Satellites, a visit to China, Nazi war criminals and stock day trading in Shen Zhen. How far will we go to keep ahead of the game? Some thoughts after reading “Sputnik” by Paul Dickson.

 

HBS rating: Good Fun

whos should read:

• Tech lovers

• East VS’ west interesandos

• What helped drive and build America as we know it today fascianados

Crossing from Hong Kong to the Shen Zhen province in China a few weeks ago, I didn’t quite know what to expect once I leave the ferry.  The ride is short, about 30 minutes.  The closer I got to the Chinese mainland the more curious I became.  What does China look like? Should I expect industrial revolution cityscape or ancient ink drawings?

The Shen Zhen province, is one of China’s industrial zones.  Anyone interested in manufacturing something, or anything, big or small, simple or complicated, is bound to arrive there at one point or another.  Remove the people from the streets, and the banners and logo’s off of the buildings, and you will not know which part of the world you are in.  A mega city of modern high-rise buildings, four to six lane highways, Starbucks, McDonalds and Walmart (yes Walmart). 

It’s exciting and disappointing at the same time.  Exciting as it is quite an opportunity to see a country going through high energy stages of an industrialized revolution.  Disappointing, as it seems that the Cultural Revolution now followed by an industrial one, pushed away anything an outsider would recognize as “Chinese”.

In here lies a trap.  Do we really know the Chinese and what China can do?  Once we figure out what the Chinese can do, how far will the west go to keep its edge?

China is developing fast; as time passes by, more and more knowledge and abilities associated with Western or other advanced technological societies around the world is and will shift (actually already have shifted) to this vast country.  The technology race is on, and there are historical precedents we can refer to.

In “Sputnik, the shock of the century” Paul Dickenson lays out the story of how one chunk of shiny metal circling the earth, shocked the entire American nation.  It wasn’t that the Americans didn’t have the ability to shoot something into space, its seems it wasn’t in their list of “things to be done”.  It’s not so certain that the Russians had it on top of their priority list either.  In a very Soviet way, they managed to delay their space program by a good number of years by imprisoning their brightest mind in a Gulag (for something only a communist would understand).  Luckily enough for them (again in a very hard to understand Russian way) the imprisoned scientists kept on developing their science in hiding.

What the Russians had, was thrust.  They could build rockets, and pretty damn powerful ones.  What they couldn’t solve with a small hammer, they solved with a bigger one.  So the dream of overcoming gravity became a reality.  What the Russians didn’t have, was the delicacy and technology to actually place in space something clever and sophisticated.

The Americans on the other hand, seemed to have the opposite.  They had, and eventually managed to perfect the complex necessary technology to go into orbit and land on the moon.  What they missed at the time Sputnik was beeping from space, was the knowledge of how to leave the Earth.

Here the reader will be confronted with a very difficult to come to agreement part of the American Space Program.  This does raise the question of how far nations will go to keep ahead of the game.

The person that is responsible for most of the rocket knowledge the Americans have, and the most spoken personalities to advance the American space program in a time that it wasn’t that popular (as result of big spending and internal rivalry between Army, Navy and Air Force as to who should lead the program), was none other than a Nazi war criminal.

Werner Von Brown, was a high ranking Nazi officer, responsible for the development of the infamous German V2 rockets.  In fact, the first rockets shot from American soil after the war, had many captured V2 parts in them.

Von Brown was not just an administrator; he was responsible for running the secret factories in which Jews were forced to labor and slave and build the V2’s.  In a very German way, the Nazi’s found out that it is cheaper to bring in new labor and let it die, than try and keep the existing labor alive.  Thus the life expectancy of anyone unfortunate enough to arrive at those technology death camps was about three months.

And Von Brown was responsible for that.

However, let us not confuse ourselves with facts.  The Russians had an object in orbit, so Von Brown, his team, and their families were cleansed from their criminal past and turned into official American citizens; in return, they helped the US overcome gravity.  How Americanized has Von Brown became? To the point he was testifying in Congress committees headed by the future 36ths President LBJ.  

Going back to my visit in China, I tried to figure out which is it that the Chinese have today: thrust, technology or knowledgeable scientists providing knowledge from countries that used to be considered enemies.

The answer is easy.  They have it all. 

On my last day of the visit I met with an American living in China for 25 years.  He is a go between business man helping outsiders manufacture in China.  How long will it be before the Chinese will stop needing people as yourself, I asked.  Six to ten years, he figured.  I sipped my locally brewed beer, locked over the city skyline similar to that of any American city, thought of the couple I saw earlier in the day drinking Frapucino’s in the local Starbucks while day stock trading on their locally manufactured laptops.  I think that with all of his experience in China he is getting his numbers wrong.  Sooner, much sooner,  a “beep from space” will awaken the west to realize exactly how far and advanced China is.  And then, how far will we go to keep ahead of the game?