Why would anyone spend the time to read something so long that's been generated by an LLM? The topic seems super interesting otherwise and would benefit from the real human voice. OP, can you elaborate on why you decided to go this direction?
It is LLM with a clever prompt that avoids the most egregious tells (though "load-bearing" appears).
The number of times the article goes on complete tangents, introducing new irrelevant names and the general useless level of detail, all in perfect verbose English points to an LLM. So does the upbeat and persuasive style.
If you write that level of detail, use a historian's style and footnotes. Do not use the synthetic LLM voice that is optimized for rhetoric.
No worries, I don't mean to disparage your article. At least it avoids some of the most annoying LLMism I have seen, and given its length you must have put some effort into prompting, researching, or editing. Hope you will find your own voice as you write more and more.
Youtube these days is full of probably great and interesting documentaries, where people put a lot of time in, but when I hear these typical LLM narrations I can't make it more then a few seconds in, they are horrible.
An error rate of 0 is unachievable. Given that, it’s a question of your tolerance for error and the consequences of the opposite kind of error. Given the numbers of people involved in the exchange the comparative value must have been quite clear to both parties.
The Chinese outcome was not nearly so certain even in 1990, half a century after the events in question. The counterfactual that China could not have indigenously achieved this also seems unlikely.
After all, the thesis is that Chinese leaders were so organizationally intelligent that they recognized key players that could implement century-long organizational methodology improvements. Given that they could get that far, it seems unlikely that they could not take the next step: that of recreating/finding a Qian Xuesen within their own country; like we found Oppenheimer.
Overall, this seems like a strategic choice that played off roughly at the risk control level it was aimed at. You cannot judge decisions solely by outcomes.
I buy it that this guy is incredibly important in the history of aerospace engineering and the weapons industry, but the article seems like it's making an overly strong claim that the trajectory of American and Chinese tech development was so affected by Qian Xuesen. There are, after all, many other people involved in both trajectories. Would Qian have been so successful in China if the economic and political incentives to listen to him had not been there? Had Qian stayed in America, is there a guarantee that the infrastructure necessary to support his doctrine on technological development would have been available?
Reminds me of the results of a large Slavic country going to war with a much smaller, once subordinate, now independent republic that was the source of their best engineers.
It's a false analogy. Ukraine was no such source. It's just happened after WW2, that as a part or rebuilding a devastated territory, plus a better climate, resulted in USSR relocating several of its best aero/space and in general military institutions to what is now known as Ukraine. For example, their space engines engineers were educated in Russia till 2008 at least, maybe even longer.
The destruction of the research and development education pipeline in the USA that took 75 years to build because “college and women and minorities bad/Israel always good” was vying for the title only a few months ago.
unless you are Alexander the great and even then, your armies would get tired of fighting for so long for a piece of land far far away from their homeland and they would wish to get homes.
Pointless? Have you noticed which energy companies are making record profits? Who is filling demand for oil & gas if the ME refineries are blown up or blockaded?
Qian is a typical opportunist, who had been contacting ccp since 1930s. He was already away from military and academia for years, while pouring huge sum of money into his immigration case. After deported from US, his job in China was mostly management.
It's hard to say how much it contributed to the pre-eminence of modern-day China. But overall the rise of China surely dominates anything that's happened in the last year. No other nation even comes close to vying for hegemony with the US. We could have another full-on Vietnam-esque quagmire in Iran and it wouldn't even be a blip in comparison.
I don't quite get why the author thinks it would be impossible to get a big budget nose-rub in the dirt to the security apparatuses about their incredible abilability to create self-fulfilling prophecies against themselves via bigotry. It isn't like it takes pentagon cooperation for history biopics, the tech is all old.
If you wanna read an article containing essentially the same information without the pesky LLM voice: https://www.usni.org/magazines/naval-history/2025/december/m...
Why would anyone spend the time to read something so long that's been generated by an LLM? The topic seems super interesting otherwise and would benefit from the real human voice. OP, can you elaborate on why you decided to go this direction?
> Why would anyone spend the time to read something so long that's been generated by an LLM?
What diference does it make as long as the content is interesting and the tone not grating?
It's possible for a human being to use an LLM but guide it to a well-written piece that's worth consuming.
The tone is grating. That’s why we notice it.
If the LLM output was indistinguishable from real human text nobody would say anything, because by definition we wouldn’t be able to tell.
So obviously generated
This is an incredible piece of writing, to accuse it of LLM voice borders on sacrilege
It is LLM with a clever prompt that avoids the most egregious tells (though "load-bearing" appears).
The number of times the article goes on complete tangents, introducing new irrelevant names and the general useless level of detail, all in perfect verbose English points to an LLM. So does the upbeat and persuasive style.
If you write that level of detail, use a historian's style and footnotes. Do not use the synthetic LLM voice that is optimized for rhetoric.
I don't really think there's a tangential detail that is related to the message. Which one are you referring to?
Also, the upbeat and persuasive style ... is my style kek, is it me being too pushy or?
Unfortunately there is too much detail here for me to write more candidly.
No worries, I don't mean to disparage your article. At least it avoids some of the most annoying LLMism I have seen, and given its length you must have put some effort into prompting, researching, or editing. Hope you will find your own voice as you write more and more.
Youtube these days is full of probably great and interesting documentaries, where people put a lot of time in, but when I hear these typical LLM narrations I can't make it more then a few seconds in, they are horrible.
An error rate of 0 is unachievable. Given that, it’s a question of your tolerance for error and the consequences of the opposite kind of error. Given the numbers of people involved in the exchange the comparative value must have been quite clear to both parties.
The Chinese outcome was not nearly so certain even in 1990, half a century after the events in question. The counterfactual that China could not have indigenously achieved this also seems unlikely.
After all, the thesis is that Chinese leaders were so organizationally intelligent that they recognized key players that could implement century-long organizational methodology improvements. Given that they could get that far, it seems unlikely that they could not take the next step: that of recreating/finding a Qian Xuesen within their own country; like we found Oppenheimer.
Overall, this seems like a strategic choice that played off roughly at the risk control level it was aimed at. You cannot judge decisions solely by outcomes.
I buy it that this guy is incredibly important in the history of aerospace engineering and the weapons industry, but the article seems like it's making an overly strong claim that the trajectory of American and Chinese tech development was so affected by Qian Xuesen. There are, after all, many other people involved in both trajectories. Would Qian have been so successful in China if the economic and political incentives to listen to him had not been there? Had Qian stayed in America, is there a guarantee that the infrastructure necessary to support his doctrine on technological development would have been available?
What became JPL had numerous colorful characters who had trouble with the security apparatus not least
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Parsons
who invented modern composite solid rockets and was also a collaborator of Aleister Crowley and L. Ron Hubbard.
Reminds me of the results of a large Slavic country going to war with a much smaller, once subordinate, now independent republic that was the source of their best engineers.
It's a false analogy. Ukraine was no such source. It's just happened after WW2, that as a part or rebuilding a devastated territory, plus a better climate, resulted in USSR relocating several of its best aero/space and in general military institutions to what is now known as Ukraine. For example, their space engines engineers were educated in Russia till 2008 at least, maybe even longer.
This is literal Russian propaganda.
I'm gonna let you finish, but starting a completely pointless war with Iran is one of the greatest strategic blunders of all time.
The destruction of the research and development education pipeline in the USA that took 75 years to build because “college and women and minorities bad/Israel always good” was vying for the title only a few months ago.
Oh, that blunder is so 2025. In 2026 we brought our A game.
Turns out there's a nice phrase that neatly describes these seemingly disparate trends.
It's one of the classic blunders: never get involved in a land war in asia.
unless you are Alexander the great and even then, your armies would get tired of fighting for so long for a piece of land far far away from their homeland and they would wish to get homes.
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Pointless? Have you noticed which energy companies are making record profits? Who is filling demand for oil & gas if the ME refineries are blown up or blockaded?
That is a good piece on a truly major technology debacle. The title is overblown.
Qian is a typical opportunist, who had been contacting ccp since 1930s. He was already away from military and academia for years, while pouring huge sum of money into his immigration case. After deported from US, his job in China was mostly management.
I doubt it's the greatest given all that's happened in the past year. But it's certainly up there, no pun intended.
It's hard to say how much it contributed to the pre-eminence of modern-day China. But overall the rise of China surely dominates anything that's happened in the last year. No other nation even comes close to vying for hegemony with the US. We could have another full-on Vietnam-esque quagmire in Iran and it wouldn't even be a blip in comparison.
I don't quite get why the author thinks it would be impossible to get a big budget nose-rub in the dirt to the security apparatuses about their incredible abilability to create self-fulfilling prophecies against themselves via bigotry. It isn't like it takes pentagon cooperation for history biopics, the tech is all old.