Comment by unethical_ban | Hacker News Reader

Comment by unethical_ban | Hacker News Reader

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What do my HN colleagues think about the assertion by some in the US congress that RISC-V is a clever conspiracy by China to dodge sanctions and get clever American universities to do their research for free?

While I think "information wants to be free" and that stopping CPU collab is like trying to stop encryption in the 90s, I can't help but wonder that RISC-V neuters attempts to lock China out of military AI advancements.

Then again, don't they have x86 factories there? If China has a factory, doesn't the government pretty brazenly learn trade secrets from it?

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edit to Nickik, since HN has throttled me for more than an hour. Gotta get around the system somehow, since the goddamned rules are so opaque. I'll move this to a comment when I am in the site's good graces again.

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Highlight where I suggested any of that.

I even said that actually attempting to curtail open development, even if desired, is futile.

I was only wondering if there is validity in suspecting that China will explicitly finance/encourage RISC-V development in order to dodge EU/US sanctions of processor technology.

So all your sarcasm was for nothing.

Why don't we just no longer have opensource. We can also shut down the wikipedia. Lets also shut down google. Otherwise China might use these things. Why not just nuke Bay Area, NY and LA. Then we can make sure China can't profit from the people there. All universities should be closed, those people might produce research that China can read.

RISC-V does not have its origin in China. It's not a "clever conspiracy" at all.

Are Chinese companies jumping on board this existing effort to avoid sanctions? Almost certainly.

Other than that, don't care much what US congressmen think, since I'm not American, but attempting to close the door on RISC-V will not only be harmful to the broad industry (not just China) but will also be ineffective.

This all comes down to the US wanting to have both freedom of speech, but also prevent US citizens from talking to Chinese citizens. Because what if the American invents a better mousetrap and tells the Chinese person? We can't let the communists win the rodentiacide race!

Well, considering the communist party doesn't value human life or dignity, keeping them crippled technologically is a noble goal. However, it can't be done at the expense of free expression and collaboration.

So to be clear, I don't support cramping RISC-V development.

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