Tony Pan

[Asia Times @asiatimesonline]

#Nvidia went to Beijing to sell #H200 chips, but #China said no. The old model of Western invention and Chinese manufacturing is inverting as Beijing pushes self-sufficiency, and Western firms increasingly need Chinese tech. #SMIC #Huawei #Decoupling

https://t.co/CBJgTXU5bv

[Tony Pan @tonyspan]

@s8mb Thank you! Linear no-threshold is wrong!

[Tony Pan @tonyspan]

@dwarkesh_sp There are quite a few EU technology giants that are majority held by non-profit foundations, for example Bosch.

[Crémieux @cremieuxrecueil]

Commencement speech, America: 'You can do anything, and you're going to do great!'

Commencement speech, Taiwan: 'Consider suicide if you make a mistake.'

[World Economic Forum @wef]

The Strait of #Hormuz crisis could rewrite the future of #AI development. Countries that want to lead on AI must secure electricity, materials and hardware, not just code.

https://t.co/nqY9YIeYeE

[Tony Pan @tonyspan]

Just wrote a piece for the @wef on how the Iran war is hitting the physical economy of AI -- the chips, molecules, and substations, without which there would be no AI data centers.

https://t.co/SVD7OhUgle

[Tony Pan @tonyspan]

Detecting Aliens via their Slingshots around Supermassive Black Holes

I've wondered about this for a while, so finally did the math & writing:
https://t.co/wAdLh2wTWq

[Yisu Zhou @yisuzhou]

"In Shanghai, long the country’s preferred hub for foreign companies, the number of foreign-owned R&D centres has increased to 631, as of September, from 441 in 2018. French automaker Renault does not even sell cars in China, but it is among those companies to have opened an R&D centre in Shanghai this year to learn from the local market."

[Tony Pan @tonyspan]

@SamoBurja China already has a migrant model, it's just internal. Not only did a few hundred million Chinese people move from rural to cities, but there still is ~300 million of 'migrant' labor today (aka live outside their registered household area.)

[Tony Pan @tonyspan]

@Noahpinion It's competition. The term "neijuan" didn't start with China's inter-corporate & provincal competition. The phrase started around the person-to-person race to bottom. Fighting to get into high school. Then gaokao for college. Then work, have to show facetime 996 or else let go.

[afra wang @afrazhaowang]

my new essay “The China Tech Canon” is out in @asteriskmgzn's 12th issue, themed “Book.” link in reply.

in this piece, i trace the intellectual map of china’s tech founders by asking a simple question: what books have shaped their worldview?

what emerged is that the “china tech canon” shares deep roots with the “silicon valley canon” that @patrickc and @Scholars_Stage once outlined—works by paul graham, jim collins, peter thiel, and biographies of elon musk (and many others) circulate widely. but the chinese canon also branches into its own distinct traditions: what i call the red canon, the grey canon, and the fanstasy canon. alongside the western playbook of disruption and ambition, chinese entrepreneurs also draw from maoist texts, confucian ethics, martial-arts fantasies, and liu cixin's ruthless universe.

i’ve loved @asteriskmgzn for a long time, and it was a joy to become friends with the founder+editor @clarabcollier during our china trip in august that @jasminewsun organized, and to work with her on this piece. many thanks to @jkeatn and @clarabcollier's wonderful editing.

also thanks to @danwwang @Scholars_Stage and @Zac_Aztec for their feedback.

@danwwang asked a few great follow-up questions that i might later expand into a sequel on my substack, Concurrent.

[Tony Pan @tonyspan]

@afrazhaowang @asteriskmgzn This is fantastic. I wonder how to introduce Jin Yong to Western audiences though. Analogy to Tolkien vastly undersells his influence in contemporary China. Jin Yong's canon of 15 books is not only widely read but spawned 100+ TV series, and dozens of movies, games, etc.

[Tony Pan @tonyspan]

@auren Operation Dinner Out!

[Tony Pan @tonyspan]

@hsu_steve China's data center strategy balancing energy and latency is pretty mature and out in the open: 东数西算 (Eastern data western compute)

[Tony Pan @tonyspan]

@JonathonPSine Latest numbers (2022) published from China Ministry of Education show their percentage of college students in Engineering is holding steady at ~34%. However, most data I find re: USA 4-year college engineering percentage is just 6-7%.

[Tony Pan @tonyspan]

Unlocking electricity for AI without building more infrastructure - my article for @wef https://t.co/CzuyZIrHts

[Tony Pan @tonyspan]

@emollick Reading text & image & video bitrate >> listening. Pressing buttons on good UI bitrate >> talking. Talking bitrate >> typing on onscreen keyboard. So Apple probably not crazy to continue on conventional UIs.

[Tony Pan @tonyspan]

@zebulgar Just took a train ride across 4 EU countries. We have faster wifi on USA planes then EU's top trains. Still love the people here, but EU not keeping up.

[Tony Pan @tonyspan]

@vsiv @noah_gordon_ Similar to China's wise leapfrog strategy and invest in EV instead of internal combustion over 15 years ago. Overtake at the curve!

[Tony Pan @tonyspan]

@auren “For scientific discovery give me Scott; for speed and efficiency of travel give me Amundsen; but when disaster strikes and all hope is gone, get down on your knees and pray for Shackleton.”