China's Strategic Advantage

Newsmax ^ | November 30, 2006 | Lev Navrozov

[2ndDivisionVet]

Since Hitler declared war on the United States in 1941, the U.S. president could, as commander in chief, allocate money for the development of a super weapon of that time—"the atom bomb," which was being developed in Hitler's Germany, according to Einstein's letter of 1939 to President Roosevelt. But in peacetime, only Congress allocates money for whatever weapons development.

Super weapons are created by scientists and inventors of genius. While the United States graduates 60,000 engineers a year, the dictatorship of China graduates 442,000 of them. The figure, considering the size of China's population, will finally be mind-boggling. Some of these graduates will be scientists and inventors of genius able to create super weapons.

Thus Tsung-Dao Lee, born in 1926, received in 1957 the Nobel Prize in Physics — in those new fields, requiring genius and nourishing the development of super weapons.

What is remarkable is that this scientist of genius regards China's dictatorship as his dear native country, and in 1989 he established the Chun-Tsung (Chun is his wife's name) Endowment Fund of scholarships to be awarded at five universities of China.

But what about scientists and inventors of genius born in other countries? In Australia, Mike O'Dwyer has been working on the "Metal Storm" technology. Just as a machine gun was, once upon a time, a weapon able, in Kipling's opinion, to defeat all countries that did not have it, a Metal Storm weapon can make a million shots per minute from many barrels simultaneously.

[2ndDivisionVet]

The author raises many questions as to China's intentions. Here are some other articles in the same vein:

http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2006/12/29/84802.shtml

http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2006/12/22/105404.shtml

http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2006/12/7/132748.shtml

http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2006/12/15/105747.shtml

[Flavius]

Metal Storm weapon can make a million shots per minute from many barrels simultaneously

thats got to be a bi.ch to reload

[Zhang Fei]

China has been graduating large numbers of engineering people for a while. The problem is that you can't mass produce initiative and creative thinking. All these guys know how to do is pass exams. If a corporation somehow manages to discover a need for large numbers of excellent test takers, China definitely fits the bill. If it wants people who will actually generate innovative products that will meet the needs of the marketplace, it will pretty much have to go elsewhere.

[matt1234]

The biggest problem with China:

hundreds of millions raised with no moral or religious guidance except the Communist Party. It will take at least a generation to redress, short of war. Probably more.

[generalhammond]

China will do anything to get this technology AND prevent it from being developed and used by the West by poaching the inventor, Mike O'Brien, for $100 million. Read more at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/10/04/wchina04.xml

 

 

[ClearCase_guy]

China's got over a billion people, so I'd be a fool if I said that none of them were super geniuses.

All I can say is that I've worked in high technology for a long time, and worked alongside people from many, many countries. Many of them were brilliant. Majority of the ones I've worked with came from India and from China. The Indians were smart and hard-working.

I have never, in all my years, had the priviledge of working with an engineer from China who was above average. I think their education system stamps something out of their soul.

[jeddavis]

China is missing something like 60,000,000 women right now because of their one child law; they're going to need a flag with a hammer, a sickle, and a pink flamingo on it. That's aside from the fact that 65% of them are still farming for a living. No way would I trade our problems in life for theirs.

[Calpernia]

China is China's worst enemy. They keep playing with germs in Guangdong and kicking themselves in the Hong Kong.

[Anti-Bubba182]

Metal Storm

[Lexinom]

Speaking on Australia's Nine Network, Mike O'Dwyer said that a representative of China had called him over the phone and said: "We want you and your family in Beijing," to finish his work on Metal Storm weapons. His salary? $100 million a year, with $50 million on arrival in China.

Of course! He and his wife may wish to buy a mansion of their own or whatever else.

O'Dwyer turned down the offer and reported it to the Australian government, which responded with its advice on how he "should continue the discussion" and on how to preserve his "personal safety." O'Dwyer said he would like to have seen a little more concern.

Had O'Dwyer accepted the $100-million-a-year offer, no one would have known about it. An Australian going to work in China? Big deal! Nowadays this is fashionable!

So who is talking about this? Any of our '08 contenders? Does anyone care? Anyone? Going once... going twice...

[Lexinom]

My experience as well.

[Sandreckoner]

Yes, China graduates half a million engineers, as long as you also call U.S. vo-tech pre-engineering folk "engineers." There's a wide range of what are considered actual "engineers" by China.

[Lexinom]

I had no comment on the number of engineering graduates - others on the thread have addressed that issue quite well, esp. post #3 (quantity vs. quality paradigm). I am openly wondering (rhetorically; I think we all know the answer) why, exactly, they would specifically contact this Australian with an offer of $100 million salary to complete his research there. And why are we not taking the Chinese threat seriously? Though less imminent it is, to my thinking, even more serious than the WOT for the long haul.

[Sandreckoner]

My bad, I wasn't meaning to reply directly to you, was intending to reply to the thread in general.

[Zhang Fei]

And why are we not taking the Chinese threat seriously?

Of course we are. This is why our procurement budget alone is bigger than the entire Chinese military budget. It is why we're going ahead with major upgrades to our aviation and naval assets despite mostly infantry focus of our campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan. Rumsfeld is criticized for his focus on not expanding the ground forces, but I think his options were limited. He simply did not have the dollars he needed to prepare for the bigger long-term threat - China - by getting upgraded air and naval equipment *and* simultaneously expand the ground forces. He could do one but not both. So he chose to prepare for the eventuality that threatened us with a higher total body count - a conflict with China.

[Captain Rhino]

That, of course, is a theoretical rate of fire extrapolated from on how long the device takes to discharge its (much smaller) load of ammunition. I'd normally write "empty it's magazine," but if you know how the MetalStorm technology works, you realize that there is no magazine involved, just multiple barrels each preloaded with multiple complete rounds (primer, propellent, and projectile).

As for reloading, well, you can either replace the entire barrel assembly or, more likely, open a new, preloaded weapon. Except for the fact that the target is still peppered with bullets fired from rifled barrels, it is hard to think of MetalStorm as a gun in the traditional sense of the word at all.

Welcome to the 21st century.

[Captain Rhino]

I had similar thoughts.

During the early 1970s I was assigned as a Marine Security Guard at the US Consul General in Calcutta. The city is located in the Indian state of West Bengal and the Bengalis are a famously literate people (90%+ literacy rate with many high school and college graduates). However, unemployment - regardless of education level - was high because the economy simply could not absorb so many new entrants into the workforce. The state had been placed under "President's Rule" by the central government in New Delhi when the CPI (Communist Party of India) had been unable to form a state government after winning the parliamentary elections (with a plurality). In that instance, having so many educated persons on hand and no means of productively employing them (at levels appropriate to their education) was just a recipe for resentment, turmoil, and radical politics. Fortunately, things are much better today. But, you'll note, it took a revoultion in technology (specifically computer technology) in the West to unleash that human potential.

China having so many engineers is of no comparative advantage if there is not enough economy to productively employ them. I suspect there just are not enough junior engineer positions in the Chinese economy (even noting the quality spread you referred to) to absorb nearly half a million new "engineers" on an annual basis. Short of a full scale general mobilization for war, that is. But that is another conversation entirely.

Personally, I think of Chinese engineers as another type of Chinese export to the world. But that too raises it's own questions about immigrants (legal and otherwise) and national security.

[SauronOfMordor]

Metal Storm weapon can make a million shots per minute from many barrels simultaneously thats got to be a bi.ch to reload

You have to rework the whole assembly. In terms of system weight to total rounds fired, that's not even remotely cost effective for sustained firing.

Yes, it does put out a lot of lead very fast. So does a claymore. Claymores are cheaper

I see on their website that they've gotten some research and prototype contracts, but nothing about actually delivering any production units to actual customers

[CPT Clay]

like your tagline

[sam_paine]

I have never, in all my years, had the priviledge of working with an engineer from China who was above average. I think their education system stamps something out of their soul.

This 400k vs 60k thing is trotted out very often in these scare articles.

The 400k include degrees from what we would consider technical/trade schools. A guy who runs an automated pick-n-place PCB assembly machine with a 6 week degree from the Xiamen Shoe Tying Academy is called an "engineer."

Clear Case, I share your experience with Chinese engineers....but I submit with all due respect to the multi- millenial culture, it is not their education system which "stamps something out of them," but it is the traditional Chinese cultural systems that are incompatible with rapid technical innovation.

Americans (and Chinese-Americans) are imbued with an "arrogance" that each individual's ideas might just be the next, well, "Bill Gates."

Chinese engineers just do not have this arrogance and will not "rock the boat."

American engineers (Dilberts) assume that everyone above them is an idiot (compared to themselves) and thus have no inherent restraint from trying to push their ideas up the chain to get noticed. A Chinese (especially a nominal collective/communist) would continue to do as his superiors direct, as long as they are his superior, even if there's an obvious better way.)

When/If he is promoted for his "proficiency," he may then be reticent to introduce his improvements/change, since it woud be risky.

Chinese avoid "risk" like Americans avoid "work."