HN readers often struggle to overlook minor effectual literary details but miss the bottom line:
China's population is sufficient that no one will notice a few scientists missing. Definitely not beyond their borders. They'll make sure of it.
If this experiment was unsuccessful we'd never know about it and everyone involved would be incinerated.
I don't think you could pull that off in India, population or not. For all their corruption I want to believe they frown on disappearing people if anything for religious reasons.
No I didn't mean anything quite that fanciful, I'm referring to net migration between China and the US. Are more people leaving the US for China, or are more people leaving China for the US? It's a crude measurement, but it beats online doomerism.
I've already been very clear, you simply seem unable or unwilling to read the word "net" in my posts. I appreciate that China is doing many exciting things and happily unlike many in both China and the US I don't see human progress as a zero sum game either. None of that changes what I said however, or the reality of net migration between China and the US.
yes, ok, net, so what you care about is poor people coming to america; as oppose to smart people leaving it.
That's what's confusing. Right, your pov is about body count as opposed to any other useful metric. You want to change it? Are you being racist or what.
What exactly is the argument "a bunch of poor people want to come here, even when we're giant fascists, #winning"
See, I don't know if you're actually making an argument from the absurd, but if you're trying to win the America is actually desireable, you might want to gauge what exactly is being desired.
That's a general observation/opinion, not evidence that it's a leading indicator of anything. There are far less indirect measures of "high-tech industrial progress" as well.
You think the fact that US researchers are leaving for China because the US does not value basic science anymore but China does is not evidence of anything?
I think the US under the Trump administration is making a series of errors that do have consequences. I also believe that some researchers and academicians have sought positions in Chinese universities, although the numbers suggest a majority looked to Europe rather than Asia. Very few that I can find hard info on have emigrated however, much like it would be foolish of me to claim that 300K Chinese students in the US per year were migrating here to stay; we both know they're just visiting.
I also have to say that in trying to find hard numbers for any of this I was struck by how little is available beyond early claims in late 2025, plans to "welcome" US scientists in various countries, and other projects that haven't been extensively reported on since. If you can find better hard data on the topic I'd welcome it.
The US is clearly on a path to crumbling infrastructure, waste, inefficiency, and corruption. Seeing that other countries seem to be doing some actual thinking about the future is demoralizing when you cannot get your leaders to care.
I've read and seen more about it than I should have, as a non-American that's never going to live in the US. Press cycles in smaller countries are inundated with US news.
There is probably a lot I don't know so please ask and I'll do my best to explain my knowledge on the topic to the best of my abilities.
1. Intentionality does not preclude a mistake. The makeup of the Senate gives outsized power to rural states with very few people in them, and in practice is a huge giveaway to the right wing.
2. The House's size is also capped, and not directly based on population, which is completely unnecessary in this age of digital communication. There is no reason why we couldn't return the number of representatives to being explicitly population-based—say, 1 representative per 50k constituents, or the like. That would increase the size of the House by about 15-fold, make every representative much more dependent on the votes of their particular district, make gerrymandering much harder (as districts will be smaller and there will be more of them), and make the electoral college much more representative and harder to game.
3. See #1.
4. The European Commission is widely criticized as being the least democratic, most unresponsive, most oligarch-friendly body in Europe.
5. "Representative government" does not have to mean "tyranny of the majority". There are plenty of checks and balances even in the current system that would prevent that sort of thing, provided the enforcement mechanisms weren't entirely operated by and for Trump.
> This was done intentionally, with great care, by people far smarter than a ragebait post on HN.
Ad-hominem, you're assuming things without knowing me.
Those people had no prior art except for the Athenian democracy and a handful of other partial examples. They were not gods. They lived in an age without the telegraph, the telephone, TV, the internet, and many other force multipliers for intelligence, communication and country level organization.
They did all right for their time but every garden needs... periodic gardening.
> There are two houses of Congress (the second of which is allocated by population).
Again with the assumptions. I know about the House of Representatives.
> It was done for balance of power
Back in the day when there was no American nation. There are other ways to protect state rights these days, for example by adding more explicit state rights in constitutions.
> The EU has literally emulated this model (see European Commission allocating one per member state).
LOL. Are you comparing the EU, a loose confederation of nation states, with a full-blown federal states? The EU starts from a VERY different historical context (Latvians, Portuguese and Austrians have far less in common than Oregonians, Virginians and Texans). The EU is also hobbled by this system and the US and China constantly mop the floor with the EU in geopolitical terms. Required reading: history of the Articles of Confederation and its outcome.
> Imagine if Germany was allowed to overrule every law and decision in EU because of population alone. EU would cease to exist.
Again, totally different starting position. Also, there are ways to avoid this. The EU uses some for Parliament voting.
Oh, the US badly needs to pass the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, that would help with lots of things.
* * *
Any way, the worst part of this discussion is: the US has such outsized international impact that its shortcomings inflict pain on people around the world, otherwise I would not care.
We could, like, stop framing it as us vs them to start. We could also elect leaders who want progress and are willing to squeeze the 1% even a little bit to make that progress.
China is taking long term views. Transit and rail, solar energy, batteries, manufacturing and automation, science investment.
The US is thinking very short term, to benefit very few. Ignoring rail, cutting renewables, building highly speculative and unpopular data centers, and cutting funding to science and the arts.
I see the 30 year vision for infrastructure in China and I think we could do it here. We just... don't. Because we have somehow made long term investments that benefit many a political dead end so our two "teams" can argue about how the other team is evil.
China is an authoritarian regime that brutally punishes dissidents. Just throwing this out there because apparently everyone seems to have forgotten this.
There are people being arrested for being in Signal chats where non violent protests are being discussed. People being arrested for carrying water bottles. ICE is shooting people who are not even in the way, just making noise across the street. Rubio called the DSA a terrorist organization.
And second, I don't think I said "at the same level as China". It can be the case that both countries are authoritarian and punishing dissidents. And still be the case that China is worse.
PRC slapping fraction of % dissidents is magnitude more benevolent than US incarceration complex. Authoritarian system that delivers is better than sclerotic "democracy" that doesn't. Just throwing this out there because apparently LIO ideologues never seem to learn this.
What? Tiananmen Square was not more benevolent. When I worked in the bay area we had a ton of Chinese Americans who happened to be college students when Tiananmen happened who then stayed instead of going home. Do you people no longer work with them? Never talk to them? What is going on.
Did you know the founding fathers slaughtered indigenous and enslaved blacks, or women couldn't vote? With respect to modern discursive, who cares. It's 2026, only LIOtards still grasping at lame Tiananmen shit from ~40 years ago. Might as well be different era on PRC timescale.
What's going on is PRC sea turtles are returning in record numbers, while no one particularly thinks about diaspora who fled decades ago stuck in their time capsule of what PRC was. 40 years ago, when PRC didn't have riot police and slapped some comprador with lethal prejudice with only means a developing country had, now it's light touch, polite invite to drink tea and self criticism essays while Americans still getting executed on the street without the dignity of van (pure dystopia etc etc) at ~2x the per capita while getting locked up at ~4x per capita.
What's going on is some people can't do math nor accept times change. Democracy may just be the worse form of government vs whatever modern system PRC is trying. It sucks LIO experiment failed, but it's time appreciate history = national power being by weeding dissidents - Patriots certainly don't seem to be getting the hint and refreshing that liberty tree from time to time.
You're going to get a lot of angry responses about how China can only accomplish what it does because it's an authoritarian regime and very bad, but you're actually correct. Historically, authoritarian countries are held back by their regimes, which means China is likely underperforming what it could accomplish if Xi Jinping Conservative Boomer Thought with Chinese Characteristics wasn't strangling everything.
The United States very much started trying to invest seriously for the future in the Biden years, and as it turns out, people associated that with consumer inflation and chucked it out in 2024 for another round of the Republican "wrecking crew" dismantling and demolishing the federal agencies that the USA has historically used to Get Stuff Done in the long term.
At this point it's hard to point to a major country or bloc that isn't shooting itself in the foot.
Oh you'll get no support for me about Biden. Shutting down rail strikes and declaring Covid over very clearly put him in the "protect the owners, not the people" camp.
You can seek comfort by looking at some GDP numbers and compare GDP numbers and AI benchmarks with EU I guess :)
Kidding aside, it is very normal for a huge populous country to dominate once they get their shit together. Europeans mostly made peace with the fact that they no longer have empires, Turks and Brits a bit less so I guess but you will be fine. US is a great country, expect China be greater simply because of its sheer size.
Time to make peace with the fact that the exceptional situation was a phase, not an inherent result of the superiority of the people.
Basically the entire industrial base in Eurasia had been destroyed during WW2. Unsurprisingly the only unscathed industrialized country in the world entered an unprecedented boom. Assuming that everyone else would revert to the Stone Age forever was unrealistic.
Exactly. All the best scientists, engineers and ambitious people went to USA and entire industrial bases were uprooted and moved to USA. US did the Marshal plan but all this happen because the rest of the world was busy destroying each other. Now USA destroys itself, EU trying to find its soul and unite at the same time. China? China is reaping the rewards of its decades of hard work.
Honestly, apart from big ego guys who make things hard, I think the world is actually set to a new united phase. The issues are %100 local, apart from climate change I guess.
They’re going to run away with it. We have true regressives in power at this point staunchly defending fossil fuels and diminishing the main advantage the US had with attracting the best and brightest from all over the world. This was the worst possible to have MAGA take over.
That being said, I would still definitely want to live in the US compared to China.
USGOV disemboweled itself, telling its citizens that they'd be better off without all those gross innards. Womp womp, no do-overs on the global stage, sorry.
We got too cautious. They may be too incautious but possibly not given how excessively cautious we are. Caution is good but it needs to be accurately costed and where it cant be we need to error on the side of incaution because the cost of caution is often atleast as high as the cost of incaution
As a non-USian but a fan of your republic’s ideals, I understand. I feel incredibly saddened at the slow-motion self-immolation that seems to be consuming your country. I read this article yesterday and couldn’t believe what I was reading. I had to double check it wasn’t a gag.
It’s not necessarily that China is “better”, but they clearly have an intentionality to the directions they are pursuing. Sadly, it seems so does the US.
This headline is burying the lede. My response to someone using genetically altered retroviruses to genetically engineer cells in the CNS of living humans would be stunned silence too. That's quite a risk to get past a review board.
The big question seems to be, how specific is the targeting of these designer retroviruses to the desired cell types and tissues and how is that achieved?
Wasn't there just a post a few days ago about how Chinese researchers ignored a bunch of ethical and safety guidelines to run some of this research and ended up killing a girl?
The article just brushes aside that incident and seems to assume that because China is doing this experimentation, it's ahead in regards to gene therapy targeting the brain.
For all the theories about how covid might have been some conspiracy in China... (I'm more inclined to believe a hybrid, they didn't have a program to develop any weapons out of it, but would EASILY buy a coverup to try to hide the shame of yet another seasonal virus that turned out to be more)
What if this sort of research leads to some prion like disease that either works like a slow acting (fast to spread) neuro-toxin, or a scenario like the Children of Men movie?
Speculation about "who's done it" is seriously counterproductive - bio-events are awfully easy to engineer for misdirection.
The most concerning part of this story isn't that there's nothing to prevent any of these or worse, it's the push to paint bio-concerns as a ridiculous caricature. Especially in the light of international bio-treaties being a bad joke and the suppression of protective bio-information by the big AI labs.
> If people die it’s no big deal if they volunteer for it and know the risks before they sign up for it.
Similarly, letting pilots skip the security check is no big deal. Just check the id_hash of their _pilot_struct against the ids in the day's flight manifest for the current frame being evaluated in the fully verified Rust-based simulation of reality.
If people are really that worried about "exploits" they're free to set a save point before arriving to the airport that morning.
Edit: important clarification wrt the fully verified Rust-based simulation of reality.
bix6 | a day ago
pudgywalsh | a day ago
Fortunately for China they have the luxury of killing people, pretending it never happened, and replacing them from its never-ending pipeline.
econ | a day ago
pudgywalsh | a day ago
China's population is sufficient that no one will notice a few scientists missing. Definitely not beyond their borders. They'll make sure of it.
If this experiment was unsuccessful we'd never know about it and everyone involved would be incinerated.
I don't think you could pull that off in India, population or not. For all their corruption I want to believe they frown on disappearing people if anything for religious reasons.
GPerson | 23 hours ago
wellitsmehere | 13 hours ago
EA-3167 | a day ago
cyanydeez | a day ago
EA-3167 | a day ago
No I didn't mean anything quite that fanciful, I'm referring to net migration between China and the US. Are more people leaving the US for China, or are more people leaving China for the US? It's a crude measurement, but it beats online doomerism.
cyanydeez | a day ago
They are definitely getting immigrants: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to_China
High quality scientists leaving UK and US: https://www.nationpress.com/sciencetech/10-scientists-quit-u...
You'll need to clarify what you value about the immigration arguement.
EA-3167 | 23 hours ago
cyanydeez | 23 hours ago
That's what's confusing. Right, your pov is about body count as opposed to any other useful metric. You want to change it? Are you being racist or what.
What exactly is the argument "a bunch of poor people want to come here, even when we're giant fascists, #winning"
See, I don't know if you're actually making an argument from the absurd, but if you're trying to win the America is actually desireable, you might want to gauge what exactly is being desired.
Daishiman | a day ago
EA-3167 | a day ago
Daishiman | 23 hours ago
EA-3167 | 23 hours ago
Daishiman | 23 hours ago
EA-3167 | 21 hours ago
I also have to say that in trying to find hard numbers for any of this I was struck by how little is available beyond early claims in late 2025, plans to "welcome" US scientists in various countries, and other projects that haven't been extensively reported on since. If you can find better hard data on the topic I'd welcome it.
dudisubekti | 23 hours ago
Why? China could do their own thing, and your country can do yours.
forestrywat | 23 hours ago
bdangubic | 23 hours ago
oblio | 23 hours ago
1. Fixed number of Senate spots, regardless of State population.
2. First past the post voting everywhere leading to 2 party system.
3. Broken electoral college voting system for presidential elections.
4. Legalized gerrymandering.
5. Legalized bribes, sorry lobbying.
Their democratic system is stuck in the 1870s and they can't reform it. And on top of that they have outsized corporate political power.
It's really hard even for masses of determined inviduals to reform anything.
pudgywalsh | 23 hours ago
oblio | 21 hours ago
There is probably a lot I don't know so please ask and I'll do my best to explain my knowledge on the topic to the best of my abilities.
bdangubic | 21 hours ago
pudgywalsh | 20 hours ago
1. This was done intentionally, with great care, by people far smarter than a ragebait post on HN
2. There are two houses of Congress (the second of which is allocated by population).
3. It was done for balance of power
4. The EU has literally emulated this model (see European Commission allocating one per member state).
5. Imagine if Germany was allowed to overrule every law and decision in EU because of population alone. EU would cease to exist.
danaris | 12 hours ago
2. The House's size is also capped, and not directly based on population, which is completely unnecessary in this age of digital communication. There is no reason why we couldn't return the number of representatives to being explicitly population-based—say, 1 representative per 50k constituents, or the like. That would increase the size of the House by about 15-fold, make every representative much more dependent on the votes of their particular district, make gerrymandering much harder (as districts will be smaller and there will be more of them), and make the electoral college much more representative and harder to game.
3. See #1.
4. The European Commission is widely criticized as being the least democratic, most unresponsive, most oligarch-friendly body in Europe.
5. "Representative government" does not have to mean "tyranny of the majority". There are plenty of checks and balances even in the current system that would prevent that sort of thing, provided the enforcement mechanisms weren't entirely operated by and for Trump.
oblio | 5 hours ago
> This was done intentionally, with great care, by people far smarter than a ragebait post on HN.
Ad-hominem, you're assuming things without knowing me.
Those people had no prior art except for the Athenian democracy and a handful of other partial examples. They were not gods. They lived in an age without the telegraph, the telephone, TV, the internet, and many other force multipliers for intelligence, communication and country level organization.
They did all right for their time but every garden needs... periodic gardening.
> There are two houses of Congress (the second of which is allocated by population).
Again with the assumptions. I know about the House of Representatives.
> It was done for balance of power
Back in the day when there was no American nation. There are other ways to protect state rights these days, for example by adding more explicit state rights in constitutions.
> The EU has literally emulated this model (see European Commission allocating one per member state).
LOL. Are you comparing the EU, a loose confederation of nation states, with a full-blown federal states? The EU starts from a VERY different historical context (Latvians, Portuguese and Austrians have far less in common than Oregonians, Virginians and Texans). The EU is also hobbled by this system and the US and China constantly mop the floor with the EU in geopolitical terms. Required reading: history of the Articles of Confederation and its outcome.
> Imagine if Germany was allowed to overrule every law and decision in EU because of population alone. EU would cease to exist.
Again, totally different starting position. Also, there are ways to avoid this. The EU uses some for Parliament voting.
Oh, the US badly needs to pass the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, that would help with lots of things.
* * *
Any way, the worst part of this discussion is: the US has such outsized international impact that its shortcomings inflict pain on people around the world, otherwise I would not care.
Hikikomori | 20 hours ago
forestrywat | 23 hours ago
dudisubekti | 12 hours ago
China basically experienced this last century, collectively asking themselves "maybe we shouldn't suck this bad??"
forestrywat | 23 hours ago
China is taking long term views. Transit and rail, solar energy, batteries, manufacturing and automation, science investment.
The US is thinking very short term, to benefit very few. Ignoring rail, cutting renewables, building highly speculative and unpopular data centers, and cutting funding to science and the arts.
I see the 30 year vision for infrastructure in China and I think we could do it here. We just... don't. Because we have somehow made long term investments that benefit many a political dead end so our two "teams" can argue about how the other team is evil.
virgil_disgr4ce | 23 hours ago
forestrywat | 23 hours ago
isatty | 23 hours ago
What’s up with whitewashing China on all online platforms these days? You, on hacker news, should know better.
virgil_disgr4ce | 23 hours ago
bothers | 23 hours ago
Have you been paying attention? At all?
The US is really trying to cut off its own legs and branding it as removing unnecessary weight. Give it time, we'll get there.
forestrywat | 22 hours ago
And second, I don't think I said "at the same level as China". It can be the case that both countries are authoritarian and punishing dissidents. And still be the case that China is worse.
maxglute | 22 hours ago
_DeadFred_ | 19 hours ago
Also
https://www.google.com/search?q=china+execution+van
is pure dystipia.
maxglute | 2 hours ago
What's going on is PRC sea turtles are returning in record numbers, while no one particularly thinks about diaspora who fled decades ago stuck in their time capsule of what PRC was. 40 years ago, when PRC didn't have riot police and slapped some comprador with lethal prejudice with only means a developing country had, now it's light touch, polite invite to drink tea and self criticism essays while Americans still getting executed on the street without the dignity of van (pure dystopia etc etc) at ~2x the per capita while getting locked up at ~4x per capita.
What's going on is some people can't do math nor accept times change. Democracy may just be the worse form of government vs whatever modern system PRC is trying. It sucks LIO experiment failed, but it's time appreciate history = national power being by weeding dissidents - Patriots certainly don't seem to be getting the hint and refreshing that liberty tree from time to time.
krapp | 22 hours ago
pudgywalsh | 23 hours ago
eli_gottlieb | 23 hours ago
The United States very much started trying to invest seriously for the future in the Biden years, and as it turns out, people associated that with consumer inflation and chucked it out in 2024 for another round of the Republican "wrecking crew" dismantling and demolishing the federal agencies that the USA has historically used to Get Stuff Done in the long term.
At this point it's hard to point to a major country or bloc that isn't shooting itself in the foot.
forestrywat | 22 hours ago
esseph | 21 hours ago
Congress, but President signed. And it was broadly bipartisan!
The House voted 290–137, and the Senate voted 80–15 to pass the measure, which was then signed into law.
The entire US government looked at working people and said, basically: "No, you are not allowed to take time off work for cancer treatments".
forestrywat | 19 hours ago
mrtksn | 23 hours ago
Kidding aside, it is very normal for a huge populous country to dominate once they get their shit together. Europeans mostly made peace with the fact that they no longer have empires, Turks and Brits a bit less so I guess but you will be fine. US is a great country, expect China be greater simply because of its sheer size.
Time to make peace with the fact that the exceptional situation was a phase, not an inherent result of the superiority of the people.
oblio | 23 hours ago
Basically the entire industrial base in Eurasia had been destroyed during WW2. Unsurprisingly the only unscathed industrialized country in the world entered an unprecedented boom. Assuming that everyone else would revert to the Stone Age forever was unrealistic.
mrtksn | 23 hours ago
Honestly, apart from big ego guys who make things hard, I think the world is actually set to a new united phase. The issues are %100 local, apart from climate change I guess.
anon291 | 23 hours ago
vardalab | 23 hours ago
dyauspitr | 23 hours ago
That being said, I would still definitely want to live in the US compared to China.
dave_sid | 23 hours ago
bothers | 23 hours ago
USGOV disemboweled itself, telling its citizens that they'd be better off without all those gross innards. Womp womp, no do-overs on the global stage, sorry.
snapplebobapple | 21 hours ago
phs318u | 20 hours ago
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-08-14/donald-trump-us-navy-...
It’s not necessarily that China is “better”, but they clearly have an intentionality to the directions they are pursuing. Sadly, it seems so does the US.
_DeadFred_ | 19 hours ago
superkuh | a day ago
The big question seems to be, how specific is the targeting of these designer retroviruses to the desired cell types and tissues and how is that achieved?
readthenotes1 | 11 hours ago
I'm confused what you think the lede for this story should be?
scheme271 | a day ago
The article just brushes aside that incident and seems to assume that because China is doing this experimentation, it's ahead in regards to gene therapy targeting the brain.
fakedang | a day ago
HedonicEscal8r | 22 hours ago
insane_dreamer | 14 hours ago
> Several people died recently in early-stage gene therapy trials in China.
mjevans | a day ago
What if this sort of research leads to some prion like disease that either works like a slow acting (fast to spread) neuro-toxin, or a scenario like the Children of Men movie?
Containment and risks need to be considered.
SoftTalker | 23 hours ago
readthenotes1 | 11 hours ago
bigbadfeline | an hour ago
The most concerning part of this story isn't that there's nothing to prevent any of these or worse, it's the push to paint bio-concerns as a ridiculous caricature. Especially in the light of international bio-treaties being a bad joke and the suppression of protective bio-information by the big AI labs.
dyauspitr | 23 hours ago
jancsika | 23 hours ago
Similarly, letting pilots skip the security check is no big deal. Just check the id_hash of their _pilot_struct against the ids in the day's flight manifest for the current frame being evaluated in the fully verified Rust-based simulation of reality.
If people are really that worried about "exploits" they're free to set a save point before arriving to the airport that morning.
Edit: important clarification wrt the fully verified Rust-based simulation of reality.
tiahura | 23 hours ago
turtleyacht | 22 hours ago
readthenotes1 | 11 hours ago