The best deterrence would be for the Allies to show they can scale up defense production. Right now, they’re kind of trying but kind of failing. Nothing will encourage China more than a Russian win in Ukraine due to a failure to supply Ukraine with enough anmo. That would be a clear sign of western weakness, and Taiwan could basically kiss its freedom goodbye.
Exactly right.
I would note that the U.S. and Germany, have been especially "timid" in allowing their weapons systems to interdict Russian forces in Russia, as well as destroy Russian military production at the source. Of note, recently developed Russian systems have fallen to Western weapons systems that are decades old; Russian hardware just isn't that great.
It's all pretty much nonsense from a chip perspective.
Only a tiny fraction of the world's chip output is on cutting edge nodes. What makes the world go around is everything else that isn't cutting edge. The much older, more mature nodes.
There are strategic commercial reasons behind China not having access to cutting edge nodes so the most likely outcome of hostilities is old-fashioned, ehem, 'anonymous' physical destruction, a la Nord Stream, for example and the bulk of our telecommunications runs over undersea cabling too so that is guaranteed to get the snip if things go wrong. Satellite communications will also be interfered with.
That would see a lot of already fabricated chips with very little to do.
Sanctions have only accelerated China's chip efforts and determination and, as we move beyond silicon, new solutions will come to market (phototonics are showing promise). Possibly for highly specialised fields first but 'kill switches' are simply spanners in the works when it comes to fabrication.
Apple took a huge risk in putting all its chip related eggs into one basket mostly in Taiwan. It's paid off so far but the risk (political, economic, natural disaster or otherwise) remains and they are seeking to change that slowly. A wise move.
This is one area in which we can agree. Telling China that we’re not going to sell you the most advanced chips is just going to spur them on to spend a few dozen more billion on figuring out how to do it themselves. China is not Russia. Russia hasn’t the talent or money to compete. China, even with its current economic problems, does.
China's economy is in shambles, so the level of effort to recreate the entire supply chain to compete in leading edge nodes isn't something that will happen very rapidly, if at all. It certainly will be more than a "few dozen more billion".
China not having access to leading edge nodes for AI, for example, maintains the edge that the U.S. and the Western World have on weapons development, anti-ship missiles, as an example, a primary constraint on any attempt of invasion by China.
The greatest danger to Taiwan is though the end of the decade, as the potential window for a successful invasion closes.
China will get there far quicker than they would have otherwise, specifically due to sanctions. Short term gain in exchange for long term loss in semiconductor related revenues.
"Enhancing Computing Power for AI. In October 2023, MIIT and other agencies announced the Action Plan on the Development of High-Quality Computing Power Infrastructure. Among other things, the plan aims to increase China’s computing power to 300 EFLOPS by 2025. According to MIIT, China reached 197 EFLOPS, ranking second globally, as of 2023. The action plan includes the creation of 50 computing hubs by 2025 to boost advanced computing capabilities and improve data management, processing, and infrastructure. This initiative highlights the significant investment of the Chinese government in advanced computational infrastructure to meet future AI and other computing demands."
Your point of view makes some sense only if you set aside the fact that China continues to threaten invasion of Taiwan, a sovereign country. You do agree that Taiwan is a sovereign country, don't you?
Would you accept that China will continue to use this same technology for war fighting, just as the U.S. and its allies have and will?
If the above is true, and it certainly is, then why would the U.S. want to continue to give China the tools to increase China's war fighting ability in the short term? Why wouldn't the U.S. and its allies restrict sales of dual use technology to China, and at the same time, decrease investment generally in China, with a shift of the supply chain.
More to the point, where is your support of your beloved EU to take up some of the slack in production on the older nodes that you are so fond of touting? One would think that you would be at the forefront of that.
China has been attempting to move to leading edge nodes, and that has cost them a tremendous amount of resources, mostly to little effect. True, SMIC has been able to use DUV to get to 7nm, and they may be able to get to 5nm, but that will be at a huge inefficiency and cost. At the same time, the U.S. and its allies have shut off sales of DUV machines to China, with restrictions on support for those, as well as restrictions of much more of the semiconductor supply chain that China has access to.
As for the invasion of Taiwan, it isn't a sure thing in any case, and the more time that goes by, the more resources that the West will have in place to deter it, should China decide to invade Taiwan.
As for your posts above about the "loss of sales", that quite laughable, given that Nvidia, et all, are expected to continue massive sales driven by AI, even without sales to China of the latest hardware.
Apple took a huge risk in putting all its chip related eggs into one basket mostly in Taiwan. It's paid off so far but the risk (political, economic, natural disaster or otherwise) remains and they are seeking to change that slowly. A wise move.
The only real threat to TSMC is China invading, so yeah, it has certainly paid of for Apple, Nvidia, Qualcomm, AMD and many other, including those users of the older nodes.
Your point of view makes some sense only if you set aside the fact that China continues to threaten invasion of Taiwan, a sovereign country.
BINGO.
This is a case where the famous Keynes quote — “in the long run we’re all dead” — is very applicable.
And more generally, the CCP has done a decent job of exploiting a bug in western liberal (in the 19th century sense) capitalist thinking — a tendency to assume everyone shares the goal of peace and prosperity, and a tendency to favor decentralized decision making. Those tendencies are largely good, but if those tendencies are pursued on autopilot, they open up vulnerabilities to people who aren’t interested in peace and prosperity for all and who are willing to tolerate the general drawbacks of authoritarian control in order to achieve very specific goals.
So we need to turn off the autopilot, turn on our brains, and recognize we are facing a different kind of threat that needs a response other than knee jerk liberal platitudes
The best deterrence would be for the Allies to show they can scale up defense production. Right now, they’re kind of trying but kind of failing. Nothing will encourage China more than a Russian win in Ukraine due to a failure to supply Ukraine with enough anmo. That would be a clear sign of western weakness, and Taiwan could basically kiss its freedom goodbye.
Exactly right.
I would note that the U.S. and Germany, have been especially "timid" in allowing their weapons systems to interdict Russian forces in Russia, as well as destroy Russian military production at the source. Of note, recently developed Russian systems have fallen to Western weapons systems that are decades old; Russian hardware just isn't that great.
It's all pretty much nonsense from a chip perspective.
Only a tiny fraction of the world's chip output is on cutting edge nodes. What makes the world go around is everything else that isn't cutting edge. The much older, more mature nodes.
There are strategic commercial reasons behind China not having access to cutting edge nodes so the most likely outcome of hostilities is old-fashioned, ehem, 'anonymous' physical destruction, a la Nord Stream, for example and the bulk of our telecommunications runs over undersea cabling too so that is guaranteed to get the snip if things go wrong. Satellite communications will also be interfered with.
That would see a lot of already fabricated chips with very little to do.
Sanctions have only accelerated China's chip efforts and determination and, as we move beyond silicon, new solutions will come to market (phototonics are showing promise). Possibly for highly specialised fields first but 'kill switches' are simply spanners in the works when it comes to fabrication.
Apple took a huge risk in putting all its chip related eggs into one basket mostly in Taiwan. It's paid off so far but the risk (political, economic, natural disaster or otherwise) remains and they are seeking to change that slowly. A wise move.
This is one area in which we can agree. Telling China that we’re not going to sell you the most advanced chips is just going to spur them on to spend a few dozen more billion on figuring out how to do it themselves. China is not Russia. Russia hasn’t the talent or money to compete. China, even with its current economic problems, does.
China's economy is in shambles, so the level of effort to recreate the entire supply chain to compete in leading edge nodes isn't something that will happen very rapidly, if at all. It certainly will be more than a "few dozen more billion".
China not having access to leading edge nodes for AI, for example, maintains the edge that the U.S. and the Western World have on weapons development, anti-ship missiles, as an example, a primary constraint on any attempt of invasion by China.
The greatest danger to Taiwan is though the end of the decade, as the potential window for a successful invasion closes.
China will get there far quicker than they would have otherwise, specifically due to sanctions. Short term gain in exchange for long term loss in semiconductor related revenues.
"Enhancing Computing Power for AI. In October 2023, MIIT and other agencies announced the Action Plan on the Development of High-Quality Computing Power Infrastructure. Among other things, the plan aims to increase China’s computing power to 300 EFLOPS by 2025. According to MIIT, China reached 197 EFLOPS, ranking second globally, as of 2023. The action plan includes the creation of 50 computing hubs by 2025 to boost advanced computing capabilities and improve data management, processing, and infrastructure. This initiative highlights the significant investment of the Chinese government in advanced computational infrastructure to meet future AI and other computing demands."
Your point of view makes some sense only if you set aside the fact that China continues to threaten invasion of Taiwan, a sovereign country. You do agree that Taiwan is a sovereign country, don't you?
Would you accept that China will continue to use this same technology for war fighting, just as the U.S. and its allies have and will?
If the above is true, and it certainly is, then why would the U.S. want to continue to give China the tools to increase China's war fighting ability in the short term? Why wouldn't the U.S. and its allies restrict sales of dual use technology to China, and at the same time, decrease investment generally in China, with a shift of the supply chain.
More to the point, where is your support of your beloved EU to take up some of the slack in production on the older nodes that you are so fond of touting? One would think that you would be at the forefront of that.
China has been attempting to move to leading edge nodes, and that has cost them a tremendous amount of resources, mostly to little effect. True, SMIC has been able to use DUV to get to 7nm, and they may be able to get to 5nm, but that will be at a huge inefficiency and cost. At the same time, the U.S. and its allies have shut off sales of DUV machines to China, with restrictions on support for those, as well as restrictions of much more of the semiconductor supply chain that China has access to.
As for the invasion of Taiwan, it isn't a sure thing in any case, and the more time that goes by, the more resources that the West will have in place to deter it, should China decide to invade Taiwan.
As for your posts above about the "loss of sales", that quite laughable, given that Nvidia, et all, are expected to continue massive sales driven by AI, even without sales to China of the latest hardware.
Apple took a huge risk in putting all its chip related eggs into one basket mostly in Taiwan. It's paid off so far but the risk (political, economic, natural disaster or otherwise) remains and they are seeking to change that slowly. A wise move.
The only real threat to TSMC is China invading, so yeah, it has certainly paid of for Apple, Nvidia, Qualcomm, AMD and many other, including those users of the older nodes.
I'm mainly talking about the technology side of things even if there is some degree of geo-political overlap.
Taiwan's sovereignty is neither here nor there. There is a geopolitical angle to the TSMC situation and that is based on purely commercial interests and those interests are tied inevitably to technology hegemony.
Take TSMC out of Taiwan and no one would give a damn about the people of Taiwan. For the US it would simply be another 'Afghanistan' and if they could keep military outposts there, all the better. That is the harsh reality.
'Dual use' technology is simply an empty reference, devoid of any real meaning.
Huawei handsets were 'banned' in the US. That is protectionism, plain and simple. No dual use scenarios. The 'Hawks' say the Evil CCP have their fingers in every Chinese company. No Chinese company is free from its influence! At least according to them. So why are plenty of other Chinese companies allowed to operate within the US? Where is the dual use danger within a smartphone, a laptop or whatever, anyway?
Come on, even 'people' are dual use!
Then there are the technology supply chains themselves. Almost all of them involving China somewhere along the way. iPhone included. Much was (and still is) said about that, but China is still pumping out core technology components worldwide.
It is not up the the US to decide who can 'have' and who can 'not have'.
Weaponry does NOT use cutting edge technology for the most part and, as stated by Peter Wennink, most military use chipset technologies are around 15 years behind the technological curve.
No one, and I think this needs repeating, NO ONE is in a position to thwart China's technology advances because that is quite literally mission impossible.
ALL US moves have had the overall opposite effect: spurring China to do it themselves. Accelerating Chinese advances at the expense of US interests which have have seen their revenue streams severed.
"ASML Holding NV Chief Executive Officer Peter Wennink said US-led export control measures against China could eventually push Beijing to successfully develop its own technology in advanced chipmaking machines." ...
If they cannot get those machines, they will develop them themselves. That will take time, but ultimately they will get there ...
"The laws of physics in China are the same as here,”
Of course, privately, Wennink is tearing his hair out because he knows that when China pulls the rabbit out of the hat, his company is in for some formidable competition.
That exact same word was used by the CEO of Nvidia to describe Huawei's current AI products.
Both companies are losing business to their biggest customers for no good reason.
In what way is forcing China to reach its goals faster, better than having them reach them later?
I'll tell you: In no way.
It's crazy.
The problem is that the US voted in a president who was simply not fit for office and his replacement is too senior to understand what is really going on.
And one of them will probably be back for the next term! Neither candidate is fit for the job, realistically speaking.
Trump's China obsession (as Tweeted by the man himself) was all about things not happening "on my watch".
That was it. No one (except the Pentagon no less!) held him in check. The Pentagon actually held back one of his executive orders on China for 'national security' reasons, only to let it proceed later.
It's something when your own president is deemed a national security risk.
Now Biden is making the same mistakes.
From the recent US tariff increase factsheet (May 2024):
"As President Biden says, American workers and businesses can outcompete anyone—as long as they have fair competition. But for too long, China’s government has used unfair, non-market practices."
"Through the CHIPS and Science Act, President Biden is making a nearly $53 billion investment in American semiconductor manufacturing capacity, research, innovation, and workforce. This will help counteract decades of disinvestment and offshoring that has reduced the United States’ capacity to manufacture semiconductors domestically"
Fair competition is banning Huawei's handset business and putting it on the Entity List without a shred of supporting evidence? Fair competition is threatening allies? Fair competition is weaponising technology and the dollar?
The US can 'outcompete anyone' yet in the very same document, reveals that the root causes of the inability to compete lie in disinvestment and offshoring.
What a mess!
And that is why the US has no technology leverage in ICT market terms on 5G.
The US dropped the ball!
And after years of moaning about China subsidising industry (something everyone, everywhere has done forever!) it is now OK to launch the CHIPS act (with strings attached). Those strings being that China is out of the picture. There is your 'fair competition'.
So now, de-dollarisation has begun. De-Americanisation is underway. Virtually nobody is supporting sanctions against Russia. The only countries openly supporting the US represent less than 12% of the world's population. Almost the entirety of the rest is either invested in BRICS+ and/or the BRI. And let's not forget the Digital Silk Road.
The unipolar world is gone but the US is clinging to an 'old world' mindset.
It is not only doomed to failure (that ship sailed the moment Trump put pen to paper) but there is no going back. US technology is now 'toxic' in the eyes of many and when China eventually catches up, it will be very competitive. For starters, where do you think local Chinese companies will be sourcing their new technologies?
As Africa, Latin America/Brazil, Asia etc move up the technology ladder, where do you think they will be sourcing their technology from?
HarmonyOS has already hit 800 million devices. This year it will jettison Android completely in China and move to a 'pure' HarmonyOS version. It is tipped to overtake iOS in China by year's end. It seems Huawei took first place in Chinese tablet sales for Q1-24.
Apple is currently heavily discounting iPhones in China as the Pura 70 series targeted the price points of every single current iPhone model.
The Mate 70 series is rumoured to release and go head to head with this year's iPhone.
As Huawei takes marketshare away from Apple and other Chinese players, it is also taking share indirectly from US companies (like Qualcomm).
Had it not been for sanctions, how much of this technology would be a reality today?
I know you want to go 'full on' politics but try to keep things in the technology bubble on the whole. Please.
The CCP would be foolish to invade a sovereign nation. Which means it's bound to happen sooner rather than later. I think Taiwan and it's partners have plans ready for launch once the CCP goes full-on crazy.
CCP does not consider Taiwan to be a sovereign nation. They consider it to be just another Chinese province. So I also expect them to "exercise their legitimate sovereignty over this rebellious province" sometime within the the next decade.
The CCP's consideration is bunk. Taiwan was never ruled over by the communists. Not one year, day nor second. Taiwan has its own legislature, military, monetary system and its citizens are responsible for electing its leadership.
Once the CCP attacks, they will overwhelm Taiwan; but it won't be a short and total "victory" in any sense. Indeed, the ramifications will be just as swift and long-lasting, to the CCP's detriment in the long run.
The CCP's consideration is bunk. Taiwan was never ruled over by the communists. Not one year, day nor second. Taiwan has its own legislature, military, monetary system and its citizens are responsible for electing its leadership.
Agreed. And even if the CCP had ruled Taiwan at some point in time, all the other things you say are still true.
By way of analogy, the Communist Russian Empire (aka USSR) ruled over much of Eastern Europe, but those countries are now independent democracies and the fact that they were once subjugated by an evil empire does not mean that they must forever be subjugated by an evil empire.
The US was once a part of the British empire -- does that mean King Charles sits around plotting to recapture those lost colonies?
Puerto Rico is currently a territory of the US, but if the people of Puerto Rico decided to declare independence, I suspect the US would say "okie dokie -- good luck!" and that would be the end of it.
CCP propagandists and useful idiots who parrot their propaganda like to compare Taiwan to the Confederacy in the US Civil War. But that ignores the fact that *the* defining issue of the US Civil War was the indefensible mortal sin of slavery. Taiwan is not the moral equivalent of the Confederacy. If either party is the moral equivalent of the Confederacy, it's the CCP.
The best deterrence would be for the Allies to show they can scale up defense production. Right now, they’re kind of trying but kind of failing. Nothing will encourage China more than a Russian win in Ukraine due to a failure to supply Ukraine with enough anmo. That would be a clear sign of western weakness, and Taiwan could basically kiss its freedom goodbye.
Exactly right.
I would note that the U.S. and Germany, have been especially "timid" in allowing their weapons systems to interdict Russian forces in Russia, as well as destroy Russian military production at the source. Of note, recently developed Russian systems have fallen to Western weapons systems that are decades old; Russian hardware just isn't that great.
It's all pretty much nonsense from a chip perspective.
Only a tiny fraction of the world's chip output is on cutting edge nodes. What makes the world go around is everything else that isn't cutting edge. The much older, more mature nodes.
There are strategic commercial reasons behind China not having access to cutting edge nodes so the most likely outcome of hostilities is old-fashioned, ehem, 'anonymous' physical destruction, a la Nord Stream, for example and the bulk of our telecommunications runs over undersea cabling too so that is guaranteed to get the snip if things go wrong. Satellite communications will also be interfered with.
That would see a lot of already fabricated chips with very little to do.
Sanctions have only accelerated China's chip efforts and determination and, as we move beyond silicon, new solutions will come to market (phototonics are showing promise). Possibly for highly specialised fields first but 'kill switches' are simply spanners in the works when it comes to fabrication.
Apple took a huge risk in putting all its chip related eggs into one basket mostly in Taiwan. It's paid off so far but the risk (political, economic, natural disaster or otherwise) remains and they are seeking to change that slowly. A wise move.
This is one area in which we can agree. Telling China that we’re not going to sell you the most advanced chips is just going to spur them on to spend a few dozen more billion on figuring out how to do it themselves. China is not Russia. Russia hasn’t the talent or money to compete. China, even with its current economic problems, does.
China's economy is in shambles, so the level of effort to recreate the entire supply chain to compete in leading edge nodes isn't something that will happen very rapidly, if at all. It certainly will be more than a "few dozen more billion".
China not having access to leading edge nodes for AI, for example, maintains the edge that the U.S. and the Western World have on weapons development, anti-ship missiles, as an example, a primary constraint on any attempt of invasion by China.
The greatest danger to Taiwan is though the end of the decade, as the potential window for a successful invasion closes.
China will get there far quicker than they would have otherwise, specifically due to sanctions. Short term gain in exchange for long term loss in semiconductor related revenues.
"Enhancing Computing Power for AI. In October 2023, MIIT and other agencies announced the Action Plan on the Development of High-Quality Computing Power Infrastructure. Among other things, the plan aims to increase China’s computing power to 300 EFLOPS by 2025. According to MIIT, China reached 197 EFLOPS, ranking second globally, as of 2023. The action plan includes the creation of 50 computing hubs by 2025 to boost advanced computing capabilities and improve data management, processing, and infrastructure. This initiative highlights the significant investment of the Chinese government in advanced computational infrastructure to meet future AI and other computing demands."
Your point of view makes some sense only if you set aside the fact that China continues to threaten invasion of Taiwan, a sovereign country. You do agree that Taiwan is a sovereign country, don't you?
Would you accept that China will continue to use this same technology for war fighting, just as the U.S. and its allies have and will?
If the above is true, and it certainly is, then why would the U.S. want to continue to give China the tools to increase China's war fighting ability in the short term? Why wouldn't the U.S. and its allies restrict sales of dual use technology to China, and at the same time, decrease investment generally in China, with a shift of the supply chain.
More to the point, where is your support of your beloved EU to take up some of the slack in production on the older nodes that you are so fond of touting? One would think that you would be at the forefront of that.
China has been attempting to move to leading edge nodes, and that has cost them a tremendous amount of resources, mostly to little effect. True, SMIC has been able to use DUV to get to 7nm, and they may be able to get to 5nm, but that will be at a huge inefficiency and cost. At the same time, the U.S. and its allies have shut off sales of DUV machines to China, with restrictions on support for those, as well as restrictions of much more of the semiconductor supply chain that China has access to.
As for the invasion of Taiwan, it isn't a sure thing in any case, and the more time that goes by, the more resources that the West will have in place to deter it, should China decide to invade Taiwan.
As for your posts above about the "loss of sales", that quite laughable, given that Nvidia, et all, are expected to continue massive sales driven by AI, even without sales to China of the latest hardware.
Apple took a huge risk in putting all its chip related eggs into one basket mostly in Taiwan. It's paid off so far but the risk (political, economic, natural disaster or otherwise) remains and they are seeking to change that slowly. A wise move.
The only real threat to TSMC is China invading, so yeah, it has certainly paid of for Apple, Nvidia, Qualcomm, AMD and many other, including those users of the older nodes.
I'm mainly talking about the technology side of things even if there is some degree of geo-political overlap.
Taiwan's sovereignty is neither here nor there. There is a geopolitical angle to the TSMC situation and that is based on purely commercial interests and those interests are tied inevitably to technology hegemony.
Take TSMC out of Taiwan and no one would give a damn about the people of Taiwan. For the US it would simply be another 'Afghanistan' and if they could keep military outposts there, all the better. That is the harsh reality.
'Dual use' technology is simply an empty reference, devoid of any real meaning.
Huawei handsets were 'banned' in the US. That is protectionism, plain and simple. No dual use scenarios. The 'Hawks' say the Evil CCP have their fingers in every Chinese company. No Chinese company is free from its influence! At least according to them. So why are plenty of other Chinese companies allowed to operate within the US? Where is the dual use danger within a smartphone, a laptop or whatever, anyway?
Come on, even 'people' are dual use!
Then there are the technology supply chains themselves. Almost all of them involving China somewhere along the way. iPhone included. Much was (and still is) said about that, but China is still pumping out core technology components worldwide.
It is not up the the US to decide who can 'have' and who can 'not have'.
Weaponry does NOT use cutting edge technology for the most part and, as stated by Peter Wennink, most military use chipset technologies are around 15 years behind the technological curve.
No one, and I think this needs repeating, NO ONE is in a position to thwart China's technology advances because that is quite literally mission impossible.
ALL US moves have had the overall opposite effect: spurring China to do it themselves. Accelerating Chinese advances at the expense of US interests which have have seen their revenue streams severed.
"ASML Holding NV Chief Executive Officer Peter Wennink said US-led export control measures against China could eventually push Beijing to successfully develop its own technology in advanced chipmaking machines." ...
If they cannot get those machines, they will develop them themselves. That will take time, but ultimately they will get there ...
"The laws of physics in China are the same as here,”
Of course, privately, Wennink is tearing his hair out because he knows that when China pulls the rabbit out of the hat, his company is in for some formidable competition.
That exact same word was used by the CEO of Nvidia to describe Huawei's current AI products.
Both companies are losing business to their biggest customers for no good reason.
In what way is forcing China to reach its goals faster, better than having them reach them later?
I'll tell you: In no way.
It's crazy.
The problem is that the US voted in a president who was simply not fit for office and his replacement is too senior to understand what is really going on.
And one of them will probably be back for the next term! Neither candidate is fit for the job, realistically speaking.
Trump's China obsession (as Tweeted by the man himself) was all about things not happening "on my watch".
That was it. No one (except the Pentagon no less!) held him in check. The Pentagon actually held back one of his executive orders on China for 'national security' reasons, only to let it proceed later.
It's something when your own president is deemed a national security risk.
Now Biden is making the same mistakes.
From the recent US tariff increase factsheet (May 2024):
"As President Biden says, American workers and businesses can outcompete anyone—as long as they have fair competition. But for too long, China’s government has used unfair, non-market practices."
"Through the CHIPS and Science Act, President Biden is making a nearly $53 billion investment in American semiconductor manufacturing capacity, research, innovation, and workforce. This will help counteract decades of disinvestment and offshoring that has reduced the United States’ capacity to manufacture semiconductors domestically"
Fair competition is banning Huawei's handset business and putting it on the Entity List without a shred of supporting evidence? Fair competition is threatening allies? Fair competition is weaponising technology and the dollar?
The US can 'outcompete anyone' yet in the very same document, reveals that the root causes of the inability to compete lie in disinvestment and offshoring.
What a mess!
And that is why the US has no technology leverage in ICT market terms on 5G.
The US dropped the ball!
And after years of moaning about China subsidising industry (something everyone, everywhere has done forever!) it is now OK to launch the CHIPS act (with strings attached). Those strings being that China is out of the picture. There is your 'fair competition'.
So now, de-dollarisation has begun. De-Americanisation is underway. Virtually nobody is supporting sanctions against Russia. The only countries openly supporting the US represent less than 12% of the world's population. Almost the entirety of the rest is either invested in BRICS+ and/or the BRI. And let's not forget the Digital Silk Road.
The unipolar world is gone but the US is clinging to an 'old world' mindset.
It is not only doomed to failure (that ship sailed the moment Trump put pen to paper) but there is no going back. US technology is now 'toxic' in the eyes of many and when China eventually catches up, it will be very competitive. For starters, where do you think local Chinese companies will be sourcing their new technologies?
As Africa, Latin America/Brazil, Asia etc move up the technology ladder, where do you think they will be sourcing their technology from?
HarmonyOS has already hit 800 million devices. This year it will jettison Android completely in China and move to a 'pure' HarmonyOS version. It is tipped to overtake iOS in China by year's end. It seems Huawei took first place in Chinese tablet sales for Q1-24.
Apple is currently heavily discounting iPhones in China as the Pura 70 series targeted the price points of every single current iPhone model.
The Mate 70 series is rumoured to release and go head to head with this year's iPhone.
As Huawei takes marketshare away from Apple and other Chinese players, it is also taking share indirectly from US companies (like Qualcomm).
Had it not been for sanctions, how much of this technology would be a reality today?
I know you want to go 'full on' politics but try to keep things in the technology bubble on the whole. Please.
Good luck on Huawei competing with 2nm iPhones next year, but sure, Huawei will do very well with BRICS and third world countries.
The rest of your rant is certainly supporting of authoritarians, but mostly, your worldview is unsupported. Certainly sanctions would have been less likely if Xi hadn't become the totalitarian that he is today, including those sanctions on Huawei.
People love to hate the U.S., you certainly do, but there's masses of other people that see America is a great place to move to, given the chance. This would be obvious given the many entrepreneurs and CEO's of major tech companies that are immigrants to America.
Should the U.S. finally deal with immigration, I would expect that the best and brightest will preferentially want to come here, and other Western Countries, certainly not to China, Russia, or any of the other BRICS members, save maybe India.
You seem unable to connect the dots that Xi is the ruin of China, not the U.S.
The best deterrence would be for the Allies to show they can scale up defense production. Right now, they’re kind of trying but kind of failing. Nothing will encourage China more than a Russian win in Ukraine due to a failure to supply Ukraine with enough anmo. That would be a clear sign of western weakness, and Taiwan could basically kiss its freedom goodbye.
Exactly right.
I would note that the U.S. and Germany, have been especially "timid" in allowing their weapons systems to interdict Russian forces in Russia, as well as destroy Russian military production at the source. Of note, recently developed Russian systems have fallen to Western weapons systems that are decades old; Russian hardware just isn't that great.
It's all pretty much nonsense from a chip perspective.
Only a tiny fraction of the world's chip output is on cutting edge nodes. What makes the world go around is everything else that isn't cutting edge. The much older, more mature nodes.
There are strategic commercial reasons behind China not having access to cutting edge nodes so the most likely outcome of hostilities is old-fashioned, ehem, 'anonymous' physical destruction, a la Nord Stream, for example and the bulk of our telecommunications runs over undersea cabling too so that is guaranteed to get the snip if things go wrong. Satellite communications will also be interfered with.
That would see a lot of already fabricated chips with very little to do.
Sanctions have only accelerated China's chip efforts and determination and, as we move beyond silicon, new solutions will come to market (phototonics are showing promise). Possibly for highly specialised fields first but 'kill switches' are simply spanners in the works when it comes to fabrication.
Apple took a huge risk in putting all its chip related eggs into one basket mostly in Taiwan. It's paid off so far but the risk (political, economic, natural disaster or otherwise) remains and they are seeking to change that slowly. A wise move.
This is one area in which we can agree. Telling China that we’re not going to sell you the most advanced chips is just going to spur them on to spend a few dozen more billion on figuring out how to do it themselves. China is not Russia. Russia hasn’t the talent or money to compete. China, even with its current economic problems, does.
China's economy is in shambles, so the level of effort to recreate the entire supply chain to compete in leading edge nodes isn't something that will happen very rapidly, if at all. It certainly will be more than a "few dozen more billion".
China not having access to leading edge nodes for AI, for example, maintains the edge that the U.S. and the Western World have on weapons development, anti-ship missiles, as an example, a primary constraint on any attempt of invasion by China.
The greatest danger to Taiwan is though the end of the decade, as the potential window for a successful invasion closes.
China will get there far quicker than they would have otherwise, specifically due to sanctions. Short term gain in exchange for long term loss in semiconductor related revenues.
"Enhancing Computing Power for AI. In October 2023, MIIT and other agencies announced the Action Plan on the Development of High-Quality Computing Power Infrastructure. Among other things, the plan aims to increase China’s computing power to 300 EFLOPS by 2025. According to MIIT, China reached 197 EFLOPS, ranking second globally, as of 2023. The action plan includes the creation of 50 computing hubs by 2025 to boost advanced computing capabilities and improve data management, processing, and infrastructure. This initiative highlights the significant investment of the Chinese government in advanced computational infrastructure to meet future AI and other computing demands."
Your point of view makes some sense only if you set aside the fact that China continues to threaten invasion of Taiwan, a sovereign country. You do agree that Taiwan is a sovereign country, don't you?
Would you accept that China will continue to use this same technology for war fighting, just as the U.S. and its allies have and will?
If the above is true, and it certainly is, then why would the U.S. want to continue to give China the tools to increase China's war fighting ability in the short term? Why wouldn't the U.S. and its allies restrict sales of dual use technology to China, and at the same time, decrease investment generally in China, with a shift of the supply chain.
More to the point, where is your support of your beloved EU to take up some of the slack in production on the older nodes that you are so fond of touting? One would think that you would be at the forefront of that.
China has been attempting to move to leading edge nodes, and that has cost them a tremendous amount of resources, mostly to little effect. True, SMIC has been able to use DUV to get to 7nm, and they may be able to get to 5nm, but that will be at a huge inefficiency and cost. At the same time, the U.S. and its allies have shut off sales of DUV machines to China, with restrictions on support for those, as well as restrictions of much more of the semiconductor supply chain that China has access to.
As for the invasion of Taiwan, it isn't a sure thing in any case, and the more time that goes by, the more resources that the West will have in place to deter it, should China decide to invade Taiwan.
As for your posts above about the "loss of sales", that quite laughable, given that Nvidia, et all, are expected to continue massive sales driven by AI, even without sales to China of the latest hardware.
Apple took a huge risk in putting all its chip related eggs into one basket mostly in Taiwan. It's paid off so far but the risk (political, economic, natural disaster or otherwise) remains and they are seeking to change that slowly. A wise move.
The only real threat to TSMC is China invading, so yeah, it has certainly paid of for Apple, Nvidia, Qualcomm, AMD and many other, including those users of the older nodes.
I'm mainly talking about the technology side of things even if there is some degree of geo-political overlap.
Taiwan's sovereignty is neither here nor there. There is a geopolitical angle to the TSMC situation and that is based on purely commercial interests and those interests are tied inevitably to technology hegemony.
Take TSMC out of Taiwan and no one would give a damn about the people of Taiwan. For the US it would simply be another 'Afghanistan' and if they could keep military outposts there, all the better. That is the harsh reality.
'Dual use' technology is simply an empty reference, devoid of any real meaning.
Huawei handsets were 'banned' in the US. That is protectionism, plain and simple. No dual use scenarios. The 'Hawks' say the Evil CCP have their fingers in every Chinese company. No Chinese company is free from its influence! At least according to them. So why are plenty of other Chinese companies allowed to operate within the US? Where is the dual use danger within a smartphone, a laptop or whatever, anyway?
Come on, even 'people' are dual use!
Then there are the technology supply chains themselves. Almost all of them involving China somewhere along the way. iPhone included. Much was (and still is) said about that, but China is still pumping out core technology components worldwide.
It is not up the the US to decide who can 'have' and who can 'not have'.
Weaponry does NOT use cutting edge technology for the most part and, as stated by Peter Wennink, most military use chipset technologies are around 15 years behind the technological curve.
No one, and I think this needs repeating, NO ONE is in a position to thwart China's technology advances because that is quite literally mission impossible.
ALL US moves have had the overall opposite effect: spurring China to do it themselves. Accelerating Chinese advances at the expense of US interests which have have seen their revenue streams severed.
"ASML Holding NV Chief Executive Officer Peter Wennink said US-led export control measures against China could eventually push Beijing to successfully develop its own technology in advanced chipmaking machines." ...
If they cannot get those machines, they will develop them themselves. That will take time, but ultimately they will get there ...
"The laws of physics in China are the same as here,”
Of course, privately, Wennink is tearing his hair out because he knows that when China pulls the rabbit out of the hat, his company is in for some formidable competition.
That exact same word was used by the CEO of Nvidia to describe Huawei's current AI products.
Both companies are losing business to their biggest customers for no good reason.
In what way is forcing China to reach its goals faster, better than having them reach them later?
I'll tell you: In no way.
It's crazy.
The problem is that the US voted in a president who was simply not fit for office and his replacement is too senior to understand what is really going on.
And one of them will probably be back for the next term! Neither candidate is fit for the job, realistically speaking.
Trump's China obsession (as Tweeted by the man himself) was all about things not happening "on my watch".
That was it. No one (except the Pentagon no less!) held him in check. The Pentagon actually held back one of his executive orders on China for 'national security' reasons, only to let it proceed later.
It's something when your own president is deemed a national security risk.
Now Biden is making the same mistakes.
From the recent US tariff increase factsheet (May 2024):
"As President Biden says, American workers and businesses can outcompete anyone—as long as they have fair competition. But for too long, China’s government has used unfair, non-market practices."
"Through the CHIPS and Science Act, President Biden is making a nearly $53 billion investment in American semiconductor manufacturing capacity, research, innovation, and workforce. This will help counteract decades of disinvestment and offshoring that has reduced the United States’ capacity to manufacture semiconductors domestically"
Fair competition is banning Huawei's handset business and putting it on the Entity List without a shred of supporting evidence? Fair competition is threatening allies? Fair competition is weaponising technology and the dollar?
The US can 'outcompete anyone' yet in the very same document, reveals that the root causes of the inability to compete lie in disinvestment and offshoring.
What a mess!
And that is why the US has no technology leverage in ICT market terms on 5G.
The US dropped the ball!
And after years of moaning about China subsidising industry (something everyone, everywhere has done forever!) it is now OK to launch the CHIPS act (with strings attached). Those strings being that China is out of the picture. There is your 'fair competition'.
So now, de-dollarisation has begun. De-Americanisation is underway. Virtually nobody is supporting sanctions against Russia. The only countries openly supporting the US represent less than 12% of the world's population. Almost the entirety of the rest is either invested in BRICS+ and/or the BRI. And let's not forget the Digital Silk Road.
The unipolar world is gone but the US is clinging to an 'old world' mindset.
It is not only doomed to failure (that ship sailed the moment Trump put pen to paper) but there is no going back. US technology is now 'toxic' in the eyes of many and when China eventually catches up, it will be very competitive. For starters, where do you think local Chinese companies will be sourcing their new technologies?
As Africa, Latin America/Brazil, Asia etc move up the technology ladder, where do you think they will be sourcing their technology from?
HarmonyOS has already hit 800 million devices. This year it will jettison Android completely in China and move to a 'pure' HarmonyOS version. It is tipped to overtake iOS in China by year's end. It seems Huawei took first place in Chinese tablet sales for Q1-24.
Apple is currently heavily discounting iPhones in China as the Pura 70 series targeted the price points of every single current iPhone model.
The Mate 70 series is rumoured to release and go head to head with this year's iPhone.
As Huawei takes marketshare away from Apple and other Chinese players, it is also taking share indirectly from US companies (like Qualcomm).
Had it not been for sanctions, how much of this technology would be a reality today?
I know you want to go 'full on' politics but try to keep things in the technology bubble on the whole. Please.
Good luck on Huawei competing with 2nm iPhones next year, but sure, Huawei will do very well with BRICS and third world countries.
The rest of your rant is certainly supporting of authoritarians, but mostly, your worldview is unsupported. Certainly sanctions would have been less likely if Xi hadn't become the totalitarian that he is today, including those sanctions on Huawei.
People love to hate the U.S., you certainly do, but there's masses of other people that see America is a great place to move to, given the chance. This would be obvious given the many entrepreneurs and CEO's of major tech companies that are immigrants to America.
Should the U.S. finally deal with immigration, I would expect that the best and brightest will preferentially want to come here, and other Western Countries, certainly not to China, Russia, or any of the other BRICS members, save maybe India.
You seem unable to connect the dots that Xi is the ruin of China, not the U.S.
To comment on just the last part. Yes, Xi is the main problem China has. He’s so determined to be the next Mao, that he’s killing everything that had made China great over the 20 years preceding. It’s interesting that the Chinese leadership considered him to be a country bumpkin and not smart enough to gain power. But they were obviously wrong. Apparently they forgot about his family history. However, he’s trying to take China backwards, and that’s failing.
every quarterly economic report of the past several years gave some number as to when China would pull even with the USA and then move ahead. They no longer do that in their report as word is out that they don’t believe they will be able to do it.
The best deterrence would be for the Allies to show they can scale up defense production. Right now, they’re kind of trying but kind of failing. Nothing will encourage China more than a Russian win in Ukraine due to a failure to supply Ukraine with enough anmo. That would be a clear sign of western weakness, and Taiwan could basically kiss its freedom goodbye.
Exactly right.
I would note that the U.S. and Germany, have been especially "timid" in allowing their weapons systems to interdict Russian forces in Russia, as well as destroy Russian military production at the source. Of note, recently developed Russian systems have fallen to Western weapons systems that are decades old; Russian hardware just isn't that great.
It's all pretty much nonsense from a chip perspective.
Only a tiny fraction of the world's chip output is on cutting edge nodes. What makes the world go around is everything else that isn't cutting edge. The much older, more mature nodes.
There are strategic commercial reasons behind China not having access to cutting edge nodes so the most likely outcome of hostilities is old-fashioned, ehem, 'anonymous' physical destruction, a la Nord Stream, for example and the bulk of our telecommunications runs over undersea cabling too so that is guaranteed to get the snip if things go wrong. Satellite communications will also be interfered with.
That would see a lot of already fabricated chips with very little to do.
Sanctions have only accelerated China's chip efforts and determination and, as we move beyond silicon, new solutions will come to market (phototonics are showing promise). Possibly for highly specialised fields first but 'kill switches' are simply spanners in the works when it comes to fabrication.
Apple took a huge risk in putting all its chip related eggs into one basket mostly in Taiwan. It's paid off so far but the risk (political, economic, natural disaster or otherwise) remains and they are seeking to change that slowly. A wise move.
This is one area in which we can agree. Telling China that we’re not going to sell you the most advanced chips is just going to spur them on to spend a few dozen more billion on figuring out how to do it themselves. China is not Russia. Russia hasn’t the talent or money to compete. China, even with its current economic problems, does.
China's economy is in shambles, so the level of effort to recreate the entire supply chain to compete in leading edge nodes isn't something that will happen very rapidly, if at all. It certainly will be more than a "few dozen more billion".
China not having access to leading edge nodes for AI, for example, maintains the edge that the U.S. and the Western World have on weapons development, anti-ship missiles, as an example, a primary constraint on any attempt of invasion by China.
The greatest danger to Taiwan is though the end of the decade, as the potential window for a successful invasion closes.
China will get there far quicker than they would have otherwise, specifically due to sanctions. Short term gain in exchange for long term loss in semiconductor related revenues.
"Enhancing Computing Power for AI. In October 2023, MIIT and other agencies announced the Action Plan on the Development of High-Quality Computing Power Infrastructure. Among other things, the plan aims to increase China’s computing power to 300 EFLOPS by 2025. According to MIIT, China reached 197 EFLOPS, ranking second globally, as of 2023. The action plan includes the creation of 50 computing hubs by 2025 to boost advanced computing capabilities and improve data management, processing, and infrastructure. This initiative highlights the significant investment of the Chinese government in advanced computational infrastructure to meet future AI and other computing demands."
Your point of view makes some sense only if you set aside the fact that China continues to threaten invasion of Taiwan, a sovereign country. You do agree that Taiwan is a sovereign country, don't you?
Would you accept that China will continue to use this same technology for war fighting, just as the U.S. and its allies have and will?
If the above is true, and it certainly is, then why would the U.S. want to continue to give China the tools to increase China's war fighting ability in the short term? Why wouldn't the U.S. and its allies restrict sales of dual use technology to China, and at the same time, decrease investment generally in China, with a shift of the supply chain.
More to the point, where is your support of your beloved EU to take up some of the slack in production on the older nodes that you are so fond of touting? One would think that you would be at the forefront of that.
China has been attempting to move to leading edge nodes, and that has cost them a tremendous amount of resources, mostly to little effect. True, SMIC has been able to use DUV to get to 7nm, and they may be able to get to 5nm, but that will be at a huge inefficiency and cost. At the same time, the U.S. and its allies have shut off sales of DUV machines to China, with restrictions on support for those, as well as restrictions of much more of the semiconductor supply chain that China has access to.
As for the invasion of Taiwan, it isn't a sure thing in any case, and the more time that goes by, the more resources that the West will have in place to deter it, should China decide to invade Taiwan.
As for your posts above about the "loss of sales", that quite laughable, given that Nvidia, et all, are expected to continue massive sales driven by AI, even without sales to China of the latest hardware.
Apple took a huge risk in putting all its chip related eggs into one basket mostly in Taiwan. It's paid off so far but the risk (political, economic, natural disaster or otherwise) remains and they are seeking to change that slowly. A wise move.
The only real threat to TSMC is China invading, so yeah, it has certainly paid of for Apple, Nvidia, Qualcomm, AMD and many other, including those users of the older nodes.
I'm mainly talking about the technology side of things even if there is some degree of geo-political overlap.
Taiwan's sovereignty is neither here nor there. There is a geopolitical angle to the TSMC situation and that is based on purely commercial interests and those interests are tied inevitably to technology hegemony.
Take TSMC out of Taiwan and no one would give a damn about the people of Taiwan. For the US it would simply be another 'Afghanistan' and if they could keep military outposts there, all the better. That is the harsh reality.
'Dual use' technology is simply an empty reference, devoid of any real meaning.
Huawei handsets were 'banned' in the US. That is protectionism, plain and simple. No dual use scenarios. The 'Hawks' say the Evil CCP have their fingers in every Chinese company. No Chinese company is free from its influence! At least according to them. So why are plenty of other Chinese companies allowed to operate within the US? Where is the dual use danger within a smartphone, a laptop or whatever, anyway?
Come on, even 'people' are dual use!
Then there are the technology supply chains themselves. Almost all of them involving China somewhere along the way. iPhone included. Much was (and still is) said about that, but China is still pumping out core technology components worldwide.
It is not up the the US to decide who can 'have' and who can 'not have'.
Weaponry does NOT use cutting edge technology for the most part and, as stated by Peter Wennink, most military use chipset technologies are around 15 years behind the technological curve.
No one, and I think this needs repeating, NO ONE is in a position to thwart China's technology advances because that is quite literally mission impossible.
ALL US moves have had the overall opposite effect: spurring China to do it themselves. Accelerating Chinese advances at the expense of US interests which have have seen their revenue streams severed.
"ASML Holding NV Chief Executive Officer Peter Wennink said US-led export control measures against China could eventually push Beijing to successfully develop its own technology in advanced chipmaking machines." ...
If they cannot get those machines, they will develop them themselves. That will take time, but ultimately they will get there ...
"The laws of physics in China are the same as here,”
Of course, privately, Wennink is tearing his hair out because he knows that when China pulls the rabbit out of the hat, his company is in for some formidable competition.
That exact same word was used by the CEO of Nvidia to describe Huawei's current AI products.
Both companies are losing business to their biggest customers for no good reason.
In what way is forcing China to reach its goals faster, better than having them reach them later?
I'll tell you: In no way.
It's crazy.
The problem is that the US voted in a president who was simply not fit for office and his replacement is too senior to understand what is really going on.
And one of them will probably be back for the next term! Neither candidate is fit for the job, realistically speaking.
Trump's China obsession (as Tweeted by the man himself) was all about things not happening "on my watch".
That was it. No one (except the Pentagon no less!) held him in check. The Pentagon actually held back one of his executive orders on China for 'national security' reasons, only to let it proceed later.
It's something when your own president is deemed a national security risk.
Now Biden is making the same mistakes.
From the recent US tariff increase factsheet (May 2024):
"As President Biden says, American workers and businesses can outcompete anyone—as long as they have fair competition. But for too long, China’s government has used unfair, non-market practices."
"Through the CHIPS and Science Act, President Biden is making a nearly $53 billion investment in American semiconductor manufacturing capacity, research, innovation, and workforce. This will help counteract decades of disinvestment and offshoring that has reduced the United States’ capacity to manufacture semiconductors domestically"
Fair competition is banning Huawei's handset business and putting it on the Entity List without a shred of supporting evidence? Fair competition is threatening allies? Fair competition is weaponising technology and the dollar?
The US can 'outcompete anyone' yet in the very same document, reveals that the root causes of the inability to compete lie in disinvestment and offshoring.
What a mess!
And that is why the US has no technology leverage in ICT market terms on 5G.
The US dropped the ball!
And after years of moaning about China subsidising industry (something everyone, everywhere has done forever!) it is now OK to launch the CHIPS act (with strings attached). Those strings being that China is out of the picture. There is your 'fair competition'.
So now, de-dollarisation has begun. De-Americanisation is underway. Virtually nobody is supporting sanctions against Russia. The only countries openly supporting the US represent less than 12% of the world's population. Almost the entirety of the rest is either invested in BRICS+ and/or the BRI. And let's not forget the Digital Silk Road.
The unipolar world is gone but the US is clinging to an 'old world' mindset.
It is not only doomed to failure (that ship sailed the moment Trump put pen to paper) but there is no going back. US technology is now 'toxic' in the eyes of many and when China eventually catches up, it will be very competitive. For starters, where do you think local Chinese companies will be sourcing their new technologies?
As Africa, Latin America/Brazil, Asia etc move up the technology ladder, where do you think they will be sourcing their technology from?
HarmonyOS has already hit 800 million devices. This year it will jettison Android completely in China and move to a 'pure' HarmonyOS version. It is tipped to overtake iOS in China by year's end. It seems Huawei took first place in Chinese tablet sales for Q1-24.
Apple is currently heavily discounting iPhones in China as the Pura 70 series targeted the price points of every single current iPhone model.
The Mate 70 series is rumoured to release and go head to head with this year's iPhone.
As Huawei takes marketshare away from Apple and other Chinese players, it is also taking share indirectly from US companies (like Qualcomm).
Had it not been for sanctions, how much of this technology would be a reality today?
I know you want to go 'full on' politics but try to keep things in the technology bubble on the whole. Please.
More countries, like Russia, China, and other BRICS states, have expressed interest in shifting away from dollar-based trade. Yet, the idea that anyone is abandoning the greenback on a significant level isn't grounded in reality, Christian said.
"It's a myth, and it's nonsensical, and it's very persistent. It's frighteningly persistent. No one is dumping dollars," Christian said of de-dollarization in a recent presentation.
SAN DIEGO -- Midnight on the remote beach of Capurgana, Colombia, was so dark that Wang Zhongwei could not see his own hands in front of his face. About 20 people got into a large wooden canoe as waves battered the sand. This boat ride would take the group into the notorious Darien Gap between Colombia and Panama, through which migrants will trek for days in the jungle toward the U.S. border.
It was a rainy night in May 2023, and Wang, 32, tied his 14-month-old son to his chest while his wife sat behind him. Their 7-year-old daughter sat with her grandparents. Waves repeatedly thrust their boat meters into the air during the two-hour journey. Wang and his wife struggled to keep their infant's face dry with a raincoat while gripping the sides of the boat. All passengers were soaked from head to toe.
"The boat ride took two hours, and my son cried for two hours. I was worried that he wasn't breathing anymore when he became too exhausted to cry," Wang told Nikkei Asia in Mandarin. "I still remember his crying even to this day."
When Wang and his family finally reached the U.S.-Mexican border weeks later, they were held at gunpoint by Mexican cartel members demanding about $800 per person to pass. Migrants had to strip to their underwear to show the gangsters they had already handed over all their valuables before the cartel guided them to the border crossing point.
Despite the treacherous journey, "I don't regret walking here," said Wang. "There is no hope for my family back in China."
The best deterrence would be for the Allies to show they can scale up defense production. Right now, they’re kind of trying but kind of failing. Nothing will encourage China more than a Russian win in Ukraine due to a failure to supply Ukraine with enough anmo. That would be a clear sign of western weakness, and Taiwan could basically kiss its freedom goodbye.
Exactly right.
I would note that the U.S. and Germany, have been especially "timid" in allowing their weapons systems to interdict Russian forces in Russia, as well as destroy Russian military production at the source. Of note, recently developed Russian systems have fallen to Western weapons systems that are decades old; Russian hardware just isn't that great.
It's all pretty much nonsense from a chip perspective.
Only a tiny fraction of the world's chip output is on cutting edge nodes. What makes the world go around is everything else that isn't cutting edge. The much older, more mature nodes.
There are strategic commercial reasons behind China not having access to cutting edge nodes so the most likely outcome of hostilities is old-fashioned, ehem, 'anonymous' physical destruction, a la Nord Stream, for example and the bulk of our telecommunications runs over undersea cabling too so that is guaranteed to get the snip if things go wrong. Satellite communications will also be interfered with.
That would see a lot of already fabricated chips with very little to do.
Sanctions have only accelerated China's chip efforts and determination and, as we move beyond silicon, new solutions will come to market (phototonics are showing promise). Possibly for highly specialised fields first but 'kill switches' are simply spanners in the works when it comes to fabrication.
Apple took a huge risk in putting all its chip related eggs into one basket mostly in Taiwan. It's paid off so far but the risk (political, economic, natural disaster or otherwise) remains and they are seeking to change that slowly. A wise move.
This is one area in which we can agree. Telling China that we’re not going to sell you the most advanced chips is just going to spur them on to spend a few dozen more billion on figuring out how to do it themselves. China is not Russia. Russia hasn’t the talent or money to compete. China, even with its current economic problems, does.
China's economy is in shambles, so the level of effort to recreate the entire supply chain to compete in leading edge nodes isn't something that will happen very rapidly, if at all. It certainly will be more than a "few dozen more billion".
China not having access to leading edge nodes for AI, for example, maintains the edge that the U.S. and the Western World have on weapons development, anti-ship missiles, as an example, a primary constraint on any attempt of invasion by China.
The greatest danger to Taiwan is though the end of the decade, as the potential window for a successful invasion closes.
China will get there far quicker than they would have otherwise, specifically due to sanctions. Short term gain in exchange for long term loss in semiconductor related revenues.
"Enhancing Computing Power for AI. In October 2023, MIIT and other agencies announced the Action Plan on the Development of High-Quality Computing Power Infrastructure. Among other things, the plan aims to increase China’s computing power to 300 EFLOPS by 2025. According to MIIT, China reached 197 EFLOPS, ranking second globally, as of 2023. The action plan includes the creation of 50 computing hubs by 2025 to boost advanced computing capabilities and improve data management, processing, and infrastructure. This initiative highlights the significant investment of the Chinese government in advanced computational infrastructure to meet future AI and other computing demands."
Your point of view makes some sense only if you set aside the fact that China continues to threaten invasion of Taiwan, a sovereign country. You do agree that Taiwan is a sovereign country, don't you?
Would you accept that China will continue to use this same technology for war fighting, just as the U.S. and its allies have and will?
If the above is true, and it certainly is, then why would the U.S. want to continue to give China the tools to increase China's war fighting ability in the short term? Why wouldn't the U.S. and its allies restrict sales of dual use technology to China, and at the same time, decrease investment generally in China, with a shift of the supply chain.
More to the point, where is your support of your beloved EU to take up some of the slack in production on the older nodes that you are so fond of touting? One would think that you would be at the forefront of that.
China has been attempting to move to leading edge nodes, and that has cost them a tremendous amount of resources, mostly to little effect. True, SMIC has been able to use DUV to get to 7nm, and they may be able to get to 5nm, but that will be at a huge inefficiency and cost. At the same time, the U.S. and its allies have shut off sales of DUV machines to China, with restrictions on support for those, as well as restrictions of much more of the semiconductor supply chain that China has access to.
As for the invasion of Taiwan, it isn't a sure thing in any case, and the more time that goes by, the more resources that the West will have in place to deter it, should China decide to invade Taiwan.
As for your posts above about the "loss of sales", that quite laughable, given that Nvidia, et all, are expected to continue massive sales driven by AI, even without sales to China of the latest hardware.
Apple took a huge risk in putting all its chip related eggs into one basket mostly in Taiwan. It's paid off so far but the risk (political, economic, natural disaster or otherwise) remains and they are seeking to change that slowly. A wise move.
The only real threat to TSMC is China invading, so yeah, it has certainly paid of for Apple, Nvidia, Qualcomm, AMD and many other, including those users of the older nodes.
I'm mainly talking about the technology side of things even if there is some degree of geo-political overlap.
Taiwan's sovereignty is neither here nor there. There is a geopolitical angle to the TSMC situation and that is based on purely commercial interests and those interests are tied inevitably to technology hegemony.
Take TSMC out of Taiwan and no one would give a damn about the people of Taiwan. For the US it would simply be another 'Afghanistan' and if they could keep military outposts there, all the better. That is the harsh reality.
'Dual use' technology is simply an empty reference, devoid of any real meaning.
Huawei handsets were 'banned' in the US. That is protectionism, plain and simple. No dual use scenarios. The 'Hawks' say the Evil CCP have their fingers in every Chinese company. No Chinese company is free from its influence! At least according to them. So why are plenty of other Chinese companies allowed to operate within the US? Where is the dual use danger within a smartphone, a laptop or whatever, anyway?
Come on, even 'people' are dual use!
Then there are the technology supply chains themselves. Almost all of them involving China somewhere along the way. iPhone included. Much was (and still is) said about that, but China is still pumping out core technology components worldwide.
It is not up the the US to decide who can 'have' and who can 'not have'.
Weaponry does NOT use cutting edge technology for the most part and, as stated by Peter Wennink, most military use chipset technologies are around 15 years behind the technological curve.
No one, and I think this needs repeating, NO ONE is in a position to thwart China's technology advances because that is quite literally mission impossible.
ALL US moves have had the overall opposite effect: spurring China to do it themselves. Accelerating Chinese advances at the expense of US interests which have have seen their revenue streams severed.
"ASML Holding NV Chief Executive Officer Peter Wennink said US-led export control measures against China could eventually push Beijing to successfully develop its own technology in advanced chipmaking machines." ...
If they cannot get those machines, they will develop them themselves. That will take time, but ultimately they will get there ...
"The laws of physics in China are the same as here,”
Of course, privately, Wennink is tearing his hair out because he knows that when China pulls the rabbit out of the hat, his company is in for some formidable competition.
That exact same word was used by the CEO of Nvidia to describe Huawei's current AI products.
Both companies are losing business to their biggest customers for no good reason.
In what way is forcing China to reach its goals faster, better than having them reach them later?
I'll tell you: In no way.
It's crazy.
The problem is that the US voted in a president who was simply not fit for office and his replacement is too senior to understand what is really going on.
And one of them will probably be back for the next term! Neither candidate is fit for the job, realistically speaking.
Trump's China obsession (as Tweeted by the man himself) was all about things not happening "on my watch".
That was it. No one (except the Pentagon no less!) held him in check. The Pentagon actually held back one of his executive orders on China for 'national security' reasons, only to let it proceed later.
It's something when your own president is deemed a national security risk.
Now Biden is making the same mistakes.
From the recent US tariff increase factsheet (May 2024):
"As President Biden says, American workers and businesses can outcompete anyone—as long as they have fair competition. But for too long, China’s government has used unfair, non-market practices."
"Through the CHIPS and Science Act, President Biden is making a nearly $53 billion investment in American semiconductor manufacturing capacity, research, innovation, and workforce. This will help counteract decades of disinvestment and offshoring that has reduced the United States’ capacity to manufacture semiconductors domestically"
Fair competition is banning Huawei's handset business and putting it on the Entity List without a shred of supporting evidence? Fair competition is threatening allies? Fair competition is weaponising technology and the dollar?
The US can 'outcompete anyone' yet in the very same document, reveals that the root causes of the inability to compete lie in disinvestment and offshoring.
What a mess!
And that is why the US has no technology leverage in ICT market terms on 5G.
The US dropped the ball!
And after years of moaning about China subsidising industry (something everyone, everywhere has done forever!) it is now OK to launch the CHIPS act (with strings attached). Those strings being that China is out of the picture. There is your 'fair competition'.
So now, de-dollarisation has begun. De-Americanisation is underway. Virtually nobody is supporting sanctions against Russia. The only countries openly supporting the US represent less than 12% of the world's population. Almost the entirety of the rest is either invested in BRICS+ and/or the BRI. And let's not forget the Digital Silk Road.
The unipolar world is gone but the US is clinging to an 'old world' mindset.
It is not only doomed to failure (that ship sailed the moment Trump put pen to paper) but there is no going back. US technology is now 'toxic' in the eyes of many and when China eventually catches up, it will be very competitive. For starters, where do you think local Chinese companies will be sourcing their new technologies?
As Africa, Latin America/Brazil, Asia etc move up the technology ladder, where do you think they will be sourcing their technology from?
HarmonyOS has already hit 800 million devices. This year it will jettison Android completely in China and move to a 'pure' HarmonyOS version. It is tipped to overtake iOS in China by year's end. It seems Huawei took first place in Chinese tablet sales for Q1-24.
Apple is currently heavily discounting iPhones in China as the Pura 70 series targeted the price points of every single current iPhone model.
The Mate 70 series is rumoured to release and go head to head with this year's iPhone.
As Huawei takes marketshare away from Apple and other Chinese players, it is also taking share indirectly from US companies (like Qualcomm).
Had it not been for sanctions, how much of this technology would be a reality today?
I know you want to go 'full on' politics but try to keep things in the technology bubble on the whole. Please.
Good luck on Huawei competing with 2nm iPhones next year, but sure, Huawei will do very well with BRICS and third world countries.
The rest of your rant is certainly supporting of authoritarians, but mostly, your worldview is unsupported. Certainly sanctions would have been less likely if Xi hadn't become the totalitarian that he is today, including those sanctions on Huawei.
People love to hate the U.S., you certainly do, but there's masses of other people that see America is a great place to move to, given the chance. This would be obvious given the many entrepreneurs and CEO's of major tech companies that are immigrants to America.
Should the U.S. finally deal with immigration, I would expect that the best and brightest will preferentially want to come here, and other Western Countries, certainly not to China, Russia, or any of the other BRICS members, save maybe India.
You seem unable to connect the dots that Xi is the ruin of China, not the U.S.
I certainly don't 'love to hate' the US.
I am equally critical of my own country and its failures.
My 'worldview' is based on facts and in the simplest of terms things started to go wrong with China (for the US) during the Obama years.
No one can deny that the so called 'Pacific Pivot' was because of China being flagged as a 'rising power' (a superpower) and how to deal with that.
Fast forward to today and, in spite of all the US efforts, literally nothing in US foreign policy has had an impact.
Quite literally nothing.
China has continued its rise.
That is the story here. In its very simplest terms.
Within those general goals, obviously limiting China's technology aspirations was a biggie. Hence the knee-jerk reactions of Trump when it was realised (far too late) that China was about to have a major role in the digital industrial revolution (5G, AI etc).
It has turned into a comical whack-a-mole where every Chinese advance has been met with blatant 'non-rules based' attempt by the US to choke China.
William Barr made a now famous speech where he basically said China should be choked out of existence in technology and Huawei in particular was a problem.
And of course, at some point, the TSMC situation sent a shiver through Washington. Finally (and again very late in the day) the realisation that, in terms of strategic dependency, the US could fall behind in the chip race.
Huawei was actually often ahead of Apple in getting TSMC slots for its advanced needs. Business. R&D. Competition.
That's when specific technology sanctions came into play but when China managed to produce it's own 7nm solutions, panic set in. Not only because China had pulled something off that was not even supposed to be possible, but because the US had zero autoctonous 7nm capacity. Those TSMC shivers just got worse when that fact finally hit home.
I had access to a analyst paper that stated that if China decided to refocus all its capacity onto 7nm (this at a time when 5nm was the best out there) the output would surpass that of Samsung and TSMC - combined.
That would never happen in reality but the capacity was there and the US had none of its own. It was a wake up call but somehow the alarm went off late. See a pattern here?
The whack-a-mole has simply continued with one knee-jerk reaction after another since then.
The latest has been tariffs on EVs and the revocation of export licences for many Intel and Qualcomm chips to Huawei.
Intel will take a multi million dollar hit as a result. The Qualcomm situation is simply laughable as Huawei decided it didn't need Qualcomm last year and Qualcomm even notified investors that it would see 'no further material revenue from Huawei' going forward. Revoking the Qualcomm licence after the horse has bolted just goes to show how poorly the Commerce Department is working. Of course Qualcomm also took a multi million dollar hit as a result.
For what? Seriously. What good has it done?
US semiconductor interests took an absolutely catastrophic hit the day sanctions were imposed and now that the Trump 'not on my watch' chest thumping has died down,where are we?
The semiconductor association of America wrote to the White House. Its representatives visited the White House. All the major US tech companies have been in touch with the White House. Their message has always been clear but has fallen on deaf ears. And I wouldn't be surprised if those deaf ears are literally deaf given the ages of those involved.
After AI limits were imposed on Nvidia it took specific technical measures to limit its chips for China and make them sanctions compliant because its a key market for them.
The administration then fired back with a 'we know what you are doing' and then readjusted the sanctions.
Another mole whacked! Another hole fired into US commercial interests.
So what do Chinese companies do? Well, instead of pumping money into Nvidia, they pump it into Huawei.
Just this week there was a report on its wildly successful 'AI in a box' solutions that allow companies to reduce dependency on cloud solutions.
So. What's the upshot? In the simplest terms? Where are we today?
China is stronger than ever in the technology field and now actually advancing faster than ever to complete semiconductor self sufficiency.
We need to let that sink in. To accept that as a hard fact.
It is a direct result of attempts to hobble China's technological advances.
It may still have a way to go but it's going to get there far faster as a direct result of sanctions.
You like to make a point of 'authoritarian' China. That is a China issue. Not a US issue.
The US has a trade deficit with that authoritarian government. An absolutely huge trade business with it. Even with all the tariffs etc.
Through all these US foreign policy blunders, a new term is popping up. The US as a 'dominator'.
When it can't pull the strings it simply tries to bludgeon you into submission.
The US demanded the UK not do business with Huawei. The UK refused, and on technical grounds. The US then sent an official who literally shouted at Boris Johnson for five hours. That, if reports of people in the know are correct.
No go, so what did the US do? It placed sanctions on Huawei, weaponised its technology options and sent a message to the UK basically saying 'Go ahead. Sign with them and we'll make it impossible for Huawei to deliver on its obligations'. That was the official reason for that eventual rip and replace.
What happened with the Nord Stream fiasco? How on earth was Biden allowed to say: "there will be longer Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it." In public, and to the watching world. Probably an age related slip of the tongue.
You see, these are classic examples of extraterritorial overreach and the world is getting wise to it. Interference.
The point is, trying to hobble China's technology aspirations was never ever going to work.
We simply don't know what is coming or when. We just know they will get there because they have everything they need to pull it off.
Just for fun! In supercomputing. And years after sanctions came into force:
"... that it was the most powerful machine yet assembled on Earth. And we also reminded everyone that the Oceanlight system at NSC Wuxi was the second most powerful machine on the planet"
Apple using 2nm chips won't change anything. Remember, bleeding edge chips represent just a tiny fraction of the chips in use. They will also be vastly more expensive too, so volume is going to be vital.
China will achieve autoctonous 5nm this year. Once again, that should not even be possible but everything is pointing to just that. Everyone said it would take years for that to happen. They said the same for 7nm, though.
Apple is currently suffering in China, if the steep discounts there are anything to go by. The reason is said to be mainly because of Huawei. How is that possible if they are currently using a 7nm node?
Obviously there is more to phones than the nodes used to produce the cores inside them!
IMO. One that is shared by more than me, the US should have 'out-competed' China. 'Run faster' is the term that is banded about. It knew full well that China was a rising power. That is now a reality. It is now also a multi polar world but the US is having trouble accepting it.
Just as China's rise was inevitable, we can only hope US acceptance of it is inevitable.
While TSMC may currently be a key player, I have my doubts on how long it will hold its position. Not because of China in an 'aggressor scenario' but through competition.
The same applies to ASML.
You ride the wave while you have it but no wave lasts forever.
And if you think de-dollarisation isn't underway, that is fine.
".. owing to the increasing awareness of the economic and geopolitical rationales for de-dollarization and the fact that major developing countries have been at the forefront of the movement, the trend toward further de-dollarization seems unstoppable."
" As of March 2024, over half (52.9%) of Chinese payments were settled in RMB while 42.8% were settled in USD. This is double the share from five years previous. According to Goldman Sachs, foreigners’ increased willingness to trade assets denominated in RMB significantly contributed to de-dollarization in favor of China’s currency. Also, early last year, Brazil and Argentina announced that they would begin allowing trade settlements in RMB."
The CCP would be foolish to invade a sovereign nation. Which means it's bound to happen sooner rather than later. I think Taiwan and it's partners have plans ready for launch once the CCP goes full-on crazy.
CCP does not consider Taiwan to be a sovereign nation. They consider it to be just another Chinese province. So I also expect them to "exercise their legitimate sovereignty over this rebellious province" sometime within the the next decade.
The CCP's consideration is bunk. Taiwan was never ruled over by the communists. Not one year, day nor second. Taiwan has its own legislature, military, monetary system and its citizens are responsible for electing its leadership.
Once the CCP attacks, they will overwhelm Taiwan; but it won't be a short and total "victory" in any sense. Indeed, the ramifications will be just as swift and long-lasting, to the CCP's detriment in the long run.
Well, maybe and maybe not. There are only 13 countries that recognize Taiwan as a country, a number that does NOT include the U.S., Russia, or any other permanent member of the U.N. Security Council, and in fact Taiwan was kicked from the U.N. in the 70s.
So "bunk" we may consider it, but that doesn't mean much to CCP.
And if you think de-dollarisation isn't underway, that is fine.
".. owing to the increasing awareness of the economic and geopolitical rationales for de-dollarization and the fact that major developing countries have been at the forefront of the movement, the trend toward further de-dollarization seems unstoppable."
" As of March 2024, over half (52.9%) of Chinese payments were settled in RMB while 42.8% were settled in USD. This is double the share from five years previous. According to Goldman Sachs, foreigners’ increased willingness to trade assets denominated in RMB significantly contributed to de-dollarization in favor of China’s currency. Also, early last year, Brazil and Argentina announced that they would begin allowing trade settlements in RMB."
You lost me at your rambling and massively long spaghetti post #31. Perhaps you should opt for some AI assistance?
You might want to actually attempt to understand the details a bit better before you post. Yeah, countries are attempting de-dollarization, but so far, with little success. Perhaps that reason is that the BRICS economies aren't doing so well; all of them collective are barely larger than the U.S. GDP. Meanwhile, the 2nd largest economy in the world, that would be China, is in economic trouble.
China's rise? I'm old enough to remember when you were certain that China was going to exceed the U.S. GDP.
That isn't going to happen, and that is plainly on Xi.
The CCP would be foolish to invade a sovereign nation. Which means it's bound to happen sooner rather than later. I think Taiwan and it's partners have plans ready for launch once the CCP goes full-on crazy.
CCP does not consider Taiwan to be a sovereign nation. They consider it to be just another Chinese province. So I also expect them to "exercise their legitimate sovereignty over this rebellious province" sometime within the the next decade.
The CCP's consideration is bunk. Taiwan was never ruled over by the communists. Not one year, day nor second. Taiwan has its own legislature, military, monetary system and its citizens are responsible for electing its leadership.
Once the CCP attacks, they will overwhelm Taiwan; but it won't be a short and total "victory" in any sense. Indeed, the ramifications will be just as swift and long-lasting, to the CCP's detriment in the long run.
Well, maybe and maybe not. There are only 13 countries that recognize Taiwan as a country, a number that does NOT include the U.S., Russia, or any other permanent member of the U.N. Security Council, and in fact Taiwan was kicked from the U.N. in the 70s.
So "bunk" we may consider it, but that doesn't mean much to CCP.
Yep, totally overlooked reality. So I'll repeat: Taiwan was never ruled over by the communists. Not one year, day nor second. Taiwan has its own legislature, military, monetary system and its citizens are responsible for electing its leadership. Therefore, not "just another Chinese province" as you wrote.
And if you think de-dollarisation isn't underway, that is fine.
".. owing to the increasing awareness of the economic and geopolitical rationales for de-dollarization and the fact that major developing countries have been at the forefront of the movement, the trend toward further de-dollarization seems unstoppable."
" As of March 2024, over half (52.9%) of Chinese payments were settled in RMB while 42.8% were settled in USD. This is double the share from five years previous. According to Goldman Sachs, foreigners’ increased willingness to trade assets denominated in RMB significantly contributed to de-dollarization in favor of China’s currency. Also, early last year, Brazil and Argentina announced that they would begin allowing trade settlements in RMB."
You lost me at your rambling and massively long spaghetti post #31. Perhaps you should opt for some AI assistance?
You might want to actually attempt to understand the details a bit better before you post. Yeah, countries are attempting de-dollarization, but so far, with little success. Perhaps that reason is that the BRICS economies aren't doing so well; all of them collective are barely larger than the U.S. GDP. Meanwhile, the 2nd largest economy in the world, that would be China, is in economic trouble.
China's rise? I'm old enough to remember when you were certain that China was going to exceed the U.S. GDP.
That isn't going to happen, and that is plainly on Xi.
Your 'little success' is totally irrelevant. My quote on China's de-dollarisation paints a very clear picture.
Your post was in reply to me saying de-dollarisation is underway.
More to the point are the reasons why it is underway.
Please quote me on the China GDP claims. Why is it even so important when both countries take up a huge swathe of global GDP, leaving even the third place well behind?
As you well know, China overtook the US in PPP back in 2016 but I already know you won't accept that as a metric. However, that is irrelevant.
And what do BRICS economies have to do with anything? That is a ridiculous statement.
China is still building out massive critical infrastructure projects everywhere outside China on BRICS/BRI policy (ports, airports, ICT, health, rail... plus the technology tools for managing that infrastructure which is all digital) and staking an ever increasing claim to business in the Middle East.
As for China's rise, well yeah, that was my point, wasn't it? . They've 'risen' and that's why the US is acting like it is in the technology stakes.
Flailing wildly with no real coherent ideas. Just whack-a-mole reactions.
Compare the Obama era China to the Biden era China. See any difference?
So what have US 'counter' China efforts actually achieved?
Literally nothing because China rose just like everyone knew it would.
Yet the price paid in self harm for US semiconductor interests is painfully evident. And it's highly likely that business (billions upon billions) is never coming back.
And if you think de-dollarisation isn't underway, that is fine.
".. owing to the increasing awareness of the economic and geopolitical rationales for de-dollarization and the fact that major developing countries have been at the forefront of the movement, the trend toward further de-dollarization seems unstoppable."
" As of March 2024, over half (52.9%) of Chinese payments were settled in RMB while 42.8% were settled in USD. This is double the share from five years previous. According to Goldman Sachs, foreigners’ increased willingness to trade assets denominated in RMB significantly contributed to de-dollarization in favor of China’s currency. Also, early last year, Brazil and Argentina announced that they would begin allowing trade settlements in RMB."
You lost me at your rambling and massively long spaghetti post #31. Perhaps you should opt for some AI assistance?
You might want to actually attempt to understand the details a bit better before you post. Yeah, countries are attempting de-dollarization, but so far, with little success. Perhaps that reason is that the BRICS economies aren't doing so well; all of them collective are barely larger than the U.S. GDP. Meanwhile, the 2nd largest economy in the world, that would be China, is in economic trouble.
China's rise? I'm old enough to remember when you were certain that China was going to exceed the U.S. GDP.
That isn't going to happen, and that is plainly on Xi.
Your 'little success' is totally irrelevant. My quote on China's de-dollarisation paints a very clear picture.
Your post was in reply to me saying de-dollarisation is underway.
More to the point are the reasons why it is underway.
Please quote me on the China GDP claims. Why is it even so important when both countries take up a huge swathe of global GDP, leaving even the third place well behind?
As you well know, China overtook the US in PPP back in 2016 but I already know you won't accept that as a metric. However, that is irrelevant.
And what do BRICS economies have to do with anything? That is a ridiculous statement.
China is still building out massive critical infrastructure projects everywhere outside China on BRICS/BRI policy (ports, airports, ICT, health, rail... plus the technology tools for managing that infrastructure which is all digital) and staking an ever increasing claim to business in the Middle East.
As for China's rise, well yeah, that was my point, wasn't it? . They've 'risen' and that's why the US is acting like it is in the technology stakes.
Flailing wildly with no real coherent ideas. Just whack-a-mole reactions.
Compare the Obama era China to the Biden era China. See any difference?
So what have US 'counter' China efforts actually achieved?
Literally nothing because China rose just like everyone knew it would.
Yet the price paid in self harm for US semiconductor interests is painfully evident. And it's highly likely that business (billions upon billions) is never coming back.
When Obama was initially in office, Xi was not. Chairman/President/ General Secretary Xi didn't happen until Obama's second term.
What changed? Xi became more authoritarian, that's a fact, and later, due to China's COVID response, supply chains began shifting out of China.
What has the U.S. counter to China actually achieved? Well, it hard to state whether China's economy has slowed due to those supply chain shifts, or Xi's policies, but the fact that the U.S. has made re-shoring and friend-shoring the point of its economic policy, while China's growth has slowed seem to indicate a bit of both. China's economy is in very poor shape right now, and with the EU likely having to have tariffs on Chinese EV's, China is going to be very unhappy and retaliate, which is expected.
You still seem to be unaware that Xi's threats of invasion of Taiwan are threats against the global economy, and for a fact, if Xi invades Taiwan, the Global economy will be in shock. That won't be on the U.S. for that happening, it will be on Xi, who likely won't care at that point. How bloody that battle will be is unknown, but it will be the most intense in history, but for a very short time. China will likely not recover, even if it successfully invades Taiwan.
Meanwhile, all of the tech stocks are up, driven by AI, so I don't see that China is of much concern to ASML, et al, especially if the EU follows the U.S. to fund more fabs, which it seems to be inclined to do. What doesn't go to China will go elsewhere, and China will surely be able to build all of the power plants that it needs for all of the older tech that will drive its AI efforts.
And if you think de-dollarisation isn't underway, that is fine.
".. owing to the increasing awareness of the economic and geopolitical rationales for de-dollarization and the fact that major developing countries have been at the forefront of the movement, the trend toward further de-dollarization seems unstoppable."
" As of March 2024, over half (52.9%) of Chinese payments were settled in RMB while 42.8% were settled in USD. This is double the share from five years previous. According to Goldman Sachs, foreigners’ increased willingness to trade assets denominated in RMB significantly contributed to de-dollarization in favor of China’s currency. Also, early last year, Brazil and Argentina announced that they would begin allowing trade settlements in RMB."
You lost me at your rambling and massively long spaghetti post #31. Perhaps you should opt for some AI assistance?
You might want to actually attempt to understand the details a bit better before you post. Yeah, countries are attempting de-dollarization, but so far, with little success. Perhaps that reason is that the BRICS economies aren't doing so well; all of them collective are barely larger than the U.S. GDP. Meanwhile, the 2nd largest economy in the world, that would be China, is in economic trouble.
China's rise? I'm old enough to remember when you were certain that China was going to exceed the U.S. GDP.
That isn't going to happen, and that is plainly on Xi.
Your 'little success' is totally irrelevant. My quote on China's de-dollarisation paints a very clear picture.
Your post was in reply to me saying de-dollarisation is underway.
More to the point are the reasons why it is underway.
Please quote me on the China GDP claims. Why is it even so important when both countries take up a huge swathe of global GDP, leaving even the third place well behind?
As you well know, China overtook the US in PPP back in 2016 but I already know you won't accept that as a metric. However, that is irrelevant.
And what do BRICS economies have to do with anything? That is a ridiculous statement.
China is still building out massive critical infrastructure projects everywhere outside China on BRICS/BRI policy (ports, airports, ICT, health, rail... plus the technology tools for managing that infrastructure which is all digital) and staking an ever increasing claim to business in the Middle East.
As for China's rise, well yeah, that was my point, wasn't it? . They've 'risen' and that's why the US is acting like it is in the technology stakes.
Flailing wildly with no real coherent ideas. Just whack-a-mole reactions.
Compare the Obama era China to the Biden era China. See any difference?
So what have US 'counter' China efforts actually achieved?
Literally nothing because China rose just like everyone knew it would.
Yet the price paid in self harm for US semiconductor interests is painfully evident. And it's highly likely that business (billions upon billions) is never coming back.
When Obama was initially in office, Xi was not. Chairman/President/ General Secretary Xi didn't happen until Obama's second term.
What changed? Xi became more authoritarian, that's a fact, and later, due to China's COVID response, supply chains began shifting out of China.
What has the U.S. counter to China actually achieved? Well, it hard to state whether China's economy has slowed due to those supply chain shifts, or Xi's policies, but the fact that the U.S. has made re-shoring and friend-shoring the point of its economic policy, while China's growth has slowed seem to indicate a bit of both. China's economy is in very poor shape right now, and with the EU likely having to have tariffs on Chinese EV's, China is going to be very unhappy and retaliate, which is expected.
You still seem to be unaware that Xi's threats of invasion of Taiwan are threats against the global economy, and for a fact, if Xi invades Taiwan, the Global economy will be in shock. That won't be on the U.S. for that happening, it will be on Xi, who likely won't care at that point. How bloody that battle will be is unknown, but it will be the most intense in history, but for a very short time. China will likely not recover, even if it successfully invades Taiwan.
Meanwhile, all of the tech stocks are up, driven by AI, so I don't see that China is of much concern to ASML, et al, especially if the EU follows the U.S. to fund more fabs, which it seems to be inclined to do. What doesn't go to China will go elsewhere, and China will surely be able to build all of the power plants that it needs for all of the older tech that will drive its AI efforts.
There you go! Full on politics.
Try to keep things technology focused.
Xi is irrelevant to my point. The point was that US foreign policy saw China (not the leader!) as a rising power. Technology was one of pillars of that rise.
The Pacific Pivot was partly a move to suppress it. Followed up by US tariffs which are ongoing.
China has risen nevertheless.
Policy failed.
Saying 'well we don't know how effective the moves were' or blaming Xi are irrelevant to my point.
In technology (the industrial revolution of this century) sanctions are not working and are doomed to failure. They were from day one.
Just today (Reuters):
"During Nvidia's first quarter earnings on Wednesday, senior executives warned that the company's business in China is "substantially" lower than in the past due to the sanctions.
Nvidia's most advanced AI chip it developed for the China market has got off to a weak start, with abundant supply forcing it to be priced below a rival chip from Chinese tech giant Huawei. ...
Our data centre revenue in China is down significantly from the level prior to the imposition of the new export control restrictions in October ...
Analysts said while Nvidia was trying hard to capture share in a market it cannot afford to lose, the outlook is increasingly uncertain. ...
Nvidia is definitely preparing for the worst in the long term"
So US semiconductor interests get shot to pieces (by friendly fire) through them not being allowed to do business with their biggest customers. Revenues fall as a result and from those revenues R&D is supposed to lead to the technologies of tomorrow.
Less revenue. Less financing for R&D. Less technology for tomorrow.
Not only that. Your main commercial market (that you are now unable to cater to on competitive terms) begins creating solutions that will directly compete with you in the future!
That's Nvidia's reality and the reality of every single US technology company. They are all in the same leaky boat.
You can 'want to believe' Biden when he says the US can 'out-compete' anyone but deep down, you know its just an election year soundbyte that is going straight into the bin.
After all, this is the same person who so strongly criticised Trump's tariffs on China, saying they only cost American citizens more money. That was pre-election too.
And if you think de-dollarisation isn't underway, that is fine.
".. owing to the increasing awareness of the economic and geopolitical rationales for de-dollarization and the fact that major developing countries have been at the forefront of the movement, the trend toward further de-dollarization seems unstoppable."
" As of March 2024, over half (52.9%) of Chinese payments were settled in RMB while 42.8% were settled in USD. This is double the share from five years previous. According to Goldman Sachs, foreigners’ increased willingness to trade assets denominated in RMB significantly contributed to de-dollarization in favor of China’s currency. Also, early last year, Brazil and Argentina announced that they would begin allowing trade settlements in RMB."
You lost me at your rambling and massively long spaghetti post #31. Perhaps you should opt for some AI assistance?
You might want to actually attempt to understand the details a bit better before you post. Yeah, countries are attempting de-dollarization, but so far, with little success. Perhaps that reason is that the BRICS economies aren't doing so well; all of them collective are barely larger than the U.S. GDP. Meanwhile, the 2nd largest economy in the world, that would be China, is in economic trouble.
China's rise? I'm old enough to remember when you were certain that China was going to exceed the U.S. GDP.
That isn't going to happen, and that is plainly on Xi.
Your 'little success' is totally irrelevant. My quote on China's de-dollarisation paints a very clear picture.
Your post was in reply to me saying de-dollarisation is underway.
More to the point are the reasons why it is underway.
Please quote me on the China GDP claims. Why is it even so important when both countries take up a huge swathe of global GDP, leaving even the third place well behind?
As you well know, China overtook the US in PPP back in 2016 but I already know you won't accept that as a metric. However, that is irrelevant.
And what do BRICS economies have to do with anything? That is a ridiculous statement.
China is still building out massive critical infrastructure projects everywhere outside China on BRICS/BRI policy (ports, airports, ICT, health, rail... plus the technology tools for managing that infrastructure which is all digital) and staking an ever increasing claim to business in the Middle East.
As for China's rise, well yeah, that was my point, wasn't it? . They've 'risen' and that's why the US is acting like it is in the technology stakes.
Flailing wildly with no real coherent ideas. Just whack-a-mole reactions.
Compare the Obama era China to the Biden era China. See any difference?
So what have US 'counter' China efforts actually achieved?
Literally nothing because China rose just like everyone knew it would.
Yet the price paid in self harm for US semiconductor interests is painfully evident. And it's highly likely that business (billions upon billions) is never coming back.
When Obama was initially in office, Xi was not. Chairman/President/ General Secretary Xi didn't happen until Obama's second term.
What changed? Xi became more authoritarian, that's a fact, and later, due to China's COVID response, supply chains began shifting out of China.
What has the U.S. counter to China actually achieved? Well, it hard to state whether China's economy has slowed due to those supply chain shifts, or Xi's policies, but the fact that the U.S. has made re-shoring and friend-shoring the point of its economic policy, while China's growth has slowed seem to indicate a bit of both. China's economy is in very poor shape right now, and with the EU likely having to have tariffs on Chinese EV's, China is going to be very unhappy and retaliate, which is expected.
You still seem to be unaware that Xi's threats of invasion of Taiwan are threats against the global economy, and for a fact, if Xi invades Taiwan, the Global economy will be in shock. That won't be on the U.S. for that happening, it will be on Xi, who likely won't care at that point. How bloody that battle will be is unknown, but it will be the most intense in history, but for a very short time. China will likely not recover, even if it successfully invades Taiwan.
Meanwhile, all of the tech stocks are up, driven by AI, so I don't see that China is of much concern to ASML, et al, especially if the EU follows the U.S. to fund more fabs, which it seems to be inclined to do. What doesn't go to China will go elsewhere, and China will surely be able to build all of the power plants that it needs for all of the older tech that will drive its AI efforts.
There you go! Full on politics.
Try to keep things technology focused.
Xi is irrelevant to my point. The point was that US foreign policy saw China (not the leader!) as a rising power. Technology was one of pillars of that rise.
The Pacific Pivot was partly a move to suppress it. Followed up by US tariffs which are ongoing.
China has risen nevertheless.
Policy failed.
Saying 'well we don't know how effective the moves were' or blaming Xi are irrelevant to my point.
In technology (the industrial revolution of this century) sanctions are not working and are doomed to failure. They were from day one.
Just today (Reuters):
"During Nvidia's first quarter earnings on Wednesday, senior executives warned that the company's business in China is "substantially" lower than in the past due to the sanctions.
Nvidia's most advanced AI chip it developed for the China market has got off to a weak start, with abundant supply forcing it to be priced below a rival chip from Chinese tech giant Huawei. ...
Our data centre revenue in China is down significantly from the level prior to the imposition of the new export control restrictions in October ...
Analysts said while Nvidia was trying hard to capture share in a market it cannot afford to lose, the outlook is increasingly uncertain. ...
Nvidia is definitely preparing for the worst in the long term"
So US semiconductor interests get shot to pieces (by friendly fire) through them not being allowed to do business with their biggest customers. Revenues fall as a result and from those revenues R&D is supposed to lead to the technologies of tomorrow.
Less revenue. Less financing for R&D. Less technology for tomorrow.
Not only that. Your main commercial market (that you are now unable to cater to on competitive terms) begins creating solutions that will directly compete with you in the future!
That's Nvidia's reality and the reality of every single US technology company. They are all in the same leaky boat.
You can 'want to believe' Biden when he says the US can 'out-compete' anyone but deep down, you know its just an election year soundbyte that is going straight into the bin.
After all, this is the same person who so strongly criticised Trump's tariffs on China, saying they only cost American citizens more money. That was pre-election too.
The point, and you know that you have been avoiding it, is that Xi has threatened, over and over again, to invade Taiwan. More than that, China has been supporting Russia with dual use material. That doesn't endear China to the U.S. and the EU at all.
Good luck on China picking up the pace in technology without the West, and more so, without the revenues from the West to fund the Chinese economy. I'm sure that China will be able to compete using less efficient technology while plugged into an array of additional coal fired power plants, but otherwise, they aren't going to catch up a rate fast enough to make a difference in the semiconductor market.
Yes, there are sales that are not being made into China, but at the same time, AI investment is bringing new sales to Intel, Nvidia, AMD, and yes, even Apple.
Your support of authoritarianism is something I noted when I saw some of your first posts, wrt using facial recognition on Catalonian protestors. What you post today is yet more indication of your lack of moral framework, and I find your support of authoritarians loathsome..
And if you think de-dollarisation isn't underway, that is fine.
".. owing to the increasing awareness of the economic and geopolitical rationales for de-dollarization and the fact that major developing countries have been at the forefront of the movement, the trend toward further de-dollarization seems unstoppable."
" As of March 2024, over half (52.9%) of Chinese payments were settled in RMB while 42.8% were settled in USD. This is double the share from five years previous. According to Goldman Sachs, foreigners’ increased willingness to trade assets denominated in RMB significantly contributed to de-dollarization in favor of China’s currency. Also, early last year, Brazil and Argentina announced that they would begin allowing trade settlements in RMB."
You lost me at your rambling and massively long spaghetti post #31. Perhaps you should opt for some AI assistance?
You might want to actually attempt to understand the details a bit better before you post. Yeah, countries are attempting de-dollarization, but so far, with little success. Perhaps that reason is that the BRICS economies aren't doing so well; all of them collective are barely larger than the U.S. GDP. Meanwhile, the 2nd largest economy in the world, that would be China, is in economic trouble.
China's rise? I'm old enough to remember when you were certain that China was going to exceed the U.S. GDP.
That isn't going to happen, and that is plainly on Xi.
Your 'little success' is totally irrelevant. My quote on China's de-dollarisation paints a very clear picture.
Your post was in reply to me saying de-dollarisation is underway.
More to the point are the reasons why it is underway.
Please quote me on the China GDP claims. Why is it even so important when both countries take up a huge swathe of global GDP, leaving even the third place well behind?
As you well know, China overtook the US in PPP back in 2016 but I already know you won't accept that as a metric. However, that is irrelevant.
And what do BRICS economies have to do with anything? That is a ridiculous statement.
China is still building out massive critical infrastructure projects everywhere outside China on BRICS/BRI policy (ports, airports, ICT, health, rail... plus the technology tools for managing that infrastructure which is all digital) and staking an ever increasing claim to business in the Middle East.
As for China's rise, well yeah, that was my point, wasn't it? . They've 'risen' and that's why the US is acting like it is in the technology stakes.
Flailing wildly with no real coherent ideas. Just whack-a-mole reactions.
Compare the Obama era China to the Biden era China. See any difference?
So what have US 'counter' China efforts actually achieved?
Literally nothing because China rose just like everyone knew it would.
Yet the price paid in self harm for US semiconductor interests is painfully evident. And it's highly likely that business (billions upon billions) is never coming back.
When Obama was initially in office, Xi was not. Chairman/President/ General Secretary Xi didn't happen until Obama's second term.
What changed? Xi became more authoritarian, that's a fact, and later, due to China's COVID response, supply chains began shifting out of China.
What has the U.S. counter to China actually achieved? Well, it hard to state whether China's economy has slowed due to those supply chain shifts, or Xi's policies, but the fact that the U.S. has made re-shoring and friend-shoring the point of its economic policy, while China's growth has slowed seem to indicate a bit of both. China's economy is in very poor shape right now, and with the EU likely having to have tariffs on Chinese EV's, China is going to be very unhappy and retaliate, which is expected.
You still seem to be unaware that Xi's threats of invasion of Taiwan are threats against the global economy, and for a fact, if Xi invades Taiwan, the Global economy will be in shock. That won't be on the U.S. for that happening, it will be on Xi, who likely won't care at that point. How bloody that battle will be is unknown, but it will be the most intense in history, but for a very short time. China will likely not recover, even if it successfully invades Taiwan.
Meanwhile, all of the tech stocks are up, driven by AI, so I don't see that China is of much concern to ASML, et al, especially if the EU follows the U.S. to fund more fabs, which it seems to be inclined to do. What doesn't go to China will go elsewhere, and China will surely be able to build all of the power plants that it needs for all of the older tech that will drive its AI efforts.
There you go! Full on politics.
Try to keep things technology focused.
Xi is irrelevant to my point. The point was that US foreign policy saw China (not the leader!) as a rising power. Technology was one of pillars of that rise.
The Pacific Pivot was partly a move to suppress it. Followed up by US tariffs which are ongoing.
China has risen nevertheless.
Policy failed.
Saying 'well we don't know how effective the moves were' or blaming Xi are irrelevant to my point.
In technology (the industrial revolution of this century) sanctions are not working and are doomed to failure. They were from day one.
Just today (Reuters):
"During Nvidia's first quarter earnings on Wednesday, senior executives warned that the company's business in China is "substantially" lower than in the past due to the sanctions.
Nvidia's most advanced AI chip it developed for the China market has got off to a weak start, with abundant supply forcing it to be priced below a rival chip from Chinese tech giant Huawei. ...
Our data centre revenue in China is down significantly from the level prior to the imposition of the new export control restrictions in October ...
Analysts said while Nvidia was trying hard to capture share in a market it cannot afford to lose, the outlook is increasingly uncertain. ...
Nvidia is definitely preparing for the worst in the long term"
So US semiconductor interests get shot to pieces (by friendly fire) through them not being allowed to do business with their biggest customers. Revenues fall as a result and from those revenues R&D is supposed to lead to the technologies of tomorrow.
Less revenue. Less financing for R&D. Less technology for tomorrow.
Not only that. Your main commercial market (that you are now unable to cater to on competitive terms) begins creating solutions that will directly compete with you in the future!
That's Nvidia's reality and the reality of every single US technology company. They are all in the same leaky boat.
You can 'want to believe' Biden when he says the US can 'out-compete' anyone but deep down, you know its just an election year soundbyte that is going straight into the bin.
After all, this is the same person who so strongly criticised Trump's tariffs on China, saying they only cost American citizens more money. That was pre-election too.
The point, and you know that you have been avoiding it, is that Xi has threatened, over and over again, to invade Taiwan. More than that, China has been supporting Russia with dual use material. That doesn't endear China to the U.S. and the EU at all.
Good luck on China picking up the pace in technology without the West, and more so, without the revenues from the West to fund the Chinese economy. I'm sure that China will be able to compete using less efficient technology while plugged into an array of additional coal fired power plants, but otherwise, they aren't going to catch up a rate fast enough to make a difference in the semiconductor market.
Yes, there are sales that are not being made into China, but at the same time, AI investment is bringing new sales to Intel, Nvidia, AMD, and yes, even Apple.
Your support of authoritarianism is something I noted when I saw some of your first posts, wrt using facial recognition on Catalonian protestors. What you post today is yet more indication of your lack of moral framework, and I find your support of authoritarians loathsome..
How Xi Jinping’s authoritarianism is killing China’s economy | Business Beyond
You can't help yourself. Authoritarian or not is NOT the problem.
That is irrelevant. Forget that in this discussion.
The US does massive business with the country and is fine with that. As per Trump, the US actually wants more business with China!
The US has literally depended on Saudi Arabia for decades. Another authoritarian state (which it literally armed to the teeth!).
The US does NOT have an issue with authoritarian governments just because they are authoritarian.
No. What the real issue is, is if a state can challenge US hegemony. Then the US will use (is using!) any means it can to thwart it.
Authoritarian or not!
And ironically, that makes its actions, well, authoritarian! Breaking UN charter agreements, WTO agreements, not joining the ICC system (for fear of finding itself on the hook multiple times over), etc.
China has largely been non-interventionist. The US has invaded countries at will, effected regime change, caused untold civilian deaths (directly and indirectly), mismanaged both Iraq and Afghanistan...
China is a poodle in comparison.
That is irrelevant here, though.
Like I said earlier. Taiwan is an afterthought for the US. It doesn't give a damn about it. What it cares about is TSMC.
That means technology.
Set aside your political ideas and look at the technology side.
As China has upped it technological capabilities to the point of actively challenging US influence, the US decided that couldn't be allowed and it was clear about it (re-read Barr's speech).
How they are going about it, though, is doing more harm than good to its own interests. That is my point.
US semiconductor interests are literally getting pummeled in the process and all you relentlessly point to is Xi and authoritarianism. Let it go!
Nvidia (and by extension, the US semiconductor industry) is dependent on China for key revenues. Export restrictions are effectively tying its hands behind its back and accelerating China's (already advanced) progress.
Catalonian protestors? Facial recognition technology? I have no idea where you want to go with that but I can guarantee you, wherever it is, you are mistaken. As usual.
You definitely don't know what happened here on the night of September 7th 2017 and why it was called a blow to democracy. Do you know why those Catalan politicians ended up in prison?
Don't bother answering that.
Refocus your thoughts onto the technology side and its impact.
Comments
Would you accept that China will continue to use this same technology for war fighting, just as the U.S. and its allies have and will?
If the above is true, and it certainly is, then why would the U.S. want to continue to give China the tools to increase China's war fighting ability in the short term? Why wouldn't the U.S. and its allies restrict sales of dual use technology to China, and at the same time, decrease investment generally in China, with a shift of the supply chain.
More to the point, where is your support of your beloved EU to take up some of the slack in production on the older nodes that you are so fond of touting? One would think that you would be at the forefront of that.
China has been attempting to move to leading edge nodes, and that has cost them a tremendous amount of resources, mostly to little effect. True, SMIC has been able to use DUV to get to 7nm, and they may be able to get to 5nm, but that will be at a huge inefficiency and cost. At the same time, the U.S. and its allies have shut off sales of DUV machines to China, with restrictions on support for those, as well as restrictions of much more of the semiconductor supply chain that China has access to.
As for the invasion of Taiwan, it isn't a sure thing in any case, and the more time that goes by, the more resources that the West will have in place to deter it, should China decide to invade Taiwan.
As for your posts above about the "loss of sales", that quite laughable, given that Nvidia, et all, are expected to continue massive sales driven by AI, even without sales to China of the latest hardware.
The only real threat to TSMC is China invading, so yeah, it has certainly paid of for Apple, Nvidia, Qualcomm, AMD and many other, including those users of the older nodes.
Taiwan's sovereignty is neither here nor there. There is a geopolitical angle to the TSMC situation and that is based on purely commercial interests and those interests are tied inevitably to technology hegemony.
Take TSMC out of Taiwan and no one would give a damn about the people of Taiwan. For the US it would simply be another 'Afghanistan' and if they could keep military outposts there, all the better. That is the harsh reality.
'Dual use' technology is simply an empty reference, devoid of any real meaning.
Huawei handsets were 'banned' in the US. That is protectionism, plain and simple. No dual use scenarios. The 'Hawks' say the Evil CCP have their fingers in every Chinese company. No Chinese company is free from its influence! At least according to them. So why are plenty of other Chinese companies allowed to operate within the US? Where is the dual use danger within a smartphone, a laptop or whatever, anyway?
Come on, even 'people' are dual use!
Then there are the technology supply chains themselves. Almost all of them involving China somewhere along the way. iPhone included. Much was (and still is) said about that, but China is still pumping out core technology components worldwide.
It is not up the the US to decide who can 'have' and who can 'not have'.
Weaponry does NOT use cutting edge technology for the most part and, as stated by Peter Wennink, most military use chipset technologies are around 15 years behind the technological curve.
No one, and I think this needs repeating, NO ONE is in a position to thwart China's technology advances because that is quite literally mission impossible.
ALL US moves have had the overall opposite effect: spurring China to do it themselves. Accelerating Chinese advances at the expense of US interests which have have seen their revenue streams severed.
"ASML Holding NV Chief Executive Officer Peter Wennink said US-led export control measures against China could eventually push Beijing to successfully develop its own technology in advanced chipmaking machines."
...
If they cannot get those machines, they will develop them themselves. That will take time, but ultimately they will get there
...
"The laws of physics in China are the same as here,”
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/asml-says-chip-controls-push-160223528.html
Of course, privately, Wennink is tearing his hair out because he knows that when China pulls the rabbit out of the hat, his company is in for some formidable competition.
That exact same word was used by the CEO of Nvidia to describe Huawei's current AI products.
Both companies are losing business to their biggest customers for no good reason.
In what way is forcing China to reach its goals faster, better than having them reach them later?
I'll tell you: In no way.
It's crazy.
The problem is that the US voted in a president who was simply not fit for office and his replacement is too senior to understand what is really going on.
And one of them will probably be back for the next term! Neither candidate is fit for the job, realistically speaking.
Trump's China obsession (as Tweeted by the man himself) was all about things not happening "on my watch".
That was it. No one (except the Pentagon no less!) held him in check. The Pentagon actually held back one of his executive orders on China for 'national security' reasons, only to let it proceed later.
It's something when your own president is deemed a national security risk.
Now Biden is making the same mistakes.
From the recent US tariff increase factsheet (May 2024):
"As President Biden says, American workers and businesses can outcompete anyone—as long as they have fair competition. But for too long, China’s government has used unfair, non-market practices."
"Through the CHIPS and Science Act, President Biden is making a nearly $53 billion investment in American semiconductor manufacturing capacity, research, innovation, and workforce. This will help counteract decades of disinvestment and offshoring that has reduced the United States’ capacity to manufacture semiconductors domestically"
Fair competition is banning Huawei's handset business and putting it on the Entity List without a shred of supporting evidence? Fair competition is threatening allies? Fair competition is weaponising technology and the dollar?
The US can 'outcompete anyone' yet in the very same document, reveals that the root causes of the inability to compete lie in disinvestment and offshoring.
What a mess!
And that is why the US has no technology leverage in ICT market terms on 5G.
The US dropped the ball!
And after years of moaning about China subsidising industry (something everyone, everywhere has done forever!) it is now OK to launch the CHIPS act (with strings attached). Those strings being that China is out of the picture. There is your 'fair competition'.
So now, de-dollarisation has begun. De-Americanisation is underway. Virtually nobody is supporting sanctions against Russia. The only countries openly supporting the US represent less than 12% of the world's population. Almost the entirety of the rest is either invested in BRICS+ and/or the BRI. And let's not forget the Digital Silk Road.
The unipolar world is gone but the US is clinging to an 'old world' mindset.
It is not only doomed to failure (that ship sailed the moment Trump put pen to paper) but there is no going back. US technology is now 'toxic' in the eyes of many and when China eventually catches up, it will be very competitive. For starters, where do you think local Chinese companies will be sourcing their new technologies?
As Africa, Latin America/Brazil, Asia etc move up the technology ladder, where do you think they will be sourcing their technology from?
HarmonyOS has already hit 800 million devices. This year it will jettison Android completely in China and move to a 'pure' HarmonyOS version. It is tipped to overtake iOS in China by year's end. It seems Huawei took first place in Chinese tablet sales for Q1-24.
Apple is currently heavily discounting iPhones in China as the Pura 70 series targeted the price points of every single current iPhone model.
The Mate 70 series is rumoured to release and go head to head with this year's iPhone.
As Huawei takes marketshare away from Apple and other Chinese players, it is also taking share indirectly from US companies (like Qualcomm).
Had it not been for sanctions, how much of this technology would be a reality today?
I know you want to go 'full on' politics but try to keep things in the technology bubble on the whole. Please.
Once the CCP attacks, they will overwhelm Taiwan; but it won't be a short and total "victory" in any sense. Indeed, the ramifications will be just as swift and long-lasting, to the CCP's detriment in the long run.
I mean, if you create a backdoor, you never know who's going to slip in.
By way of analogy, the Communist Russian Empire (aka USSR) ruled over much of Eastern Europe, but those countries are now independent democracies and the fact that they were once subjugated by an evil empire does not mean that they must forever be subjugated by an evil empire.
The US was once a part of the British empire -- does that mean King Charles sits around plotting to recapture those lost colonies?
Puerto Rico is currently a territory of the US, but if the people of Puerto Rico decided to declare independence, I suspect the US would say "okie dokie -- good luck!" and that would be the end of it.
CCP propagandists and useful idiots who parrot their propaganda like to compare Taiwan to the Confederacy in the US Civil War. But that ignores the fact that *the* defining issue of the US Civil War was the indefensible mortal sin of slavery. Taiwan is not the moral equivalent of the Confederacy. If either party is the moral equivalent of the Confederacy, it's the CCP.
The rest of your rant is certainly supporting of authoritarians, but mostly, your worldview is unsupported. Certainly sanctions would have been less likely if Xi hadn't become the totalitarian that he is today, including those sanctions on Huawei.
People love to hate the U.S., you certainly do, but there's masses of other people that see America is a great place to move to, given the chance. This would be obvious given the many entrepreneurs and CEO's of major tech companies that are immigrants to America.
Should the U.S. finally deal with immigration, I would expect that the best and brightest will preferentially want to come here, and other Western Countries, certainly not to China, Russia, or any of the other BRICS members, save maybe India.
You seem unable to connect the dots that Xi is the ruin of China, not the U.S.
every quarterly economic report of the past several years gave some number as to when China would pull even with the USA and then move ahead. They no longer do that in their report as word is out that they don’t believe they will be able to do it.
https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/currencies/dedollarization-dollar-dominance-currency-war-trade-usd-reserves-explained-2024-5
But you believe it...
Hey, and check this out....
https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/The-Big-Story/Why-so-many-middle-class-Chinese-migrants-take-risky-illegal-route-to-U.S
Gee, who would have known...
I am equally critical of my own country and its failures.
My 'worldview' is based on facts and in the simplest of terms things started to go wrong with China (for the US) during the Obama years.
No one can deny that the so called 'Pacific Pivot' was because of China being flagged as a 'rising power' (a superpower) and how to deal with that.
Fast forward to today and, in spite of all the US efforts, literally nothing in US foreign policy has had an impact.
Quite literally nothing.
China has continued its rise.
That is the story here. In its very simplest terms.
Within those general goals, obviously limiting China's technology aspirations was a biggie. Hence the knee-jerk reactions of Trump when it was realised (far too late) that China was about to have a major role in the digital industrial revolution (5G, AI etc).
It has turned into a comical whack-a-mole where every Chinese advance has been met with blatant 'non-rules based' attempt by the US to choke China.
William Barr made a now famous speech where he basically said China should be choked out of existence in technology and Huawei in particular was a problem.
And of course, at some point, the TSMC situation sent a shiver through Washington. Finally (and again very late in the day) the realisation that, in terms of strategic dependency, the US could fall behind in the chip race.
Huawei was actually often ahead of Apple in getting TSMC slots for its advanced needs. Business. R&D. Competition.
That's when specific technology sanctions came into play but when China managed to produce it's own 7nm solutions, panic set in. Not only because China had pulled something off that was not even supposed to be possible, but because the US had zero autoctonous 7nm capacity. Those TSMC shivers just got worse when that fact finally hit home.
I had access to a analyst paper that stated that if China decided to refocus all its capacity onto 7nm (this at a time when 5nm was the best out there) the output would surpass that of Samsung and TSMC - combined.
That would never happen in reality but the capacity was there and the US had none of its own. It was a wake up call but somehow the alarm went off late. See a pattern here?
The whack-a-mole has simply continued with one knee-jerk reaction after another since then.
The latest has been tariffs on EVs and the revocation of export licences for many Intel and Qualcomm chips to Huawei.
Intel will take a multi million dollar hit as a result. The Qualcomm situation is simply laughable as Huawei decided it didn't need Qualcomm last year and Qualcomm even notified investors that it would see 'no further material revenue from Huawei' going forward. Revoking the Qualcomm licence after the horse has bolted just goes to show how poorly the Commerce Department is working. Of course Qualcomm also took a multi million dollar hit as a result.
For what? Seriously. What good has it done?
US semiconductor interests took an absolutely catastrophic hit the day sanctions were imposed and now that the Trump 'not on my watch' chest thumping has died down,where are we?
The semiconductor association of America wrote to the White House. Its representatives visited the White House. All the major US tech companies have been in touch with the White House. Their message has always been clear but has fallen on deaf ears. And I wouldn't be surprised if those deaf ears are literally deaf given the ages of those involved.
After AI limits were imposed on Nvidia it took specific technical measures to limit its chips for China and make them sanctions compliant because its a key market for them.
The administration then fired back with a 'we know what you are doing' and then readjusted the sanctions.
Another mole whacked! Another hole fired into US commercial interests.
So what do Chinese companies do? Well, instead of pumping money into Nvidia, they pump it into Huawei.
Just this week there was a report on its wildly successful 'AI in a box' solutions that allow companies to reduce dependency on cloud solutions.
So. What's the upshot? In the simplest terms? Where are we today?
China is stronger than ever in the technology field and now actually advancing faster than ever to complete semiconductor self sufficiency.
We need to let that sink in. To accept that as a hard fact.
It is a direct result of attempts to hobble China's technological advances.
It may still have a way to go but it's going to get there far faster as a direct result of sanctions.
You like to make a point of 'authoritarian' China. That is a China issue. Not a US issue.
The US has a trade deficit with that authoritarian government. An absolutely huge trade business with it. Even with all the tariffs etc.
Through all these US foreign policy blunders, a new term is popping up. The US as a 'dominator'.
When it can't pull the strings it simply tries to bludgeon you into submission.
The US demanded the UK not do business with Huawei. The UK refused, and on technical grounds. The US then sent an official who literally shouted at Boris Johnson for five hours. That, if reports of people in the know are correct.
No go, so what did the US do? It placed sanctions on Huawei, weaponised its technology options and sent a message to the UK basically saying 'Go ahead. Sign with them and we'll make it impossible for Huawei to deliver on its obligations'. That was the official reason for that eventual rip and replace.
What happened with the Nord Stream fiasco? How on earth was Biden allowed to say: "there will be longer Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it." In public, and to the watching world. Probably an age related slip of the tongue.
You see, these are classic examples of extraterritorial overreach and the world is getting wise to it. Interference.
The point is, trying to hobble China's technology aspirations was never ever going to work.
We simply don't know what is coming or when. We just know they will get there because they have everything they need to pull it off.
Just for fun! In supercomputing. And years after sanctions came into force:
"... that it was the most powerful machine yet assembled on Earth. And we also reminded everyone that the Oceanlight system at NSC Wuxi was the second most powerful machine on the planet"
https://www.nextplatform.com/2024/02/09/the-mystery-of-tianhe-3-the-worlds-fastest-supercomputer-solved/
So much for sanctions.
Apple using 2nm chips won't change anything. Remember, bleeding edge chips represent just a tiny fraction of the chips in use. They will also be vastly more expensive too, so volume is going to be vital.
China will achieve autoctonous 5nm this year. Once again, that should not even be possible but everything is pointing to just that. Everyone said it would take years for that to happen. They said the same for 7nm, though.
Apple is currently suffering in China, if the steep discounts there are anything to go by. The reason is said to be mainly because of Huawei. How is that possible if they are currently using a 7nm node?
Obviously there is more to phones than the nodes used to produce the cores inside them!
IMO. One that is shared by more than me, the US should have 'out-competed' China. 'Run faster' is the term that is banded about. It knew full well that China was a rising power. That is now a reality. It is now also a multi polar world but the US is having trouble accepting it.
Just as China's rise was inevitable, we can only hope US acceptance of it is inevitable.
While TSMC may currently be a key player, I have my doubts on how long it will hold its position. Not because of China in an 'aggressor scenario' but through competition.
The same applies to ASML.
You ride the wave while you have it but no wave lasts forever.
".. owing to the increasing awareness of the economic and geopolitical rationales for de-dollarization and the fact that major developing countries have been at the forefront of the movement, the trend toward further de-dollarization seems unstoppable."
https://internationalbanker.com/finance/the-dollar-still-dominates-but-de-dollarization-is-unstoppable/
" As of March 2024, over half (52.9%) of Chinese payments were settled in RMB while 42.8% were settled in USD. This is double the share from five years previous. According to Goldman Sachs, foreigners’ increased willingness to trade assets denominated in RMB significantly contributed to de-dollarization in favor of China’s currency. Also, early last year, Brazil and Argentina announced that they would begin allowing trade settlements in RMB."
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/sp/hf02-start-of-de-dollarization-chinas-gradual-move-away-from-the-usd/#:~:text=The Start of De-Dollarization: China's Move Away from the,that's no longer the case.
Just random Google results.
You might want to actually attempt to understand the details a bit better before you post. Yeah, countries are attempting de-dollarization, but so far, with little success. Perhaps that reason is that the BRICS economies aren't doing so well; all of them collective are barely larger than the U.S. GDP. Meanwhile, the 2nd largest economy in the world, that would be China, is in economic trouble.
China's rise? I'm old enough to remember when you were certain that China was going to exceed the U.S. GDP.
That isn't going to happen, and that is plainly on Xi.
Your post was in reply to me saying de-dollarisation is underway.
More to the point are the reasons why it is underway.
Please quote me on the China GDP claims. Why is it even so important when both countries take up a huge swathe of global GDP, leaving even the third place well behind?
As you well know, China overtook the US in PPP back in 2016 but I already know you won't accept that as a metric. However, that is irrelevant.
And what do BRICS economies have to do with anything? That is a ridiculous statement.
China is still building out massive critical infrastructure projects everywhere outside China on BRICS/BRI policy (ports, airports, ICT, health, rail... plus the technology tools for managing that infrastructure which is all digital) and staking an ever increasing claim to business in the Middle East.
As for China's rise, well yeah, that was my point, wasn't it? . They've 'risen' and that's why the US is acting like it is in the technology stakes.
Flailing wildly with no real coherent ideas. Just whack-a-mole reactions.
Compare the Obama era China to the Biden era China. See any difference?
So what have US 'counter' China efforts actually achieved?
Literally nothing because China rose just like everyone knew it would.
Yet the price paid in self harm for US semiconductor interests is painfully evident. And it's highly likely that business (billions upon billions) is never coming back.
What changed? Xi became more authoritarian, that's a fact, and later, due to China's COVID response, supply chains began shifting out of China.
What has the U.S. counter to China actually achieved? Well, it hard to state whether China's economy has slowed due to those supply chain shifts, or Xi's policies, but the fact that the U.S. has made re-shoring and friend-shoring the point of its economic policy, while China's growth has slowed seem to indicate a bit of both. China's economy is in very poor shape right now, and with the EU likely having to have tariffs on Chinese EV's, China is going to be very unhappy and retaliate, which is expected.
You still seem to be unaware that Xi's threats of invasion of Taiwan are threats against the global economy, and for a fact, if Xi invades Taiwan, the Global economy will be in shock. That won't be on the U.S. for that happening, it will be on Xi, who likely won't care at that point. How bloody that battle will be is unknown, but it will be the most intense in history, but for a very short time. China will likely not recover, even if it successfully invades Taiwan.
Meanwhile, all of the tech stocks are up, driven by AI, so I don't see that China is of much concern to ASML, et al, especially if the EU follows the U.S. to fund more fabs, which it seems to be inclined to do. What doesn't go to China will go elsewhere, and China will surely be able to build all of the power plants that it needs for all of the older tech that will drive its AI efforts.
Read:
2034: A Novel of the Next World War
Then you no longer care about TSMC.Try to keep things technology focused.
Xi is irrelevant to my point. The point was that US foreign policy saw China (not the leader!) as a rising power. Technology was one of pillars of that rise.
The Pacific Pivot was partly a move to suppress it. Followed up by US tariffs which are ongoing.
China has risen nevertheless.
Policy failed.
Saying 'well we don't know how effective the moves were' or blaming Xi are irrelevant to my point.
In technology (the industrial revolution of this century) sanctions are not working and are doomed to failure. They were from day one.
Just today (Reuters):
"During Nvidia's first quarter earnings on Wednesday, senior executives warned that the company's business in China is "substantially" lower than in the past due to the sanctions.
Nvidia's most advanced AI chip it developed for the China market has got off to a weak start, with abundant supply forcing it to be priced below a rival chip from Chinese tech giant Huawei.
...
Our data centre revenue in China is down significantly from the level prior to the imposition of the new export control restrictions in October
...
Analysts said while Nvidia was trying hard to capture share in a market it cannot afford to lose, the outlook is increasingly uncertain.
...
Nvidia is definitely preparing for the worst in the long term"
https://www.reuters.com/technology/nvidia-cuts-china-prices-huawei-chip-fight-sources-say-2024-05-24/
That is a simple and very current snapshot.
So US semiconductor interests get shot to pieces (by friendly fire) through them not being allowed to do business with their biggest customers. Revenues fall as a result and from those revenues R&D is supposed to lead to the technologies of tomorrow.
Less revenue. Less financing for R&D. Less technology for tomorrow.
Not only that. Your main commercial market (that you are now unable to cater to on competitive terms) begins creating solutions that will directly compete with you in the future!
That's Nvidia's reality and the reality of every single US technology company. They are all in the same leaky boat.
You can 'want to believe' Biden when he says the US can 'out-compete' anyone but deep down, you know its just an election year soundbyte that is going straight into the bin.
After all, this is the same person who so strongly criticised Trump's tariffs on China, saying they only cost American citizens more money. That was pre-election too.
https://news.sky.com/story/the-dual-use-chinese-goods-helping-russias-war-machine-13136786
Good luck on China picking up the pace in technology without the West, and more so, without the revenues from the West to fund the Chinese economy. I'm sure that China will be able to compete using less efficient technology while plugged into an array of additional coal fired power plants, but otherwise, they aren't going to catch up a rate fast enough to make a difference in the semiconductor market.
Yes, there are sales that are not being made into China, but at the same time, AI investment is bringing new sales to Intel, Nvidia, AMD, and yes, even Apple.
Your support of authoritarianism is something I noted when I saw some of your first posts, wrt using facial recognition on Catalonian protestors. What you post today is yet more indication of your lack of moral framework, and I find your support of authoritarians loathsome..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5vWCzfX9MI4
How Xi Jinping’s authoritarianism is killing China’s economy | Business Beyond
That is irrelevant. Forget that in this discussion.
The US does massive business with the country and is fine with that. As per Trump, the US actually wants more business with China!
The US has literally depended on Saudi Arabia for decades. Another authoritarian state (which it literally armed to the teeth!).
The US does NOT have an issue with authoritarian governments just because they are authoritarian.
No. What the real issue is, is if a state can challenge US hegemony. Then the US will use (is using!) any means it can to thwart it.
Authoritarian or not!
And ironically, that makes its actions, well, authoritarian! Breaking UN charter agreements, WTO agreements, not joining the ICC system (for fear of finding itself on the hook multiple times over), etc.
China has largely been non-interventionist. The US has invaded countries at will, effected regime change, caused untold civilian deaths (directly and indirectly), mismanaged both Iraq and Afghanistan...
China is a poodle in comparison.
That is irrelevant here, though.
Like I said earlier. Taiwan is an afterthought for the US. It doesn't give a damn about it. What it cares about is TSMC.
That means technology.
Set aside your political ideas and look at the technology side.
As China has upped it technological capabilities to the point of actively challenging US influence, the US decided that couldn't be allowed and it was clear about it (re-read Barr's speech).
How they are going about it, though, is doing more harm than good to its own interests. That is my point.
US semiconductor interests are literally getting pummeled in the process and all you relentlessly point to is Xi and authoritarianism. Let it go!
Nvidia (and by extension, the US semiconductor industry) is dependent on China for key revenues. Export restrictions are effectively tying its hands behind its back and accelerating China's (already advanced) progress.
Catalonian protestors? Facial recognition technology? I have no idea where you want to go with that but I can guarantee you, wherever it is, you are mistaken. As usual.
You definitely don't know what happened here on the night of September 7th 2017 and why it was called a blow to democracy. Do you know why those Catalan politicians ended up in prison?
Don't bother answering that.
Refocus your thoughts onto the technology side and its impact.