I think if China really wants to destroy the West, fostering a biotech revolution that meaningfully extends human lifespans (say, by 5-7 years) would be the way to do it. Western democracies are run for the interests of retirees. Longer lifespans means increasing retirees’ share of the electorate while requiring greater outlays of retirement benefits. It would bring our budgets and total debt burdens to the brink.
Now, maybe you say the second order effects of such a biotech revolution would be eventually bringing down the costs of health care, including health care for retirees, but that is far from clear.
Truly a 4D chess move by China lol. "We'll make those Western dogs live longer, and they'll spend that extra time self-sabotaging. The Chinese Century will be guaranteed!"
Excellent post. In order for China to achieve great success in biotech it will need a research environment where ideas flow fairly easily between Chinese scientists. In that case, it seems exceedingly unlikely that the basic idea behind any medical breakthrough would not leak out to the broader international community.
I'd argue nukes were also positive. People used to be a lot more okay with going to war. Now nukes have made war too expensive, and cooperation more reasonable among great powers.
If completion breeds innovation is obviously postive, but it shouldn't transform in nonsense new cold war policies, China and America are both nice capitalist countries, america is better but no reason to antagonize China
“knowledge of how to create drugs more cheaply” doesn’t exist within the US? Aren’t these pricing decision mostly guided by IP monopolies, the whole point of IP
> The debate on this topic has the strange quality where the same facts about China’s biotech rise can be marshaled in order to support policies that are either wise or destructive.
That isn't a strange quality. Every political debate, without exception, shares it. The same facts are marshaled on both sides in support of opposite goals.
> business interests that see an opportunity to profit in some way.
The usual suspects are any biotech worker or biotech company in the US that doesn't want to compete against Chinese workers or companies. Worse, the cost of living is lower in China, maybe half that in the US, so the Chinese workers can live just as well while charging half the price.
> what I think is the overly zero-sum perspective we take when it comes to that country.
Back in the 1970s, when Japan was starting to provide serious competition to the US auto and steel industries, someone polled Americans to find out what their preferred policy approach was. The winner was "maintaining US economic predominance over Japan, even if that lowers the standard of living in both the US and Japan". Never assume that people care more about their absolute standard of living than they do about their relative standard of living. Keeping people from operating purely on a zero-sum basis is pretty much what civilized society has to work at continuously.
Reminds me of Jerusalem Demsas’ point about who exactly electric vehicle tariffs are protecting/benefitting and others’ points about solar panel tariffs (who cares where they are made this is a pure commodity?). But this case feels even stronger.
I agree. Another perspective to make the same case is that America hasn't seen big geopolitical advantages from dominating biotech for decades. Biotech hasn't helped in the wars in Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Ukraine, Venezuela, etc. Maybe we won some soft power that the covid vaccines and HIV cures have been American, but it's nothing compared to the battlefield advantages of starlink, AI, drones, hacking, etc. Biotech just isn't relevant for modern war.
Biotech investors and the FDA have very different incentives when it comes to fraudulent studies. From a commercial perspective, studies are just a thing you have to give the FDA to get a licence, whether they reflect reality isn’t very important as you’ll still have a sellable product. For the FDA, studies not being fraudulent is important because making people do studies is kind of their whole raison d’etre.
Fraudulent studies could potentially be good on the margin (if the study requirements are pointless and overbearing, just lying about them is cheaper and better), but I wouldn’t trust biotech investors to be the ones rooting this out given the lack of investment. Even if they aren’t the ones who invested in Theranos.
I think if China really wants to destroy the West, fostering a biotech revolution that meaningfully extends human lifespans (say, by 5-7 years) would be the way to do it. Western democracies are run for the interests of retirees. Longer lifespans means increasing retirees’ share of the electorate while requiring greater outlays of retirement benefits. It would bring our budgets and total debt burdens to the brink.
Now, maybe you say the second order effects of such a biotech revolution would be eventually bringing down the costs of health care, including health care for retirees, but that is far from clear.
Truly a 4D chess move by China lol. "We'll make those Western dogs live longer, and they'll spend that extra time self-sabotaging. The Chinese Century will be guaranteed!"
Excellent post. In order for China to achieve great success in biotech it will need a research environment where ideas flow fairly easily between Chinese scientists. In that case, it seems exceedingly unlikely that the basic idea behind any medical breakthrough would not leak out to the broader international community.
I'd argue nukes were also positive. People used to be a lot more okay with going to war. Now nukes have made war too expensive, and cooperation more reasonable among great powers.
Very much true until it isn't, and then it'll be *very* untrue.
If completion breeds innovation is obviously postive, but it shouldn't transform in nonsense new cold war policies, China and America are both nice capitalist countries, america is better but no reason to antagonize China
Sorry if I'm skeptical of, if not horrified by what is being cooked up in Chinese labs, given their recent track record.
“knowledge of how to create drugs more cheaply” doesn’t exist within the US? Aren’t these pricing decision mostly guided by IP monopolies, the whole point of IP
> The debate on this topic has the strange quality where the same facts about China’s biotech rise can be marshaled in order to support policies that are either wise or destructive.
That isn't a strange quality. Every political debate, without exception, shares it. The same facts are marshaled on both sides in support of opposite goals.
> business interests that see an opportunity to profit in some way.
The usual suspects are any biotech worker or biotech company in the US that doesn't want to compete against Chinese workers or companies. Worse, the cost of living is lower in China, maybe half that in the US, so the Chinese workers can live just as well while charging half the price.
> what I think is the overly zero-sum perspective we take when it comes to that country.
Back in the 1970s, when Japan was starting to provide serious competition to the US auto and steel industries, someone polled Americans to find out what their preferred policy approach was. The winner was "maintaining US economic predominance over Japan, even if that lowers the standard of living in both the US and Japan". Never assume that people care more about their absolute standard of living than they do about their relative standard of living. Keeping people from operating purely on a zero-sum basis is pretty much what civilized society has to work at continuously.
We can cooperate on cancer research with them, but no more virology mmkay?
Wonderful and insightful piece.
Reminds me of Jerusalem Demsas’ point about who exactly electric vehicle tariffs are protecting/benefitting and others’ points about solar panel tariffs (who cares where they are made this is a pure commodity?). But this case feels even stronger.
I agree. Another perspective to make the same case is that America hasn't seen big geopolitical advantages from dominating biotech for decades. Biotech hasn't helped in the wars in Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Ukraine, Venezuela, etc. Maybe we won some soft power that the covid vaccines and HIV cures have been American, but it's nothing compared to the battlefield advantages of starlink, AI, drones, hacking, etc. Biotech just isn't relevant for modern war.
Biotech investors and the FDA have very different incentives when it comes to fraudulent studies. From a commercial perspective, studies are just a thing you have to give the FDA to get a licence, whether they reflect reality isn’t very important as you’ll still have a sellable product. For the FDA, studies not being fraudulent is important because making people do studies is kind of their whole raison d’etre.
Fraudulent studies could potentially be good on the margin (if the study requirements are pointless and overbearing, just lying about them is cheaper and better), but I wouldn’t trust biotech investors to be the ones rooting this out given the lack of investment. Even if they aren’t the ones who invested in Theranos.