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BREAKING: USA cuts off supply of Sour Cream & Onion and is considering restrictions on BBQ
It's pretty funny how these people have no imagination whatsoever, all they know how to do is double down on shit that clearly isn't working for them.
That's likely the rationale behind the move, but the problem is that we already see US based companies starting to lose money because of it. This was a really good of the problems. Basically, chip development has very low margins and profitability relies entirely on selling large volumes. China used to be one of the biggest consumers for chips, and now US companies aren't allowed to export newer chips there. So, their market has shrunk and now it's not profitable for them to even bother developing new chips. What's worse is that they're now becoming worried that China will be flooding the world with older chips now that they've spun up their own foundries. Most of the chips being sold aren't bleeding edge ones, but older variants that are still good enough for most applications.
US has also been struggling with trying to get domestic foundries going, and at the rate things are going I expect China will end up leapfrogging the US in terms of bleeding edge chip production as well within a couple of years.
The only play US really has here is to force their vassals to decouple from China entirely and then force them to buy chips and other tech from US. However, we're already seeing anti-US sentiment growing in Europe, and pro US governments might end up getting kicked out of power in the near future.
Overall, I think this is a really poor strategy all around, and it's not going to produce the results that US is hoping for. It's the same level of delusion that resulted in the debacle in Ukraine.
I definitely agree with your assessment of the logic behind this move.
There's only so much you can do when you're whole approach is 'do as we say or else' but the threats stop working.
Interesting ideas but it doesn't take into account the extremelly expensive AI chips, and the new AI designed chips as well to a lesser extent I guess.
If they can make enough money with the AI chips, or if the government invests heavily, they could keep their position for longer, but if it doesn't make them enough or if they just distribute this to the shareholders they could indeed face a lack of sales leading to falling income and possible crashes.
It looks like US hasn't really been doing much of an investment into subsidizing domestic fabs
- https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/us-government-doles-out-paltry-dollar35-million-of-the-dollar52-billion-chips-act-warns-of-possible-delays-in-intel-and-tsmc-fab-buildouts
- https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/semiconductors/us-govts-sluggish-chips-act-payouts-slam-the-breaks-on-samsungs-fab-company-delays-mass-production-at-texas-fab-to-await-further-chips-funding-report
Meanwhile, China is already making domestic 7nm chips for AI https://www.digitimes.com/news/a20230717PD210/china-7nm-ai-chips.html
and has a huge domestic market https://asiatimes.com/2023/12/china-to-meet-ai-market-demand-with-local-chips/
My expectation is that China will rapidly catch up and will start outpacing western chip companies. It's also worth noting that as western chip market slumps, China will be able to poach a lot of the people. This has already been happening with TSMC and Samsung researchers and engineers moving to China because they got really attractive job offers.
Truly specialized chips for AI have yet to be fully explored. And China will surely be one of the countries to invent them, with the sanctions in place meaning the government will have to prioritize designing new chips.
Bro just one more sanction. Please their economy has almost collapsed, just one more sanction. Bro please just one more.
the waspiest looking woman I can imagine
I know she's part Italian but she really encapsulates the wasp perfectly
Arch Linux is already available for loong64
https://github.com/loongarchlinux
I had no idea China had other new architectures than RISC-V going on. It doesn’t even have its own NATOpedia page yet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loongson#LoongArch
I may be misremembering, but the restrictions on AI hardware was big enough for the CEO of Nvidia to complain. I don't think it'll impact China in the long term, but it's a strange tactic if the ideal is to secure profits for American companies.
Nvidia is exactly the least likely to get an export license because their GPUs are the best for AI. The sanctions are mainly targeting Nvidia because their GPUs are seen as useful for military applications of AI.
Respectfully. I'm not sure I buy this. There might be some thinking there but I really think it is the return of chips as munitions that existed in the 90s and the US trying to hurt China's ability to compete on AI and super-computing and in the defense space. It's ill advised and doomed to destroy their domestic industries in the end but the evidence including NVIDIA (an American company) begging for export licensing, designing chips around the export ban only to have those then hit with an updated ban and the commerce secretary openly stating she wouldn't allow them to get around such restrictions and would veto things next day if she had to in order to stop it.
Terminating deals with Netherlands companies to knee them center mass I could see, but these things are attacking American companies.
Along with the fact that there has been all this talk of "clean networks" I really think the US is going to try and cut China out, ban sales to them, then lock in as many countries as they can with talks of Chinese chips being a threat (like they did with Huawei) and possibly passing laws or regulations to the effect that countries (with a few strategic exceptions like India who are too important to lose and will be given exemptions) must choose. Either they get access to US chips, US technology, US high tech products and brands or they choose Chinese and those brands are banned from exporting technology above a certain level to them.
Thing is US sanctions have always had these "loopholes" you speak of because the US wants flexibility to benefit themselves as well as not to drive strategic allies into the arms of others (and that's what these are for, handing them out to India or in case it's somehow otherwise beneficial to the plan, it's not a back-door in 99% of cases just a situation where if you've been bribing the commerce secretary all their life and call in a favor they can get your little company a little exemption so you don't have to deal with the hassle kind of thing).
The fact is they hadn't handed NVIDIA a blanket exemption as I'd expect they would if the goal was destroying foreign companies. In fact they've made life difficult and the NVIDIA CEO has complained that it's going to badly hurt them in the long-run and that he doesn't like it. I don't think the CEO of NVIDIA is being deceptive on this. It makes no sense. What's the point of a deception so elaborate it encourages the Chinese to invest in replacement for NVIDIA chips? They're not going to shut all that down if the US one day says "just kidding haha, here" because they're not about to be trusting of anyone acting like that. Just to fool their lapdog vassals? Not needed as we've seen with Russia the US merely needs say jump into the volcano and they ask at what degree of attack and it won't work, the Chinese will have replacements by the time such an alleged ruse is dropped.
I think what we are seeing here is in fact the industrial vs financial bourgeoisie. Finance being international in nature is fine cozying up to China and this means most tech companies. On the other hand the defense industry, the war-hawks, and the brain-poisoned politicians all have reasons to try and confront and destroy China and this is part of a strategy to do that. A portion of the bourgeoisie, the ones in control of most of the levers of government are convinced it's necessary to destroy or really contain and restrain China and that short-term pain for that among some industries is acceptable to the whole for its health.
White house advisors have talked about their desires for keeping China 5-10 years behind the US at all times. Not of being able to conclusively beat them or destroy them in the near future but of locking them in the past and making sure if you want the best you have to buy American.
They underestimate China, they're using an outdated playbook, they think they can get ahead and stay ahead. But it's reasonable to assume they're not lying. They usually tell the truth. I mean they've been happy to publish the truth for decades on everything including grand geopolitical strategy like their reasons for destabilizing the middle east/west Asia. Sure they don't say it on CNN but they publish books, give talks at think tanks and basically are very candid about this stuff and always have been in order to get buy-in because there is division among the bourgeoisie and corporations and indeed among their thinkers on this.
"China to circumvent ban by tricking the US by naming chips "freedom fries" instead."
Chinese chip makers give thanks to US Dept of Commerce for its unwavering support.
