The US is trying to block China's access to EUV lithography devices as well, which are required to fabricate chips at the 7nm scale and below. The lithography machines that Chinese companies (in particular, SMIC) want to buy are produced by a Dutch company, ASML. The US government recently pressured the Dutch government into blocking a sale of such machines by ASML to SMIC.[1]
The US government has identified EUV lithography as a bottleneck in the semiconductor industry, and is trying to keep that bottleneck in place, as a pressure point that can be used against China in the future. The Brookings Institution has laid out the strategy.[2]
Of course, that means that the Chinese government will now probably invest heavily in domestic lithography companies. The Brookings Institution thinks that the US can shut China out of high-end semiconductor production indefinitely. That seems like a pretty foolish conception to me.
> The Brookings Institution thinks that the US can shut China out of high-end semiconductor production indefinitely. That seems like a pretty foolish conception to me.
U.S. had done that to Japanese Semiconductor industry in the 80s and 90s[1], which was why South Korean semiconductor industries flourished and Samsung became the king of Memory chips (it used to be Toshiba etc.) And today it's Huawei. Who's gonna be the next in the future?
It simply boggles my mind all the things US did to Japan when they were booming and were supposed to go past US and the fact that we don't really talk about it much.
Or maybe traced to WW2. Let's not forget what Japan did to get the US involved at all. After Japan surrendered, the US helped Japan back on their feet, much to the surprise of many older Japanese who were expecting to be raped and pillaged. After all, that's what Japan was doing to China at the time, and probably what it had planned to do to the US if they won.
I don't see how it is mind boggling that the winner of an armed conflict would try to install a friendly post war government. Or that the US still had influence lasting decades after the conflict.
> Or maybe traced to WW2. Let's not forget what Japan did to get the US involved at all.
But wasn't the point of Marshall Plan to not repeat what Treaty of Versailles led to? If you keep demanding an eye for an eye the wars will never end. It does not justify what US did to Japan or other countries.
This is a narrative that was taught in my high school. My college professors explained how wrong it was. Germany, despite the reparations demanded by the treaty, was in much better shape after WWI than WWII. The first world war ended without cities being leveled, and with German industry largely intact. By comparison Germany after WWII was in literal ruins, and ceased to exist as a unified country. The Marshall Plan's spending on German reconstruction actually didn't meet the figure Germany had to pay on reparations. We didn't repeat what the Treaty of Versailles led to because Germany was obliterated and split in two.
Also, I'm not sure how this leads to Japan. Japan broke the Washington Naval treaty (related to but separate from the Treaty of Versailles) which was meant to prevent a naval arms race.
I don't think what the US did was as bad as Versailles (which was a disaster). And I don't see how it was eye for an eye. Japan attempted global domination and genocide with their friend Nazi Germany. Eye for an eye implies an equal punishment, what could be equal to that? Certainly not restrictions on semiconductor development and forced currency rebalancing. Lets keep things in context here.
The funny thing is that the US tried to install two different post war governments, one before the "fall of china", the other after:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_Course
As for influence lasting decades after, I am still searching for a reason that the Japanese would have benefited from signing the Plaza Accord. Anyone have one?
War occupations are never rosy, I didn't mean to paint it that way. But you could certainly make the argument it was rosy compared to the Japanese occupation of China.
My first reaction is that the implication the Korean war was somehow being planned by the US at the time of the Japanese surrender is some crazy revisionist propaganda.
But can you elaborate on what you are trying to say and what supports it?
There are plenty of examples, but I think to call that the zeitgeist is overstated. I mentioned in another thread in a different context, a near-future SF book from the early 90s, which posited an early 21st century war with Japan and the US on one side and Russia on the other, I forget who else. Things changed very quickly in the bubble-era.
Ronald Reagan asked in his campaign “What do we want our kids to do? Sweep up around the Japanese computers?” "an economic Pearl Harbor" was a term used.
While the US was fighting double digit inflation Japanese were buying American companies and real estate like candy. Sony bought movies studio, someone else bought Rockefeller Center. Japan's 5th generation computer systems and AI was seen as threat to the US. Japanese management philosophy was seen as superior.
Even in popular culture movies like "Back To The Future 2", "Die Hard" etc. Japanese dominate.
Well, I was there, and I say it wasn't. "Double digit inflation" seems like a giveaway that you at best have skimmed the history. Inflation was ultra high very briefly very early in the 80s. Do you know the name Volcker?
Japanese cars became mainstream. People started to become interested in anime. Nobody remembers or noticed what Reagan said, unless the hivemind/AI decides to resurrect it now and pound cherry picked things into our heads until we assent that Eurasia was always at war with Eastasia.
You can debate until you turn blue, but it's lazy revisionism.
Well, I was there, and I say that while it might not have been the zeitgeist, it was certainly an idea and concern that was known and discussed publicly, both in political rhetoric and in fiction.
You can debate until you turn blue, but it's lazy revisionism.
"Nobody remembers or noticed what Reagan said" is equivalent to asserting, on a hypothetical 2056 HN, that "nobody remembers or noticed what Trump* said".
* At least he hasn't said "We begin bombing in five minutes".
(besides, can't have Oceania at war with Eastasia until you all get Airstrip One back from Eurasia, innit?)
Are you from 2056? I can't be sure what will stick with people over that time, but I can look back at the Reagan/Bush administrations in retrospect.
Also, I think maybe younger people don't appreciate how much less people were plugged in to a very narrow channel of hysteria and BS before the late 2010s and the rise of ad-tech.
For a hint of what it was like, look at your local newspaper if it still exists or current events on Wikipedia.
We both agree that Reagan/Bush were 1980-1988, right?
Other than that, it doesn't sound like we had much in common. I was going to search old USENET for (Reagan|Raygun) references, but those archives seem to have gone down the memory hole.
Maybe we're from different timelines? I do see an amazing number of people around with goatees. Do you know how I can get back to my timeline? Should I ask evil Spock or evil Cartman for help?
> It simply boggles my mind all the things US did to Japan when they were booming and were supposed to go past US and the fact that we don't really talk about it much.
Well, you have to realize that MITI (at the time, now METI) was absolutely doing a number on American businesses (some of it deserved--see US auto manufacturers) with its subsidies. It damn near killed the US semiconductor industry.
If it weren't for the US government and VHSIC, the US semiconductor industry would have died.
The US also upset the Tokugawa Shogunate, the isolationist military-fuelaistic government which had ruled Japan for more than two hundred years. I don't think any of this is so clear cut.
So is it not interesting that the US went to great efforts to keep the same corrupt government in place that attacked them just because the alternative was socialism?
The difference is that Japan and SK were strategic allies. Intelligence sharing agreements were strong, the US provided security guarantees. It's an acceptable loss, to a certain extent, to cede the market to the US, despite it hurting cutting edge domestic industries.
China will not accept US market dominance in chip production, or frankly, US dominance in any industry.
No, what I said is exactly what I meant. Some countries will accept the gutting of certain domestic industries because it doesn't threaten national security interests or strategic goals.
I want to bring a point of view from a Chinese person.
These are questions Chinese people often ask: why is that a factory worker in China makes 4000rmb(560usd) per month, while a US worker makes 2000usd per month and work for less hours. Why is that pay for software engineers and researchers in China average are much lower than the US and the hours are much longer? The fundamental issue is that US companies can drive much higher margins than Chinese companies, and one of the reasons is they have much better technology. Technology increases the barrier to entry and increases the value add to a product. If we look a IPhone, Chinese companies and its workers only assemble the phone. While all of the high tech components that makes an Iphone what is, like chips, camera senors, display, even the glass panel are made in other countries. I don't remember the exact value, but its safe to say that out of a $1000 iphone, $300 is BOM, and Chinese companies and its workers gets $2 for assembling the phone. The rest all goes to high tech suppliers and Apple itself. This is true across a wide range of industries. If you think about it, in today's global economic system, China actually gets a small share of the value add in the economy chain because it only plays the low end. Industries that can generate high value add also benefit incomes of nearby industries because money flows. This is why restaurant workers in California earns more than the person doing the same job in Nebraska. (Btw, when US counts trade with China, an Iphone is counted for the export price from China to US, for example, $300 for the BOM. But China imported most of the most valuable/high margin components from outside, it only earned $2 for assembling the phone. US thought China made $300 making the phone, but it didn't. Also corporate earnings US companies makes in China are not counted in the US-China trade. So in my opinion, its not true to say China is ripping off the US in the China-US trade relationship because of the trade deficits)
If you go to China, or other developing nations, for example, in South America or South Asia, you know that there is huge quality of life difference. Dont look at lives in Shanghai, look at Mid west of China. China is huge, while the median income today is 30,000 yuan/year, about 600million people still have 12,000 yuan/year (1600 usd). And Chinese people all ask "we are humans, why should there be such a massive quality of live difference. And how could we work towards to close the gap?" And given the world's economy system today, which is a free market, capitalist and "best product sells" systems, then the only way to increase qualify of life is to climb to value add chain.
But that doesn't mean its a zero sum game, its China or US. Increasing income will increase people's buying power, making the market larger. Think about it, in 1990, GDP per captia in China was 300 USD, if Apple tries to sale a $700 iphone, no one in China will be able to afford it. Apple will not get any revenue. Today with 30,000yuan/year median income, its said that China has about 200million people that can be considered middle class by PPP standards. Apple and a host of US companies can sell to this population, and China contributes a large percentage to Apple's revenue. Also in turns, Apple uses this revenue to continue invest in R&D, increasing the barrier to entry and competitiveness of its product around the world, earn more money in the process. Also, cheap assembly cost in China contributes to Apple's margins too. So its a collaboration, not a zero sum game. For past 20 years of Chinese industries increasingly competed with the outside industries, making more and more similar products, US GDP has continued to grow. Corporate revenue of the s&p500 has continued to increase to record levels. Also, its interesting that GM has not being that competitive in the US market, but is making a lot of sales in China. Also Tesla, if you look at the recent bullish analyst cases, China sales is one of the pillars.
China never has a problem with US companies being successful. Its not like government is jealous of the US industries and want them dead. "oh the Americans shouldn't make money". But its "how should our people survive and live, how should their quality of life improve?". From an economic system and social development standpoint, its bound that the Chinese society will go up in the value add ladder. Chinese people want good jobs that pay well and have good work life balance too. But these things don't come from the thin air. In the world of free competition, the best product sells. These things have to be supported by a industry that can compete in the global marketplace.
If you look at Chinese government's work during the last 40 years, starting from the reforms in the 80s, one of the primary goal is poverty alleviation, and build sustainable income sources for households under the principles of the market economy. That work is still going on today. Today the work is centered around the villages and poor neighborhoods in remote areas which faces systematic discrimination in the market economy. Solve the blockers that prevent them from joining the market economy, and jump start their place in the market economy. The result of this process is ordinary households have more income that they can earn by themselves, and they can choose to spend that money in a free open market however they want. And many spend their money on American products due to the superiority of the products. Also, if you look at the government's policies from the past and going forward, continue to increase foreign companies access to the Chinese market was and will continue to be a fundamental policy. Look at how quickly Tesla could set up shop in China, and much sales they are getting from Chinese market just after a few months. Also IP protection is getting much stronger as well. You can also look at the situation this way, the government invests in the people by doing things like: building bridges, improve educations and allow them to find work. That investment later becomes personal incomes, which flows to the domestic and the world's economy (including US). In summary: I think that US-China economy is not a zero-sum game. For us to win they have to lose. It could be a win-win situation.
I'm not so sure any more. China consumes 25% of the USA industrial automation machinery. They're obsoleting jobs in China at an accelerating rate. They will reach and surpass America's looming issue of the unemployed and unemployable 'labor' class growing beyond manageable bounds. When industrial output is largely automated, where are all those people to go?
Folks wave their hands and imagine some better future where they do more useful things. But the number of useful things is actually rapidly diminishing. Creation of products and materials doesn't need actual humans, not in the numbers they historically did.
So whatever China did in the last 40 years, they will have to do something completely different in the next 40 (or 20 or 10). The problems are different. Never mind "the people control the means of production". The people will have nothing to exchange of value to the new industrial complex, when labor becomes useless and meaningless.
Thank you for your point of view. Maybe I have just been lucky, but in my travels, I've found most people wherever in the world appreciate looking for win-win situations, just like your countrymen.
However, in the "Star Wars" franchise, there is the concept of the antagonistic Sith. These always come in pairs — "one to embody power, one to crave it". When one runs across people who believe in zero sum games (or worse yet: seek a bigger slice of a smaller pie), I guess they are attempting to apply the movie concept of a Sith lord to real life.
PS. I enjoyed the 1961 大鬧天宮. Orwell's "Animal Farm" starts out similarly, being a story about animals vs elites, but ends much more cynically. It is depressing, but provides wonderful insight into anglophone politics.
I think there's two separate things going on here.
On the one hand, the world is full of horrifying inequality, which you highlight and indeed perhaps understate. Inequality within America, inequality within China, inequality between Americans and Chinese, and of course a multiplicity of other permutations. As you say quite correctly: "Chinese people want good jobs that pay well and have good work life balance too." And so they should!
On the other hand, there is imperialism. The Chinese government is an imperialist government, I think there is no doubt. It makes sense for governments of other nations to attempt to limit the growth of power of that government. Of course, those last two sentences make just as much sense when describing America, too.
My point is that most of the conversation, in the article and in the comments thread, is about the relationships that societies have to each other. And most of your comment is about the relationships that individuals have to their lives. I agree with the majority of what you said, I just don't think it's directly relevant.
I'm not even saying that China "shouldn't be" imperialist (though I wish China and America were both less imperialist, but I might as well wish to fly by flapping my ears). I'm only saying that if you think you'd enjoy patting a tiger, and you think the tiger would enjoy the pats (the pats could be win-win!), that doesn't mean that you go pat the tiger. (is China the tiger and America the would-be pat-er, or vice versa? doesn't matter!)
> I think that US-China economy is not a zero-sum game. For us to win they have to lose. It could be a win-win situation.
That's a nice thought and I think you're right that it could be, in theory.
I'd say the people running those countries don't have such goals though.
Instead they're looking for more power and square meter land,
And look at Trump and his statements related to opening fire on the protestors. The leaders don't have in mind to create a world with happy people, they'd rather burn in to get more power
These are questions Chinese people often ask: why is that a factory worker in China makes 4000rmb(560usd) per month, while a US worker makes 2000usd per month
That US worker is also paying a much higher price for everything. Comparing economies dollar-for-dollar makes literally no sense.
That's not foolish. Modern lithography technology (and in general high-end semiconductor production) is complicated enough that neither US nor China may catch up in reasonable time, if they are targeting a domestic supply chain.
That said, the caveat here is the "neither US nor China" part, why would ASML, a Dutch company, align itself with US?
I know quite some people at ASML and I worked a bit in lithography in the past. Yes, it's extremely hard to make a machine that can compete with ASML's. But given enough smart people, I'm convinced that it's totally possible. Making a machine that can compete with what ASML could do, say, 20 years ago is a matter of 10 people and 2 years (I did some contracting at a company that did just that). If you start there and then just keep adding the right kind of talent, then I bet in 10-15 years you can get impressively close.
Don't underestimate the enormous amount of technical and engineering debt ASML has accumulated through decades of mad deadline pushing. Nobody has time to invest in eg automated tests or anything that lets you guard code quality because all the good engineers are needed on the critical path to make the next deadline, and there's always a next deadline and it's always 3 months sooner than in any way reasonable. This is how they became a world monopoly, effectively. It's been a good strategy. They ship so early that the machines they sell simply don't work yet, so they put two engineers inside the box with it who (together with 50 more engineers back home) make the thing actually work while the customer sets it up in their fab.
As a result, their codebase is a steaming pile of shit. Copy & paste galore. An example: the code is so bad that you can't just fix bugs. If you find an off-by-one error in the code and you want to fix it, you first write a "risk assessment document" where you describe what the bug does and whether any code could potentially rely on the presence of the bug. Then multiple layers of risk assessment officers assess whether you get a go. Then, if you get a go, you can go and fix your off-by-one error in similar-but-not-the-same C files across 7 product families.
To be honest I don't know if the same holds for ASMLs mechanical engineering, physics, electro etc departments, but their software dept (a large percentage of their entire R&D) is easily 10x less productive than similarly sized and skilled software teams elsewhere. It's really mind boggling.
I'm convinced that a good startup with a good mindset, plus sufficiently good funding, can totally build a competitor. China just has to fund 20 litho startups so that 19 can mess it up and 1 makes it big.
My odds would be pretty bad cause I still think a startup like this has like a 1 in 20 chance of succeeding. Plus to be frank I doubt YC is good enough about high tech hardware stuff (that isn't a 100% hype play like Cruise) to be able to add much value, but that's another story :-)
Access to the right people is the point, I’d say YC giving this a punt would involve a huge amount of just talking to the right people and trying to get them onboard. No harm in trying to get meetings with people and try it on. That’s how these things get off the ground. I agree with you but they aren’t exactly biotech or AI experts either, what they can help with is getting started...
I've been fascinated by the semiconductor manufacturing process, design tools, etc. and found it be very opaque and inaccessible. There are a ton of books that go into the history of software and the Internet .. any chance, you have come across something similar for your industry? Not looking for ASML for which there is a book (ASML's architect) but a bit more general. Maybe I should dig more into Intel's history.
Would it be financially viable to make lithography machines that use 20 year old technology? How long would you expect that market to exist? What would be the capital costs of making these machines, apart from talent acquisition?
The company I contracted for marketed them for LED production (I don't know the details, but making tiny gaps on the right places in the surface could somehow make the LEDs more efficient) and for the upper layers of chips, where way less precision is needed.
We got to a .8 micrometer error margin, which is "an enormous valley" by ASML standards but still fine for the top ~5 layers of normal semicon designs, where there's typically way fewer lanes, placed more widely apart. Again, I don't know much about chip design so I probably got all the details wrong.
Basically, yes there's a market. It's not at all as big as ASML's but it doesn't need to be. There's also a market of refurbishing old ASML/Canon/Nikon machines and repurposing for different parts of the production process (either chips or other semicon stuff like LEDs), which is what a new litho startup would compete with I think.
Note that all my knowledge about this is 5 years outdated, I now run a chat api startup :-)
To me, the semiconductor fabrication world is like an opaque industry where you need a significant amount of capital to do anything useful. Very happy to learn that startups are getting a chance too. Super curious to know if the company made it.
As far as I know they didn't. The r&d was in NL but the sales and marketing, as well as the funding, was in China. Last I heard our prototype machine got shipped to China, and either our work sucked way more than I think it did, or the sales people botched it (or I'm wrong and there's simply no market) but last I heard its still in boxes in a storage facility somewhere in Shanghai.
I know it's easy to say "we did great but the HQ fucked it up" so I don't want to make that claim. I honestly don't know where it went wrong (and I was way less interested in sales and marketing and entrepreneurship then, so I didn't ask).
I learned everything I know about lean and agile and just shipping from our R&D lead though. He was ex-ASML and they definitely know how to ship.
The US have a long track record of using soft power and extraterritorial law to punish foreign states and companies, including supposed allies. The two most interesting cases where high profile European companies were targeted had something to do with US sanctions against Cuba and Iran.
Examples abound. Look at what happened to BNP Paribas. This is how it looks in a press release:
I suspect you're missing somethingindeed. Of course, BNP's general counsel sounded submissive. His company entered a plea deal in the US.
The issue at stake is how extraterritorial the US legislation is.
Should the US government be able to determine that an EU company cannot do anything anywhere anytime involving US dollars if it has Iranian clients for example?
I reviewed more and I don't appear to be missing anything. Yes to your question.
"BNP Paribas has been present in the United States since the late 1800s and currently has over 16,000 employees in North America." [1]
From the article: "The sentencing followed BNP Paribas’ guilty plea in July to conspiring from 2004 to 2012 to violate the International Emergency Economic Powers Act and the Trading with the Enemy Act."
You violate Acts and you want to operate in the US, you get sentenced. If they want to play ball, they need to follow the laws.
"Authorities said that BNP essentially functioned as the “central bank for the government of Sudan,” concealing its tracks and failing to cooperate when first contacted by law enforcement."
You had written - "The US have a long track record of using soft power and extraterritorial law to punish foreign states and companies, including supposed allies"
What I mean by "foolish" is that in the long run (a decade), it will not work, and the entire policy of trying to stunt China's economic development will lead to conflict sooner or later.
ASML didn't have a choice in the matter. The US government pressured the Dutch government to withdraw the export license. That's at the diplomatic level, way above the heads of company executives. The Netherlands is part of NATO and is more closely aligned with the US than with China. But the Netherlands could at some point decide that it just wants to do business with everyone.
JFK had some thoughts on ways to resolve conflict:
https://nationalcenter.org/KennedyInaugural.html
but I guess not everyone was on board with "where the strong are just and the weak secure and the peace preserved".
(Διογένης, I like your "bottleneck" much better than Brookings' word choice)
My impression is that the European Union is too politically fractured to mount any consistent policy.
Just one example: the French government has made noises about doing something to counter the United States' extraterritorial application its sanctions regime. US sanctions against Iran effectively apply to European companies, even if they have basically nothing to do with the US. The US can unilaterally force the EU to stop doing business with Iran. The French see that as a violation of their sovereignty.
The problem is, if France proposes to do anything about it, Germany will object, because Germany fears that the US will retaliate against the German automotive industry.
Imagine if the US could only take action when 50 states all agreed. There's no powerful central government in Europe that can decide to temporarily sacrifice some interests in order to achieve something more important - establishing independence of action from the US on sanctions policy.
> The problem is, if France proposes to do anything about it, Germany will object, because Germany fears that the US will retaliate against the German automotive industry.
I was under the impression that Germany is generally on board with the idea of using the INSTEX special-purpose vehicle to trade with Iran despite US sanctions. Of course the first (and only?) transaction was only completed this year, so the mechanism doesn't look too successful so far: https://www.auswaertiges-amt.de/en/newsroom/news/instex-tran...
INSTEX has done virtually nothing to weaken the sanctions regime.
The EU would have to take much stronger measures if it was really serious about preventing the US from imposing its sanctions regime on European companies. I'm not an expert, so I can only guess at what sort of measures Europe would have to take, but I imagine they would involve reciprocal retaliation for any measures the US takes to punish European companies.
I am not sure Europe's best interest is to help China replace USA as the world's bully. Compared to future China, even USSR might be remembered with fond memories of that bully who harassed everyone for a time, but is in his hart just a depressed and neglected boy who needed a compassionate touch.
Europe should stand on its own and do what is in its best interests, not the US's, not China's.
I don't think that the US's aggressive stance is in Europe's interests to follow. Standing your ground, sure, but this confrontation seems counterproductive in the long term and, again, is simply trying to delay the inevitable, IMO.
Doesn't Europe already do what is in its best interest? Is Europe's best interest to be world's most powerful bully (which it is not at least since WW2), or to provide good life conditions for its population (which it arguably does), or even something else?
It will have to be powerful. Otherwise others will impose their wishes (as Russia is doing with countries, as the US doing with companies and as China is trying to do with public opinion or statements of facts in European media as well as statements by parliaments).
I'm under the impression that the US heavily subsidizes European security. Obviously, the US gets a number of advantages from this as well.
It seems like Europe will have to build up its military if it wants to be able to stand alone. Not that I think a multi-polar world is good for stability. I think US leaders used to keep that in mind a bit more before trying to leverage their position.
The relationship between US and EU is very one sided and it’s not the Americans who are the benefactors. EU gets unlimited access to the worlds best consumer market, secure trade everywhere, military bases on their territory, deterrence against the Soviets - they’re so dependent on the US they don’t keep more than token militaries.
Why do you think the EU wants to throw all of this good away?
The sentiment is changing somewhat though. The US used to be a leader in the Western world.
Currently: not so much. The value of the US with shared 'western' values is greatly declining, since they are retreating from almost every partnership.
This effect wasn't visible during previous White House administration and perhaps will be reversed within the next one. Current isolationist politics, with explicit mantra "America first" looks more like an aberration rather than a long term reality.
Trust is easier lost than gained. In international diplomacy "losing trust" simply means you get a wake-up call: what happens next time the White House decides to squeeze their allies? With populism on the rise the next president might go for the jugular for next to nothing because that's what voters with no understanding of international diplomacy and politics want and expect. Right now the US "pays" for the support of other western countries by footing the bill for everything military. When this is outweighed by the abuse of soft power it may just start pushing allies towards other soft power projecting countries.
Completely agree. America has a lot to do to gain it back; it's a long process.
"Squeezing allies" sounds interesting. Maybe they shouldn't be "squeezed" in the first place, so it's good that they can't? On the other hand, if, for example, Europe sees the benefits in countering some specific China expansion issue, USA won't need to ask too much for a concerted response.
And frankly, Western alliance has no alternative today; maybe only going alone - or as a European Union, but USA (and Canada to a degree) are still the best partners. That doesn't mean, of course, that USA doesn't make bad mistakes lately.
> Maybe they shouldn't be "squeezed" in the first place, so it's good that they can't?
Not sure how to read this.
> Western alliance has no alternative today
Of course not, every single alternative is considered an enemy by the USA and any attempt to have a relationship with them has to be sanctioned by the USA or face punishment. If these were companies the move would be monopolistic, anti-competitive, exclusive dealing, all illegal. But it's not companies, it's international relations, where some are still free to consider torture legitimate and moral.
Putting aside the arbitrary choice of who's a terrorist state and who's a "trusted ally" (Iran vs. Saudi Arabia?), trying to cooperate with countries like Iran, Russia, or China can be arbitrarily (depending on interest) seen as an aggressive act of "disobedience" and is punished. Even if the sanctions were unilateral and with no agreement from other allies.
that's the advantage of being a hegemon. the e.u can:
- throw its lot in with the u.s and take it when it hurts
- throw its lot in with another aspiring hegemon and take it when it hurts
- do what it taker to go it alone.
the e.u have ruled out the last on multiple occasions. perhaps when brexit and corona is behind us, they'll begin thinking about it again.
the second does not seem particularly appealing; between putin russia, a xi prc and a trump u.s, i think the u.s is best of a bad bunch. and its fair to say they have more upside than down; i would favor good government returning to the u.s and be reluctant to favor improving government returning to china or russia.
small, isolated western countries like au and n.z have effectively no choice in the matter: they get to pick china or the u.s, and china have made it clear they intend that choice to be hobson's choice.
It's always about the ratio between the benefit and the "taking it when it hurts". With other presidencies the ratio was OK. But with the rise of populism the moves are left to someone playing to please people with no understanding of the small or big pictures. And it's hard to forget when "friends" decide to abuse the stick because the carrot didn't sit well with their voting base.
Yes - if Trump loses by 2% of the vote, anyone is going to have to wonder when he or someone similar comes back. If he left under impeachment or a huge blowout loss, that would be far more convincing that his style of politics was rejected rather than edged out.
It was visible during Bush's presidency. Trump's foreign policies are effectively an extreme version of Bush's. For example Clinton signed the Kyoto protocol but Bush decided not to ratify it. Obama ratified the Paris agreement and Trump decided to withdraw from it.
Well it doesn't help when the ostensible NATO allies barring the U.S. have never once met their full monetary or self-defense obligations. Obama of all people had to take a stick to Germany just to get them to raise their rate to 15% from 8% per annum when they are supposed to be paying 33% per annum.
> The value of the US with shared 'western' values is greatly declining, since they are retreating from almost every partnership.
Sometimes there is a tendency to forget that there is more to the USA than Trump and co. I think most Europeans are well aware of the "battle for the soul of America" within USA. The retreats from partnerships are most likely only a temporary glitch.
Why would ASML willingly give up its position in the chipmaking industry by giving away its technology to the most likely entity to try to rip it off and copy it? I'm speaking about China of course.
Because ASML uses lots of technologies and IPs originated from the U.S., consequently is subject to export control & entity list restrictions.
Semiconductor industries has been growing into a very tightly coupled and globalized eco-systems these days. No one country can own or domesticate the entire ecosystem or supply chains, albeit companies headquarters in the U.S. still own a significant portion of the technologies and intellectual properties.
This tight global integration is why US sanctions policy is so disruptive. The US is asserting the right to tell European, Japanese, Korean and Taiwanese companies who they can do business with, based on those companies' connection to the US economy. Use of American-designed software, interactions with a US bank, engagement in dollar-denominated transactions, etc. can all put a company under American jurisdiction.
It will be interesting to see if European countries begin to try to push back against this policy. Imposition of American sanctions against Iran on European companies have already caused a good deal of consternation in Europe. But so far, the EU has been too fractured to do anything serious about it.
"We" give them the right, USA cannot stop a bank transacting with X or X company in Iran, Cuba, etc. but since USA owns the USD they can block these banks from using/clearing USD which is a lethal blow for a bank. But if USA gets on the wrong side of this and countries start phasing out $ and start favouring € (this is a 50 year process btw) then USA will have an empty threat in its hands. And I do know that there many connecting points/sanctions that can be imposed, not just the currency.
It's supposed to cause consternation because even the UN has declared Iran a state sponsor of terrorism for the last fifty years and nobody in the EU should even be considering doing business with them.
> Modern lithography technology (and in general high-end semiconductor production) is complicated enough that neither US nor China may catch up in reasonable time
I suppose that much of the tech is already in the scientific literature, and the "only" problem left is putting the pieces together.
That is indeed the only problem, and it is a hard problem.
ASML people like to describe it as "a bit like having robot controlled helicopters tie a rope around a skyscraper in a heavy storm, while not crashing nor pulling the skyscraper over" iirc.
This is because at nanoscale, every vibration is a huge movement, and even the flattest surface is mountainous. An ASML machine is basically little more than tons of little sensors and control mechanisms to detect all these vibrations and surface shapes and to adjust the light beam positioning accordingly.
Because of this, nearly the entire company (several thousand people R&D staff) is focused on "putting the pieces together". Eg they do comparatively little deep research. It's all engineering.
There is a reason TSMC is the only fab working on <='7nm' class lithography. It is hard. It also requires massive amounts of capital expenditure. And that's the case when the critical equipment is bought from a different company that's again, in a league of its own.
So even if the 'only' problem is putting the pieces together, that doesn't mean it is even possible. Look at it another way-- same thing can be said about Nuclear Fusion :D
Intel can’t do it. The leader of chip fans for near half a century failed to deliver on this generation of lithography. That’s the level of difficulty we’re talking about.
Neither have any fab operations, what makes you think they could make a dent? Mind you don’t have to just make chips. You can’t make inferior chips and brand them a certain way. You need to be an actual market leader at the cutting edge of fab technology, otherwise Apple devices will not be competitive.
Because the US and the Netherlands are long-term strategic allies and partners in NATO, share a broadly similar vision of a world governed by international institutions and the rule of law (if the current US decline into authoritarianism can be reversed), and largely share a common culture and history?
The Netherlands has benefited greatly from 400 years of the dominance of western civilization, and I assume they would want to see that continue?
Much more simply, because the US is a rich customer and military giant with a population of 330 million, and has the means to hurt the Netherlands, a country of only 17 million people.
This is not moral suasion, this is pure and simple bullying.
Sure, but the Netherlands is not as interdependent with China as it is with the US. The point is that the US is not convincing the Netherlands that blocking China is a smart move (because it isn't), it's forcing it with threats.
> but NL is part of the EU so sit back, shut up, and play nice. ... And on the EU side we are making it happen slow and steady.
Oh well, you're very optimistic. I see a EU that keeps failing again and again at being anything more than a collection of countries, each sporting a national pride that is genuinely pathetic at this point. Last year the US told Europe that it would sanction EU companies that acted according to an international treaty that was signed both by Europe and the US (the Iran nuclear agreement). I didn't hear a voice coming from the EU. Let's be realistic, at this moment the EU is an embarrassing disaster. I am European and I wish the best for the Union, but we're not really going anywhere like this.
While you might not have heard of it the EU has actually been working very hard on the implemention of a parallel payment mechanism that will allow them to trade with Iran despite US banking sanctions.
"Working very hard" is really giving them too much credit. The parallel payment system, INSTEX, has done almost nothing to actually facilitate trade with Iran.
The EU set up this system in order to say that they were doing something, but the practical consequences for trade have been approximately zero. That's why Iran decided to stop abiding by the terms of the nuclear agreement. European companies refuse to do business with Iran because of US sanctions, so the fact that the EU lifted its nuclear-related sanctions doesn't bring Iran any relief in reality.
Yes, that scares me a bit, we seem to be doing 3 steps forward, 1 step back. But looking at where we are now, on major and smaller things, we are definitely moving forward. I remember a 7-8 years ago major steps were made on the collaboration into issuing pensions for EU citizens that have worked in more than one EU country. This now has been resolved, and instead of needed X months to exchange data, now it's done (almost) seamelessly and someone (like me) that has worked in many countries, can get "one pension" from "one country" in weeks (instead if months/years). There is a lot of work, plenty of things to align.
If we see this just as an IT project, we need to align 26 different core systems, they have differences in their data dictionaries, diffent laws and regulatory frameworks. This is a nightmare project, and it is run by 26 Public Sectors :) Imagine getting THAT to work. But it is working. One problem at a time.
The problem is not "aligning the core systems". The problem is that each of those systems has its own independent government and tries to defend first and foremost its own interests against the other countries in the union. The fact that France, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, etc. have their own foreign ministers, their own defense ministers (and armies) and so on is the issue. Or the fact that the US government can address its requests to a Dutch minister, or a French minister. Someone who can't reply "oh yes? Then we'll have that German or Irish industry stop importing from you. And forget about the participation of the whole EU army in any of your present and future aggressions around the world".
France has always been kind of contrarian. For example, they are NATO members but unbelievably they were also selling Russia a couple of Mistral landing platform docks.
Tons of high profile people have been talking about how it is not tolerable that the US is unilaterally forcing embargoes using the $US and tech as a weapon. Development of alternatives take time, but this has already started.
The goal is not to replace the US with China. Not only things are not reducible to a single dimension, but even if they were, it does not make the need to enforce our own sovereignty disappear.
No one in NATO trusts France (especially former communist countries).
France left once, and came back. They used to pander to communist regime during the Cold War.
During the NATO bombing during the Yugoslavian dissolution, a French General was caught giving out the bombing plans to the enemy.
No wonder nobody likes their foreign policy, and Macron is puzzled why the other EU countries don’t follow France in creating a Common EU military force.
The other countries know when push comes to shove, the US is a reliable partner, while France is not.
Not even all Americans align with certain US policies, and certainly foreign nations do not necessarily. Most Allied countries comply with current administration due to pressure, not because of some misguided loyalty to America.
Governance and diplomacy is not a short term venture. Trump will not be president forever and you cannot undo the act of siding against the US in favor of China.
There are a lot of decision-making processes in governance that involves a lot more than 'we don't like the current president'.
Interests can be short-term. US having no problem siding with China still takes into account the long-term interests. Generally Western world members do the same, even if that goes against the short-term interests.
Ah, the time old argument of “two wrongs make a right!”
China is systemically stealing IP from European companies, research from European universities, and forcing labor into a race to the bottom. Europeans would be wise to stand with Trump on this.
There is nothing wise about "standing with Trump" on any issue. His impact on allies is a kin of a moped doing figure 8s on a pigsty.
And no country stands with Trump on anything. At most they stand with the current US administration, which happens to be presided by Trump. Trump the citizen is repellent and has no redeeming qualities.
And by the way, Europe has its best interests in mind, and the current US administration already made it quite clear that the US under the Trump administration is a highly unreliable ally, and even a potential liability that's compromised by Europe's current biggest threat.
That's your high bar on Trump's reliability with regard to EU's vital interests.
I don't need to explain the sheer idiocy of complaining about the EU's... skeptical attitude towards the Trump administration in general, and Trump specifically.
I think you’re confused - NATO isn’t an alliance if the US is the only one putting in any effort. Trumps specific complaint is (from your own article):
> complained about the defence spending of European allies who committed less than the agreed 2% to defence, particularly Germany
The US wants the alliance, it’s the Europeans who feel they don’t need it (since they aren’t fulfilling their obligations).
The US maybe is able to prevent a Dutch company selling to China. But what if China goes "Hey mr. Dutch lithography specialist and mr. Taiwanese electrical engineer. Come work for us for couple of years and help us build this. Nice flat here in Shenzhen and plenty of money. Bring your family as well."
If you look at the next-generation lithography road maps, even in the early 90s EUV was just beyond the horizon, but it was on the road map. By 2014 more than twenty billion dollars were spent by various governments and private research when ASML began to ship these https://web.archive.org/web/20150920221539/http://www.asml.c... and even so it was another four years before the first actual devices using EUV CPUs shipped. And, let's not forget, the first device was the A12 Bionic for the iPhone XS/XS Max/XR and some iPads. In the fourth quarter of 2018 alone, Apple sold 46.89 million iPhones worldwide. And there were other companies jumping on the bandwagon but that's a lot of preorder money to help bootstrapping this.
Taiwanese engineers lured to mainland China as chip makers go into overdrive
"More than 300 senior engineers from Taiwan have moved to mainland chip makers so far this year, joining nearly 1,000 others who have relocated since Beijing set up a US$22 billion fund to develop the chip industry in 2014"
Even with the "chokepoints" it is just a question of time and money, no? In particular now that China essentially is being forced to be self-sufficient.
The hardest thing about producing the atomic bomb itself, was to determine if it was actually possible. But once it was achieved, then everyone knew it was possible. So all you had to do was throw more time and money into cracking it. And a little espionage probably didn’t hurt too.
The 5nm EUV, while it sounds cutting edge today, may just need enough time, money, and focus to achieve it.
Someone already achieved it, so we know it is possible. And SMIC may go a different route to achieve the same result, thus giving China independent Intellectual Property rights to it.
Not sure whether we are talking of the same problem but the Oak Ridge site alone cost more than a billion dollars and nothing cost a billion those years (the total federal budget outlay in 1942 was a modest 35 billion which admittedly climbed to almost 93 billion by 1945). The K-25 building was half of that: 1,640,000 square feet floor space, 97,500,000 cubic feet volume. The Hanford site was another 400 million. They created an entire industry out of nothing.
EV is not that bad but yes, it's quite bad.
And the possibility was always known, the devil really is in the details.
Still, the Soviet Union somehow repeated that. Despite the fact that half the country was still in ruins. Kiev and Minsk don't have that many pre-war buildings.
What? No, the hardest thing about producing an atomic bomb is spinning up enough U235. To produce highly enriched uranium requires huge numbers of gas centrifuges. This makes your facilities very large, conspicuous targets for espionage and sabotage.
If the hardest part was knowing nuclear weapons are possible then the world would be a giant glass parking lot by now.
> the hardest thing about producing an atomic bomb is spinning up enough U235. To produce highly enriched uranium requires huge numbers of gas centrifuges.
This is true in the modern era. However it should be noted that the Manhattan Project did not use gas centrifuges to produce their enriched uranium. Centrifuges were apparently considered but ultimately gaseous diffusion was used. Gaseous diffusion requires larger facilities and more energy, but I suppose the process doesn't require such tight tolerances as modern highspeed centrifuges.
I think the key to the US strategy here is that the lithography tech and hardware, especially for EUV, is insanely complex and difficult to get working correctly. Even if you entice a lot of engineers and researchers from around the world to come work for you, it'll still take a very long time to build up the capability yourself.
World trade is denominated in USD, no? A small percentage is Euro and smaller percentage in Yen, perhaps. A negligible percentage of world trade is in Yuan, I believe.
Yup, it’s clear if you pay attention that the US is aiming to stunt China technologically. I have been surprised at the kind of blows they have been able to land-but I don’t see this strategy working out in the medium term.
Previous admins all used the carrot much more than the stick with other countries regarding their relationships with China. The current admin is all stick. There’s a point where you overshoot and lose allies.
State of the art chips are only partly starting to be produced with EUV. You can do 7 nm without. And even then you don't do all chips with 7, specifying all "high-end" as a race to the smallest node is completely insane, the design space permitted by "just" 14 has yet to be fully explored, and I'm not even talking about the other applications where you absolutely don't even want the smallest node. The strategy makes no sense at all IMO. This is a (very time limited) commercial war over gadgets, and this will clearly lead to China eventually developing and owning their whole stack.
NAND, DRAM, and CPU / SoC from TSMC are all going to or already need EUV. There is no shortage of sales even if you exclude SMIC. ASML currently only produce ~30 of their TwinScan EUV System per year, which is behind their target in 2019, and behind their original target in 2020. And that is without the pandemic shutting down the production for months. The backlog orders are already going all the way to 2022. And if Intel were to keep up with their promise of 7nm EUV you can expect 2023 and 2024 orders are filled as well. All of these are excluding the use of EUV on DRAM and NAND which Samsung is actively researching and testing.
Basically ASML can just say their orders are already filled up to 2025 and tell SMIC to come back later.
Have you looked at Kirin 990? It beats Exynos 990, a design team who started working on mobile chips even before Apple. Their 5G chips are undeniably superior to anything on the market and by a huge margin.
This is actually an excellent example of what I’m talking about. The Kirin 990 might be great, but it’s actually manufactured by TSMC in Taiwan. China can design chips, but they currently can’t make them.
True, but that wasn't the point of my argument. The point is you can actually throw money at a problem and get it to work. There are 4 big ARM chip designers in the world right now - Qualcomm & Apple in the West and Samsung & Huawei in the East. Both Samsung and Huawei have reached this stage by being pumped with lot of cash and backing by their government in the past. So this model has proven that it works.
According to ASML, EUV requires an incredible amount of institutional knowledge to pull off, including for the optics involved. And they're not worried about a machine being taken to an unauthorized location because EUV machines are huge and assembled on-site for customers ("bolted to the ground") by ASML itself.
Given the pace of chipmaking die shrink, I wouldn't be surprised if they can retard the ability of China to get up to speed on 7nm before the next lithographic generation becomes common.
As a foreigner this completely makes sense to me. Left and right, us tries very hard to stop other countries development. That is what make us extremely bad actor in the eyes of people.
As I understand it the big challenge is to replicate the chip manufacturing done by TSMC today. From what I have read mainland China is still years away from doing that.
What is happening has probably made catching up one of their top priorities, and thus this will, ironically, shorten the time it will take for them to rise in that industry. That will also diminish Taiwan's strategic importance, which some might argue can increase the probability of forceful reunification.
> If I where them, I'd quietly ban al ethnic Chinese from working at their company.
That's a horrible and dangerous suggestion and I hope the the world is above racial profiling. Given historical precedent and the difficulty in developing extreme ultraviolet lithography, it's reasonable to expect CCP has their top hackers and human intelligence operatives (both paid an unpaid PRC nationals and non-PRC nationals of varying ethnicities) attacking ASML to try and steal its invaluable trade secrets.
Even ethnic Chinese from Taiwan have been known to spy for Communist China (like the Chinese American who stole the plans for the latest U.S. nuclear warheads at Lawrence Livermore and is now teaching at a university in China).
The Chinese have a strong group identity and their nationality doesn't matter a great deal to them. In their mind they're Chinese, no matter where they live.
Harvard professor Charles Lieber had similar allegations, and he's not ethnically Chinese. There's millions of ethnic Chinese in Taiwan, Malaysia and elsewhere who are against Communist China. I agree the CCP has a strong 'ethnonationalist' ideology that tries to go beyond nationality. This needs to be strongly pushed back upon, but banning all ethnic Chinese is not the answer. Please keep in mind the centuries of historical context with anti-Asian immigration sentiment ("Yellow Peril"). I agree given the risks the world should put great thought into limiting (even banning) all immigration from the PRC because the security risks are too great. But that law should not apply to Taiwan, Malaysia etc if the people immigrating have proven themselves anti-CCP.
My motto is "better safe than sorry" as far as China is concerned. This banning doesn't need to occur at every company, only at the ones which are strategically important, such as defense and cutting-edge high-tech.
Don't give up America's values for even more state sponsored discrimination based on ethnicity. It does mean PRC nationals and others continue to steal, but that's something to be managed through the legal system.
Didn't it took ASML ages to be able to build EUV Machines?
I don't think you can just replicate something like a EUV machine from them in any way.
You probably need highly specialized workshops for tons of different components and all of those workshops have to go through the same innovation cycle.
Yes, these machines are incredibly complex. Even the laser source is a $200M machine from Cymer that implements the same principles as the nations ignition facility by lasing microscopic droplets of molten tin that are falling in a vacuum. That requires rapid closed loop tracking of the tin droplets. It’s perhaps replicable but there’s a lot of art in EUV that took 30 years to develop. It’s not a simple job to clone that.
It took ASML a long time to perfect these machines, but once they nailed it I'm pretty sure it's no big deal for anyone to duplicate it if they knew how to avoid all the pitfalls.
It would save the Chinese decades if they stole ASML's secrets instead of trying to figure it out on their own. Most likely they will simply take the shortcut and then start selling the machines at half the price ASML is selling them for (as they do with almost everything).
If Huawei is still blocked after stockpiles runs out, they have to start buying standard components from MediaTek or Samsung. There is no good non-American substitute for Xilinx.
MediaTek’s flagship Dimensity 1000 5G Chipset is fine, so is Exynos 990. They are just slightly behind Snapdragon 855+ and A13
Edit: in case it's not clear, FPGA's are used in wireless base-stations.
Interesting to speculate on the engineering workarounds if all FPGAs disappeared tomorrow. I'm not sure there's a big long-term impact.
Maybe more shift to more to DSP, make low volume ASICs on older nodes cheaper and cycle faster, put up with more card swaps since you can't update certain things in firmware so easily.
You can still do all the things but maybe the design takes longer or you sacrifice some performance (designer gets to choose the tradeoff).
My guess is the main "real" impact is cycle times, design retooling and having to pause and rework existing designs suffering from supply chain disruption. Potentially all problems you can fix scalably by throwing enough bodies at them since the money is clearly there.
Would be interested in perspectives from anyone working in a related area.
This sounds like a great opportunity for organised crime. I imagine China'd be willing to pay at least as much for smuggled chips as drug consumers in many places pay for smuggled drugs, so it represents a huge opportunity for US-law-nonabiding middlemen.
More of a target for espionage or cyber espionage. These lithography, semicon machines are low in number and expensive. Companies can't run gray batch for these and hide the profits, especially when they have good backlog of orders. So, these are good target for espionage, like it already is.
I think this decoupling attempt is unwise and will cost the US a lot of cash long term. There's too much at stake for China to ever back down, and it won't take them long to catch up in chip production. It's going to hurt them for a while but at the end of the day the US will have thrown a gigantic market away it could have comfortably owned. The strategic sector for Huawei is 5G, and it can trivially get enough chips for that. It will hurt their smartphone sector but the government can jump in if necessary to dampen the impact.
Same with the Google Play Store embargo on Android. It just robs American companies of a market where they had a lead while it accelerates China's ambitions.
I see this argument all the time and just don't get it. China is basically stealing everything from source code, hardware schematics, materials science research.
It might accelerate this a bit, but China already had its sights on a domestic semiconductor solutions years ago.
The idea that they were going to ever let the US just "have the market" isn't how China does things. One way or another, China is going to copy everything the US does. It's just kicking the can down the road another 5 years or so.
There is no path for backing down for China. There is no clear actionable demand from the current U.S. administration. All players are waiting for the November result to pursuit a more strategically-oriented outcome.
Has the US disclosed why they are cracking down so hard on this one company. I know they are seen as a security threat and a puppet of the Chinese government but has there been a statement explaining what's going on here?
> Has the US disclosed why they are cracking down so hard on this one company.
I read somewhere that the simplest counter measure Huawei can take is to show it's a private company, by publishing its shareholder structure, thus renders the crack down illegal.
Though notionally a private company, Huawei (notably its founder Ren Zhengfei) has many complex and often opaque links with the Chinese government and the Chinese military.
More than a decade ago, Huawei admitted that it unlawfully copied Cisco source code regarding the switches and routers that are the backbone of the internet.
Huawei does not disclose details about Chinese-made components it uses in its devices and has admitted that these may be more vulnerable to hacking than some western competitors.
The US basically asked point blank to define their organizational structure, connections to the CCP etc. Huawei basically balked and ignored the ask.
It may ostensibly be owned by the employees but there's a more complex ownership structure involved than what a normal company would have.
" Scholars have found that, after a few stages of historical morphing, employees do not own a part of Huawei through their “shares”. Instead, the “virtual stock is a contract right, not a property right; it gives the holder no voting power in either Huawei Tech or Huawei Holding, cannot be transferred, and is cancelled when the employee leaves the firm"
Huawei is one of the few Chinese tech giants with success in the West. I think that entire concept scares the US, which until now has enjoyed almost a monopoly on big tech.
There is a security argument of course, and the US government is well aware of smartphones and related technology being perfect spy machines, but I think you have to look at this in terms of great power competition to get the full picture.
Disclaimer: I work for a major West-based supplier to Huawei.
It's the first non-west-friendly provider of core bits of network infrastructure. It's also cheaper and better, which means it's selling quickly.
Having network infrastructure with your designs installed on every network interconnection worldwide is very useful if you want to, say, have access to tap any conversation anywhere in the world...
The funny thing is the US has missed the boat... Hearts and minds is what matters far more than network infrastructure, and tiktok has won there...
Stealing two bits of good tech, and combining them to make the best tech, might be against lots of IP laws in the US, but still results in the cheapest and best product on the market.
The US and China have been in a Cold War for longer than 3 years. This didn’t start with Trump, and it won’t end with him. Trump is just an inarticulate accelerant in an already unfolding geopolitical catastrophe.
Seems to me that buying a 2 year supply of CPUs is not a great strategic measure since 2 years out your competitors will have faster chips or paying far less than you in 2 years for the chips sitting in your inventory.
Obviously if the alternative is to not have CPUs, it's the only choice they have, but its going to put them in a rough place competitively.
there's still a ton of new phones shipping with two-year-old chips in them.
obviously, for new designs they won't choose to integrate chips that they can't source, but having a supply of chips they can no longer source means they can continue to manufacture their current models.
Since 2018? Plenty of time to have run some Westlaw/LexisNexis searches in between.
According to the Phase-1 agreement, China should buy at least USD 68B of US services in 2020. If they were to spend most of it on counsel, that'd be a lot of nastygrams, even at common-law billing rates.
I think it's important that the next big advances in computing are developed in the West. That's why the proposed NSF Technology Directorate [1] is so important.
I wouldn't be worried about those. I'm sure China can easily find "alternative sourcing" for them (also the version they have right now is probably sufficient for some time)
Those stocks will run out eventually. Huawei is probably betting on the sanctions being resolved through negotiations and the Chinese government making concessions on trade.
However, I wouldn't count on this happening since the U.S. knows very well the power of being able to spy on adversaries and allies using network and telecom equipment. I don't believe Trump will back down on Huwawei no matter what the Chinese government offers.
Apparently not enough as Huawei seems pretty nervous about it. If your competition is using 7nm and 5nm parts and you're stuck in the past with 14nm your market share will erode very quickly, especially in the smartphone business.
Mind you that other Chinese smartphone makers do not (as of yet) face the same restrictions and are able to purchase the newest parts. What chance does Huawei stand against them, even in the Chinese market? I'd say very little.
Such conflict will be disaster for the whole humanity, so the probability of such conflict is not that great except some small skirmish here and there.
I will not count on difficulty of technology to stop a country progress for long. China mastered bullet trains and surpassed the original designs from German, French and Japanese designs, so given time and resolve they will be able to solve given, at present USA closing doors and China opening doors for educated immigrants.
I hope the world instead of focusing on differences, focus on collaboration, USA and its system has its own pros and cons so is China’s system. Also in general I believe no meaning in forcing Chinese to accept what’s right for them based on US ideas, let them have their own freedom to choose and work or change their system. As US has black minorities and Puerto Rico (overseas territory), so does China (Hong Kong and Taiwan). Let them figure out in their own way how to work out between their majority and minority. This is what US or any sovereign country irrespective of system will expect. If China tries to teach USA how to treat and respect its minorities and overseas territory they won’t agree, same is China.
Both have overseas territories, except that means virtually nothing in and of itself. Do a majority of Hong Kongers (let alone Taiwanese) support the status quo or closer integration with mainland China? Did they choose to join in the first place through an election?
Did Indian govt respect vote in Kashmir (Hong Kong and Taiwan enjoy a lot of freedom I can’t say the same for Kashmiris who are still prisoners at military gunpoint in their own place)? Did US tried votes for black minorities if they want to form a separate country or in Guam and Guantanamo Bay or even accepted the verdict of the people of Puerto Rico and these 2 are the largest democracies. If in a majoritarian politics outcome for minority is same as China than really both systems are having an issue with protecting minorities.
Even in HN by downvoting comments minority view is turned unreadable, this is same in USA, India or China where systems work based on majoritarian politics.
The majority of Taiwanese were about to vote for KMT (pro-China party) just before HK protests erupted. After that there was a massive shift in favor of the pro-US administration. But immediately prior to protests KMT was favored to win.
I tend to agree. If the world’s fine with China engaging in a little soft genocide, I don’t think there’s much China would do on the international stage to actually provoke a war. The CCP does seem to be legitimately uninterested in the kind of violent foreign policy that would drag it unintentionally into conflicts.
Muslim minority is treated worse by USA with the treatment of Palestine and its own Muslim population, same goes for India. So it will be better if we want to protect minority apply same standards for everyone.
As I said like China is imperfect in treating its minorities with differing opinions (Tibet, Uighur, Hong Kong and Taiwan), so is many large democracies be it USA or India (where majoritarian politics works the same way as China, trampling on the rights of minorities finding loopholes in systems and bypass all safeguards with majority support). We all have a right to disagree with Chinese system, but don’t have a right to force it on majority of Chinese who believe in their own system.
Lol. Nope. I know plenty of Muslims in the US. Being arrested and placed in a concentration camp hasn’t occurred to them as something to worry about. We’ve made plenty of mistakes and have a ton of discrimination still, but China is on a different scale of atrocity.
At the risk of descending into a mud-slinging fight, I'll just point out that the United States has been fighting non-stop wars in Muslim countries for nearly two decades, killing hundreds of thousands of people. The US government cannot credibly claim to occupy the high ground here.
Attacking another user like that is a serious violation of HN's guidelines and will get you banned here, regardless of how wrong another comment is or how strongly you feel about it. Please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here.
HN is a highly international community. It has users all over the world, but also many users who are outside their countries of origin, and users of ancestry from all over the world. It is natural for people here to see these issues very very differently. Our job as a community is to have space for that, not try to exclude violators of our preconceptions.
Since HN's demographic is overwhelmingly Western, there is usually a pro-Western consensus in the comments (though it gets complicated, since many Westerners hold anti-Western views too). I don't see that as a problem, but it becomes a problem when consensus slides into mob behavior, which your comment unfortunately exemplifies.
People have been hounded off this site in ugly ways and attacked for their ethnicity here and I don't want us to have any part of that. Indeed if the question is framed that way, I don't believe you or any other decent HN user would want to have any part of that. The trouble is that we slide into it without intending to.
If you or anyone wants further explanation or examples, plenty are here:
I yet have to understand why Chinese companies are not getting the same treatment in the US as US companies get in china. In the EU i understand - germans need to sell cars there, but in the US it is beyond me given the POTUS is “against” China.
This [1] sounds like an embargo workaround which can get people to prison [IANAL] (for example those Russian immigrants [2] got arrested for doing similar thing with Xilinx chips few years ago)
[1] "... Huawei has not been able to directly buy chips from American companies without special approval since last May.
However, it has been able to continue building its inventory of American chips through other available channels -- such as local chip distributors and traders, or even asking its own suppliers to buy the chips for it, sources familiar with the matter said. Huawei has been willing to pay far higher prices than normal for the chips, despite the fact the company can only secure "off-the-shelf" versions without customization or technical support, they said."
The US government has identified EUV lithography as a bottleneck in the semiconductor industry, and is trying to keep that bottleneck in place, as a pressure point that can be used against China in the future. The Brookings Institution has laid out the strategy.[2]
Of course, that means that the Chinese government will now probably invest heavily in domestic lithography companies. The Brookings Institution thinks that the US can shut China out of high-end semiconductor production indefinitely. That seems like a pretty foolish conception to me.
1. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-asml-holding-usa-china-in...
2. https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/FP_2020...