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points by nicoburns 3 days ago | 0 comments

Good news: batteries on are a similar exponential curve. Just a decade or so behind.

Its important to qualify that:

A decade or so behind, in the US.

If the US didn't block import of Chinese tech, we could have electrified a decade ago.

The tech available at the current moment, is even more capable of replacing petroleum based electricity.

But our government is banning Chinese tech to serve our outdated industries instead of importing it to serve the population.

As any wise country would do when faced with superior technology, we should import it with the condition of technology exchange. Chinese manufacturers should be training US workers and industrial ownership how to produce cheap, efficient, sodium batteries.

This benefits the populous immediately, and the industries are able to advance into the current century's tech.

[–] noduerme 3 days ago

>>> As any wise country would do when faced with superior technology, we should import it with the condition of technology exchange.

If it were a matter of industrial protectionism against a country which was not hostile, not authoritarian, didn't rely on slave labor, etc., then I'd agree with you. Countries have other pressing reasons besides immediate economic advantage to prevent this sort of thing.

To greatly oversimplify: Japan fought against opening their markets, as did China, out of political and social concerns for the stability of their states, far more than economic ones.

[–] johnea 1 day ago

I would still argue that this is another reason to pursue technology exchange, to make the tech available outside of that oppressive country...

The people of the US would still benefit immediately by access to cheap batteries and solar...

[–] 0xbadcafebee 3 days ago

The US is far more hostile than China, also relies on slave labor, and is so increasingly authoritarian that our country's domestic & foreign policy now resembles a 3rd world dictatorship.

Doesn't matter though. The big mistake was allowing manufacturing to be exported from the US to begin with. Nearly any advanced technology we use or wish to produce is now dependent on China. They control not only the advanced manufacturing process, but also the refinement of rare earths (we can mine it but not refine it) and have cheaper labor. Not only can't we make tech without them, we can't sell it at competitive prices. Things will soon get worse as robotics and vertical integration makes Chinese products even cheaper and better quality. And we can't compete on robots because China controls that production chain too.

The smart play would be to build up our own green energy sector to gain cost savings, while investing in its manufacturing, so we can eventually compete and support ourselves (which Biden and Obama passed funding for). Trump eliminated all that when he came back, because the oil companies wanted more profits, they literally don't believe climate change is real, and they have no idea how diplomacy works. We could've had cheap battery, wind, and solar manufacturing in the US. Not anymore.

[–] leonidasrup 3 days ago

You should visit the Tibet region and ask the locals. But:

1. As a US citizen, you would probably not a get permit necessary for entering the Tibet region.

2. If you could get a permit for Tibet region and go there, you would be followed by police officers dressed in civilian clothing. The locals would be quite hesitant to speak to you.

(Source: been there long ago, seen it). China has many qualities, but freedom is not one of them.

[–] noduerme 3 days ago

Nor are civil rights, or civil litigation for that matter.

I don't think the poster you're responding to is writing in good faith; they're either an agent of an authoritarian power, or blind to the difference of being one.

People in China can say anything the government approves of, but they can't say "long live freedom and democracy," unless they want to be executed.

Neither, I suspect, will Chinese AI models make any statement in sympathy with personal freedom, democracy, or human rights; it would come at the expense of the people who paid to train those models, and that can't be allowed.

[–] motionlessveloc 3 days ago

Fun fact: there are huge government-sponsored posters proclaiming Freedom (自由) and Democracy (民主) through China, because they're two of the official twelve Core Socialist Values.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Core_Socialist_Values

[–] noduerme 2 days ago

That is a fun fact.

I guess freedom means different things to different people. Do people in China just roll their eyes at that?

And are we perfectly free in America? No. But we can say whatever we want about the government or the corporations, provided we're nonviolent. And we're not commanded how many children we can or can't have, or what religion to practice or not, or forced to show loyalty to a political party.

Plus we can smoke weed, buy guns, vote the bums out every four years, and most importantly make money without having to pay off some party official.

[–] noduerme 3 days ago

>> The US is far more hostile than China, also relies on slave labor, and is so increasingly authoritarian that our country's domestic & foreign policy now resembles a 3rd world dictatorship.

As a child of immigrants from the Soviet Union, and also as someone who knows people still resident in authoritarian dictatorships: This is patently ridiculous. Everything else in your post is a spray of nonsensical policy points and predictions. You led off with the tell. Frankly, it makes everything you say afterward sound like what an authoritarian enemy government would want people in the US to think about their own country.

What you wrote in your first sentence is either (a) wildly misinformed (like, you have no idea what life is like in an authoritarian country with actual slave labor, which is an insult to the people who do currently live there), or (b) intentionally nefarious (like, you work for such a country, in a capacity to minimize the distinction between their system of autocracy and the United States' democracy). If it's (a), study at least a little bit of the history of mass murder in the 20th Century. If (b), well, we live in a free country so you can spew whatever garbage you want. Interestingly, we have not been overtaken by any of the dictatorships that have sprung up in Eurasia over the past hundred years, and I don't think we will be soon.

[–] 0xbadcafebee 2 days ago

I love how nobody asks me to give evidence or examples. You don't want to find out you're wrong.

[–] noduerme 2 days ago

Sure, give evidence and examples.

[–] clarionbell 3 days ago

>> As any wise country would do when faced with superior technology, we should import it with the condition of technology exchange.

Europe tried doing that. And our green technology sector promptly collapsed, because it couldn't compete with Chinese undercutting our prices. The only thing left now are wind turbines, but Chinese are making inroads there too. In the meantime, the green transition barely moved a needle when energy shock arrived in 2022 or this year. Rendering rest of our industry, especially chemical industry, uncompetitive.

[–] WarmWash 3 days ago

All fine and dandy until your grid goes mysteriously offline the day after China moves on taiwan.

[–] jacquesm 3 days ago

Call me paranoid. I have a couple of inverters here that are grid connected and I made sure everything that allowed outside connectivity in the box mysteriously stopped working. A little bit of RF knowledge goes a long way with stuff like that. It was interesting to see how many ways it tried to do this. Fortunately it kept working even without connectivity. Configuring the things is a pain though, the display and buttons are clearly not meant to be used that way but it does work.

[–] noduerme 3 days ago

That's not paranoid.

Paranoid is me testing the plates I bought off amazon for lead, and throwing away the bathtub mat which smelled like petroleum waste. I'm fairly convinced that the goal of that ruthless dictatorship is to poison, degrade and infiltrate every single household abroad in every way possible. A fast attack might be to bring as many devices offline as possible, but the slow attack is simply to lower people's intelligence by hardware or software methods (e.g. TikTok, Qwen... or, let's say, not notifying anyone for a few months that a new SARS virus had escaped a lab). Everything that comes out of communist China is warfare, even if it looks like a plush toy.

[–] andsoitis 3 days ago

> But our government is banning Chinese tech to serve our outdated industries instead of importing it to serve the population.

It protects American companies who operate in the green energy generation and storage arena from Chinese competition.

[–] reactordev 3 days ago

No, it protects fossil fuel energy companies from having to retool and change.

[–] andsoitis 3 days ago

It does that too, but it would be unbalanced to not also recognize it protects green energy companies in America from Chinese competition.

Not only does Chinese competition get blocked, but governments are incentivizing green energy. For instance, just recently it was reported that Tesla’s $10B solar factory could get 35 years of tax breaks in Texas (Oil Capital!!!)

https://electrek.co/2026/10/23/tesla-solar-factory-texas-35-...

[–] noduerme 3 days ago

Sorry, which country in the world burns the most coal? https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/coal-cons...

[–] banktops 2 days ago

China of course. But they are not hobbled by energy ideologies. China is pragmatic and still increasing coal and nuclear power depending on what works.

[–] Schiendelman 3 days ago

Honestly, it's not even doing that. Thing that would really push the US ahead would be the tax breaks we had until a couple years ago.

[–] blitzar 3 days ago

> protects American companies who operate in the green energy generation

Wont someone think of the big beautiful clean coal companies

[–] toss1 2 days ago

Yup. Forcing technology exchange is exactly what China demanded of the US to get access to its markets, specifically to gain the advantage it now has.

Access to US markets conditioned on full tech exchange with US battery and automakers would be a fair exchange (and would likely require some temporary support of US automakers so they survive the transition).