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U. S. Sanctions on Huawei to ease?

Fred Chen

Moderator

According to Bloomberg, The U.S. Commerce Department has decided to come up with some so-called new “standards” which would allow even restricted companies to access U.S.-made technologies. However, there’s a direct catch, that these companies must have to obey what these standards decided by the commerce department.
 
Omg. Back to selling tech to chinese (and possibly russian) military?

Personally, I think cutting of semiconductors to any country is an act of war, not unlike cutting of gas or oil or other life sustaining resources. If you back any country or dictator into a corner always expect them to come out fighting. The US is playing a dangerous game here and today I don't think we have the political strength to back up our actions. Just my opinion of course.
 
Personally, I think cutting of semiconductors to any country is an act of war, not unlike cutting of gas or oil or other life sustaining resources. If you back any country or dictator into a corner always expect them to come out fighting. The US is playing a dangerous game here and today I don't think we have the political strength to back up our actions. Just my opinion of course.
There's no doubt the US is well into both a cold war with China while approaching a hot war with Russia.

Though this definitely isn't one sided - consistent theft of IP without repercussions and constant attack on US IT and Defense infrastructure electronically, doesn't exactly constitute benevolent behavior.

In either case - 100% agree, this is only going to make it worse.
 
Personally, I think cutting of semiconductors to any country is an act of war, not unlike cutting of gas or oil or other life sustaining resources. If you back any country or dictator into a corner always expect them to come out fighting. The US is playing a dangerous game here and today I don't think we have the political strength to back up our actions. Just my opinion of course.
I agree. An analogous situation with an oil embargo is what drove the Japanese to attack the US in 1941.

I don't understand what the Chinese government is looking to realistically accomplish. They have built an export-driven economy, and about one third of all of their exports go to the US, Europe/UK, Japan, and South Korea, countries which are unlikely to align with China in the event of a conflict. I am not a global strategist, but if I were Xi, I'd be looking expand China's wealth, power, and influence by just following the course they were on in 2019. Globalization was humming along, and China was the biggest beneficiary of that trend. In 30 years they would easily be the dominant world power. The situation they're creating, aligning the US political class against them, looks irrational. Why fight, when you can play the economic game and likely win? The Chinese government must understand the strategic situation better than I do; perhaps they see an upcoming strategic advantage the US and its allies will have that must be averted at great cost. Or perhaps the motivations are just historical impact and personal glory.

The Axis powers in WWII under-estimated the ability of the US to produce enough war material for a two-hemisphere war, and completely under-estimated the Russians' willingness to fight on against superior forces at any cost. (Reminds me of the Russians' current dilemma with Ukraine.) I think the Chinese are, perhaps, underestimating the impact of the many millions of people alive in western countries whose parents were alive in WWII, either as soldiers or suffering civilians, and these direct descendants are likely to support very aggressive political positions against dictators who have world rule in mind. A dangerous situation indeed.
 
Personally, I think cutting of semiconductors to any country is an act of war, not unlike cutting of gas or oil or other life sustaining resources. If you back any country or dictator into a corner always expect them to come out fighting. The US is playing a dangerous game here and today I don't think we have the political strength to back up our actions. Just my opinion of course.

One should not be ridiculed for not enriching their adversary.
 
One should not be ridiculed for not enriching their adversary.

Are you saying sacrifice the many for the needs of a select few? Or are you saying semiconductors are not critical to sustaining life? The Chinese people are not our adversary. Why should they suffer? We are talking about 1.4B innocent people here.
 
Are you saying sacrifice the many for the needs of a select few?
Being altruistic when national security is at stake is not a winning strategy.
Or are you saying semiconductors are not critical to sustaining life?
State of the art semiconductors are provably not critical for sustaining life. China could easily sustain life with, say, 90nm process. Other countries did for several years.
The Chinese people are not our adversary. Why should they suffer? We are talking about 1.4B innocent people here.
Too altruistic for my taste, Daniel. It is the way of the world comprised of nations that people ruled by certain governments will suffer because of the policies of those governments. I look at the situation from a different perspective. Would I prefer that about a billion people living in countries which largely follow the rule of law between nations suffer economically and be insecure so that 1.4 billion people living in a nation that breaks those laws don't have to? No, I would not.
 
Are you saying sacrifice the many for the needs of a select few? Or are you saying semiconductors are not critical to sustaining life? The Chinese people are not our adversary. Why should they suffer? We are talking about 1.4B innocent people here.

Are saying that China does not fabricate their own semiconductors?
 
Being altruistic when national security is at stake is not a winning strategy.

State of the art semiconductors are provably not critical for sustaining life. China could easily sustain life with, say, 90nm process. Other countries did for several years.

Too altruistic for my taste, Daniel. It is the way of the world comprised of nations that people ruled by certain governments will suffer because of the policies of those governments. I look at the situation from a different perspective. Would I prefer that about a billion people living in countries which largely follow the rule of law between nations suffer economically and be insecure so that 1.4 billion people living in a nation that breaks those laws don't have to? No, I would not.

National security is at stake? Yes we have done a great job in securing our secrets :ROFLMAO:. I spent four years on a classified project only to read about it in a Tom Clancy novel with chilling detail. Causing a war now to protect national security is the strategy?

And what process node is required to sustain life in the future but not too advanced to protect our national security? Who is going to make this call? A politician up for re-election? A General who is fighting for funding? Or people who have no idea what a nanometer really is?

AI is the best advanced process node argument. AI will never have enough processing speed nor memory, it will always need more. AI certainly has military applications but AI will also touch just about every chip we make and some of those will in fact sustain life.

SMIC has 14nm in HVM with 7nm and 5nm on the way and I assure you the Chinese military has first dibs. And if China needs more advanced chips they can take Taiwan.

As history has shown sanctions/embargos cause wars. Why is this any different?
 
National security is at stake? Yes we have done a great job in securing our secrets :ROFLMAO:. I spent four years on a classified project only to read about it in a Tom Clancy novel with chilling detail. Causing a war now to protect national security is the strategy?
What? MHD? A technology invented in the 1800s? National security is the second most popular reason to cause a war. Of course the first most popular reason is to advance national power. Exactly what would you recommend, Daniel? What other lever can be pulled with the Chinese government? Diplomacy? That has certainly failed. Inclusion, like adding them to the WTO? Certainly ineffective. If you have a better plan than just submission, I'd like to hear about it.
And what process node is required to sustain life in the future but not too advanced to protect our national security?
I don't understand your "sustain life" argument. The Chinese could sustain life, if I understand your use of the term, on 1990s technology, which they have clearly far exceeded already.

I suppose I could argue that semiconductors are not a deciding factor in national security. Arguably, the Chinese have already exceeded the rest of the world in the construction of exascale supercomputers. I've read papers arguing that they are at least at parity in AI research, and the availability of open source software and hardware, and stealing trade secrets through cybercrime, means that just hobbling their [official] access to high-end semiconductors is probably futile already. And limiting their access to fab tools seems to hurt US companies as much as Huawei. Okay, even if we assume all of that for the point of discussion, what is the strategy for dealing with bad behavior? A nasty speech at the UN? Tariffs? Keeping them from participating in the Olympics? The toolbox looks pretty empty.
Who is going to make this call? A politician up for re-election? A General who is fighting for funds? Or people who have no idea what a nanometer really is? AI is the best advanced process node argument. AI will never have enough processing speed nor memory, it will always need more. AI certainly has military applications but AI will also touch just about every chip we make and some of those will in fact sustain life.
I've previously argued in this forum that US politicians are mostly technical know-nothings, so that is not a point of contention here. I think US politicians believe they have to "do something" to contain the Chinese government, and they can't find another point of leverage. As for AI and ML, military applications just might be the most valuable use models. There are some medical applications in which AI beats humans, like finding tumors in an image compared to pathologists, but it is difficult to think of successful examples that are "life sustaining". AI in weather forecasts, for example, is not impressive. Self-driving cars? Maybe, that's a stretch, but hardly life-sustaining.
SMIC has 14nm in HVM with 7nm and 5nm on the way and I assure you the Chinese military has first dibs. And if China needs more advanced chips they can take Taiwan.
Taking Taiwan reduces their access, it wouldn't increase it.
As history has shown sanctions/embargos cause wars.
We agree, but the alternative is to encourage a bad actor to run unimpeded. Politicians can't do that and stay in office very long in a democracy.
 
Minor comment on the term "national security". It can mean a whole lot of things.

Its not only secrets and blueprints but can be synonymous with energy security, resource security (raw materials, etc), labor security (to keep the economy going).. basically anything that enables self sufficiency for both the population and military.

I don't think lack of 7nm for China or even access to TSMC really represents a significant threat to any of those things, though it's still potentially an act of war by some definitions.
 
What other lever can be pulled with the Chinese government? Diplomacy? That has certainly failed. Inclusion, like adding them to the WTO? Certainly ineffective. If you have a better plan than just submission, I'd like to hear about it.

Good question. How about economic? Stop buying bad actor's products. The American consumer has more power than politicians. The US buys $400B+ products from China every year funding their military spending, right? That's okay? EU sanctions Russia over Ukraine yet still buys their gas? Put your money where your mouth is as they say.

And yes we can all live without semiconductors. How about you start and show us how? :LOL: If we outlawed Starbucks in the US there would be riots in the streets, never mind the latest iProducts. Look at China 30 years ago before semiconductor proliferation. I was there and could not believe my eyes.

How about this: Semiconductors are critical to sustaining modern life
 
Good question. How about economic? Stop buying bad actor's products. The American consumer has more power than politicians. The US buys $400B+ products from China every year funding their military spending, right? That's okay? EU sanctions Russia over Ukraine yet still buys their gas? Put your money where your mouth is as they say.
I agree. And we do patronize products from other countries, but we have income and wealth significantly higher than the US medians, so while a $180 pair of US-made New Balance running shoes doesn't faze us much, expecting most Americans to follow our lead is unrealistic. And we also understand that our decisions mostly just make us feel better, and have no effect on China's policy behavior. I also tend to think that the current US trend to re-shoring production and some supply chains may increase supply chain reliability, but is also likely to raise consumer prices, and that won't be popular.
And yes we can all live without semiconductors. How about you start and show us how? :LOL:
We have a car with a manual transmission. Does that count? ;)
If we outlawed Starbucks in the US there would be riots in the streets, never mind the latest iProducts. Look at China 30 years ago before semiconductor proliferation. I was there and could not believe my eyes.

How about this: Semiconductors are critical to sustaining modern life
How about: Semiconductors are critical to enhancing modern life.
 
Commerce department is about commerce, I think they are doing commerce: Make rules of the road that everyone can follow without facing arbitrary and ever changing restrictions. We’re supposed to be the rule of law country.
 
Commerce department is about commerce, I think they are doing commerce: Make rules of the road that everyone can follow without facing arbitrary and ever changing restrictions. We’re supposed to be the rule of law country.
IMO, it is not a question of the rule of law. It is a question of what actions we should take when those rules are ignored, benefitting the transgressor. The rule of law for individuals is easy, relatively speaking, to enforce and deter transgression. For nations, especially with interlocking economies, well, I'm not seeing that punishment is practical. Daniel has a point when he said that the best remedy is economic disengagement.
 
I agree. An analogous situation with an oil embargo is what drove the Japanese to attack the US in 1941.

I don't understand what the Chinese government is looking to realistically accomplish. They have built an export-driven economy, and about one third of all of their exports go to the US, Europe/UK, Japan, and South Korea, countries which are unlikely to align with China in the event of a conflict. I am not a global strategist, but if I were Xi, I'd be looking expand China's wealth, power, and influence by just following the course they were on in 2019. Globalization was humming along, and China was the biggest beneficiary of that trend. In 30 years they would easily be the dominant world power. The situation they're creating, aligning the US political class against them, looks irrational. Why fight, when you can play the economic game and likely win? The Chinese government must understand the strategic situation better than I do; perhaps they see an upcoming strategic advantage the US and its allies will have that must be averted at great cost. Or perhaps the motivations are just historical impact and personal glory.

The Axis powers in WWII under-estimated the ability of the US to produce enough war material for a two-hemisphere war, and completely under-estimated the Russians' willingness to fight on against superior forces at any cost. (Reminds me of the Russians' current dilemma with Ukraine.) I think the Chinese are, perhaps, underestimating the impact of the many millions of people alive in western countries whose parents were alive in WWII, either as soldiers or suffering civilians, and these direct descendants are likely to support very aggressive political positions against dictators who have world rule in mind. A dangerous situation indeed.
The objective of the CCP is to retain power.

If what they do helps the people of China then good news for the people , if it doesnt benefit the people that is of no concern to the CCP
 
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