China Morning Missive

Enough already. America needs to return to its competitive roots. A clarion call must be made.

Last night I stumble upon a few reviews of the latest Xiaomi 17-series smartphones. They are, unquestionably, a better value and experience than Apple’s latest iPhone iteration.

My mind immediately went to the US auto industry of the 70s and 80s.

Now, my expectation is that anyone who’ll read this will immediately jump to the argument that Xiaomi has done nothing more than “steal” Apple’s IP. Probably. For me, that was nothing more than the inevitable outcome of the Apple decision to centralize its entire production in the Mainland.

The real point is the irrelevancy of this argument. Ignoring reality will not address the core issue.

This Xiaomi example is nothing but another chink in the American armour of supposed technological exceptionalism. The China tech threats aren’t just accelerating, they are expanding in scope.

Real world implications are just around the corner and AI is the Hemingway whale with more than a few harpoons already lodged in its mid section.

The American business media headlines need to be fully dismissed. Seek out all LLM community commentary. The AI user base. Do so and you’ll quickly find just how precarious the American AI ecosystem is from China’s relentless advances.

The competitive threat from China isn’t insurmountable. Far from it. Still, what’s required is a return to raw competitive forces. Enough with share buy backs. Invest. Enough with regulatory capture. Build better products. Deliver better services.