Why is China smashing its tech industry?
&gt; There are certainly those in America who believe that Facebook and Google produce little of value relative to the profit they rake in; maybe China’s leaders, for reasons that will remain forever opaque to us, have simply reached the same conclusion.<p>Arguably, capturing most of your country&#x27;s top talent with absurd salaries and putting them to work on world-critical challenges like... how to generate more revenue from advertisement or... how to create as many &quot;phone-addicts&quot; as possible... could be quantified as producing tons and tons of negative value.<p>If China&#x27;s crackdown on &quot;consumer-facing tech&quot; is about this, that could be a very good thing for China long term.<p>I grew up wanting to work on NASA and putting stuff on space, and during university got offered 10x the NASA salaries at FAANG companies, and was to week to just say &quot;no thanks&quot;.<p>10 years later I am starting to wonder what my legacy is going to be.