There's a single reason the Senator doesn't want Chinese cars in Michigan, and it's got nothing to do with data collection. If China wanted to collect the data she listed, they'd do it with the folks they already have on the ground or with satellites. She's talking nonsense to hide from the one single simple fact, to whit...
Chinese cars make the crap coming out of Detroit look like a joke, and they cost about half as much. If they let Chinese cars into America, American auto manufacturing evaporates. It's already a dead man walking. There's a reason Farley (Ford's CEO) doesn't want to send his Xiaomi SU7 back to China.
(Michigander living in Wuhan for the last 15 years.)
Data collection is the cover story. The supply chain that makes a 9,998 yuan robot at 40% margin is the same one building the 25K dollar EV. That is what cannot be banned.
The data collection you're talking about is the cover story. The data collection the senator was talking about...bridges, odds and ends infrastructure...was not the cover story. Either she was hedging (she is a politician), or just playing to her constituency (definitely) in the Motor City. For someone with her deep background in national security (CIA, military), her comments about Chinese cars seemed a bit dumb.
It's economic regardless; Chinese cars are better for 1/2 the price...and somewhere in there is data collection going to robotics and AI...which China, given its size, and ample power generation, already has the bigger edge.
The adoption-rate point is the one that should travel furthest. The frontier-model lead is real, but a capability that takes years to clear procurement and testing is one the warfighter doesn't actually have yet. The flexibility-versus-conflict-of-interest tension she names is why the bottleneck stays stuck: the reforms that speed adoption are the same ones that open the door to sweetheart deals, so neither side wants to move first.
There's a single reason the Senator doesn't want Chinese cars in Michigan, and it's got nothing to do with data collection. If China wanted to collect the data she listed, they'd do it with the folks they already have on the ground or with satellites. She's talking nonsense to hide from the one single simple fact, to whit...
Chinese cars make the crap coming out of Detroit look like a joke, and they cost about half as much. If they let Chinese cars into America, American auto manufacturing evaporates. It's already a dead man walking. There's a reason Farley (Ford's CEO) doesn't want to send his Xiaomi SU7 back to China.
(Michigander living in Wuhan for the last 15 years.)
Data collection is the cover story. The supply chain that makes a 9,998 yuan robot at 40% margin is the same one building the 25K dollar EV. That is what cannot be banned.
The data collection you're talking about is the cover story. The data collection the senator was talking about...bridges, odds and ends infrastructure...was not the cover story. Either she was hedging (she is a politician), or just playing to her constituency (definitely) in the Motor City. For someone with her deep background in national security (CIA, military), her comments about Chinese cars seemed a bit dumb.
It's economic regardless; Chinese cars are better for 1/2 the price...and somewhere in there is data collection going to robotics and AI...which China, given its size, and ample power generation, already has the bigger edge.
The adoption-rate point is the one that should travel furthest. The frontier-model lead is real, but a capability that takes years to clear procurement and testing is one the warfighter doesn't actually have yet. The flexibility-versus-conflict-of-interest tension she names is why the bottleneck stays stuck: the reforms that speed adoption are the same ones that open the door to sweetheart deals, so neither side wants to move first.