How an obscure Turkish scientist’s obscure theoretical breakthrough helped the Chinese tech giant gain control of the future. US telecoms never had a chance.
(A worth reading article on 5G network war between USA and China. Turkish Scientist, Erdal Arikan, discovered “Polar codes” (backbone of 5G network) to transmit high volume data at high speed and without noise error. He offered to US companies, but they refused, but Chinese company, Huawei, jumped on it. It made Huawei a force to reckon with in 5G network. This is the major friction between USA and China, other trade war is just a noise. f.sheikh)
“Polar codes itself is not what’s important,” Erdal continued. “It is a symbol. 5G is totally different than the internet. It’s like a global nervous system. Huawei is the leading company in 5G. They will be around in 10, 20, 50 years—you cannot say that about the US tech companies. In the internet era, the US produced a few trillion-dollar companies. Because of 5G, China will have 10 or more trillion-dollar companies. Huawei and China now have the lead.”
US companies and the US government can no longer expect to beat China back with threats or indictments, even if they are sometimes warranted. And it’s not just telecom companies like Huawei. For all the furor at the highest levels over whether the teen-oriented social app TikTok presented security issues, the real threat to American business was that its Chinese engineers had devised an AI-powered recommendation engine that Silicon Valley had not matched.
Arıkan says the experience has led him to respect Huawei—and to provide a warning to the country where he learned information theory. “I owe a lot to the US,” he says. “I give you friendly advice: You have to accept this as the new reality and deal with it accordingly.”
To paraphrase Shannon: No one knows the future. But Huawei and China now have a hand in controlling it.
posted by f.sheikh