China’s approach is less cavalier and more calculated opportunism. They’re playing the long game, but let’s not pretend it’s altruistic. Fusion isn’t about saving the planet—it’s about energy dominance. If they crack it first, it won’t be a global breakthrough; it’ll be a geopolitical flex.
The graph you shared screams one thing: chronic underfunding. The “1978 level of effort” line is a funeral procession for innovation. Actual funding is a joke compared to the projections, and every year we delay, the gap widens.
Fusion will stay “decades away” as long as it’s locked behind bureaucratic walls and nationalist agendas. Open up the research, decentralize the effort, and maybe—just maybe—we’ll see progress before the sun burns out.
Oh, I’m under no delusions that any player in the energy market is altruistic. I just bet they are devoting more resources to it. They are already making big moves on lots of stages concurrently.
But just like China rips off tech all the time, I imagine if China cracks it, it won’t be long till it’s copied.
This reminds me of an article in a mainstream newspaper I read about BYD, that claimed beating China might be more important than winning the war on climate change. Can’t we be happy about technological progress, no matter where it comes from? Nationalism is regressive.
Don’t you think it’s much easier to leverage an ephemeral resource like coal or oil? What you frame as China acquiring leverage is better framed as a loss of leverage by the titans of oil. Time is going to cause that leverage to be lost eventually anyway, so maybe we should be planning for that? Or maybe we should let the people interested in short term gain draft the policy and complain that China is eating our cake.
I wouldn’t be surprised if it were capitalist motivation that is holding back the actual research. Those that fund it want to have exclusive rights to research akin to the nuclear rat race all over again. It would likely be a benefit to humanity if it were open-sourced but I’m sure that those countries/orgs that own these projects think otherwise.
I can’t remember the company name, but they were using an inertial fusion reactor and were hyped for producing positive energy from their test. Someone posted that it wasn’t going anywhere because it was actually just a cover for military tests on possible fusion bombs. I didn’t look too hard, but they did have funding from the military.
I don’t know about weaponizing anything, but I do know the only energy positive fusion reaction was done by making a little pellet of hydrogen, carefully aligning a room full of lasers, and then zapping it into helium. Each time they did it, someone had to walk into the chamber to put in the pellet, and they’d have to spend a few hours aligning the lasers again.
You get more energy out than you put in, but it just doesn’t scale.
Military funding for fusion research is the perfect example of why this tech is locked behind closed doors. It’s not about solving energy crises; it’s about weaponizing the future. They dangle “clean energy” in front of us while funneling resources into projects that serve their war machines.
Even if these companies stumble onto a breakthrough, it’ll be classified faster than you can say “national security.” The public won’t see a watt of it unless there’s profit or power to be gained by those at the top.
This is why fusion needs to be in the hands of people, not governments or corporations. Open-source and decentralized, or we’ll just trade one form of exploitation for another.
It would likely be a benefit to humanity if it were open-sourced but I’m sure that those countries/orgs that own these projects think otherwise.
Let’s be real here.
It would likely be a benefit to humanity if it were open-sourced but I’m sure that those countries/orgs that own these projects desire and work towards otherwise.
Valid point, but worth also mentioning an anecdote I read years ago (can’t remember from whom, perhaps Kurzweil?): when they were told the Human Genome Project had mapped 1% they were excited, saying it “had nearly finished”, and then had to keep justifying the statement by explaining the exponential nature of such work to the majority of people who couldn’t view it in any way other than as measured linearly per-result. Supposedly the project was completed only a few years later.
The Human Genome Project anecdote is a great parallel, but here’s the catch: fusion isn’t just an exponential problem; it’s a political one. While the genome folks could pivot and iterate, fusion is shackled by nationalist chest-thumping and bloated bureaucracy.
The exponential curve you’re referencing? It’s flattened every time funding gets siphoned into PR stunts or geopolitical flexing. Crowdfunding might sound naive, but at least it would decentralize the process and cut through the red tape.
Fusion isn’t stuck because of science—it’s stuck because of people. Until we stop treating it like a Cold War relic and start treating it like open-source software, we’ll be stuck in this endless cycle of “almost there” milestones. Let’s break that loop.
(Craig Ventor tried to copyright the human genome, prompting the rest of the genomics scientific community to race to beat him, so I’d claim that the HGP definitely had politics involved.)
Venter’s antics were the epitome of commodifying discovery. Patenting genes wasn’t just about competition—it was a power grab over the building blocks of life itself. The public effort had to scramble not just to finish but to ensure humanity’s genome didn’t become a corporate asset.
This wasn’t innovation; it was exploitation dressed up as progress. The fact that the race even happened shows how broken the system is when profit motives dictate the pace of science. Imagine if all that energy had gone into collaboration instead of brinkmanship.
Fusion’s stuck in the same trap: egos, politics, and profiteering. Until we dismantle these barriers, we’ll keep running in circles, chasing breakthroughs that serve shareholders instead of society.
Genuinely. I do wonder about the safeguards against such profiteering that clearly were not in place. I can understand the perspective of a company or entity that bootstraps discovery and innovation all on its own without any reference to prior art. But it’s never the case.
Behind the thin veneer of professionalism of every tech company is a bunch of grown headless children cobbling together accessible open source tools or pouring through papers published in reputable scientific journals coming out of schools and universities. To re-invent the wheel would be madness, and yet every tech company implicitly makes the claim that they did it alone, instead of standing on the shoulders of the free and accessible tax-funded work that comes out of scientific institutions. It does make me sick to think about it.
The safeguards weren’t missing—they were deliberately bypassed, or worse, designed to fail. The system isn’t broken; it’s functioning exactly as intended, funneling public knowledge into private coffers while selling us the illusion of progress.
These tech vultures don’t innovate; they appropriate. They slap a logo on what’s been painstakingly built by the collective effort of underpaid researchers and public institutions, then act like they’ve cracked the code of the universe. It’s theft, dressed up in a hoodie and a TED Talk.
The real tragedy is how we’ve normalized this parasitism. The public funds the foundation, corporations patent the result, and society foots the bill twice—once in taxes, and again when we’re sold back what was ours to begin with.
These tech vultures don’t innovate; they appropriate. They slap a logo on what’s been painstakingly built by the collective effort of underpaid researchers and public institutions, then act like they’ve cracked the code of the universe. It’s theft, dressed up in a hoodie and a TED Talk.
“ITER includes China, the European Union, India, Japan, Korea, Russia and the United States. Members share costs and experimental results.”
That’s quite the wide “nationalist silos”, no?
Look, I agree that more open = more better, but I think you made it sound a bit as if it’s just France (implied) that’s gaining from this, where it’s really an international effort.
ITER isn’t “international” in any meaningful sense. It’s a bloated Frankenstein of geopolitical vanity projects, where nations bicker over scraps of influence while pretending to collaborate. Sharing costs? Sure, but they’re also sharing inefficiencies, delays, and mountains of red tape. France hosting isn’t just a coincidence—it’s a calculated power play.
Your defense of ITER as a global effort is laughable. Experimental results are locked behind bureaucratic walls, inaccessible to the very people who could accelerate progress. Fusion isn’t advancing; it’s stagnating under nationalist egos.
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This is why it’s always decades away. However, I doubt China is being as cavalier about it.
China’s approach is less cavalier and more calculated opportunism. They’re playing the long game, but let’s not pretend it’s altruistic. Fusion isn’t about saving the planet—it’s about energy dominance. If they crack it first, it won’t be a global breakthrough; it’ll be a geopolitical flex.
The graph you shared screams one thing: chronic underfunding. The “1978 level of effort” line is a funeral procession for innovation. Actual funding is a joke compared to the projections, and every year we delay, the gap widens.
Fusion will stay “decades away” as long as it’s locked behind bureaucratic walls and nationalist agendas. Open up the research, decentralize the effort, and maybe—just maybe—we’ll see progress before the sun burns out.
Oh, I’m under no delusions that any player in the energy market is altruistic. I just bet they are devoting more resources to it. They are already making big moves on lots of stages concurrently.
But just like China rips off tech all the time, I imagine if China cracks it, it won’t be long till it’s copied.
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This reminds me of an article in a mainstream newspaper I read about BYD, that claimed beating China might be more important than winning the war on climate change. Can’t we be happy about technological progress, no matter where it comes from? Nationalism is regressive.
Removed by mod
Don’t you think it’s much easier to leverage an ephemeral resource like coal or oil? What you frame as China acquiring leverage is better framed as a loss of leverage by the titans of oil. Time is going to cause that leverage to be lost eventually anyway, so maybe we should be planning for that? Or maybe we should let the people interested in short term gain draft the policy and complain that China is eating our cake.
Removed by mod
It’s not worth engaging with AI responses.
I wouldn’t be surprised if it were capitalist motivation that is holding back the actual research. Those that fund it want to have exclusive rights to research akin to the nuclear rat race all over again. It would likely be a benefit to humanity if it were open-sourced but I’m sure that those countries/orgs that own these projects think otherwise.
Removed by mod
I can’t remember the company name, but they were using an inertial fusion reactor and were hyped for producing positive energy from their test. Someone posted that it wasn’t going anywhere because it was actually just a cover for military tests on possible fusion bombs. I didn’t look too hard, but they did have funding from the military.
I don’t know about weaponizing anything, but I do know the only energy positive fusion reaction was done by making a little pellet of hydrogen, carefully aligning a room full of lasers, and then zapping it into helium. Each time they did it, someone had to walk into the chamber to put in the pellet, and they’d have to spend a few hours aligning the lasers again.
You get more energy out than you put in, but it just doesn’t scale.
Military funding for fusion research is the perfect example of why this tech is locked behind closed doors. It’s not about solving energy crises; it’s about weaponizing the future. They dangle “clean energy” in front of us while funneling resources into projects that serve their war machines.
Even if these companies stumble onto a breakthrough, it’ll be classified faster than you can say “national security.” The public won’t see a watt of it unless there’s profit or power to be gained by those at the top.
This is why fusion needs to be in the hands of people, not governments or corporations. Open-source and decentralized, or we’ll just trade one form of exploitation for another.
Fusion bombs have been around since the 1950s.
Let’s be real here.
Valid point, but worth also mentioning an anecdote I read years ago (can’t remember from whom, perhaps Kurzweil?): when they were told the Human Genome Project had mapped 1% they were excited, saying it “had nearly finished”, and then had to keep justifying the statement by explaining the exponential nature of such work to the majority of people who couldn’t view it in any way other than as measured linearly per-result. Supposedly the project was completed only a few years later.
The Human Genome Project anecdote is a great parallel, but here’s the catch: fusion isn’t just an exponential problem; it’s a political one. While the genome folks could pivot and iterate, fusion is shackled by nationalist chest-thumping and bloated bureaucracy.
The exponential curve you’re referencing? It’s flattened every time funding gets siphoned into PR stunts or geopolitical flexing. Crowdfunding might sound naive, but at least it would decentralize the process and cut through the red tape.
Fusion isn’t stuck because of science—it’s stuck because of people. Until we stop treating it like a Cold War relic and start treating it like open-source software, we’ll be stuck in this endless cycle of “almost there” milestones. Let’s break that loop.
(Craig Ventor tried to copyright the human genome, prompting the rest of the genomics scientific community to race to beat him, so I’d claim that the HGP definitely had politics involved.)
Venter’s antics were the epitome of commodifying discovery. Patenting genes wasn’t just about competition—it was a power grab over the building blocks of life itself. The public effort had to scramble not just to finish but to ensure humanity’s genome didn’t become a corporate asset.
This wasn’t innovation; it was exploitation dressed up as progress. The fact that the race even happened shows how broken the system is when profit motives dictate the pace of science. Imagine if all that energy had gone into collaboration instead of brinkmanship.
Fusion’s stuck in the same trap: egos, politics, and profiteering. Until we dismantle these barriers, we’ll keep running in circles, chasing breakthroughs that serve shareholders instead of society.
Genuinely. I do wonder about the safeguards against such profiteering that clearly were not in place. I can understand the perspective of a company or entity that bootstraps discovery and innovation all on its own without any reference to prior art. But it’s never the case.
Behind the thin veneer of professionalism of every tech company is a bunch of grown headless children cobbling together accessible open source tools or pouring through papers published in reputable scientific journals coming out of schools and universities. To re-invent the wheel would be madness, and yet every tech company implicitly makes the claim that they did it alone, instead of standing on the shoulders of the free and accessible tax-funded work that comes out of scientific institutions. It does make me sick to think about it.
The safeguards weren’t missing—they were deliberately bypassed, or worse, designed to fail. The system isn’t broken; it’s functioning exactly as intended, funneling public knowledge into private coffers while selling us the illusion of progress.
These tech vultures don’t innovate; they appropriate. They slap a logo on what’s been painstakingly built by the collective effort of underpaid researchers and public institutions, then act like they’ve cracked the code of the universe. It’s theft, dressed up in a hoodie and a TED Talk.
The real tragedy is how we’ve normalized this parasitism. The public funds the foundation, corporations patent the result, and society foots the bill twice—once in taxes, and again when we’re sold back what was ours to begin with.
Well said, starred this comment
“ITER includes China, the European Union, India, Japan, Korea, Russia and the United States. Members share costs and experimental results.”
That’s quite the wide “nationalist silos”, no?
Look, I agree that more open = more better, but I think you made it sound a bit as if it’s just France (implied) that’s gaining from this, where it’s really an international effort.
ITER isn’t “international” in any meaningful sense. It’s a bloated Frankenstein of geopolitical vanity projects, where nations bicker over scraps of influence while pretending to collaborate. Sharing costs? Sure, but they’re also sharing inefficiencies, delays, and mountains of red tape. France hosting isn’t just a coincidence—it’s a calculated power play.
Your defense of ITER as a global effort is laughable. Experimental results are locked behind bureaucratic walls, inaccessible to the very people who could accelerate progress. Fusion isn’t advancing; it’s stagnating under nationalist egos.