AI experts return from China stunned: U.S. grid's so weak that race may be over

https://fortune.com/2025/08/14/data-centers-china-grid-us-infrastructure/

by judahmeek • 11 months ago

16 6 11 months ago

joules77• 11 months ago

Experts are regularly stunned by ant hills. That doesn't mean we emulate ants. Subject matter Experts are examples of narrow intelligence.

All you have to do is look at how terrified the Chinese are of dealing with any kind of Uncertainty/Complexity/Problems without neat answers in a textbook and you learn quickly there is nothing interesting going on in China under the surface.

aurareturn• 11 months ago

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

metalman• 11 months ago

made me laugh out loud I live off grid, and as a result have become somewhat familiar with all the aspects of maintaing a power generation and storage system and so follow technology and news about anything power related. What China has done is to persue both the highest level of technological implimentation in there grid and simultainiously the lowest, but with a clear and functioning plan to install clumsy cheap coal(and worse) plants where power is needed NOW, and rip it out as soon as there vast mega grid reaches the underserved areas........they are doing similar things with, road, rail, and marine infrastructure.....not just for themselves, but in Africa, South America, and well, anywhere people want to do better

not to suggest that China does not have some very serious flaws in there general world view and ideology, they do, but yelling at there engineering achivements is then unfortunately a distraction from there, and our, other problems

jaggs• 11 months ago

Yep totally. China is completely finished. A nothing burger in dim sum clothing. Useless. Washed up. LOL.

(hint: rip out everything in your home that is made in China, then try to repeat that post. Heh.)

quantified• 11 months ago

Private investment in the states is indeed all about short-term returns, and the federal government is withdrawing many useful longer-term investments and closing the pipelines. Short-term gains and long-term losses, even without comparing to the Chinese. Capitalism with American characteristics is not going to go well.

yorwba• 11 months ago

The article points to the tension between rapid US data center growth and limited grid capacity, contrasting it with energy oversupply in the Chinese grid, but doesn't really fill in the fourth quadrant with Chinese data center growth. Which is unsurprising, considering that Chinese tech companies aren't investing in data centers anywhere near the scale of their US counterparts: https://chinai.substack.com/p/chinai-323-the-ai-deflation-of...

China has abundant energy because there's insufficient demand to make use of that energy, part of which is that there's insufficient demand for data centers.

AI experts return from China stunned: U.S. grid's so weak that race may be over

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