China's EAST project has set a new global record by maintaining a high-confinement plasma state for over 17 minutes, paving the way for future clean energy solutions by mimicking the sun's fusion process. China's Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST), also known as the "artificial
This reminds me of an article in a mainstream newspaper I read about BYD, that claimed beating China might be more important than winning the war on climate change. Can’t we be happy about technological progress, no matter where it comes from? Nationalism is regressive.
Technological progress isn’t some neutral, utopian march forward—it’s a weapon in the hands of whoever controls it. Pretending the source doesn’t matter is naive at best, dangerous at worst. Nationalism may be regressive, but unchecked global power dynamics are worse. If China dominates fusion, it’s not just about clean energy; it’s about leverage over every nation still burning coal.
We can celebrate progress and question its implications. Decentralization isn’t just a buzzword; it’s a survival strategy. Letting one state monopolize the future of energy is like handing them the keys to the planet. Fusion needs to be a global effort, not a geopolitical trophy. Progress without accountability is just another form of control.
Don’t you think it’s much easier to leverage an ephemeral resource like coal or oil? What you frame as China acquiring leverage is better framed as a loss of leverage by the titans of oil. Time is going to cause that leverage to be lost eventually anyway, so maybe we should be planning for that? Or maybe we should let the people interested in short term gain draft the policy and complain that China is eating our cake.