How Good Is U.S. Tech?

I don't know how familiar you are with the ins and outs of hard-core technology like artificial intelligence, but I can assure you it's dizzying. I barely escaped my machine learning course in college, and it was by far the most difficult course I took. As such, I have a great appreciation for the kind of programming and technology that goes into true robotics. But, as with most things, there's a political angle to robotics, too. Allow me...

Remember ASIMO, the Japanese humanoid robot? It's this cutting edge project that Honda has been working on since 1986 to create a functional robot that walks like a human. Pretty amazing stuff, but far from perfected, even 23 years later:

Now, if you're like me, you kind of think of the Japanese as being really, really good at technology, right? Well, let's see how some good old American private industry ingenuity (funded by Defense Department dollars, I assume) compares:

Now, it's true that this is a 4-legged robot, but it looks to me that this technology is significantly ahead of ASIMO. Guess how long it took this American company to reach this level of robotic competence? Just four years. More background and information here.

So, what's my point? The point is that this is what American ingenuity is capable of if it is unleashed. We can start from scratch and leap ahead of foreign competitors in far less time because we are free to give it our best shot. This is what's given American forces the kind of superior technology that has allowed us to fight two wars over six years and lose less than 5,000 soldiers when wars of the past have seen tens of thousands of casualties in just days.

President Obama is killing that advantage, both directly and indirectly. He promised to cut the defense budget, and he is moving ahead to do just that. Projects like Big Dog are probably going to be included because they aren't old, established techology. He is also stifling innovation in the private sector by implementing punitive taxation on companies and business leaders who succeed financially, as well as enacting oppressive regulation that is driving businesses out of the country because it's just too damned expensive to operate here.

Hope! and Change! is going to make the American military -- and thus America itself -- less secure.

There's my two cents.