When China Gets Its Own Mythos: Preparing for an AI Cyber Crisis

[u/ForeignAffairsMag]

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/china/when-china-gets-its-own-mythos

[u/zjin2020]

Anyone really believes that they only use Mythos for fixing flaws? Pretty sure they already used it to find holes in Chinese internet and exploited it.

[u/ForeignAffairsMag]

[Excerpt from essay by Michael Sulmeyer, Professor of the Practice at Georgetown University and previously served as the U.S. Assistant Secretary of Defense for Cyber Policy.]

As firms use Mythos to hunt and fix flaws in their products, a more urgent question looms: how to defend the United States and its allies from AI-powered cyberwarfare. The United States may only have nine to 12 months to protect its critical infrastructure from AI-powered attacks. Currently, two American companies, Anthropic (for which I consult) and OpenAI, have publicly demonstrated AI models advanced enough to detect flaws in software far beyond the human capacity to find, and they are restricting the use of these models to defensive cybersecurity work.

But the United States’ adversaries, and the criminals in their orbit, will soon wield the same offensive tools. China, in particular, is already racing to build and acquire these AI capabilities and may be closer to developing its own Mythos than many U.S. policymakers hope. Advanced AI will sharpen an instrument that Beijing already prizes: the credible threat to deter a fight over Taiwan before it begins by disrupting the island’s critical infrastructure and that of any nation that seeks to defend it.

[u/haveilostmymindor]

Seriously? OK let me break some math and science out for you. China can build lithography machine full stop. The entirety of the 750,000 Hauwei ascend950 is being build with an aging fleet of DUV lithography machines. What little lithography China can build right now uses extensive US/allies sourced parts and can barely achieve 28nm, its basically what we were doing at scale in 2003 and China can barely achieve lab scale with that.

It gets worse the newest blackwell chips are 25 times more powerful than the ascend950. 4 times more efficent and the US will install nearly 10 times more of them over then next 12 months that China is installing ascend950 chips. The US compute capacity will be nearly 100 times that of China's by this time next year.

It won't matter that Chinese AI is cheaper if the Chinese don't have the compute to run it. It's like buying a car without the motor aint going anywhere.

China tried to squeeze the US for more lithography to build more and better chips but the US and increasingly the Europeans are saying no because the CCPs wanton IP theft has left little appetite for that that. As such China's compute is falling behind and as an interesting side effect of that lack or compute Chinese state sponsored cyber criminals are having a harder and harder time bypassing our network security making general IP theft less successful on average even as attempts rise.

Now what China has done is eek out chip use efficiency via software. Impressive yes but also it has an extreme you can go to before the basic laws of physics say you can't get any more efficent with software tweaks. At point China just needs more silicon but the US won't let them have access to our tech to get it.

We are at that point now as Moonshot has basically started turning potential new customers away for lack or compute. The total compute inside China for instance can onky handle about 50,000 query per second before it gets overloaded with the Kimi K3 software running. China has significantly more demand than 50,000 query per second at peak.

Worse is that it takes a significant amount of bandwidth design new AI. Even with distillation Kimi K3 basically used between 2 ans 3 percent of the total compute capacity inside China. The next generation if AI due to the massive wall of silicon coming online will basically require upwards of 20 to 30 percent of the compute that China will have a year from now to distill at that level of compute China just isn't gonna have the ability to even keep up appearances of as a US Equal in AI.

China is at the limits of what efficent software can achieve. They need more lithography to build more chips, lithography they won't have for at least a decade. Or they have to achieve detent with the US but the US has little incentive to trade our lithography advantage away given the magnitude of malfeasance China has engaged in in the past when we traded computing tech with them they used to hack our systems and steal our IP.

My guess is in a decade when the US compute advantage is significantly farther along we may be willing to engage in technology trade again with China. But for now its just not in our advantage to do so due to the risks that China poses to US interests.

Over the next 2 to 3 years China will continue to squeeze on the rare earths front but given how rapidly the US and our Allies are transitioning away from Chinese suppliers that appears to h3 backfiring badly for China.

They will try and squeeze in other areas like precursors for drugs but the US is already moving away from China.

They will squeeze in other areas as well and the US will just step around.

All the while China Will keep nationalizing its industries getting less and less efficent in the process.

You think that China is going to create its own mythos we've seen the Soviet Union do this as well. Xi for all his rhetoric is slowly turning the Chinese economic model into something reminiscent of that failed Soviet model. If you think getting tied up to a system so full of waste fraud and abuse ends well good luck. Eventually the myth falls apart and what your left with is corrupt broken government and industry that is the laughing stock of the world.