China's authoritarian/totalitarian government might be better for developing I.T Sector

[Benjamin Frank]

Pretty interesting program. About 1 hour long.

"Anthropologist Darren Byler sees a confluence in Xinjiang province in China of constant surveillance, state data harvesting and private companies driven by profit. How does this apply to the global race for supremacy in artificial intelligence?"

This program is directly about the Uighurs, the one Muslim people that seems to generate a lot of sympathy from those on the right.

https://www.cbc.ca/listen/live-radio/1-23-ideas/clip/15895551-on-china-detention-surveillance-profit

The theory is that China's I.T sector benefits from the 'economy of scope' provided by their totalitarian government.  The contracts and information provided by the government allow these Chinese private sector I.T companies to further develop these technologies with non direct government applications, and then back again in a feedback loop.

Economy of scope
An economy of scope means that the production of one good reduces the cost of producing another related good. Economies of scope occur when producing a wider variety of goods or services in tandem is more cost effective for a firm than producing less of a variety, or producing each good independently. In such a case, the long-run average and marginal cost of a company, organization, or economy decreases due to the production of complementary goods and services.

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/e/economiesofscope.asp

[Farmlands]

As someone studying in IT, it always pisses me off to see totalitarian regimes use it, and very effectively, to control and subjugate their populations. Too bad it only seems to be getting worse in China, what with the nightmarish and dystopian social credit program.

[Person Man]

As someone studying in IT, it always pisses me off to see totalitarian regimes use it, and very effectively, to control and subjugate their populations. Too bad it only seems to be getting worse in China, what with the nightmarish and dystopian social credit program.

Big Tech also uses social credit to ban people not just from things like Twitter or FB, but also from things like Airbnb and Turo.

[dead0man]

If the PRC survives long enough, and your theory is true, eventually they'll stop stealing tech from us.  Let me know when they stop doing that and we can revisit your theory.