US blocks shipments of semiconductors to Huawei
cnbc.com
cnbc.com
[0] https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/chinese-telecommunications-co...
[1] https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/chinese-telecommunications-de...
Whatever happened to arresting Huawei’s Chief Financial Officer Wanzhou Meng? Was she ever extradited from Canada after being captured in Vancouver, BC?
a) The deal china made with US companies is bring us your technology and we will manufacture for you cheaply.
b) Giving technology as part of a deal and then retroactively calling it stealing is, well, strange.
c) America because what it was because it "stole" technology from Europe during the industrial revolution.
American companies understood what they were getting into and what the deals were and took them. China didn't force US companies to make those deals.
Most technological invention is paid for by the US government investment. Name any high technology and it's lineage points back to some government grant or purchase agreement.
Companies that use these inventions and innovate on top to bring them to market are themselves using technology we paid for. But we don't call that "stealing". Do you think they care that China also gets them?
Knowledge should be shared and free anyway.
A falsehood. The US was one of the primary innovators during the industrial revolution, along with Germany, Britain and France. In the oil/mining, steel, railroad/transport, electricity, building, manufacturing, automobile, farming and communication segments the US held its own when it came to invention in the 1870-1930 era. It doesn't take very long to canvas the major industrial segments and point to various large US contributions.
The recent claim that the US stole all of its industrial revolution era technology, is an empty defamation that you mostly only see on sites like Reddit as a propaganda angle, and it's always unsupported in argument.
> Was she ever extradited from Canada after being captured in Vancouver, BC?
No, it's still a giant political mess. The Canadian government wishes they had never gotten involved - they should have just let her slip. With the US and China, Canada is between a rock and a hard place.
Source on this? I certainly haven't heard the government say anything to this effect. As a Canadian I certainly do not wish we had "just let her slip". We're a country of laws. We should follow those laws, not just give in to pressure from China because they're big, mean, and scary.
I'm basing this on the government's paralysis in this case.
> We're a country of laws.
Canada's system of laws is being abused by the Trump administration, which has made no secret of its desire to use Meng Wanzhou as a bargaining chip in the trade war. Allowing the Canadian extradition treaty with the US to be abused for political ends was not wise. There were smarter ways to deal with the request. Hong Kong's reaction to the US extradition request for Snowden (please resubmit the paperwork while we let him fly out of our jurisdiction) would have been a good model to follow.
> We should follow those laws, not just give in to pressure from China because they're big, mean, and scary.
The possible US reaction to not extraditing Meng Wanzhou would be just as - if not more - scary. Canada is extremely dependent on trade with the US. That's why the government arrested Meng Wanzhou, and why it is finding it so difficult to acknowledge the obvious: that this is a politically motivated prosecution that does not fall under the terms of the extradition treaty.
What paralysis? It's moving through the court system at the court systems typical pace. (Which is slower than I would like... but that's just a general comment about our court system)
> Canada's system of laws is being abused by the Trump administration
This is primarily an argument for amending our laws in response to this case, not ignoring them in this case. Admittedly it's partially an argument that might be raised to say that the laws do not support extradition in this case, but of course at the time we detained Meng Wanzhou this was nowhere near as clear, and her lawyers are more then capable of making this argument to the court.
> The possible US reaction to not extraditing Meng Wanzhou would be just as - if not more - scary.
Indeed, and we should pay as little attention to that as we do to China's threats and retaliatory arrests. I have complete faith that our courts are paying as little attention to it.
> This is primarily an argument for amending our laws in response to this case, not ignoring them in this case.
The political exception to extradition quite obviously applies here. This is a standard clause in extradition treaties. The thing is, the Canadian government is afraid to use this clause for political reasons - fear of retaliation from the Trump administration.
Next you'll be telling us that a police officer would never lie on the stand.
Not requiring trust is the entire reason why we have such a public court process.
I suspect we have very different opinions on how frequently police lie on the stand.
Really though the crux of the matter is wether Meng is held due to a real criminality as per Canadian/US law, or is being held as a political move, and signals from both US and Canadian administration has been confusing in this regard. Some statements from US and administrations give a feeling that she's being held for political reasons.
"Several well-known Canadians, including former prime minister Jean Chrétien and former foreign minister John Manley, have suggested that Canada let Meng go or orchestrate a “prisoner exchange” with China."
From WaPo on this issue:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/extraditio...
It is embarrassing that we haven’t banned Huawei products in Canada yet.
1. https://www.marketwatch.com/story/nortel-files-for-bankruptc...
2. https://www.reuters.com/article/amp/idUSN1936265020080619
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/former-nortel-exec-warns-ag...
https://aragonresearch.com/cyber-war-flashback-remembering-t...
Chinese government hacking and Huawei hacking are one and the same as the end result is Huawei benefitting from the stolen information.
Had Nortel not been hacked they wouldn't have had to deal with their competitors ripping off their products and out manoeuvring them in their business deals.
The article I linked to cites an ex senior security advisor at Nortel stating that the hacking dated back to 2000, before the tech bubble burst.
Instead of being swept under the rug the demise of Nortel due to hacking should be a case study in why computer security needs to be given a lot more attention even if it is at the expense of convenience.
Nortel expanded massively during the dot-com bubble, and went on a nearly $20 billion acquisition spree that caused it to lose money every quarter for years, even while its stock price was driven up by unrealistic expectations. Then the dot-com bubble burst, at which point these expectations were tempered and people began worrying about Nortel's unprofitability. The stock crashed, raising capital became difficult, demand for Nortel's products (and all telecommunications hardware) plummeted, and the company had to lay off 20% of its workers. At this time, Huawei was a tiny player outside of China. Nortel's major competitor was Cisco.
In 2003, for the first time in years, Nortel finally posted a quarterly profit, but then came under investigation from the SEC over suspicions that it was fudging its numbers (specifically, the accusation was that executives shifted revenue in time in order to meet targets that earned them bonuses). The SEC charged top Nortel executives with fraud, and the case was eventually settled, but Nortel had to change out its top management. Nortel was also sued by shareholders, to whom it had to pay billions of dollars in a settlement. There were layoffs and downsizing throughout this entire period.
To look at that history, and then to claim that hacking that might have helped one of Nortel's several competitors (and not even the largest, by a long shot) is the reason for Nortel's demise just seems completely out of left field to me. To be honest, it sounds like a batter yelling at the ump about being distracted by a fan after he strikes out 0-3.
Here is a quote from one of the articles I linked: >Nortel was once one of the dominant telecom providers globally, but in early 2004, Huawei was caught stealing trade secrets from Nortel. This was proven by Nortel security expert Brian Shields. However, Nortel management had a hand in their own eventual downfall when it outsourced manufacturing to Huawei in the ’90s.
>In the hack, Huawei gained credentials of Nortel executives, including CEO Frank Dunn and Brian McFadden. It then simply stole documents that contained the future product and marketing plans of Nortel.
>The hack went even further than usernames and passwords. It has never been proven, but U.S. sources discovered that it was most likely Huawei that used sophisticated malware to record nearly every phone call that Frank Dunn made. After all of this, Huawei grew and Nortel faded, eventually going bankrupt.
All of the history of some mismanagement or funny accounting means nothing to me. Nortel had a large portfolio of IP that was stolen by China and ended up in the hands of Huawei and then the details of all of the deals they were trying to make to sell equipment were also stolen and used to out manoeuvre them, driving losses and unprofitability.
History has shown us and it keeps showing us principles are great as long as they don't get in the way of business.
For example why was it that Trudeau decided to "just let [it] slip" when it came to the SNC-Lavalin corruption investigation?
https://edition.cnn.com/2019/03/06/americas/canada-politics-...
I have idea if the claims against Huawei are true (many of these details seem to be kept secret) and my suspicion would be they may well have been involved in some sort of industrial espionage.
I'm also sure many companies and countries around the world are also actively engaged in all sorts of espionage.
However, the fact a government has been shown to easily bend it's own laws for the sake of business also means Huawei's claim this is a politically motivated attack can't be so easily dismissed.
I mean, look at the number of contributions to the 5G standards by company in this document, and compare the positions of Huawei, Qualcomm and Cisco: https://www.iplytics.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Who-Lead... (page 9).
What are they supposed to steal there? They literally are defining what 5G is.
No mate, it was a rip-off.
note: I was involved in early tech standardization on 3GPP for many years. yes Huawei contributes a lot. That doesn't mean they also don't steal your shit. They do it because there literally is no way to hold them accountable. You just got to make sure you don't travel to a country that may extradite you to the US. And by the way they are _not_ the leader in 5G. This is constantly parroted propaganda. You can get the same "mature" Tech for 5G from Ericsson, Nokia ... yes Huawei might have more patents but you can only sell what the standard supports in terms of interoperability, and so the constant claim that the only 5G player is Huawei is plain wrong.
[1] obviously we didn't use github to manage our source code.
Friendships among nations is a very relative term.
What you describe is just less attempts by chinese to cover up their tracks, since it doesn't matter that much now.
Right?
I think there are certain lines that aren't supposed to be crossed. You'll notice in the U.S. that Uber and Levandowski were sued by Waymo. Why? Because they stole source code. If "everybody is doing it" surely Waymo would just chalk it up to business as usual right?
I guess you could say, well in the U.S. we enforce certain standards blah blah... exactly. There are certain standards. You can play dirty within certain limits. The U.S. doesn't have a national policy of having companies steal stuff from trading partners. If I, as a U.S. citizen, started hacking into Chinese companies and stealing their source code, set up an operation to call and scam old Chinese ladies out of their life savings, or any of that I'd be in serious shit. In China it's business as usual because the CCP has an unofficial policy of "steal as much as possible and fuck em".
I really don't like when people try and normalize CCP actions or equate their actions with the U.S. or Europe for that matter. It's nonsense and self-hating.
It really depends on how much valuable stuff you got
Imaginary property only worked when all jurisdictions agreed to follow the same rules, and could enforce these rules onto individual actors. Obviously China isn't playing by these rules and has no desire to play by these rules, regardless of any lip service paid. So we can either adjust our own philosophies to better match how the real world operates. Or we can continue trying to force our rules on everyone else, which will end catastrophically when reality finally does catch up.
Yet all of this seems completely unknown in the West, outside of the legal/business community that actually engages with the Chinese IP system. The same comments about there being no IP enforcement in China are made over and over again, completely disregarding the massive changes that have occurred.
Countries always act in what they perceive to be their best interests.
Ergo, there will always be tension over rules that further those interests and rules that act counter to them.
Pharma patents have historically been a major example. Disempowering smaller countries in their negotiations with pharmaceutical companies (via mandatory IP enforcement) tilts the playing field in favor of corporations headquartered in first world countries.
So, even in the most lawful of times (2000s?), it's a constantly shifting landscape.
While China may have ignored more rules than most, the existing rules certainly didn't favor them, and they believed they had the power to ignore them.
We'll see where that ends up.
You can argue that Ericsson and Nokia are equals to Huawei in 5G technology. But Huawei are by far the leaders in 5G equipment sales.
This is the problem with China, they unashamedly want to eat the hand that feeds them. Even in China there’s a saying, somethink like “Don’t wake up the sleepy giant” in reference to the US’ lax policy in dealing with this. They, the Chinese themselves, think that the US is dumb for letting them get away with so much.
In 2019, Huawei had the 5th largest R&D budget of any company in the world. Its R&D budget was larger than that of Apple.[1]
> They, the Chinese themselves, think that the US is dumb for letting them get away with so much.
What are you basing this on? It might surprise you to know that China has established dozens of specialized IP courts since 2014, which now handle hundreds of thousands of cases per year. What you're saying sounds like pure prejudice, born out of a lack of knowledge.
1. https://www.caixinglobal.com/2019-01-11/chart-of-the-day-hua...
I suspect this happens in other countries too, but I think elsewhere people make an effort to be less obvious about it. I get the impression copy paste programming isn't as looked down upon here as it is in the west.
I mean, in Europe salespeople routinely take customer contact-lists with them whenever they move, everybody knows it. Developers do the equivalent stuff in their field. Asians are just a bit more blunt about it, because they have less to lose. Plenty of Europeans did the same sort of thing when moving to the US in 18th/19th century - I call it "hungry makes right".
https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/19/21187651/anthony-levandow...
Refusing to sell chips to them incentivizes further theft of intellectual property. If these two things are linked, this seems like a terrible strategy.
We shouldn't punish theft in a way where stealing now becomes their best option to survive.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-huawei-argu...
All nations have way too many laws. You will be in violation of one of them. So the only thing the Chinese or US government needs to do is pick a US or Chinese citizen, and then hold up the probably 10 laws that he/she is violating. It's impossible to live somewhere and be law abiding while simultaneously not knowing what all the laws are.
Let's be frank, we're not at the level of the elites in these nations who are arguing over which nation has the largest most attractive tits. On our level, and I'm talking to western and Chinese workers alike, but we're so far down the chain that we won't have people out there pulling strings for us. You don't want to be the hapless patsy sitting in US and Chinese prisons for 10 years while the elites compare dick size or whatever. To paraphrase that old adage, "They can remain irrational much longer than you can comfortably sit in prison."
I'm saying both americans and chinese should be mindful of this risk when working in the other country.
Has something changed?
Putting faith in the government officials is just a bit naive I think.
If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and sticking to the rules when posting here, we'd be grateful.
This is very vague. Does anyone understand what they are talking about?
“Under the new rule, any foreign company that uses American technology to produce microchips would need a license to sell to Huawei. That makes it difficult for major chip contract manufacturers like Taiwan’s T.S.M.C. to sell to Huawei, because its supply chains rely heavily on American manufacturing tools. It could also clamp down on sales by makers of semiconductor equipment, like Applied Materials and KLA, and chip design software companies like Cadence.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/15/business/economy/commerce...
That this is all such a string of vagueness makes me suspect it's a bunch of bullshit, more about politics (in the 'optics' sense) or business competitiveness than actual national security.
All of this is about national security. US & Taiwan’s TSMC are in talks to open a TSMC factory in the US. Chairman of TSMC has publicly stated if the US gives them enough money, they’ll do it. Appears US (Trump) is telling TSMC if they do not open the factory for free, they’re going to have trouble making money at all. Taiwan wants to keep TSMC because it’s an insurance policy, China & the US both need TSMC. That or it is a plausible way for TSMC to deny they’re cutting off China.
...any thoughts?
Like maybe if Huawei were accused of being used by the Chinese government to spy on America, it would make sense to require a license to sell tech to Huawei. (I have sometimes seen it accused of such; I have no idea how credible such accusations are; but this is an example of what 'national security' means to me, particularly in regard to requiring licenses to do business with a particular company).
You seem to be talking about whether TSMC gets a federal subsidy or not to open a factory or not as 'national security'. I mean, I get how the general economic environment has 'national secuirty' implications; how the future access to semiconductor market has 'national security' implications. But if that's "national security" it seems like the entire economy is "national security", and "national security" doesn't actually mean anything. Especially when Huawei is being penalized for concerns about a different company?
With that understanding of national security, is there any aspect of international trade negotiations that isn't "national security", or any international trade measure that can't be said to be "justified by national security"? Do you have an example of any international trade measure (a tariff, an embargo, a subsidy, a penalty, a ban, any method of one nation trying to get an economic/trade advantage over another) that you do not think would be "national security" related under this understanding? Is there such a thing?
Among other things, it's another reminder that the era of legal-norms-based international trade has been brought to an end...
National security is an ends, not a means; its ultimate form is shapelessness, not a strict definition.
https://www.csis.org/analysis/wtos-first-ruling-national-sec...
What the WTO determines has changed over time, and can depend on the balance of power. The WTO knows that if it keeps making rulings that countries just ignore, it loses power and legitmacy, it has to try not to push too hard.
But your opinion is whatever the WTO decides is correct?
To me, if the penalties against Huawei are really about negotiations over a government subsidy for a TSMC plant, I'd expect the WTO to rule against the US, if it was playing 'fair'. Which doesn't mean it will.
Here's an example of the WTO ruling against the US in a trade dispute with China, and the US retaliating to try to weaken the WTO.
https://www.ft.com/content/131a55ea-a84a-11e9-984c-fac8325aa...
Here's an expert writing on "Why Limiting U.S. Tech Exports to Chinese Companies Like Huawei Is a Risky Strategy",
https://itif.org/publications/2019/05/23/why-limiting-us-tec...
China has been working on challenging actions against Huawei specifically at the WTO; although it has to be careful because they know the WTO's rulings can be effected by politics, and the US (especially current administration) may not abide by the WTO ruling anyway, they need to try to remain on good terms to avoid escalating trade war, regardless of what the WTO might ultimately rule (which can take a while too).
https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman/2019/05/29/huawei-go...
Supply chain security is also part of national security. Economic (in)dependency is also part of national security. Economic well-being and competition is also part of national security. There's more to national security than espionage and military capabilities. You don't have to agree -- it doesn't matter if you don't because the people work in the national security apparatus do think that national security encompasses all of that and more, and their opinion matters a hell of a lot more than your typical HN commenter's (mine included).
1. you guys really worry too much about our ability to innovate, seriously. There is no room for real innovations. But at the same time the system rewards stealing and copying. The system, the education, the overall political environment are not designed with innovations in mind but to help a few to stay in power. My personal take on this is that Chinese "innovation" is now built upon: Chinese with foreign education/working background bringing back technologies, CCP buying foreign companies with OUR everyday people's money, and of course hacking/stealing directly. I don't believe we have a change winning the innovation war, not in the long run.
2. for a "private" company like huawei, isn't it weird that it's always backed by CCP? Lots of Chinese private companies get balls kicked everyday and why only huawei get treatment worthy of a state owned business? Even us Chinese knows better.
3. please think about us everyday Chinese citizens. we are currently under direct information warfare and systematic repression waged by CCP for decades, and our lives/future squeezed out in order to found companies like huawei and projects like one belt one road, without a fking vote. It's much bigger than us vs huawei, at least from our side.
btw it is not my field of expertise but I'd like to call for experienced software/hardware engineers from the west, help us bring down the CCP's GFW system before it's too late. If it is built by man it can be broken.
thanks and apologize for my broken English.
Is HN not blocked/censored in China?
https://www.gizmochina.com/2020/05/12/huawei-kirin-710a-smic...
In the semi industry, nearly all of them. You can hardly make anything in the semiconductor industry without using several of the major US companies. The US still dominates the semiconductor equipment industry. Of the six major players, half of them are US companies.
> The $412bn global semiconductor industry rests on the shoulders of just six equipment companies, three of them US-based. Together, the companies make nearly all of the crucial hardware and software tools needed to manufacture chips, meaning an American export ban would choke off China’s access to the basic tools needed to make their latest chip designs.
> "You cannot build a semiconductor facility without using the big major equipment companies, none of which are Chinese," said Brett Simpson, the founder of Arete Research, an equity research group. “If you fight a war with no guns you’re going to lose. And they don’t have the guns.”
> "ASML cannot do without Applied Materials and the other way around. If you take even one out of the value chain, that may hamper Chinese fabs," said a former ASML executive.
https://www.ft.com/content/4a8553a6-f3b2-11e8-ae55-df4bf40f9...
I don't think it is quite so widely understood that there are close seconds in every market.
It is pretty easy to imagine ASML giving up on Intel, cutting HMI, and all the chipmakers going outside of Lam, Applied, and KLA for their next tools. The industry would be a bit disrupted but outside the US...fine. and it would destroy the US industry.
This will also tend to pressure the Chinese to keep pushing their own supplier industry, rather than just integrators.
Basically, though, a process flow is deposition, track, litho, etch, clean, deposition, cmp, metro, inspect (lots of steps vary, but these are the basics)
You need each of these to work. Deposition: Lam, Applied, TELand then Wonik, ASM, and others Track: TEL Litho: ASML Etch: Lam, Applied, TEL CMP: Ebara, Applied Metro: Onto, KLA, Hitachi Inspect: KLa, Applied
There are more, and I missed a bit, but basically, you need to tick off each of these layers, and quite often with the best at each.
ASML cannot make wafers for anyone without someone doing all the other parts. And really, that is true for all these companies. There is a best of breed and selection bias that makes each system imperfectly interchangeable.
But you can also see that ASML is the sole true monopoly. So if they are out, nothing works. There are plausible workarounds otherwise.not always easy or cost effective, but plausible in most cases.
ASML needs the rest of the infrastructure to sell tools. And likewise, everyone needs ASML to deliver, or there is no new node....
And they might get nice introspection by operating an x-ray FEL to do coherent transmission imaging for analytical purposes.
China has both, money and leverage (not just political, rare earths, etc), to throw at this problem, and from China's perspective it should be a strategic priority to get this done. It would in fact surprise me if there weren't such projects already in full drive since May 2019 when this all started.
I know that our system of government does not optimize long term gain, but this case seems especially bad.
Yet.
Eh, you know what, bring it on. The CCP needs to chill the fork out, but new sources/manufacturers for this kind of technology are always welcome.
I bet prices would go down a lot, like it happens every time AMD brings out something that can actually compete with Intel.
Funny thing is that TSMC +10 nm is subject to these rules, but not the 7 nm as it uses under 13% USA technology.
Yes, I think ASML will not sell them equipment.
EU member states certainly could see this as illegal interference in their economies and a stretch of US jurisdiction. There is also a good chance that this goes counter to at least a few international trade agreements. Agreements the US still desperately needs for other things it wants to keep doing.
It appears a very short sighted policy, by people who probably don't give a shit about whatever damage they do long term. Once they are out of office, it is no longer their problem. If it made them richer, they won. It's the ordinary people that will likely pay a price for this at some point, but not them.
And it took only a few years of media campaigns- the first one I remember was the announcement of spy chips in China-made boards, which turned out to be fake. It's scary how quickly you can steer public opinion to suit your needs.
Pulling this crap only incentives China to develop their own silicon. Since the west can't compete on manufacturing cost or quality, Chinese products will continue to dominate. But the importance of incorporating western technologies will deminish since there will be no legal alternative. The end result is just plain brand dilution, since not using western technology will become the new norm.
I'm not really personally concerned, the west will learn sooner or later that it actually needs to build something to remain competitive. A service based economy is simply everyone serving each other coffee, while gradually eroding existing equity so we can keep buying coffee beans.
Operating under the assumption this isnt already a priority to them, which I would say is a big assumption.
You're looking at this as if it was in absence of the rest of the trade footings of the two countries.
The west is building stuff in this industry - semi conductors. The east is operating heavy industrial espionage to try and steal all the secrets of it so they can take it from the west.
I'm not sure why you think this trade war situation is indicative of the US not making things - its exactly a heavily US industry where China steals technology to leapfrog actual competition.
If China steals all your research you're going to have trouble affording coffee beans. If they steal your research and then open factories up you're going broke.
So the importance of producing is true, but its tied to the importance of protecting your advantages, national and otherwise.
But if you eliminate the legal option, the grey area alternative becomes normalized.
IP is also a highly artificial construct. If all documents were suddenly in the open, and your competitors are suddenly able to build a better product, how comfortable can you be that you can actually compete on quality?
Let's not forget that a good part of the NSA's business is industrial espionage, allegedly also heavily in Western Allies.
It's just a dumb move all around.
Seems to me that's happening either way and probably always was. Why wouldn't they?
Similar to how the google ban fast tracked Huawei working on google free systems e.g. buying third party map services like TomTom. Bad for Google good for competition.
Basically the US has lost its standing thanks to Trumps bully diplomacy[1].
“Some if not all regional countries may harbour concerns about the security ramifications of using Huawei, but there are real pragmatic considerations,” said Collin Koh Swee Lean, a research fellow at the S Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore. “Cost-wise in particular, Chinese offers for infrastructure development present more attractive propositions.”
https://www.scmp.com/news/asia/southeast-asia/article/301282...
I'm not sure why that's besides the point? The U.S. for years worked to invest in China and build them as a great trading partner and the CCP continued to just steal trade secrets and do everything in their power to undermine the U.S..
And it's probably true that this development was fast tracked by the trade war... but so what? This was coming since the CCP didn't want to be a partner with the West, so why wait around to cut the ties? It's going to happen either way, why not happen on your terms?
W.r.t Trump's "bully" diplomacy - I mean, playing nice certainly didn't work. We don't need to and shouldn't be trading partners with China so long as they're acting against U.S. and western interests in general. The U.S. tried to engage and endured years of malevolent activity by the CCP only to have the actions worsen over time. So... I'm not really sure what the advantage to the U.S. is besides having a big market. Ban Chinese products in the U.S. and China can ban U.S. products. Whatever.
> Cost-wise in particular, Chinese offers for infrastructure development present more attractive propositions
Sure. For now. And if you only want to look at cost. Maybe you want to look at other factors, like maybe you're Vietnam and concerned about the Chinese ramming your fishing boats? [1]
[1] https://www.news.com.au/world/south-china-sea-tensions-at-ne...
Was the US prepared to accept that? What do you think happens when the world's only technological, economic and military superpower is about to be overtaken by a competitor? Did you think the US was going to lose its supremacy without trying everything it could to prevent it? Of course not.
And then, what kind of actions do you think it would take to prevent it? For example, the US could start a very aggressive trade war with China. They could try to justify it in various ways, for example by saying that China is a risk to the world, that its technology is tainted by some issue (maybe it could be used for spying). They could try to isolate China, advising all its partners not to trade with it. And so on.
And this is exactly what we're seeing. It would have happened anyway, independently from China's behaviour. Because the only variable is how close they are to threatening the US's power. And they're close.
Given that, I just don't think it makes much sense to engage with China unless the calculation is strictly that it benefits the U.S. (and the west in general). Like, if U.S. companies don't get access to the Chinese market then that means Chinese companies don't get access to the U.S. market, for example. To put it another way, from my current understanding I would say we should maintain U.S. hegemony at all costs short of nuclear war (or anything atrocious like that). Despite recent setbacks and general anxiety about U.S. actions over the last however many years, The U.S. has proven since WWII that it's a trustable world leader.
Although I'd certainly counter your claim that a "rise" is inevitable. Being large doesn't necessarily translate into anything. I think it's only a matter of time before the U.S. global reach is diminished, and China will certainly fill that void, but it won't solely be filled by China, especially in the Pacific.
Countries in Europe will also have to make tough choices. Is NATO still viable? Is it outdated? Should the U.S. pull out? For now those are easy decisions, but when push comes to shove the U.S. is strong-willed enough to do something like back out of NATO if they insist on integrating with Chinese systems. I don't think there will be a lot of having your cake and eating it too for the continent. Yet another disappointment.
From a tech perspective this will have quite the impact. China will eventually develop viable operating systems, but will you buy a laptop with one? Some are concerned about the NSA, but at least I can sort of fight the system. What if I'm from Cambodia? Do I want the Chinese spying on me instead or do I have more faith in the Americans?
Lots of questions and uncertainty here, in my view, except that the U.S. needs to pick up its toys and go home when it's being put at a disadvantage.
I don't think those are the reasons, they are consequences. The reason, in my opinion, is just money. Your income depends on your job and the success of your company, which largely depends on the economy at large and, in case of large powers, on their world-wide power projection. People understand this instinctively, it's pure tribal behavior.
I believe most world-politics interpretation is just motivated reasoning, and you can change somebody's worldview by making them the beneficiary of a trust that's invested in whatever country they dislike. When they draw dividends from their enemy's success, they'll come to see them in a different light.
“ Globalization has reduced many aspects of modern life to little more than commodities controlled by multinational corporations. Everything, from land and water to health and human rights, is today intimately linked to the issue of free trade. Conventional wisdom presents this development as benign, the sole path to progress.
Yash Tandon, drawing on decades of on-the-ground experience as a high level negotiator in bodies such as the World Trade Organization, here challenges this prevailing orthodoxy. He insists that, for the vast majority of people, and especially those in the poorer regions of the world, free trade not only hinders development—it visits relentless waves of violence and impoverishment on their lives.”
In business, there is the perennial question of "Do I "buy built" thus taking advantage of economies of scale within the supplier while at the same time making myself dependent on the good intentions of that supplier? Or do I "go to the cost and effort and time wasted in making it myself", which means I don't get dependent on that supplier, puts me behind for a year or two, and then possibly may be able to take away his business and keep it for myself in the future?
Most administrators find it's better overall to "buy built". But if forced to, they will "roll their own".
If Huawei starts making its own semiconductors, the US can wave goodbye to its own semiconductor companies like Intel, AMD, Radeon and Nvidia. Just like GM, Ford and Chrysler are there in name only today- when once they made over 50% of the entire world's cars back in the 1960s.
In the words of that famous hair product: "It may not happen overnight, but it will happen!"
It's even a war in the comments section.
I don't think it's safe. How do we really know it can't progress to some kind of overt military activity?
Why are people not more concerned about this?
I get the impression that people think the best way to prevent a war is to keep doing things to hold them down. But that seems to be escalating tensions and not actually limiting them.
What is the plan for getting out of this? I hope that Elon hurries up with his Mars rockets so I can emmigrate before the whole planet turns into a complete bloody (literally) science fiction nightmare.
A technological cold war will likely happen, Huawei and other Chinese companies will just continue R&D and manufacturing on their own. In a way, the US is letting go of whatever control they had left and making it easier for them to form their own alliances in this matter. It will just polarize the world more... again, as always.
The same thing that's always prevented nuclear-armed countries from going to war: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_assured_destruction
For one their are no explosions, or people with guns. On mars you don't have to worry about people trying to steal your shit because it's valuable (or "necessary for the national defense"), and you don't have to worry about being collateral damage during the war.
On mars there aren't earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes, mudslides, tsunamis, floods, volcanoes, lightning strikes, forest fires, and basically any other natural disaster that I missed except sandstorms. When you build a static structure on mars you can expect it to last basically forever, when you build one on earth it has a relatively short halflife. When your static structures become extremely valuable and difficult to replace because you need them to grow your food and you don't have the manufacturing capability to build more, I'd rather be one mars.
On mars you can reliably avoid radiation by putting enough "stuff" (water, soil, whatever) between you and the sun. On earth after a nuclear war it would be coming from everywhere exposed to the atmosphere (in the shortish term).
On mars you get to plan for the hardships while the pre-nuclear-war earth manufacturing base is still functioning. On earth you don't know when the nuclear war is going to happen, or what portions of the earth it's going to glass, so that becomes much more difficult.
On the downside, the martian atmosphere is actually deadly to humans (since it's nearly a vacuum), while the post nuclear war atmosphere is likely only ... very hazardous. Mars has no native plants so you have to be entirely self sufficient inside your colonies, while the post-nuclear war earth colonies could forage for (mildly radioactive) food in emergencies.
So it seems like either that stick needs to get much more effective very quickly, or probably more reasonably at this point we need to try to de-escalate somehow.
In my opinion there is a very obvious lack of cultural and political integration which is inevitably going to be resolved. One way or another. I don't see a plan for doing it peacefully really being promoted by leaders. Which to me indicates that the leadership and overall awareness of the situation is inadequate. And probably we are going to be totally fucked by this ignorance and stupidity at some point.
I'll even venture into complete speculation, and posit that WWIII will be fought over, and largely in, Africa. In many ways Africa represents the last frontier on earth, with great natural resources but largely behind in many areas of development and not 'controlled' by either China or the US. South America would also be a potential hot zone, but it's too close to the US. China has realized this already and is investing heavily in Africa, while the US just in the last decade established Africom. Once the US' focus on the middle easy wanes a bit with oil decreasing in relevance, they'll turn their focus to somewhere else. The only reason the middle easy didn't turn into WWIII is because of the relatively powerful players in the area, including Israel, Saudi, Iran, and formerly Iraq. Large enough to hold their own, but not so large that they individually pose a threat to the US hegemony. That, and china wasn't really a relevant player in the world-war starting game until the 80's or 90's or so, and kind of missed the whole middle east war phase. But they're ahead of the game in Africa, and are establishing control there already. And as China transitions from developing country to rich country, they will, in turn, need overseas territories to vassalize themselves. So, there's my wild prediction, that WWIII will happen between the US and China as primary axis of power, sparked over something to do with Africa, right around the time when oil is no longer the US' middle-eastern siren song that it is today. Maybe in 20-30 years or so. Also around the time that millennials will be in the 'old guard', and have no living memory (on a broad, population-scale level) of how horrific war really is. Boomers had the WWII generation still hanging around to warn them off of WWIII, and they still nearly got us there.
It is time for the hammer now.
I've seen some tools presented at RISC-V conferences, but the major closed-source component nowadays is the PDK, I'm afraid.
Hopefully, inkjet-printed transistors or some other fabless technology will make open source ICs a lot more feasible. One of the major issue is costs, when you look at more than 40k/mm² for multiproject wafers in advanced nodes and contrast that with the anemic budget most open source software has to do with. You don't need to be on the very latest node, if you can afford going slower, on bigger, cheaper dies.
A lot of open source "hardware" project seem to focus on FPGAs, since that's more approachable, and the costs are nowhere as high.
I would also like to point out that these tools will likely help us juice up a bit more performance from the existing processes, but we aren't really likely to see a lot more of Moore's scaling, going forward. So the door is open to new processes, that may or may not be open hardware-friendly. And current, top-end processes might also become cheaper over time. While I doubt a lot of new foundries will catch up with the end of Moore's scale, it might actually become easier to get there, while disruptive technologies get some time to play catch-up. Together with innovative synthesis tools.
People are fast growing tired of China's aggressive and abusive approach to 'diplomacy'.
I believe most people see US <=> China in conflict, they don't really consider China <=> Australia, Vietnam or Japan.
China <=> Russia would be considered a different conflict, as few people believe that Russia would be acting as a proxy for the US.
I wouldn't make such a dire prediction about the future of America.
To me this is all naked geopolitics, hardly fair and extremely risky. But finally America is transitioning to worrying about real problems rather than, say, the policy of treating shepherds in Afghanistan as a major threat in the Bush era.
He might deserve congratulations if his strategies made sense, but they seem more likely to hurt the US than China in the long run.
Simply doing something, anything, for the sake of having something be done is even worse than the status quo.
The actions they are taking are delaying tactics but do not change the fundamentals. In fact, blocking shipments of semiconductors may even hasten the rise of a competing Chinese industry.
I think being #1 is deeply embedded in the American psyche and it is shocking for them to even imagine otherwise (Edit: as we see in these very comments and the reactions...), which is actually a risk for world peace, IMHO.
He got rid of the most effective global efforts to contain China’s growth through the TPP. I know HN hates the TPP because of amorphous claims about IP, but flouting IP norms forms the entire basis of these actions by Trump, and the whole point of TPP’a IP protections (which HN hated, apparently) was to make sure China’s neighbors would not flout IP protections the way China did, giving private companies incentives to move manufacturing and research from China to the neighboring countries instead.
That would have been a broad ranging global effort to ensure China followed rules, that would have cost the US nothing (in fact other countries were making concessions to the US for it), and would not have required 2-3 years of barely legal efforts to contain 1 Chinese company and even there only in the US market, but would have instead affected all Chinese companies, non Chinese companies manufacturing in China, and not just the US market but also eastern Asian and Australasian markets.
So yeah, if by Trump did something you mean he dismantled an effort that would have been more effective by orders of magnitude and cost the US nothing but actually won it more friends in favor of a barely legal effort that is pissing off even allies that are not friendly to China and has taken 3 years to maybe impact 1 Chinese company, then sure.
Trump pulled out of the deal and decided to do a trade war instead.
You got a trade war because there was finally a US president willing to risk confrontation like the chinese are, who started calling out chinese practices like dumping steel in canada to kill the US steel industry.
A year ago people said trump was crazy for talking about chinese steel dumped in canada as a national security issue. Then you couldnt get n95 masks and the world realized things run out if you dont produce them and someone else makes them.
The trade war is a positive - the US-China relationship needs redefining. If you look at chinese influence campaings the chinese are well aware of US efforts to deal with orbitting allies and is pushing their own influence. Your ideas would have worked 15 years ago, maybe.
It would have incentivized manufacturing to leave China, along with a large share of all the western dollars currently feeding the regime.
Trump's strategy doesn't really seem to decouple us from China so much as it seems to invert the relationship.
It's an invisible war of nations and we dont really have a clue about allegiances nor what is right or wrong.
Sure as a european I feel more connected to the US but at the same time I feel very much excluded from that larger sphere protection and benefits.
The US needs a framework for smaller nations where we can build better relations.
> The US needs a framework for smaller nations where we can build better relations.
What could that be? We've had the U.N., NATO, the WTO, and what not.
I don't like spying period, but to try and equate what the US does to what China does is simply ludicrous.
America has been exceptionally clear that US intelligence and immigration agencies consider non-Americans to be fair game for hacking, non-judicial imprisonment, torture et al.
So if I'm not American I might acknowledge that America treats it's own citizens slightly better than China treats theirs from a human rights perspective, but as someone who's British neither nation has a stellar track record of actions that effect me and my country personally or give me any rights protection.
A document without maintainers is dead.
1 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/mar/12/bradley-mannin...
As an American I'd rather be spied on by China than my own government because China spying on me won't discover anything that they can use against me themselves. That's not so for my own government.
I'd expect this is similar in most countries. Your own government is the biggest danger because your own government has much more power over you than foreign governments and much more interest in you. The biggest threat for an average civilian from a foreign government spying on them is that the foreign government might share that information with their their own government.
Since many European governments have close intelligence sharing arrangements with the US and do not have such arrangements with China, I'd expect that for the average European it would be better to be spied on by China than the US.
This is such a West-centric viewpoint. The fact is that they're only only different in where they're the most horrible. China is worse on the domestic front and the U.S. bullies more on the foreign front. Then there's soft power, where Hollywood makes you think the U.S. actually cares about democracy and human rights, (while supporting the likes of Saudi Arabia at the same time), which are quite powerful tools of propaganda.
The 90% of civilians targeted by U.S. drones would probably strongly disagree with your assertion. Is just that there's not a strong voice speaking for them on TV, where's there's plenty on China.