人能赢的战争。 如果我们将这 6 万亿美元中的十分之一花在高科技武器上，我们就不会担心中国的超高速导弹或其他类似的东西。
然而，如果你试图强迫台湾独立，任何想要统治中国的中国政府都会采取军事行动，无论是否是共产党。 中国共产党是共产党，就像黑手党是天主教徒一样：他们非常认真地对待它，但它没有什么实际意义。
要管理一个中华帝国，就必须镇压叛乱省份，因此我们对台湾唯一能做的就是保持战略模糊性并提高中国人以武力夺取台湾的代价，而我们目前没有办法阻止这一点 核战争。 劝阻他们不要这么做，维护台湾民主，走好底线。 约翰·博尔顿会强行提出这个问题，并导致很多人丧生——如果你不相信我，请阅读斯塔夫里迪斯海军上将的精彩惊悚片《2034》。剧透警告：我们炸毁了他们的一些城市，他们炸毁了我们的一些城市，然后 我们又回到了原点。
大跃进
现在让我谈谈第四次工业革命，这是这里真正关键的。 窃取数据无法赢得战争。 他们不是被间谍赢得的。 他们凭借深入的后勤保障和获胜的意愿而赢得胜利。 第一次工业革命始于詹姆斯·瓦特 (James Watt) 于 1776 年出售他的第一台商用蒸汽机。第四次工业革命始于中国通过将人工智能应用于海量数据集来预测潜在的疫情爆发并使用法医测试和选择性封锁来应对 COVID-19 大流行。 以阻止疫情蔓延。 所以中国是第一个走出疫情的工业国家。
结果，他们的相对实力有了质的飞跃，他们现在正在着手推出与之相关的技术。 这是真正的科幻小说——我们谈论的是 5G，它允许工业机器人组在车间进行通信并自行编程。 智能物流允许跟踪单个物体从矿山到工厂、仓库到运输、返回仓库、到卡车、装载到自动驾驶车辆上并全程受控。 它允许人工智能服务器优化城市交通，并将每位乘客和包裹与交通工具相匹配。 它允许大豆植株底部的传感器与无人机进行通信，无人机提供肥料和农药，并指导自动拖拉机收割它们。 我们正在谈论像第一次和第二次工业革命那样的生产力爆炸式增长。
我们赢得了第二次工业革命。 现在听听中国人对此是怎么说的：迈克尔·白邦瑞认识的将军是一回事。 但现在负责中国经济政策的人是我认识的人，因为我在华尔街与他们共事。 他们是在美国接受教育的、彻底现代的技术官僚，他们的野心有如珠穆朗玛峰那么大。 其中一位名叫林毅夫的人。 他曾任世界银行首席经济学家，拥有博士学位。 他拥有芝加哥大学博士学位，刚刚写了一本关于为什么中国将引领第四次工业革命的书。
林说，我们对美国的立场就像19世纪美国对英国的立场一样。 英国拥有所有技术。 托马斯·爱迪生没有发明灯泡：英国物理学家约瑟夫·斯旺发明了灯泡。 爱迪生偷了它，被起诉并不得不支付巨额和解金。 爱迪生所做的是创建了一个工业规模的实验室，对 5,000 种材料进行了研究，直到他们找到了比 Swan 寿命长十倍的灯丝，使其具有商业可行性。
安德鲁·卡内基生产的钢铁比世界上任何人都多——他并没有发明贝塞麦工艺。 约瑟夫·贝塞麦做到了。 英国拥有所有技术； 美国要么借用它，要么买它，要么偷它，并有企业家和物流来深入实现它。 这就是中国如何看待自己对抗美国的。
林毅夫说：他们会试图镇压我们。 他们不希望我们崛起，就像英国试图压制德国和美国一样。但看看我们的人力资本。 人力资本是技术的驱动力。 中国每年培养的工程师数量是我们的 7 倍，STEM 博士数量是我们的 3 倍； 他们有14亿人口。
是的，中国文化确实容易产生因循守旧的倾向。 但在这么多人中，绝对有很多杰出的创新者。 这就是我们所面临的。 超高速导弹在战略上并不那么重要，但它确实代表了我们开始认识到，是的，他们可以创新。 有一些关键技术领先我们很多年。
因此，尽管我支持特朗普总统，尽管我两次投票给他，尽管我为他辩护，使其免受所有邪恶的深层国家攻击，但当特朗普说中国人只是通过从我们那里偷东西而达到他们的地位时……最重要的是 中国人从我们这里偷走了一个让里根革命成功的伟大想法：这个想法就是你可以拥有双重用途技术，既可以给你纽扣枪，又可以给你黄油。 它们促进平民生产力。 你在军队中使用它们，但它们的成本是其本身的十倍——就像阿波罗计划那样，就像战略防御计划那样。 数字时代的每一项发明，无一例外，都是始于 DARPA 项目。 它们全部由国防部资助。
再次伟大
那时我们有一个由哈罗德·布朗或詹姆斯·施莱辛格这样的人管理的国防部，他们利用国防预算来挑战物理学的极限，以便更好地赢得战争。 他们让企业家将这些东西商业化，不是通过押注于企业家，而是通过承担基础研究的成本。 就是这样。
现在我们的五角大楼对于国防承包商来说基本上是一个巨大的猪肉桶，他们年复一年地出售同样的 20 年前的垃圾，对创新没有兴趣。 中国人效仿了美国的做法：他们想成为冷战中的里根，对抗僵化的苏联。 现在，他们不像我们那么擅长，我的观点是我们没有什么可学的：我们只需要记住。
当我还是个孩子的时候，你知道在里根第一届政府期间，我为国家安全委员会做了一些咨询。 我写了一篇小论文，后来变成了里根的演讲，说 SGI 会像阿波罗计划一样收回成本。 我们相信这一点。 我们创新了。
那么：我们需要什么？ 我们需要产业政策。 在美国精英将一切都转向软件并摧毁我们的技能基础、我们的工业社区、我们的制造公司等20年后，将需要大约一万亿美元和10年的时间来重建我们的工业基础。 一万亿美元——这并不是很多钱。 我们需要像北欧人那样的学徒计划，让那些可能浪费时间做性别研究专业的孩子，教他们一门可能赚三倍钱的行业。 例如，德国汽车工人的收入是美国汽车工人的两倍。
我们需要像艾森豪威尔在人造卫星发射后推出的国防教育法案，为人们提供工程奖学金和其他超出国防要求的奖学金，而不是批判性研究理论。 我们知道所有这些事情，因为我们已经完成了其中的每一件事情。
我们需要像艾森豪威尔在人造卫星发射后推出的国防教育法案，为人们提供工程奖学金和其他超出国防要求的奖学金，而不是批判性研究理论。 我们知道所有这些事情，因为我们已经完成了其中的每一件事情。 我们只需要掸掉旧想法，让乐队重新团结起来。 我要告诉你们的是，保守派运动需要一个积极的计划，一套解决方案来激励美国人民，激发他们的想象力，就像肯尼迪在指向月球时所做的那样，就像里根在承诺保卫祖国免受侵害时所做的那样。 敌方弹道导弹。 我们需要积极的观点，我们需要一种能做的方法，我们需要在美利坚合众国为世界开拓未来的良好记录中找到它。
大卫·P·戈德曼 (David P. Goldman) 是《亚洲时报》的副主编、克莱蒙特研究所的华盛顿研究员以及《法律与自由》杂志的资深撰稿人。
5G中国精英产业创新技术
Beating China
America needs a proactive industrial policy to win the fourth industrial revolution.
The following is a transcript of comments by Claremont Institute Washington Fellow David P. Goldman at the National Conservatism Conference. Video of the original can be found here.
We need to rebuild the American economy, and we can only do that with a visionary strategy that galvanizes the imagination of Americans, like the Kennedy Moon Shot or the Reagan Strategic Defense Initiative.
Let’s put it very simply: the numbers show that the Trump policy toward China was a catastrophic failure. And with all due respect to Curt Mills, if we get more of that we’ll have more catastrophic failure. We’re now importing over 30% more from China than we did in January 2018 when Trump imposed tariffs. Tariffs are a really lousy way of dealing with this kind of problem: they’re good for micro-economic dumping issues, but they’re very ineffective at a macro level. As for technology suppression, China built 70% of the world’s 5G networks and is proceeding to build the application on top of that which constitutes the fourth industrial revolution.
We can do better than China. We’re better equipped to innovate than China. But we’re not doing so, because we’re crushed by a technocratic elite which has sucked the marrow out of the United states economy and generated enormous wealth doing things that, for the most part, harm us. Nothing short of an intervention by the federal government, namely an industrial policy, will turn that around.
That’s not a classically liberal solution. Industrial policies are dangerous—they lead to rent-seeking behavior, corruption, and too much state power. But in a war they become necessary, and we’ve got the economic equivalent of a war going on.
The thing that worries me the most is that the knuckleheads who spent $6 trillion on forever wars and gutted our military by frittering away our resources will steer us into a confrontation with China that will lead to a war that nobody can win. If we spent a tenth of that 6 trillion on high-tech weaponry, we wouldn’t be worrying about China’s hypervelocity missiles or anything else like that.
Whereas if you try to force the independence of Taiwan, any Chinese government that wants to rule China will use military action, Communist or not. The Chinese Communist party is Communist the same way the Mafia is Catholic: they take it very seriously, but it is of very little practical importance.
To run a Chinese empire you have to suppress rebel provinces, and so the only thing we can do with Taiwan is to maintain strategic ambiguity and raise the price of the Chinese taking it by force, which we have no means to stop at this point short of a nuclear war. Dissuade them from doing it, maintain Taiwanese democracy, and walk the fine line. John Bolton would force the question and get a lot of people killed—if you don’t believe me read Admiral Stavridis’s marvelous thriller 2034. Spoiler alert: we blow up a bunch of their cities, they blow up a bunch of our cities, and we’re back to square one.
The Great Leap Forward
Now let me talk about the fourth industrial revolution, which is what’s really critical here. Wars are not won by stealing data. They’re not won by spies. They’re won by logistics in depth and the willingness to prevail. The first industrial revolution began when James Watt sold his first commercial steam engine in 1776. The fourth industrial revolution began when China responded to the COVID-19 pandemic by using artificial intelligence applied to massive datasets to predict potential outbreaks and use forensic testing plus selective lockdowns to shut down the pandemic. So China was the first industrial country to come out of the pandemic.
As a result they had a quantum leap in their relative power, and they are now proceeding to roll out the technology associated with this. This is the real science fiction stuff—we’re talking about 5G permitting groups of industrial robots to communicate on the shop floor and program themselves. Smart logistics allow individual objects to be tracked from mine to factory to warehouse to ship, back to warehouse, to truck, loaded onto autonomous vehicles and controlled all the way. It allows AI servers to optimize urban traffic and match every passenger and package to a conveyance. It allows sensors at the base of soybean plants to communicate with drones that deliver fertilizer and pesticides and direct autonomous tractors to harvest them. We’re talking about an explosion of productivity like that of the first and second industrial revolutions.
We won the second industrial revolution. Now listen to what the Chinese say about this: the generals whom Michael Pillsbury got to know are one thing. But the people running Chinese economic policies now are people I know, because I worked with them on Wall Street. They’re U.S.-educated, thoroughly modern technocrats with ambition the size of Mount Everest. One of them is a fellow named Yifu Lin. He was chief economist of the World Bank, has got a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago, and he just wrote a book about why China is going to lead the fourth industrial revolution.
Lin says, we’re in the same position against America that America was against England in the 19th century. England had all the technology. Thomas Edison didn’t invent the lightbulb: Joseph Swan, a British physicist did. Edison stole it, got sued and had to pay out a gigantic settlement. What Edison did was create an industrial-scale laboratory which went through 5,000 materials until they found the filament that would make it last ten times longer than Swan, making it commercially viable.
Andrew Carnegie made more steel than anyone in the world—he didn’t invent the Bessemer process. Joseph Bessemer did. England had all the technology; America either borrowed it, bought it, or stole it and had the entrepreneurs and the logistics to realize it in depth. That is how China sees itself against the United states.
Yifu Lin says: they’re going to try to suppress us. They don’t want us to rise, just the way England tried to suppress Germany and the U.S. But look at our human capital. Human capital is what drives technology. China is producing 7 times as many engineers as we are per year and 3 times as many STEM Ph.D.’s; they have 1.4 billion people.
Yes, it’s true that Chinese culture tends to produce conformism. But among that many people, you do have a lot of brilliant innovators in absolute terms. So that’s what we’re up against. The hypervelocity missile is not that important strategically, but it did represent a point at which we began to understand that yes they can innovate. There are some key technologies where they are years ahead of us.
And so, though I support President Trump, though I voted for him twice, though I defended him against all of the nefarious deep-state attacks, when Trump said that the Chinese just got where they were by stealing stuff from us…the main thing the Chinese stole from us was the great idea that made the Reagan revolution work: the idea that you can have dual-use technologies which both give you button guns and butter. They foster civilian productivity. You use them in the military, but they pay for themselves 10 times over—just like the Apollo program did, just like the strategic defense initiative did. Every single invention of the digital age, no exceptions, started with the DARPA project. They were all funded by the Department of Defense.
Great Again
That was when we had a Department of Defense run by people like Harold Brown or James Schlesinger, who used the defense budget to push the envelope of physics, the better to win wars. They got entrepreneurs to commercialize these things not by betting on the entrepreneurs, but by covering the costs of the fundamental research. That’s it.
Now we’ve got a Pentagon that’s basically a giant pork barrel for defense contractors who sell the same 20-year-old garbage year in and year out and have no interest in innovating. The Chinese have stolen the American approach: they want to be Reagan in the Cold War against a sclerotic Soviet Union. Now, they’re not as good at it as we are, and my argument is we have nothing to learn: we only need to remember.
When I was a kid, you know back during the first Reagan Administration, I did some consulting for the National Security Council. I wrote a little paper which made it into a Reagan speech, saying, SGI will pay for itself just like the Apollo program did. We believed that. We innovated.
So: what do we need? We need an industrial policy. it’s going take about a trillion dollars and 10 years to rebuild our industrial base, after 20 years of the American elite shifting everything to software and destroying our skill base, our industrial communities, our manufacturing companies, and so forth. A trillion dollars—that’s not a lot of money. We’re going to need apprenticeship programs like the northern Europeans to take kids who might be wasting their time doing a gender studies major and teach them a trade where they’ll probably make three times as much money. German auto workers make twice as much as American auto workers, by way of example.
We need a defense Education Act like Eisenhower introduced after Sputnik, something that gives people scholarships for engineering and other things which beat National Defense requirements, as opposed to critical studies theory. We know all these things because we’ve done every single one of them. We only have to dust off the old ideas and get the band back together. And what I put to you is that the conservative movement needs a positive program, a set of solutions to galvanize the American people, capture their imagination as Kennedy did when he pointed to the moon, as Reagan did when he promised to defend the homeland against enemy ballistic missiles. We need a positive view, we need a can-do approach, and we need to found it on the proven track record of the United States of America in pioneering the future for the world.
David P. Goldman is deputy editor of Asia Times, a Washington fellow of the Claremont Institute, and a senior writer for Law & Liberty.The American Mind presents a range of perspectives. Views are writers’ own and do not necessarily represent those of The Claremont Institute.
The American Mind is a publication of the Claremont Institute, a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, dedicated to restoring the principles of the American Founding to their rightful, preeminent authority in our national life. Interested in supporting our work? Gifts to the Claremont Institute are tax-deductible.
