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China Begins Production Of x86 Processors Based On AMD's IP

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458 pointsgscott297 comments

Interesting Move. If you base your assumptions on Peter Zeihan and his Book the Absent Superpower, this would basically be China trying to get as much manufacturing out of the US as possible to force it to be a customer of Chinese goods indefinitely and secure access to the US consumers. In this case it obviously has also strategic value, as China can also securely supply his military with "clean" chips.

I can only recommend watching one of his talks on YT for a different pov regarding world politics: https://youtu.be/feU7HT0x_qU

>If you base your assumptions on Peter Zeihan and his Book the Absent Superpower, this would basically be China trying to get as much manufacturing out of the US as possible to force it to be a customer of Chinese goods indefinitely and secure access to the US consumers.

Why wouldn't they want to do that? Isn't that what any self-respecting country, much less a superpower, would want to work towards to?

If your domestic consumption base is large enough, you can ignore the issues that arise from being dependent on trade.

Germany for example is so export-driven that if our exports drop for just 2% our economy will have major problems. There's nothing scarier than a trade-war for Germany.

>Germany for example is so export-driven that if our exports drop for just 2% our economy will have major problems. There's nothing scarier than a trade-war for Germany.

China is already gunning for Machinery, which I remember represent close to 30% of Germany export. While I don't expect China will ever come close to German quality in the next 10 years, the middle half of market might be up for grab. So unless Germany have some more to export, this drop of 2% might come very very soon.

>If your domestic consumption base is large enough, you can ignore the issues that arise from being dependent on trade.

Some of those issues -- don't you still depend on trade for stuff you don't have? And I don't mean Armanis or exotic foreign fruit, but stuff like raw materials for your industries and such?

That's where Geostrategy comes into play. Trade is an option, but not the only one. China is not really "trading" with Africa, are they?

The continental US has pretty much anything needed, they'd probably need to eat a bit more environmental damage if they wanted to actually extract their rare earths for example.

>China is not really "trading" with Africa, are they?

Well, aren't they? Not goods for goods, but they pay with money and infrastructure for resources like minerals and so on.

At least they are not having them as colonies, plundering, invading with their armies, or directly installing their own lackeys in power, yet -- as most Western powers have done in the 18th, 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries...

Does it really matter whether the boot crushing your throat was made down the street or across the sea?

Yes, it can matter quite alot. There's a reason British colonies faired better post independence than those of other powers. The British typically left behind a better developed local administrative apparatus, legal system, and business network. Japan's colonization of Taiwan followed a similar strategy, and it's a significant reason why Taiwan is today a very modern nation, industrially and politically.

Imperial relationships that too heavily emphasize resource extraction--minerals, labor, etc--leave behind a tinderbox.

China is in some ways the worst of the bunch in this regard because they completely abstain from any local development. Even when China "invests" in a country, they literally ship in their own workers and project managers.[1] The locals don't learn (and have no incentive to learn) how to do mundane stuff like project management and budgeting, and expectations that all government is corrupt are left entirely undiminished. Worse, the initiatives allow corruption on heretofore unheard scale.[2]

I don't mean to equivocate the modern reality with colonialism. Colonial powers inflicted many unforgivable injuries upon local populations. In terms of national autonomy there's simply no comparison between 21st century Chinese imperialism and colonialism. But the aftermath of colonialism has taught us much about the dos and don'ts of national development.

[1] Because Chinese development initiatives in Africa and South Asia are not only about securing resources for China, but also function as employment programs for the Chinese labor underclass.

[2] Look at the 1MDB scandal. $1 billion was originally smuggled out of the country through Saudi Arabian channels. But the paper trail was too obvious. To cover his tracks it appears that Prime Minister Najib took a loan from the Chinese Development Bank, nominally to help pay for a Chinese Belt & Road Initiative-sponsored project. The loan was used to pay 1MDB debts, and the project costs (with a corrupt payment structure) born by the government using the regular budget. In effect the money was laundered after the fact because they did such a poor job of it the first time. It would be much more difficult to hide corruption this way using European, American, and Japanese banks and development programs; and if they did and the public caught wind, there'd be serious repercussions. Indeed, one reason 1MDB was discovered and the country able to hold the PM to account is because of the strong, British-derived technocracy and legal system, and the paper trails that passed through Western banks. The Chinese simply don't care, at any level. Their Belt & Road Initiative is in some ways like dropping fentanyl onto entire countries of heroin addicts.

Where are you getting this idea of english colonies doing well after independence from? I can think of many english colonies that were left very dysfunctional post-empire, and not one where you could say they were left with a solid institutional foundation.

If British colonies had a marginal advantage over, say, French ones - it's probably because the British were generally more reluctant and less capable of getting militarily involved with their affairs after the end of the empire.

There's a loose consensus in the foreign policy community that, relatively speaking, British colonialism was better. And it's backed by various studies. For example,

  This could suggest that the British colonial system, which
  had what Lee calls "greater levels of indirect rule and the
  granting of local-level autonomy to chiefs," was more
  beneficial — or at least less damaging — than the more
  hands-on French model, which involved a "greater level of
  forced labor."

Source: https://foreignpolicy.com/2012/01/03/the-post-colonial-hango...

That, I can sort of see if I squint at it. Obviously, the less the colonizers were involved, the better for everybody.

This, however:

>The British typically left behind a better developed local administrative apparatus, legal system, and business network.

is massively overselling it, I think, and is somewhat contradictory to the point that article is making. If the british left it behind, was it local? Or was it simply that the british did not utterly destroy local organizations in some areas they colonized?

That's not the difference that I wrote of, though.

What I wrote amounts to that what China does in Africa not a "boot crushing their throat".

And that's a nice change after a long period where foreign boots were crushing their throats regularly there in Africa.

Except the deal doesn't always work out well:

http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/sunday-finance/no-more-flight...

At least they are not having them as colonies, plundering, invading...

I totally agree.

But, surely, one can do better than a mere comparison to perpetrators of invasion, enslavement, colonialism, racism and genocide.

Is there a stronger defense and explanation of China's role in Africa?

Okay, I watched the vid. The guy is an über-pessimist. Also, he seems very confident that the position the US has is unassailable, I think he's showing a bias to the place where he's from.

I personally see Russia, China, India, and the EU forcing the US to disengage militarily around the world and I see the US-led unipolar world transforming into a multipolar world with more just global governance.

Is this an optimistic view? Maybe. But there is a chance that because nations have got used to trading rather than warring that nations might actively protect trade routes rather than go to war over resources. If Steven Pinker's last two books are to be believed large-scale great power hot conflicts are a thing of the past.

What I think Trump and Brexit show is that Europe got complacent about the military umbrella the US provides so I think the EU along with India and China and Russia are going to have to start policing the highways and seaways of world trade. That's a scenario pessimist Zeihan fails to imagine – that peace rumbles on and China and India rise to provide counterweights to the US, Russia, and the EU. Where the UK fits into all of this is anybody's guess – they may support the EU from a distance but they may fall even more into the sphere of US power.

Anyway, on the strength of the vid, whatever Zeihan is selling I'm not buying. I think the world is far more complex than great plains, river basins, and demographics.

>Peter Zeihan

Man, he cooks his digits and "facts" haard. What is his point? He pulls out his "revelations" just to advance himself as think tank academician/strategy consultant

Oh the river guy. Every analysis he does relies heavily on the length of inland water ways of a country.

Oh yeah. I asked him why Nigeria is a shithole when it has more rivers than Switzerland and CH is not a shithole; he blocked me.

Might be the case, I stumbled upon him just two weeks ago but didn't find much critic of his work. I'd love to hear any.

FWIW, I watched one of his videos also just 2 weeks ago:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=feU7HT0x_qU

He describes that the US is now in a position to isolate itself and will do so. While I largely would assume that's a valid prediction, I believe he forgot to mention one fact:

The USD will (in the scenario he described) lose a lot of value (why should foreigners hold US debt or currency in his scenario?) to a degree that will lead to major calamities in the US. Those in turn affect the politicians in a way, that usually leads to scapegoating others (the Chinese, the Europeans, the Russians, ...) and possibly even to a distraction war (you know, show strength, punish the others who really deserve it, we all must stand together now, ...).

That whole thing will be a major counterforce to the isolationism he predicts.

The history of his Wikipedia page is interesting – most of the content comes from two accounts flagged as sock puppets:

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Peter_Zeihan&acti...

Ironically, you've given us no facts by which to judge your position.

Double ironic, since it was in response to a statement attributed to that analyst, that is itself self-evident and obvious.

I believe is the latter point that's more important for China. First point is simply true for all nations that are trying to sell something.

Dumb question, who comes up with these smart policies/strategies?

This fits their "Made in China 2025" [1] strategy.

Side note: Chinese leadership seems a bit worried about reaching their self-proclaimed goals. [2]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Made_in_China_2025

[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/26/business/china-trade-cens...

In China, the US or where?

In the US the parties have Think Tanks and hordes of analysts covering these topics.

From what I heard from people at the WEF in China there's committees that are created to work on those topics, staffed meritocratically.

> In the US the parties have Think Tanks and hordes of analysts covering these topics.

You wouldn't say so. Most 'think tanks' seem to do what they can to give the party they work for the ammo they need to get the laws passed they desire, it rarely - if every - seems to be based in a genuine desire to move matters forward.

Well you only get the strategies that lead you to the scenarios you ordered. If your party winning the next election is on the list, the strategy will be influenced by that. Not sure if there's anyone that would pay a think tank for a strategy that achieves world peace by way of destroying the party that ordered it.

So, similar to the networks of think-tanks in the US funded by the powerful to push forward their agendas. Similar oligarchic structure, different labels on the system of record.

I seem to be getting the same impression through all the news and 'research' that have come up over the years. I'd love to be proven wrong though.

Move matters forward in the sense of implementing the party’s preferred ideology.

Though it’s a far cry from the highest good of all conceded.

This is really good for the consumers, since the Chinese are free to innovate instead of waiting for Intel.

Lately they have been coming out with really good things. The Matebook X Pro is amazing and can easily compete with Dells latest offerings, and Deepin Linux 15.6 has its own very modern user interface that makes it very enjoyable to use. Finally a linux distribution with a good sense of western style and performance, and it comes from China of all places.

Its important to be careful of spyware however, but that goes for American software as well. There is plenty of evidence that NSA is spying on everybody, and probably has access to most Americans emails and web habits already.

Well if the US does it too, that's alright then.

Caveat, I'm a European (well a Brit, so almost European) and I'm appalled by US and yes British violations of privacy and surveillance overreach. Things like the threats to cripple or ban private use of strong encryption are appallingly damaging and misguided.

However nations with an elected government accountable to the people doing this stuff is one thing. We still have the right and mechanisms to protest and these protests have frequently made a real difference. strong encryption of private communications is till legal and threats to it have gone nowhere. The fact that governments from multiple political groups, in multiple countries have looked at this and decided that the benefits to their electorate outweigh the dangers offers at least some comfort. It's at least possible that they are right, although I would prefer much stronger checks and balances.

Pervasive active harvesting, analysis, intervention, censorship and subsequent punishments of 'private' communication by a totalitarian state, with the open goal of enforcing ideological obedience is not the same thing, and it's not ok. At all.

As democratic as the US is or isn't, its government does not answer to me. China one also doesn't. So, what difference does it make?

If I'm developing some kind on tech, both have been caught using their state agencies to do industrial spying; if I'm active in some push for some non-mainstream activism (like, abolishing copyrights), both have done out of jurisdiction enforcement of their policies, and there isn't much difference on means either.

Personally, I'd imagine China spying on me is a smaller risk than the US, since my country is more under political influence of the US. But whatever you do, you will have to protect or subject yourself to government spying, thus there isn't any big difference.

> As democratic as the US is or isn't, its government does not answer to me. China one also doesn't. So, what difference does it make?

That seems like an absolutely absurd comparison. The US government is elected, if enough of the population cared about the issue (and who knows, as it gets worse, they might) the government can be held accountable at the ballot box. The same is in no way true in China.

Are you assuming that parent is an American voter? Or that the Americans will protect the rest of the world with their votes - even when it's counter to "American Interests"?

Going with the copyright theme: most American voters would have been happy with the copyright provisions of the trans-atlantic treaty since that increased "shareholder value" that would benefit their 401k's.

The difference is how that surveillance is used. Right now you my not have any personal contact with China, so you might not care what the do to their own citizens. I might have taken the same stance in 2001 before meeting the girl who would later become my wife, who was a Chinese citizen. Since then I’ve travelled to China for work, completely independently of any family connection. A relative, child or grandchild of yours could work in China, marry a Chinese partner. I could go on.

Even aside from that, China is actively exporting their political and economic model all over the world. They are using economic investments and financial grants to companies, institutions and cultural organisations as leverage to stifle criticism, and silence factual reporting of events in China all over the world, and almost certainly in your own country too.

For better or worse (I’d argue worse but that’s irrelevant) China has explicitly stayed out of foreign countries’s politics. That’s one reason why so many dictators and corrupt governments are willing to work with them. China, unlike the US or the EU, has decided the political oppression a country’s leader practices is none of their concerns. They just want to do business.

The US government is somewhat accountable to the public. Their spying agencies however are not. They never have been, have always operated in secret. The public certainly wasn’t consulted on the mass surveillance program.

The mass surveillance was a result of the wide sweeping Patriot Act after 9/11. There has never in US history been a single intrusion into our civil liberties more than the Patriot Act. In specific, Section 215 is what allowed the bulk collection of our records.

Luckily, it has now expired and was not renewed. Some reading on this very controversial section:

https://www.csis.org/analysis/fact-sheet-section-215-usa-pat...

https://www.eff.org/cases/section-215-usa-patriot-act

> The mass surveillance was a result of the wide sweeping Patriot Act after 9/11.

As if the three-letter agencies never tried to cripple encryption before September 11th, 2001...

But it got demonstrably worse afterwards. It went from a quiet thing to a well funded effort, all in the name of "defending 'merica from terrorism". GW Bush and his admin enacted the law which Obama just made worse.

While I personally wasn't around in the 90's, I believe we're yet to see anything on the level of the Clipper chip and nineties' crypto wars in general in the 21st century. Or maybe they've learned to hide their activities better, but that's a bit of a Russell's teapot.

In the Snowden leaks, BULLRUN said they were secretly weakening every cryptosystem they could even in standards. The Core Secrets leak also said the FBI was "compelling" U.S. companies to "SIGINT-enable" their systems in secret. The groups doing this also operate secretly with effective, criminal immunity. Such a situation is way worse than them pushing an obviously-backdoored chip that we could've all spotted and worked around.

Their diffie hellman hack, and router 0 days are everything they wanted out of the clipper chip.

What diffie-hellman hack are you referring to? I'm curious.

https://thehackernews.com/2015/10/nsa-crack-encryption.html

https://weakdh.org/imperfect-forward-secrecy-ccs15.pdf

Basically, for about $100M per prime (probs cheaper now), you can pre compute a big table that you can use to decrypt the diffie hellman exchange. From there you have the negotiated private keys, and you're off to the races for a full, real time decrypt. Since before the Snowden leaks, there wasn't the public thought that the choice of primes for diffie hellman mattered really for it's security, most implementations hardcoded the prime. Something like 92% of the top 1 million https sites were using the same 2 primes, and similar numbers of VPN and SSH implementations were vulnerable too.

So for a one time cost of ~$200m the NSA was able to decrypt the vast majority of internet traffic as long as they caught the diffie hellman exchange at the beginning.

The spying agencies are as accountable as any other agencies. They do what they do at the behest of the public's elected representatives.

Did the Senate ask the CIA to spy on them?

"An internal investigation by the C.I.A. has found that its officers penetrated a computer network used by the Senate Intelligence Committee in preparing its damning report on the C.I.A.’s detention and interrogation program. "

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/08/01/world/senate-intellige...

Congress can vote to get rid of the CIA, or stop them from spying. The CIA exists because of an act of Congress and at the pleasure of Congress, which consists of elected representatives .

You just gave a non-answer to try to avoid answering it. Public agencies such as the CIA are politically armoured against any attempt to get rid of it. These organizations aren't accountable nor are they at the service of the US congress.

The CIA was created by an act of congress, and can be disbanded by an act of congress. That is ultimate accountability. Any other level of accountability is at the will of congress. These are basic facts of how the government works.

Maybe we'll know 50 years after everyone involved is dead. As your own article points out, the senators certainly had the power to hold the CIA accountable. The fact that they did not do so despite making angry noises in public can only be properly responded to with the thinking face emoji.

Exactly. Sure you don't directly elect them but they still face public scrutiny because nobody wants to be the swamp that some senator makes campaign promises to drain. Every few years (not nearly often enough IMO) an agency learns that lesson the hard way.

ICE is currently that swamp, CIA, NSA, FBI, and the VA are still dealing with the fallout of that loss of face.

>accountable

You do know they have the worst dirt on everyone right?

A downside of constantly electing dirty politicians.

but in US, the pressure-flow goes like this:

step1. public pressures on the electorate

step2. electorate pressures on spying agencies

... and step1 is impossible in China

How many people know about driving the cocain economy by the CIA throughout the 70s and 80s? About project Phoenix? MKULTRA? MKULTRA surfaced after 20y in the making. About the torture assistence in the South America? Now? At that time? How is there any eloctorate pressure on the CIA? Until recently not a lot of people even knew about the NSA, I wonder how there could have been electorate pressure. There is only pressure - even if there is - when some small facts surface like Iran–Contra.

No idea why you are being downvoted.

I will add more:

- where is the pressure to close Guantanamo?

- where is the pressure to como clean with the lies leading to the Irak war?

"- where is the pressure to close Guantanamo?"

There is a lot of it. However, it's countered by the pressure of, "Where do we send those people? My constituents don't want them in our district."

I get what you mean, but your word choice is off. The "electorate" means the people represented by the elected official, not he officials themselves. i.e. the electorate is the public

oh thanks for the correction. /s/electorate/gov_officials

step 2 happens behind closed doors. you can not publish what is discussed, you can not even mention that you are dicussing it. there is in fact no guarantee that step2 happens, at all, or that it has ever happened.

Which means theatre is as good as real reform is at satisfying step 1.

> I'm a European (well a Brit, so almost European)

Wow, that Brexit is really taking a toll on your collective psyche, isn't it? :)

https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/isbritaineuropea...

The difference is, I don't think China has the reach the U.S. has, (if you're outside China).

maybe not in software, but in hardware they certainly have a lot of reach

The issue with your comment is that it's absurd. You are complaining about US overreach, so presumably your basis for judgement should be the situation in the UK.

Does the UK do mass-surveillance of it's own and foreign citizens, on UK soil and outside ? Yes [1]

Strong encryption of private communications is NOT legal in the UK. You have to give the police access when they request it and you cannot use the rights you have in the US to avoid giving this access [2]. (unless you consider strong encryption stuff where you have to make all keys available to the police, border guard, gchq, foreign intelligence services, and others still strong encryption. I don't)

The other huge difference is that the UK refuses to be accountable for their mass surveillance afterwards. In the US a big demand is that there is a paper trail for spying, to the person being spied upon. Granted, this may be buried in something like a phone contract for mass-targeting. When they target you specifically, however, you will be notified (afterwards, if the judge so decides, but can even be beforehand), and failure to do this makes the spying illegal. Furthermore, this gives private individuals and companies the option to sue to have the police/FBI/NSA/DEA/... explain themselves (and more generally the US state).

In the UK however:

1) No notification is given to the person being spied upon. The state just does it.

2) There is no recourse. If you were spied upon because a police officer wanted to be your boyfriend and needed to know where your actual boyfried was to beat him up, that's legal. [3] (yes, I realize these guys got fired, however, their actions were ruled legal)

3) If anyone in the UK takes the side of the person being spied upon, whether an internet provider, an application provider (ie. outlook.com/fb/gmail/...), they will be vigorously pursued and punished for that. This is highly illegal.

4) The UK has cooperation treaties (ie. EU treaties, and others) that let police officers in ~70 countries spy on British citizens (I heard that these treaties were used to install a phone tap, yes really, on Angela Merkel's phone. Yes, that Angela Merkel. The utter incompetence is baffling in it's scope. And yes, the guy (an officer) did this as a joke and got fired for it)

So to say I don't understand your criticism here massively understates the situation ... Obviously, as a UK citizen you've got some more local problems to sort out before you criticize the US.

In reality, the UK/EU is pushing these news articles and blowing up cooperation for EXACTLY the opposite reason : they don't want increased privacy for people, they want to further reduce it. They want the US to honor spying requests without respecting US law. They don't want Facebook to ask "can you explain why this is really necessary" when a police officer is asking for the exact location of EU citizens. They don't want to give reasons, and they certainly don't want the person to be told afterwards (and potentially sue them). They want full FB and instagram chat logs in every divorce case. They want ever single email a person ever sent in every commercial dispute. They want every police force and secret service in Europe to have access to every Europeans every mail, immediately, with zero oversight or tracking, and especially without any paper trail available to their victims. THAT's what Europe is fighting for.

THAT's what they're calling "US surveillance overreach".

Well, that, and the fact that the US successfully recorded some rather high level conversations between Merkel and Macron and managed to get caught doing it. In other words, they're incompetent, and angry. And of course, that's the US's fault (despite, of course, that Germany was also caught attempting to bug Obama, and caught having successfully bugged several high level officials before getting caught). And of course, they're angry for Trump getting elected (if you don't believe me, watch this [4], and listen to the questions).

That's why there is this campaign of "the US is horrible on privacy". There is "no cooperation". But, sadly, the US is the champion of privacy in this particular fight.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_surveillance_in_the_Unite...

[2] https://techcrunch.com/2017/09/25/traveler-who-refused-to-gi...

[3] http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1371833/20-police-of...

[4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y70LrlzrkNk

Agreed. The UK is very clearly the least free of all "western" countries. You're only touching on government surveillance. There are other aspects too, like super injunctions.

I say that as someone with a UK passport.

Most of the problems are actually EU-wide, even including a few not-quite-EU countries.

I wonder why this is being downvoted so badly.

Because it's absurd to throw all EU countries into one pot in this regard, especially if you include (and focus on) the UK?

Yeah, for freedom of speech you can simply see where Nazi websites are hosted. It's not the EU.

But the UK really stands out within the EU.

I don't think that is related. A lot of the Nazi websites are hosted via HostKey in Russia. In fact, some of these websites were used to start "white power" rallies in the US just to stir up the hornets nest. I'm a fan of free speech, but am generally against Nazis as a concept. We fought a war over this :)

> I don't think that is related. A lot of the Nazi websites are hosted via HostKey in Russia.

In isolation you're right. To expand it: "If you want to host an anti-{russia,putin,trump,jew,white,black,asian,democracy,kim} 'news' website" (as in against all or some of those) then the US would be the place to do it.

IOW: Good luck with anti-Putin in Russia or Nazi in Germany. The US is your best bet. The US didn't raid news papers forcing journalists to drill holes through their hard drives. The UK did.

> I'm a fan of free speech, but am generally against Nazis as a concept. We fought a war over this :)

We didn't fight a war over someone's right to be a Nazi. They really did start it. And the US didn't really join until it was actually attacked, if you're American. They also didn't fight a war about someone's right to be Japanese (or even their right to believe in the divinity of their emperor).

Chamberlain even thought Nazis could be part of the "peace for our time".

But it is. If people/their government are not prepared to defend what's unpleasant for them, it means they're not entirely dedicated to free speech in Voltaire's sense (“I disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it”). Who knows, what minority opinion will they decide to ban next?

I don't think anyone should be dedicated to Voltaire's sense of free speech, as it's a ludicrously absolutist position. I'm fairly certain that in Voltaire's time, they didn't have coordinated harassment/doxxing campaigns on social media.

You don't think (coordinated) harassment existed before social media?

Please.

(and doxxing is not about expressing your thoughts and ideas)

"You don't think (coordinated) harassment existed before social media?"

Where on earth did I say that? You cannot deny, however, that it is far more prevalent.

And that doesn't stop people from crying "censorship" when people who dox get banned from Twitter.

Here:

> I'm fairly certain that in Voltaire's time, they didn't have coordinated harassment/doxxing campaigns on social media.

Harassment: Existed.

Doxxing: Off topic. Not thoughts and opinions. (Voltaire said "disagree". You don't agree or disagree about someone's home address or real name)

Social media: We live in a more connected world. In a less connected world the same effects would be had in your local community.

> And that doesn't stop people from crying "censorship" when people who dox get banned from Twitter.

Straw man. Also publishing other people's copyrighted works is not censorship.

You're changing the topic. doxxing (which you have now brought up TWICE) has nothing to do with it.

Surveillance with out warrant, but which is not actively used for malign purposes, is a matter of concern. If it could be used for malign purposes it’s very concerning.

China routinely imprisons political subversives. It has among the lowest rates of voluntary organ donors in the world, yet it has one of the largest rates of organ transplants. Those organs come from prisoners, many of them political prisoners. They’re using that surveillance system to identify and incarcerate these people right now.

But hey. The NSA has files on people too so who cares? How many people, have been broken up for spare parts by the NSA or due to overreaching US and British Intelligence? In China it’s probably in the tens to hundreds of thousands. This isn’t ‘very concerning’. It’s horrifying.

EDIT: I think I misunderstood your point. In my post I did specifically call out British involvement in mass surveillance right alongside the US. Or maybe you think I should have called it out more? I’m a bit confused.

> China routinely imprisons political subversives.

And the US and UK, the Netherlands, France and I believe Italy have all been caught protecting police officers that used surveillance powers for that purpose I alluded to (finding boyfriends of a girl a police officer likes and beating them up). Given that list, I feel like we can safely assume that all EU states in fact de-facto allow and protect police officers doing this. Likewise police officers have been caught sporadically using official "legal intercept" tools to "help" in divorce, finding children they abused, finding ex-lovers they had a quarrel with, and the like.

Note: I don't mean just that police officers did that, that's troubling enough by itself that those tools allow that. My main complaint is that the justice system protected those police officers from the consequences of those actions.

The only case where the police seems to find this behavior by their own officers unacceptable is when it's directly used to help a (non-police-officer) criminal. And this is very widespread behavior. It happens in the US (but of course, in the US the victims (eventually) get notified that an officer did that, so you can sue them), it happens in the EU, and in the EU it's completely unchecked and unchallengeable, and "surprisingly" this does not lead to them using it more responsibly.

I find things just baffling. FB/Google/MS/... are all begin vigorously pursued for essentially selling your contact list ... by people who used violence against ISPs/ASPs (like FB/Google/MS/... but not just them) to allow police officers to beat up love rivals and abuse children. And when they got caught doing that ... they immediately rallied behind the criminals (because yes, what those officers did was in fact criminal in almost all cases).

I feel like we've got much bigger problems here than Trump's campaign using contact lists from phones/FB to get more people to vote for him. And I feel like the EU should not be criticizing anyone for being weak on privacy.

Thank you. I'm emigrating from the UK soon and this is one of the many reasons why.

You had me until “the US is a champion of privacy in this particular fight” - I think they are just further behind, and not particularly championing anything privacy related.

Spyware: therein lies the rub. As a civilian I suppose I'm not a target. But if I ever expected to handle classified, sensitive or even just politically compromising material with my device I would never go for a Chinese brand. Sure, the NSA gets its grubby fingers in where it wants.. But China's surveillance engine has the heft, sophistication and motivation to collect all the data it can. Every piece of silicone could be compromised. It's also much more likely to come back and bite you in the form of stolen IP, a visa ban, or online harassment and censorship than US and European surveillance operations.

What modern tech product can you buy that isn't a potato which hasn't, at some stage in manufacture, been through China?

Or, indeed, what modern tech product has not been compromised by the NSA?

People are being a little naive. The US gets its "grubby" hands on every little thing you do, as does China. The question is not, "Which 'grubby' hands do I wish to allow to do my deep body cavity search?" But rather, "Why, exactly, do I need to submit to deep body cavity searches by 'grubby' hands at all?"

I think this claim about the NSA requires actual evidence.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_(surveillance_program)

on HN you get down voted for asking for evidence.

two clains were made:

* that the NSA as compromised all major tech

* the us gets it's grubby hands on all your data

in support of which no evidence was presented. a user kindly linked me to a Wikipedia page on PRISM. However, that program is only ISP data, requires a warrant for domestic purposes.

That's true, but different companies have different standards of manufacturing. Apple, for example, exert extreme control over their products, right down to the silicone. Short of a potato, they offer the highest degree of certainty and protection.

Meanwhile, Qualcomm has several programs running below the OS level that track users "anonymously" in various ways. Such systems can much more easily be co-opted by other parties such as governments.

>As a civilian I suppose I'm not a target

That's a very poor assumption. One very common method is to get some dirt on someone, then blackmail them into getting a job with access to data they want. That doesn't have to be classified data, they're also interested (probably more so) in corporate espionage so they can make products better and cheaper.

Then there's economic disruption. Where you're not a target as an individual, but as a group. E.g. everyone using their device with Verizon's service might have their service go funky, people think it's Verizon and switch. Or certain websites appear slow/unavailable so you buy something from a different one.

Of course there's lots of other ways they could use it to their advantage, but the point is, civilians are very likely to be targets too, for a multitude of reasons.

The difference is China uses spyware to steal from anyone who has access to economically valuable information.

That's every engineer in the world.

US does not seem to steal for economic purposes at all.

Well at least not on the same scale.

"US does not seem to steal for economic purposes at all."

Sorry but they use their intelligence for economic reasons e.g. Airbus contracts. And Snowden leaks also revealed that spying is not only limited to security or political targets...

And to be honest with the current American President who is "hugely" (so yuge you could not believe it) untrustworthy and is certainly not a friend of the other western countries, I can't honestly say that it's very difficult anno 2018 to determine who you can trust.

I found lots of links saying US does 'industrial espionage' but no one says this helps US companies.

> The U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence said it does collect information about economic and financial matters, and terrorist financing. "What we do not do, as we have said many times, is use our foreign intelligence capabilities to steal the trade secrets of foreign companies on behalf of - or give intelligence we collect to - U.S. companies to enhance their international competitiveness or increase their bottom line," it said in a statement

http://money.cnn.com/2015/04/30/news/airbus-germany-nsa-spyi...

China has wide spread state sponsored stealing to help their companies. US does not seem to.

Plenty said that. The problem is that the reports are old with Google et al prioritizing new, ad-generating content. Even if you have links, many of those pages' links will be dead. It's online decay. I just spent an hour trying to find some reports of it from mainstream sources based on pieces of things I remembered. Here's two:

http://articles.baltimoresun.com/1996-11-01/news/1996306048_...

https://nypost.com/2000/07/10/giant-u-s-spy-vacuum-sparks-a-...

A lot of it happened in the Advocacy Center and/or Office of Executive Support. The European Parliament's report on Echelon talks about some of it:

http://www.europarl.europa.eu/EPRS/EPRS_STUDY_538877_Affaire...

Far as that last part, the U.S. does something quite different: a corrupt Congress makes patent and copyright laws so ridiculously strong that they make compatability/competition with big, U.S. companies anywhere from difficult to impossible. The best examples are in smartphone market where Apple tries to block Chinese and Korean products. Microsoft also pulled in about a billion in Android royalties despite not contributing anything to Android's success.

Also note that a lot of Silicon Valley heavyweights started out with big funding from the government, esp DARPA. Kind of similar to state-sponsoring of companies in China. From there, the U.S. companies legally rob or block competition via vaguely-worded, broad, long-lasting patents. Recently, competition blocking API rulings. The Chinese do it via spies and suppliers that iterate fast. I don't see one having moral high ground over the other if they're both doing things that harm the many to benefit a tiny, rich few legally backed with bribery or other corruption.

we'll take his work for it then.

because, you know, the us does not steal trade secrets, which proves that trade secrets are not stolen, by the us.

> US does not seem to steal for economic purposes at all.

Is that a joke? https://www.heise.de/tp/features/Former-CIA-Director-Says-US...

Then you haven't read any of the various books about the CIA. "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man" or "Inside the Company - CIA diary" make a good read. It's only about economic purposes. On a much larger scale than China.

I have not read those books. It sounds the CIA pressuring third world nations to do things not in their economic interests. I don't support that.

That is bad but different to stealing technology using hidden back doors which China reportedly does. I have no evidence either way.

But pressuring third world nations to do things not in their economic interests is not that different to what the One Belt One Road program is doing using loans on uneconomic projects.

Both are bad but US does not seem to steal technology through hacking like China does. I am not sure why

"Both are bad but US does not seem to steal technology through hacking like China does. I am not sure why"

Maybe not through hacking but historical a lot of the industrial revolution that happened in the US was by means of "stealing" British technology, improving on it and don't have any regards for their patents at that time.

There is really some irony somewhere in there.

I have heard that was not state sponsored but people memorizing schematics. I am not sure though. I am interested in learning more.

China does innovate. But it is a nation sponsoring technology stealing on a huge scale. I don't think USA ever did that. I am happy to be proved wrong.

That was 200 to 300 years ago. Nobody alive today was even alive during the industrial revolution, so I would not consider this to be a relevant indication of current activity.

History has a consequence to current activity. Take China. They had to open their borders in 19th century and then saw the British flood the market with opium and thus making millions of addicted chinese. Years of shame that all Chinese still remember, and that's why they don't allow single western companies come and sell any product. They know western companies have a history of abuse and won't let history repeat twice

It's a little hard to say which is worse. Not aware of the 'One Belt One Read' program. But in terms of technology stealing by nature they are mostly stealing from bigger guys and lessening their advantage/power. CIA basically preyed upon the weak, destroy countries stability and makes life hard or impossible for millions.

The strong will always prefer to steal from the weak, those who cannot fight back. I'm not saying Chinese are good or they aren't doing the same or the potential horrendous impact them stealing some powerful technology. But one have to agree in most cases it's not preying upon the weak and defenseless.

Its just an interesting observation really.

Great observation, which links to something I have been trying to communicate for some time: the biggest "sin" of the US is not that it has illegaly invaded countries, or killed civilians, or spied, or stolen. The biggest sin is that it has squandered a huge moral, technological and economical lead, and instead of having lead with it for a fairer and multipolar world, it has, at every opportunity, tried to profit from the relative weakness of the "adversaries".

Now nobody believes in anybody, because when it was needed, principles were traded for strategic advances.

Comment about not posting irrelevant inflammatory statements removed and turned into a submission here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17490716

Feels like that HN link a few weeks ago about how China employs tens of thousands of people to derail online discussions that are critical of China, often strawmanning the U.S., and the E.U. instead.

Right now on HN two of the top five discussions have been derailed in this manner. Curious.

I don't want to derail this even further, just want to offer a different point of view.

I'm a Chinese citizen, and ever since I started reading HN a few years ago, it feels like the media and comments in general are mostly negative towards China, or specifically to Chinese government. In rare occasions you have people trying to offer some different perspectives from someone who lived in China (like 1 out of 10 comments), but a large percentage of them get downvoted. This has not changed at all. So really, if there were a propaganda effort, it had failed miserably. The audience on HN just don't buy pro-China propaganda (for better or worse).

The ironic part about your argument is that whenever there is a positive news about China (like this one), it quickly derails into criticism of China.

There’s some scary things going on in China. The fact you couldn’t have these discussions in China is one and so I see HN as erring I’m the side of skepticism.

"Everyone I don't like is a foreign shill."

> but that goes for American software as well.

Exactly. It's surprising that there's a big hue and cry over Chinese spyware (the Lenovo episode) while the US's NSA has been proven to possess know-how to even spy on leaders of other powerful developed nations, and destabilize a nation's nuclear program with just malware.

You should not trust any nation state that has influence over the corporations that build their processors, but the U.S. at least has a right to privacy built into the constitution that affords its citizens (can corporations) the right to challenge any spyware it might ask a corporation to build into a processor in the courts. That is at least something.

In China, as far as I can tell, anything goes. Corporations work hand in hand with the government, and control of the population through spying and "social scores" is a high and very open priority for the government.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't American constitution apply only to US' citizens? Even in the ideal case, were it to perfectly protect Americans from three-letter agencies' weaseling, it offers absolutely zero guarantees for non-citizens, which is 95% of world population or so. Americans could pressure USG to stop spying on foreigners, but why would they? I don't see any incentive for an average John Doe to do so.

So, overall, there's not that much of a difference for most of the world. One might even argue that for outsiders Chinese relatively stable direction and autocracy is marginally better than American flipping every 8 years, since it allows you to better assess threat profile.

Edit: added a bit about assessing threat.

It's corporations have rights to and if they want to have a global reputation, fighting for users' privacy makes business sense. Or at least so I would hope.

US laws are pretty clear in that foreigners (AKA non-citizens) don't have those rights their Constitution give to their people, so, again, what changes?

The Constitution calls out 2 groups of people: "Citizens", which it uses when referring to voting rights and who can run for office, and "People", which refers to everyone, citizen or not, within the jurisdiction of the US.

> which refers to everyone, citizen or not, within the jurisdiction of the US.

Only a tiny percentage of non-Americans are within the jurisdiction of the US. This means that the vast majority of them are not protected by the constitution - which was the parent's point.

Its actually auite the opposite. It is not surprising that there is a huge outcry when country x has its spyware programs revealed.

That's sheer proof of the effectiveness of US's propaganda machine.

I think it's a difference in belief. Do you prefer American culture and values or Chinese culture and values? Which would you rather protect?

I'll need to think about this a lot more, but I agree Western spying is currently by far the lesser of the two evils.

The ultimate goal of Western spying comes down to these two things:

1. Preventing another 9/11

2. Selling advertising

I mean, there's more than that. The CIA spied on Congressional committee tasked with oversight over the CIA, this became public, and essentially nothing happened in response.

[Citation needed]

From Korea, via Vietnam through Chile and on to Iraq and Afghanistan - I think I'd prefer Chines "soft power" to US foreign policy...

Indeed. Others have argued that although both spy on everything and everyone, at least the US is a (nominal?) democracy, while China is a dictatorship. True enough. But if there are bombs falling on your head, that doesn't matter much. Which of those two counties has invaded dozen of countries over these recent decades? One shouldn't be surprised that someone from South America, Africa, or Asia would prefer China over USA.

> Which of those two counties has invaded dozen of countries over these recent decades?

Ehh... Isn't it both?

Is it? Honest question, I don't remember any China-led interventions, but I can't say that there were none. The US-led wars got a wide coverage, especially in NATO countries which were dragged into them, and the public was focused on them, so I can 100% believe that there were some underreported Chinese actions.

China has a history of invading its neighbors, and was the main disseminator of communism SE Asia, while the URSS focused more on the SW.

Which post ww2 invasion has China done? Granted, like the USA they've been involved as backers in places like Vietnam - but there's a difference between giving support, and invading?

Let's not forget that the US has a history of things like, training, supporting ho chi Minh - only to end up fighting a war against him. Training, supporting Mujahideen - only to end up fighting a war. Supporting Saddam Hussein, only to fight a war. Training, supporting contras and similar forces in Latin America - and is now fighting a shooting war on drugs in these countries...

[ed: as mentioned in a sibling comment - China intervened with troops in Korea - my apologies - I'm afraid the Vietnam War and later conflicts are more fresh in my mind.

https://history.army.mil/brochures/kw-chinter/chinter.htm ]

There was nothing soft about chinese troops fighting for north korea and supporting many decades of the most brutal dictatorship. Or the personnel and materiel support of the khmer rouge while they buried a part of their population alive.

Due to internal strife and catastrophes China was not very active on the international floor in the last century but boy did they step in it when they did.

I think it's cute that you believe that the NSA's purpose is to protect American culture and values.

I don't believe that. If it came down to it, I would rather America be the world super-power over China, normal Americans make their culture, not the NSA, CIA, FBI, etc.

Yes, but the question is "who do you prefer spying on you", not "who do you want as a superpower".

Ultimately, I disagree. If we are using the assumption that information is power, and the purpose of spying is to protect national interests (even if that only means the interests of the government in power), then I'd prefer the US spying on me. They already are and have been for years. It makes me uncomfortable, but if the US stopped spying the Chinese sure as hell wouldn't, and so I can't rightly advocate for less spying from the US.

I call it a necessary evil.

True. All just belief.

Some believe in the West.

Some believe in China.

Some believe in neither.

Some believe in both.

Etc etc etc.

You'll be arguing back and forth forever if you're just arguing belief systems. It's not like math. You can't really ever "prove" one system is "right".

There are some differences in governing style though that go beyond "culture" questions.

I'll be honest, I cannot think of a Western nation equivalent of the "great firewall" in China. I'm also not aware of a national campaign to block VPNs, as seems to be happening in China. I'm not aware of Western nations actively blocking access to foreign websites, either, as China seems to be.

Thus, based on this and other examples, I don't think it's unfair to think that the internet seems quite a bit more tightly controlled in China. This is not to excuse NSA style spying, but first impression is I might not even be allowed to openly talk about Chinese spying on Chinese social media to be honest.

Just a side note, China also prevents access to some Chinese websites outside of China.

The very existence of a great firewall is the hallmark of the failure in their state apparatus to manufacture consent. But of course you can openly talk about Chinese spying on Chinese social media because that much is already rendered irrelevant to the mainstream voice so it's no longer a threat to the state that needs to be contained.

A better question might be, which is more likely to protect you and your loved ones.

does it matter if us culture (those "rights") is just on paper?

I've yet to see a US citizen prosecuted in the US for "hate speech". That seems like more than paper to me.

I don't think either China or America has values worth defending at this point in history.

You realize you just said freedom, equality, and justice aren't worth defending?

America’s values haven’t been freedom, justice or equality for quite a while.

From an outside perspective, America is a horrible country where the rich live in a world of their own and everyone else suffers.

You have the largest population percentage of jailed citizens of any country on earth. Yet one of the smallest percentages of rich people getting convicted for crimes they are indicted with - so there isn’t really justice or equality in your justice system.

Freedom for the most part is true, but you need wealth to utilize it.

Equality is a joke. You’re the only country in the world that has no maternity leave. You’re the only country in the west that has no workers rights on maximum hours, paid vacation or sick leave. You have one of the best healthcare systems in the world for the 1% who can afford it and one of the worst healthcare systems in the world for those who can’t. You have next to no social mobility, you have a terrible educational system and you truly punish unskilled langur. It’s ironic, but America isn’t even in the top 100 as far as the American dream goes because breaking out of the social casts you’re born into is so hard.

Don’t get me wrong, America is a symbol of freedom compared to China and it saddens me that you’re constantly falling behind, but the next 150 years of human history belong to China.

A few things, from a non-US resident.

Freedom isn't the right to do what you want. It's the right to be left to your own devices, within the law. America is the most successful meritocracy in the world. Freedom of endevour, if you will.

Second, equality don't mean everybody is equal. It means given any two people with the same qualifications, experience, work ethic, etc and same risk via statistical analysis, they should have equal opportunity.

Third (and I don't even why you're arguing about employment opportunities), employment is a contract between two people. If somebody can't find a job paying 20 dollars an hour for their service, they should have the right to negotiate a lower wage to justify their employment. A minimum wage of above 20 dollars simply makes that person unemployable. Talking about paid vacation, it's the same thing. If you're worth it then your employer will provide it. If you are not worth it, and it is a right, then too bad you don't get a job. Some US engineers I know get insane amounts of paid leave that I could only dream of (coming from a country with mandated vacation).

America along with China are two of the very few countries left where people get compensated what they're worth. China not so much because of rampant socially accepted bribing, connections, etc.

"American Values", in this context, is used as a bait-and-switch.

The version that you're referencing would have most of the NSA up on the gallows. But it is obviously not the version running our society and being pushed onto the rest of the world.

You would be horrendously surprised if you knew what was going on in other western countries. You go on YouTube to find long form discussions between two (real) intellectuals on important topics and the vast vast majority of them are Americans. There is nobody fighting for western values anywhere else in the western world. Everybody is too scared.

America as it stands today, is the most free country in the world. It may sound grim, and that's because it is.

Even taking your assertions as true - this does not mean that anything done to protect the country is itself in line with those values, or that it cannot actually undermine those values. Such thinking is the general fallacy of power.

I don't indict NSA/USG because I want the US to collapse, but because their behaviors are setting up the collapse.

From the point of view of non-American citizens, your constitution does not matter much. So, for 95% (or 85%, if we talk about China) of people, those rights are meaningless.

Not even sure they are very relevant to Americans either.

I think those are good values. I also don't think those are American values in 2018.

I'd believe you if it weren't for the TSA, rich/poor divide (and subsequent access to education, healthcare, and employment), and daily police shootings of unarmed citizens.

What you are describing is a silly parody of reality. People are spending their lives making these things better, following these values. Politicians struggle to do the best possible. These values are very alive in the US.

Or he said the US does not really value those?

I'm struggling to read your comment without the inference "culture and values " == mass surveillance.

Why do we have to accept that American devices are rooted at all? To me, "American values" means that US citens' communication isn't tapped without a warrant obtained with probable cause of a crime.

Instead it sounds like I'm supposed to choose between a surveillance state.

To be fair, spying on leaders and destabilizing national security threats is their job. They wouldn’t be a very good intelligence agency if they didn’t do that.

The question is more about building in faults intentionally, versus exploiting accidental faults. The later is fair, but the former is very troublesome. I haven’t seen any evidence of the first one. In fact, when such attempts have been made — primarily in encryption — they’ve been routinely shutdown. See Clipper Chip, and most recently NIST coming out against against the very ecliptic curve coefficients it suggested, and then going on to say not to ever trust NIST coefficients in encryption.

Because possessing know-how is not at all like having a vendor-supplied backdoor, and writing malware is something that anyone knows how to do.

Also, It is not true that China never had own from scratch designed "cores." It had not one, but like 4 different families, with one being their own custom ISA (iCube.)

I as a person who meets people from Qinghua university group on 1 in every 3 industry events, I can tell. The one and only reason the huge lump of money was dished on yet another "national" chip is because the "national OS" is still is the pirated Win XP from around 2005. And according to opinion of augustly officials, no performance metrics command merit if the chip can't run it.

There is one individual from Unigroup who is the sole person responsible for bringing "the national chip" to the MofCom on a golden platter. At around 2010, MofCom announced near one hundred grants available for the chip maker who can make that chip. NuFront was one of contenders (The company's sole purpose originally was to contend for that huge grant.) Their meeting with that guy was very short. They went to him to deliver presentation about the product. Midway, he interrupted them and asked this question: "can it run Windows?," and the next words in their conversation were "no" and "bye"

> the "national OS" is still is the pirated Win XP from around 2005

I wonder why China doesn't adopt a national policy of moving to an OS it can control, such as Linux? (Possibly in conjunction with Wine for backward compatibility, or if they want something more Windows-like, maybe ReactOS.)

Whatever limitations an open source OS stack may have, surely with enough funding those limitations could be overcome, and surely the Chinese government can afford to fund that.

They certainly tried. But I can imagine that it all also broke down when "some official" factor kicked it.

First builds of red flag linux were copying WinXP "pixel for pixel," most likely just to prevent yet another official like that asking something like "where is the start button?"

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/02/14/china_shutters_wind...

> But here's where things get tricky. AMD holds a 51 percent stake in HMC, while Tianjin Haiguang Holdings owns 49%. Meanwhile, AMD owns 30% of Hygon and Tianjin Haiguang Holdings owns 70 percent.

> HMC owns the x86 IP and ends up producing the chips, which satisfies the AMD and Intel x86 cross-licensing agreements because the IP remains with a company owned primarily by AMD. But AMD provides the IP with the understanding that the company will use it to design its "own products specifically tailored to the needs of the Chinese server market." That requires quite a bit of maneuvering given the restrictions of AMD's x86 cross-licensing agreement with Intel.

> To stay within the legal boundaries, HMC licenses the IP to Hygon, which designs the x86 chips and then sells the design back to HMC.

> HMC then employs a foundry to fab the end product (likely China Foundries or TSMC). Confusingly, HMC then transfers the chips back to Hygon (the same company that designed them), which then sells the Dhyana processors.

Let's call this what it is -- IP laundering.

I feel this is important, one of the things China has felt they have been held back on is chip production, especially something like the x86 and x64 chips. Now they are good to go on something that is a national priority. They can produce hundreds of thousands of cpu's as many as they want now with no limitations from the US Government since now they can do it locally.

>one of the things China has felt they have been held back on is chip production

Not sure what you mean by held back, As far as we cant tell, ignoring all the JV and shares, this is basically AMD making their EPYC chip in TSMC specially for Chinese Market.

>As far as we cant tell, ignoring all the JV and shares, this is basically AMD making their EPYC chip in TSMC specially for Chinese Market.

Yes, basically Chinese paid near $300m just for the right to put own label on it, and distribution rights.

Shame on me. I read the title and flat out assumed China was stealing the IP.

Yeah, I don't think you can be blamed for that one at all...

one of the things China has felt they have been held back on is chip production

Really? They have a decent MIPS story there, have had for a while.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loongson

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dawning_Information_Industry#D...

They could literally have ignored x86, but they are making the same strategic blunder the UK made in the 1980s

I've been trying to find one on and off for a year. I wonder if they ever made more than a production sample.

It looks more like some kind of threat / showing off than a product that you can buy. Email and phone calls go unanswered regarding buying one of these.

Yes, MIPS is everywhere in all sorts of consumer devices like routers and cheap Android phones/tablets, but it lacks performance, and also compatibility with existing software.

See the second link - they are using MIPS for HPC so it’s performance must be adequate

MIPS had been used in HPC applications in the past. It’s just an ISA, like x86 or ARM, and (these days) has less to do with performance than the CPU architecture and process user to FAB it. Heck, they could even bring back 68k’s and make them work well enough.

Yep, all you need to do is build a massive out-of-order superscalar pipeline with 8 to 10 execution ports and a very large reorder buffer (150 to 200 uops). And idealy toss in hypertreadding.

Intel has done it with x86, IBM have done it with POWER, AMD have done it with x86 (more or less independently to Intel), Sun/Oracle have done it with SPARC, Apple have done it with ARM and most recently it looks like ARM's Cortex A76 is joining the league.

All these designs look very similar, they are basically variatins on the same archtechure with different front ends.

Yes it is important for competition. But this gives x86 another century of survival. Seriously, someone kill x86 please!

If you use any complex tool enough you will rapidly come up against its limitations and bizarre design implementations.

Is there any reason to believe any other architure that tries to be, approximately, everything for everyone would fair any better?

Never underestimate the value of backward compatibility.

Any architecture that wants to take a decent swing at replacing x86 will either have to be x86-compatible or do a good job at emulating it accurately and efficiently.

No it won’t. ARM has already displaced it pretty heavily and will continue to do so.

Is "displaced" the correct term, though?

In mobile devices, ARM has an almost(?)-monopoly indeed, but x86 never was a serious contender in that space to begin with. The same goes for "IoT" devices. In new areas of computing, Intel is just one vendor among many (well, several), and the more the market tends to demand low-power chips, Intel's advantage melts away. In that sense, I agree with you. In HPC, I could see ARM become a serious alternative, because the trend seems to be to delegate the heavy lifting to GPUs, anyway, and the GPU does not care what kind of CPU feeds it, so to speak.

But in the traditional desktop area, if you cannot run Windows and the huge number of third-party applications available there, you might as well give up. And to completely "replace" x86/x64, you have to compete in the desktop market as well.

China have Zhaoxin (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhaoxin) which can produce X86 chips already.

In terms of performance, VIA Nano and EPYC are hardly comparable.

Plus for this manufacturer, the Hygon Dhyana CPUs should work under GNU/Linux:

http://lkml.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/1806.1/00730.html

Seems pretty incredible AMD sold the keys to the kingdom for 1/4th the x86 market for 300millionish.

I'm sure the shenanegans where they get pushed out of china are going to occur after a few years, just like they happened to tons of tech companies before them after they got raided for IP with joint partnerships...

They never had much penetration into China to begin with, maybe they consider it worth it to cut down Intel's influence.

Seems super dangerous if china starts exporting the chips however.

Shows how far AMD has come. They were close to bankruptcy at the time this deal was made. I doubt they would have made the same deal today, but it was life and death issue at the time.

Afaik they get per unit royalties too

I'm sure they pay that.

https://www.npr.org/2018/07/06/626683457/judge-orders-chines...

Until China comes up with a completely "unrelated" chip which does not have to pay royalties. Because, you see, it's a completely unrelated design. Even the name will be different.

There is prior history on this. Companies used to the level of IP enforcement in the USA are in for a big surprise.

We'll see how that works out for them.

What I don't understand, is how or why this model works "only" in China as it stays within the x86 license boundary.

Why hasn't Apple, Microsoft Xbox, Sony PS 4 use this route for their semi custom SoC?

Presumably because, since they control the whole stack, targeting a different architecture is not a significant hurdle, and therefore they can skip having to license the x86 ISA.

I'm guessing because Intel/AMD/VIA don't want to sell it to them.

Xbox One and PS4 use relatively ambitious chips, integrating an AMD multicore x86-64 CPU, with and AMD GPU.

This project seems a good deal more humble: as far as I can tell from the article, they're making single-core 32-bit x86 CPUs, and they aren't touching AMD's GPU solutions.

I imagine it's far easier to get AMD to agree to sign off the licensing agreement given that it doesn't really compete with them. Also it looks far easier to pull off, so there's less reason to have AMD themselves put the work in.

Where did you get the idea that these were single core? It said they were using EPYC designs, which are many-core high end server chips (like Xeon).

Oops, I missed that.

So it's going to be multicore x86-64 then.

The Linux support patch indicates it is equivalent to AMD's family 0x17 (Zen).

As aoeusnth1 points out, I was wrong - it is indeed looking to be much like AMD's own multicore x86-64 chips.

Any idea why consoles are doing this?

Cheaper technology that lasts longer?

Not to go full PC masterrace, but I feel like my outdated computer is always out performing consoles.

Part of the point of consoles is to provide a stable platform, both for developers and for consumers. Their lifetime tends to be around 7 years. Toward the end of that cycle, they're always going to be completely outclassed by gaming PCs.

Because of software optimisation and developer familiarity, every consoles' late-in-cycle titles are far more graphically impressive than the early-in-cycle titles. Compare Halo 1 and Halo 2 for the original Xbox, for instance, or GTA IV and GTA V on the PS3.

Also, games consoles are generally sold at a loss, with the manufacturer more than making up for this by taking a cut from every subsequent game purchase. They don't want their device to cost far more than the competition, and they don't want to drown because of the console being a loss-leader, so they have to strike a balance in how impressive their console hardware is.

I have a sense that what happened to Detroit is about to happen to Silicon Valley. Detroit once had some of the highest median salaries (and home values) in the nation. Then Japan came and decimated what had become a fat and lazy domestic auto industry. China could easily do this to American chip makers, removing a key cornerstone of Silicon Valley's tech leadership.

Meanwhile a lot of newer innovators in areas like software and custom hardware have already gone elsewhere. People are rationally concluding that the benefits of Silicon Valley are outweighed by its insane cost of living and that those same benefits can be obtained in other ways, so they're doing their work elsewhere. I personally know of several startups that maintain fake Silicon Valley mailing addresses while being located in places like Southern California, Denver, Indianapolis, or Nashville. They keep the address for its silly prestige value since if it says "Palo Alto" on your contact page people who aren't knowledgeable think it means you're cutting edge.

Another big benefit of the Bay Area -- namely one of the most interesting cultural environments in the world -- has also been largely priced out and decimated by the local real estate bubble. That eliminates yet another draw. People might pay a lot to live in a fascinating city full of cutting edge culture and interesting people but not to live in a glorified office park.

I see a future SV tech scene that's largely hollowed out and dominated by social media, an industry toward which the public is becoming increasingly hostile as they realize it's all about surveillance and mass manipulation. Chips go to China and newer startups go to cities with saner costs of living.

SV has a good weather, which can keep the real estate bubble.

So do loads of other more affordable places.

As far as I know, China does not possess the newest semiconductor machines. Either it will create these chips via TSMC, or they will use a lower resolution and less powerful chips. I wonder if they can make something competitive.

I'm sure ASML will happily sign them up as a customer.

Up until an American company acquires it like they did with NXP and booking.com.

From the article: "HMC then employs a foundry to fab the end product (likely China Foundries or TSMC)"

Would they ever use TSMC?

Why not, it's on Chinese soil after all ;)

TSMC is a Taiwanese company with a few FABs in Mainland China.

He's making the joke that the PRC's official position is that it owns Taiwan.

Depends on the price they can produce them at I suppose.

This is going to be interesting. Such a partnership will avoid another ZTE-like scenario so this is a win for China. However this is probably going to place AMD in the crosshairs of the US administration. Let's see how this turns out for AMD.

How does this compare to the US Government stopping Intel in 2015? Does this wipe out everything good we have heard from AMD in recent times?

Here is the Linux kernel patch https://patchwork.kernel.org/patch/10455791/

Are they going to hit retail shelves or what? It'll be interesting to see if they do.

I was interested in getting one of those Chinese MIPS machines (based on the 3A2000), but they seem to have all but evaporated.

Whatever happened to Loongson?

Don't know. I have yet to actually see anywhere to buy one. It's all email or phone and I've done both from China and Hong Kong and never got a reply.

They exist; Richard Stallman has one in a laptop.

Backdoor Inside™

This time it is their’s backdoor at least.

Intel AMT and AMD TrustZone were suspected as US intelligence backdoors for long time.

Countries like Russia prohibit use of foreign CPUs in any strategic and military application. I bet China doesn’t run Intel/AMD CPUs in government offices too.

Nobody who knows how AMT or TrustZone works thinks that they are a US intelligence backdoor.

China runs Intel/AMD CPUs in government and so does Russia.

You missed the part about "strategic and military use" for Russia, don't know well about chinese rules.

It's the US who puts sanctions on companies working with foreign military organizations and manufacturers. So, they can't freely buy chips for rockets, for example. But their PCs use Intel chips and Microsoft Windows OS. Microsoft opens their source codes to security services of different nations, including Russia and China. There are of course Linux distributions which are supposed to be used by army, but no one really uses them.

I don't understand your comment. Are you saying the US would never put a backdoor in a chip?

I think we need a Geneva convention on microelectronics and informatics products. We are growing tired of this spy bullshit by the so-called super powers.

They are destroying the information age. We need machines and software we can trust and who don't go around spilling our secrets.

Sadly useless if even the US doesn't sign & ratify such a thing. [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_treaties_unsigned_or_u...

>I think we need a Geneva convention on microelectronics and informatics products.

Such convention is not very useful when you can't detect and prove a violation.

Or you can just buy chips from companies who don't put backdoor in them.

Which would be? I suppose you could run opensparc - but you'd still have to trust the fab..

how can you tell?

If you deploy systems for governments, you're security-conscious enough to realize threats can come from unexpected places, including hardware components, and will implement security measures to minimize these threats. Russia and China see Intel CPUs (and Western network equipment in general) the same way we perceive Dhyanas.

Depends which one you would prefer, one from USA, one from Israel or one from China?

Intel itself is backdoored with the ME firmware. The Chinese will probably have their own backdoors in place.

You mean like Intel ME?

I really don't get why the West is gifting all this technology to a competitor. By now it should be clear that in all cases of these joint ventures the only goal is to eventually clone the product. They have ripoffs of high-speed trains, military equipment and so on. I guess this is also how Japan caught up after WWII, but there the US has still ~60000 soldiers on the ground and significant long term ties.

The thing is "the West" doesn't control individual companies and AMD did it for "a much needed $293 million cash infusion."

Whether this is a good thing in general is debatable. As someone without ownership in AMD/INTC or the Chinese companies it doesn't matter much to me where my gadgets are made and I'm glad the Chinese are prosperous - I was there in the 80s and it was pretty grim then. On the other hand it boosts the military strength of what is something of a pushy big brother style dictatorship.

?? I thought the company was doing well and in no dire need for cash -- thx in part to the late crypto boom. The company's stock jumped x4 from 2016, two years ago.

The deal was made several years ago, they are just starting production now

From a non US citizens point of view, getting spied on by the giant uncle Sam or by Xi's China makes less and less difference if the current trends keep on : USA retracting on nationalistic beliefs while China keeps opening up.

> USA retracting on nationalistic beliefs while China keeps opening up.

I don't see how China is opening up, the situation is even worse than 10 years ago, we used to have an oligarchy of the CCP, now we have a proper dictator instead.

People hoped that China would open up while modernising, so far it has not worked at all.

Taking the devils advocate position, the intuition is that a) lots of money (and lots of middle class money, in particular) combined with b) western culture (movies, games, software) will "open up" China.

Of course, I think this is a silly idea. One proof is how the west seems to be closing up - which implies that money and culture is not such a strong force for "opening up". The thing about China that must change is the nature of power, which remains firmly in the hands of the Communist Party, which is independent of the elected leader. As long as they retain real power, China degenerates into a nation ruled by people not a nation ruled by law.

No, the force that makes a nation "open up" is a culture that invites dissenting voices, and speaks up, loudly, when dissent is stifled anywhere, at home or abroad. We can say, at least until recently, that one of our most unique and valuable qualities was this extreme position on dissent, to not just tolerate it, but encourage it. To open up peacefully, the Communist Party must itself open up to dissent, encourage it within itself, and allow a new, opposition party to establish itself.

But I digress.

You don't need a middle class, you 2-3 generations of middle class. The former dirt farmer turned CEO or medic won't speak up. Poverty and penury are etched into his brain. The kids used to have enough all their love will be the ones rebelling.

The alternative is that everyone starves and you get revolutions, but fewer and fewer people are starving in China and thus the government is legitimized.

"People hoped that China would open up while modernising, so far it has not worked at all."

The same can be said of the US these days. It seems to go backwards for some strange reason.

Please don't post nationalistic flamebait to HN. I'm sure that's not what you intended, but it has predictable effects on HN threads, and they're bad for the site.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

The US is still Democratic, you may not like Trump but enough people did.

USA holds elections, but the system has been gamed enough to convince most people that their votes don't matter.

That's dangerous over the long term. Democracy is more about the will of the population than highly technical rules.

>USA holds elections, but the system has been gamed enough to convince most people that their votes don't matter.

This has been a concern for Americans since the dawn of the country. Things in the early 20th century were worse than they are now.

The US got surprisingly close to a second civil war during that time period.

The issue is large numbers of both Republicans and Democrats feel their votes don't matter. Further, the last civil war is outside of living memory.

It's a black swan event which can easily catch people off guard. Rules put in place by people in power have ~zero impact on how much people trust the system.

> heir votes don't matter.

If you live in California or Texas then you pretty much can't vote for President. Your vote doesn't matter.

What makes me worried is the rise of populist politicians, not only in the US, but also across Europe. It's certainly partly motivated by exactly what you describe. For many people, democracy seems like a theater play performed by the political cast, and not even a good one at that.

highly technical rules

Like the number of voters?

I can't help feeling these complaints wouldn't have been made if the result was different.

I don't like Trump but it seems he did win.

> Like the number of voters?

3 million more voters voted for Clinton but Trump won because of the Electoral College.

The electoral rules are the rules. If you contest the result of an election that hadn’t irregularities, you put yourself in the anti-democratic camp. I’m not an US citizen but I start feeling worried about the democracy in general as more and more one side seems to entitle itself to impose its point of view despite loosing elections or referendum.

Rules are half of the equation the population must feel the rules are reasonable.

Gerrymandering is perhaps the most blatant example, but it's mostly a question of feeling the next election will be fair. If things are down to a coin toss of votes then you can feel it might flip next election. But many US elections don't even have someone running for the opposite party.

I was replying to a comment about the number of voters determining the outcome, pointing out that it did not and that it's not that simple. I know what the Electoral College is and what it's for.

And the existence of the EC surprised the DNC how? The US is a republic for good reasons. Better plan your campaign accordingly.

The EC disenfranchises both Republicans and Democrats. A Texas Republican feels just as useless as a California Republican in the presidential election.

But it's the far from the only issue. Gerrymandering, hanging chad, electronic voting machines / hacking, voter rolls, death of the filibuster, etc are all on various groups minds. Individually they don't mean much but the narrative is just as important as the reality.

Which has been in place since the Constitution was ratified.

This sour grapes whining by Clinton supporters is like a baseball team complaining that they lost a baseball game because while they scored fewer runs they had more hits and fewer errors. Except that's not how baseball games are scored, and that's known from the beginning of the game.

(Just to get it out of my way: I did not vote for Trump, and I've never supported the man. I'm just sick of people complaining about losing by the rules of the system they knew was in place when they started.)

I was replying to a comment that implied that Trump's win was based on having the greatest number of votes when he did not.

The US is an oligarchy.

If the US were an oligarchy, Trump would have never been elected. The most powerful people in the US were nearly universally against his election, including the most powerful billionaires, politicians, media and political families - on both sides of the aisle.

In fact the same can't be said about the US these days. The US is liberalizing and I can back that statement up.

To prove me wrong, all you have to do is list the large number of rights that have been revoked in the US. You'll need a lot of substantial counter examples for these:

The US is legalizing marijuana and many states are working on lessening the criminalization of drugs broadly.

The US legalized gay marriage. Meanwhile it's still illegal in 85-90% of the world and 2/3 of Europe.

The US prison population has been declining for about eight years and will be cut in half over 20 years at the current rate. The US has very broad bi-partisan support for ending its mass incarceration policies and ending minimum sentencing laws. For one example, the rate of African American female imprisonment has fallen by 50% since 1999.

The US welfare state has expanded considerably over the last 20 years and is now among the most generous. It's at the OECD average in terms of GDP spent on its welfare state. That puts it in an elite class of about the best 18 nations based on its current scoring.

Criticism about NSA spying is entirely legitimate. However, the US is still actively restricting spying & tracking abuses through curtailing the police. The Supreme Court just ruled on a big one in favor of the people, with more favorable rulings plausibly to come. [1] The Bill of Rights is still working. De facto no such restraints exist at all in China.

If all you've got are issues about immigration, that isn't going to go very far when you compare the actual US immigration policies with those of nearly all of the developed world, which overwhelmingly use variations of merit systems to only allow in certain skill classes of people by points. A further group of the developed world isn't open to much immigration at all (that now includes all of Scandinavia).

[1] https://www.npr.org/2018/06/22/605007387/supreme-court-rules...

All true, and in some sense and cases, the speed at which these changes happened was amazing. On the other hand, the current political climate seems different. Roe vs Wade might go away. The welfare state is certainly under attack. Gay rights too, see military.

Maybe this is just the swinging back after a strong push in one direction, and on average we continue on. Or maybe it's a longer-term change of direction. We will see.

Judging from everyday reality, I would not say that Scandinavia is somehow not open (i.e. closed) for immigration.

(Could not edit)

% of foreign born in Sweden is highest in Scandinavia, 17%. In Finland it is lowest, slighly over 5%.

In the USA the number is roughly 13%.

Pretty much everything you listed made solid progress during Obama's tenure. I think people are concerned about the current direction.

Sessions rescinded an Obama-era rule on marijuana enforcement[1].

It's entirely likely that abortion will be outlawed in 20 states within 18 months.

Income and wealth inequality continued to rise during Obama's tenure and last year's tax cut shows no sign of that stopping. One could argue that the inequality is natural in a liberal environment, but one can also argue that the rules are stacked in favor of the wealthy.

Quite a few states are making it harder for people to vote, especially those who have lower incomes or belong to minority groups.

Partisan gerrymandering (by both parties!) subvert the will of the people.

Finally, false attacks on legitimate press as "fake news" and baldfaced lying by government representatives subvert the press's ability to be a watchdog on the government. That said, the press still has its Constitutional freedom, so I don't want to overstate this point.

Regarding prison population which "has been declining for about eight years" and the US's broad support for ending minimum sentencing... that applied under Obama. That does not apply so much under the current Attorney General[2].

I think there is good reason to believe that the US is becoming less liberal (in the liberal democracy sense) since January 2017.

(Also, to be totally clear, I'm not saying it's anything like the dictatorship that has arisen in China today!)

[1]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/sessi... [2]: https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/7/11/15955570/j...

[flagged]

A pretty thorough description but don't forget about perception. The US is bigger than all the other developed countries (in terms of population and natural resources). It's GDP is also higher than that of 80% of the other developed countries.

Everyone expects the US to lead.

[flagged]

Give them conflicting information, so when they amalgamate Moloch will be left confused.

As another non-US citizen, I can tell you this sentiment definitely didn't start with Trump.

There is no east, there is no west. There are now only transnational corporate interests which view nation states as geographic monopolies to be both exploited and transcended.

Been meddling with the primary forces of nature again, Mr. Beale?

Well, I suppose the phrasing is a touch melodramatic.

You say ripoff, but its more like improvements of products. Everybody steals ideas from everybody, thats how it works. Otherwise cars would only exist in the US.

Japan was winning that war until US dropped the atomic bombs and killed a lot of innocent people. Im not sure how that is something to be proud of.

Between 1937 and 1945 Japan invaded china massacring hundreds of thousands of civilians and joined a monster in his murderous crusade to take over the world in the hopes that some of the spoils would stick to their hands.

In the course of the war 50-80 million died. Their people consistently showed a lack of humanity and even basic decency. War crimes were common. They ate our gis.

In Unit 731 their biological warfare research unit they performed experiments as horrifying as Mengle on innocent chinese civilians and prisoners of war.

https://unit731.org/

These people were infected with biological agents and many were dissected screaming while they were alive.

The Japanese must ultimately be accountable for their leaders actions as we are. It would be morally wrong to kill unnecessarily but if blood had to be shed to stop the spread of evil I think it was just that it was the blood of the guilty.

I find it interesting that nationalists from your nation have convinced you Japan was winning they weren't they were being driven back and the war was coming to their shores.

They were by dint of inferior production capabilities and resources doomed to lose the war by the time the bombs were dropped although it is certain they would have fought furiously civilian and military alike.

The big question in fact is was dropping the bomb necessary or would it have been feasible to secure japans surrender without spending more blood from both sides than would be lost in the bombing.

Is this place history class or CPU article comment?

Both! And much more, that's the beauty of comment sections.

'The Japanese must ultimately be accountable for their leaders actions as we are.'

Who is 'we'? Most if not all countries have done horrible things to people, directly or by sponsoring others. Are you accountable for those done in your name?

I meant that it was just to drop the bomb to stop the war even at the cost of Japanese casualties because they are at fault for letting their nation be led to war.

This doesn't excuse inflicting unneeded violence but it does mean that it is more just that the aggressor bear the cost.

> Otherwise cars would only exist in the US.

In France or in Germany: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_automobile

I don't know how you are modded down because the irony is that the whole situation is historical speaking very hypocritical.

Was it not for Samuel Slater that "stole" British inventions without regards for patents and improved further on them, he would not be regarded as "the father of the American Industrial Revolution".

>Japan was winning that war until US dropped the atomic bombs and killed a lot of innocent people.

That's some odd definition of winning: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_1rzp2YVxQ

I'm still curious to see if you would like to argue that that Japan was winning OR that the bombing was unjust. It would be interesting because the former is utterly unsupportable and the latter argument always rests on abandoning your first point and arguing that Japan would have surrendered without blowing up its cities.

If you wish to hold onto the fiction that Japan was winning you are literally arguing that an evil empire allied with the nazis taking over the world is a superior outcome compared to Japan losing the population of 2 cities.

> Japan was winning that war until US dropped the atomic bombs

Got a source? I’m on mobile so it’s difficult to provide links, but a quick Google search seems to disagree.

It is bullshit. At the time of the bombs it had long been clear that Japan was losing. The only question was how drawn-out the end game would be.

Ever heard of those pesky Daimler and Benz guys? Or that Otto dude? They weren't American :))))

If you think Japan was winning that war before the atomic bomb was dropped you need some serious history lessons.

Summary: AMD has found a legal loophole to sell out critical x86 chip design IP to the Chinese for a cash infusion of 300+ million. Expect to see knock off copies emerge and AMD ultimately get pushed out of China in favor a local company that has their IP in hand. Their executives are either stupidly naive and in for a major shock, or plain greedy/desperate and willing to sell out the West for 300 million cash. If so then its IP laundering in my opinion. I hope the US gov regulators roast them for this. I plan to avoid their products as much as possible now.

How long till EYPK chips show up on AliExpress?

What motherboards are available for these? Anyone have URLs for manufacturer datasheets, etc?

Or are they pin and chipset compatible with existing ryzen boards?

I wonder if China's chips have something like Intel Management Engine?

This will definitely be part of the us Trade War going on.

i wonder if they'll make multi socket motherboards. as manufacturers struggle to go smaller they could spread the thermal load over multiple chips.

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