Also it's very much worth nothing that Silicon Valley no longer has the monopoly on talent that it once had. In fact in some of the more important development areas now, it's shifted to places like Boston or elsewhere.

Not to mention that a lot of talent are moving to Austin, Miami, or literally anywhere thanks to the teleconferencing technology that Silicon Valley invented.

Which raises the question if Silicon Valley isn’t geographical but is rather a catch-all for the cutting edge and dumb money aspects of the U.S. tech industry. Is the Amazon/Microsoft/Valve tech scene in Seattle any less Silicon Valley than SV itself? Is Austin, which had techbros since the 90s with the likes of Trilogy [0], and an ongoing rush of new blood flowing out of the Bay Area, any less SV? Will VCs moving to Miami turn it into the funding operations center of SV?

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=620848

I've found that as much as the technical folks have spread out to Seattle & Austin (and now elsewhere as those are getting too expensive), nearly all of the business folks stick to the Valley. Both the brilliant and the parasites.

As the capital cycle has shifted away from VC towards companies consolidating and needing to make real returns, it's going to be interesting to see if SV can stay what it is until things turn around again.

During the dotcom correction, it was still possible for some people to stick around and eek out a living. Today that's not possible without technologist wages.

Business folks are mostly trend followers now and "leaving California" is a trendy thing to do.

Zoom is mostly developed in China, not even SV.

I think you’re not looking far enough back in the history of computer technology to think it’s _recently_ shifted to places like Boston. There’s always been companies outside SV, and especially in Boston. And there’s always been ebb and flow.

I'm well aware, but my point is this time that there are entire fields where the _hub_ is Boston and not SV.

The fear of China "overtaking" the US is like the fear of the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Real, but with no substance. A system built on top of paranoia is very unlikely to succeed.

Downplaying China and their potential is exactly how China got to the level of prominence they have today. I don't see the Soviet Union as a good comparison. I think China could still fail, of course, but they're much more likely than the Soviets (from whom they no doubt learned some of what not to do) to succeed in the longer term.

The biggest problem is that the West is allowing them to win, by being addicted to cheap goods and losing the ability to manufacture many things (cost-effectively or at all) ourselves, while China doesn't open up their markets to outsiders, at least nowhere near the same degree as we give them access.

No one said they would over take - merely they that are a formidable foe and will have a presence no doubt.

The kind of hubris in this thread tells me despite how asinine these articles are they hit HNs nerve.

I wouldn't say "no one"; my personal opinion is that if the West doesn't wake up, they'll quite easily overtake in a few decades, if not sooner. We continue to enable their rise, while ignoring their bad behavior, all because we need access to their manufacturing capability... capability we've willingly ceded to them over the past decades.

you oversimplify their model, for most people in Schenchzen(Chinese silicon valley) the motivation is the same as it was in US

I'm sorry, but China is much stronger economically than the USSR ever was