EA - War Between the US and China: A case study for epistemic challenges around China-related catastrophic risk by Jordan Schneider

Link to original articleWelcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: War Between the US and China: A case study for epistemic challenges around China-related catastrophic risk, published by Jordan Schneider on August 12, 2022 on The Effective Altruism Forum. TL;DR China has a critical role to play in addressing the 21st century’s most pressing catastrophic risks. In particular, the risk of a US-China war in the coming decades is real (Metaculus gives 50/50 odds of a conflict with >100 deaths by 2050, and there's perhaps a 15% chance of a war of the scale we're considering for this post). A conventional conflict could cost over 2 billion life years in the combatant countries even before taking into account nuclear escalation. Even less horrific wartime scenarios would reduce global GDP by double digits and plunge perhaps 5% of the world’s population back into extreme poverty. Analysis of modern China is very neglected relative to its scale. Only ~600 people in the United States conduct research on anything PRC-related for a living outside the US government. The US Intelligence Community does not have it covered, and a vanishing percentage of the 600 are oriented towards reducing catastrophic risk. Even more concerning is that the flow of researchers into the space has not increased even as US-China tensions have heightened (in fact, the early career talent pipeline is broken). Thankfully, there’s a lot of low-hanging fruit! Funding Ideas include Money to increase the pool of early career jobs, including direct funding for early career positions at think tanks A survey that explores the state of research and talent challenges, culminating in a roadmap to improve the quality of US policy debate around China more oriented around catastrophic risks. Epistemic tools like a giant centralized repository of Chinese government documents and translation algorithms tuned for government documents Philanthropically-funded research organizations built off CSET’s model that could inspire Congress to fund more impactful analysis Along with reducing the chances of a US-China war, an improved understanding of the PRC could prove invaluable for working on other catastrophic risks like AI safety and biosecurity. A Word from the Authors Jordan Schneider: I was the lead author of this report. For the past five years, I’ve run the ChinaTalk podcast and newsletter. I’ve interviewed more than 250 China-focused journalists, academics, and policymakers based outside of the PRC in recorded conversations for podcast episodes, and 150 more casual conversations. I have also worked for six years in the think tank field on China-focused work, spent two years in grad school in Beijing, and another two years in a macro-focused role at a hedge fund with significant investments in China. I have also interacted over a hundred students who have reached out to me for career advice. The claims that follow build off those conversations, my work experience, and countless hours reading China-focused academic literature as well as think tank and government reports. I have scoped this paper to focus specifically on great power war in the next fifty years as it’s the topic where I have the deepest expertise. However, practically every major shortermist and longtermist risk area (biorisk, global economic growth prospects, space governance, geoengineering, AI safety) is intimately tied to China, plagued by the same analytical deficiencies in the English-speaking world, and could be served by interventions analogous to the ones proposed below. Pradyumna Prasad: I was the supporting author. I run the Bretton Goods blog and podcast, helped write the sections on estimating the mortality and economic costs of a US China war, and graduated high school last year. Summary What's the problem? In 1948, two years after Churchill made his Iron Curtain speech, the CIA had 12 Russian speakers on s...