Comment It's sad but understandable. (Score 1) 22
In Germany, there used tobe the idea of "Wandel duch Handel", i.e. "change through trade", i.e. "if we hust trade enough with people, they will eventually end up being a democracy and open society".
I think this was a reasonable ide to try out.
But - just like "trickle down economics", we tried it, and it quite obviously didn't work, and we sadly have to lock things down now with more export controls and less tech and knowledge transfer.
I have no idea if this isolation policy is necessarily better, especially beacuse it means that the different players (the "west", China and India and other) will compete directly with everything. And that would require us westerns to get our act together better and be way more pragmatic. This might be a good or a bad thing. No idea.
One example is the chinese and indian space program - especially the former was quite isolated from the 'west', and it's doing huge advances every year. Compare that to Europe's incredibly risk-adverse and slow progress over the last years. Thankfully, SpaceX is innovating like crazy. But everybody must get their hands dirty and just get shit done, if we want to compete in the long term.
I think this was a reasonable ide to try out.
But - just like "trickle down economics", we tried it, and it quite obviously didn't work, and we sadly have to lock things down now with more export controls and less tech and knowledge transfer.
I have no idea if this isolation policy is necessarily better, especially beacuse it means that the different players (the "west", China and India and other) will compete directly with everything. And that would require us westerns to get our act together better and be way more pragmatic. This might be a good or a bad thing. No idea.
One example is the chinese and indian space program - especially the former was quite isolated from the 'west', and it's doing huge advances every year. Compare that to Europe's incredibly risk-adverse and slow progress over the last years. Thankfully, SpaceX is innovating like crazy. But everybody must get their hands dirty and just get shit done, if we want to compete in the long term.