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.
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?
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?
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
China literally is committing a slow genocide with the Uighurs. They put all their men in jail and assigned all their women to Han Chinese men. This is happening right now.
> 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.
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.
"Multiple controlled trials" is quite different from an under-the-table, privately funded bespoke therapy for a single patient.
The article mentions that incident and links to it too.
How absurd to think that covid was a gof leak.
gain-of-function
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?
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?
Containment and risks need to be considered.
Another possible answer to the Fermi paradox.
Really tired of hearing how much better China is than us. It’s just so demoralizing like what is going on…
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
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.
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.
The US is not a moral agent - it counts authoritarian regimes that brutally punish dissidents among its closest allies.
So is the US, to be honest.
Not even close to the same level as China.
What’s up with whitewashing China on all online platforms these days? You, on hacker news, should know better.
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.
> Not even close to the same level as China.
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.
Yeah I'm wondering the same thing. It's bizarre and unsettling and seems off-brand for HN.
It's easy to build railroads when you have no safety rules or oversight and can force the Uyghurs to build the parts in slave camps.
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.
> Shutting down rail strikes
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".
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.
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.
> demoralizing
Why? China could do their own thing, and your country can do yours.
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.
elect people that care
I do. Turns out that's not enough. My house rep very clearly cares about these. My senators too (mostly).
Their democratic system is completely broken at the moment.
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.
I don't think you understand anything about how the American government works.
You might not like it but he's not wrong.
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.
enlighten us please, been awhile since I’ve taken Gov course at the Uni
If this were the US, you'd be claiming this recklessness is what happens when you fire all the oversight at the FDA.
Fortunately for China they have the luxury of killing people, pretending it never happened, and replacing them from its never-ending pipeline.
Your use of "Printing" before the edit had me wonder. Rapidly growing population under a one child policy? Comparable to India? How?
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.
Don’t you think it hurts your case to exaggerate that China is going around incinerating scientists?
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Prove to me there’s no tea-cup in outer space orbiting the sun.
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.
Donald?
A good way to cut through competing accounts and noise to find "where do people want to live more?" is to look at net migration flows.
Migration flows are lagging indicators. Look at where researchers are moving, that's the leading indicator.
What makes researchers in general a leading indicator?
Countries that are on an upward research trajectory are likely to continue high-tech industrial progress.
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.
So scientists are all leaving for europe and billionaires are all moving to texas and ... is this what you mean?
All of the scientists! Oh my.
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.
China is working to do this: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-03657-6
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.
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.
I mean it's not a direct competition. America excels in many regards and China excels in many regards.
Yes, but we still have a leed in freedom according to the lore from our fearless leadership.
>like what is going on…
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.
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.
To add to that. Those magical 50s and 60s?
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.
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China literally is committing a slow genocide with the Uighurs. They put all their men in jail and assigned all their women to Han Chinese men. This is happening right now.
Good. Let’s get a move on on these things. If people die it’s no big deal if they volunteer for it and know the risks before they sign up for it.
> 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.