This year, we saw Russia weaponise it’s energy position to manipulate Europe. Well, the US new export controls to China make Russia look like amateurs. If Russia just cut off the gas, the US cut off the gas, stopped China from using any US gas extraction design tools, blocks China from buying any tools that can be used in the gas industry and if China tries to make these tools themselves, for good measure, blocked China from buying anything that can be used to make these tools. In short, it is like a nuclear bomb detonating on China’s semiconductor industry. It will be interesting to see how China responds. I feel like the probability of WW3 just ticked up a few notches.
Isn’t that old news? I think I saw something like that more than just a couple days ago.
I don’t actually think China will be too bothered. If they can’t buy them directly from the US they’ll find them elsewhere. If they can’t find them elsewhere they’ll make them themselves. Just look at N. Korea. Does anyone actually think they developed their nuclear and missile technology at home?
Who will China buy from? Or Russia for that matter? I hear it’s rather difficult to produce top notch chips without ASML’s machines.
There are always enough scum buckets that will do anything for a buck.
Intent is one think, capability another altogether.
Need is a huge motivation. This rather short sighted move by the Americans will force China to invent and produce their own capabilities and indeed improve on them. May take a while but the US could well have shot their own semi conductor production in the foot in a few years
I don ́t understand it, are the Americans so short sighted?
No argument from me, its just that I believe that the Americans havn ́t yet realized that China plays the long game.
The US’s idea of long term planning is the next board meeting. The Chinese is 40-50 years, or even longer.
The question may be if you can have creativity-driven change in a country and culture that is deeply hierarchical. Innovation (disruption, as opposed to gradual improvement) is fundamentally chaotic - you can’t order inventions. Also, take Japan, a culture where consent is said to be everything (another characteristic that’s fundamentally anti-innovation). Considered the world’s economic powerhouse 30-40 years ago, the killer of western car manufacturing and consumer electronics production. Where are they now, what “big thing” have they invented since? Japan excels at improving existing stuff, not at inventing. China may well be a very similar story.
In theory, yes. In practice, it is highly doubtful. The US is the leader in Wafer Fab Equipment, EDA and also controls inputs to machines such as ASML’s EUV - what ASML makes is probably the most sophisticated machine on the planet and nobody else has managed to make this. Those EUV machines took 2 decades to develop and that’s with the cooperation and availability of all the sophisticated components that are required: not least of which are Cymer’s light source (a US company and the only one in the world who can make the EUV light source) and Zeiss’ mirrors (again the only company in the world who can make it). To put it into perspective, it took China 5 years to make a ballpoint pen tip: https://www.businessinsider.com/chin…17-1?r=US&IR=T And I’ll bet that what they produced is rather inferior to what they can buy. The mirror that Zeiss makes is so flat that if it were to be “blown up to 4,500 kilometers wide, then the biggest defect would be just 0.5 mm tall.” Somehow, I doubt China can match this level of precision. And that’s just for one component of the machine. Then there are also the photoresists etc. that are required. All in all, the semi-conductor industry is truly a globalized industry requiring components and inputs from all over the world. It’s really a triumph of human achievement, so somewhat sad to see this start to degrade. China does have a role, but currently it is more towards are the lower end of the value chain and the US is now blocking their attempts at moving up that value chain.
Yes, but China doesnt have to be world class, they just need to be cheap and good enough. Perhaps Chinese chip makers are five years behind the US. That only matters in a capitalist society, not in a communist one, also if you look at the names of students and professors at the American universities, or the scientist in the labs, they read like the phone book of Peking. China would have no qualms in recalling them with better offers or even just order them home-
That’s the problem, there’s nobody else that makes the chips. If China wants to design them, they have to use US made EDA tools to design them - which they have now been blocked from using. Then due to sanctions, none of the foundries will manufacture the designs for them. OK, so China builds their own foundries. No go, they’ve been blocked from buying the machines required to build their own foundries. These are the machines that took 2 decades of global cooperation to develop and where all competitors except one dropped out of the race to produce them as it was too expensive/difficult. OK. Well China has smart people, they will still try to build them. Oh right, the components and parts required to build them have also been blocked. These by the way also rely on decades of knowledge and expertise to develop. As I noted above, it took China 5 years to get the know-how to build a ballpoint pen tip. It will take a lot longer to develop these items which are the most sophisticated and precise machines ever built by humankind. Even if it takes China 20 years to build what took the whole world 20 years, then once they’ve built it, it will be 20 year old technology.
Routers and mobile antennas are orders of magnitude more simple. In 20 years, working alone, I would be able to develop a router and a 2G mobile antenna. Granted they did a lot of R&D and innovative work to produce the 5G products. And also look how easily the US squashed them. They destroyed their mobile business and their 5G business hobbled on for a while on key US components that they stockpiled. I’m sure they can keep sourcing items such as FPGAs as they are commercial, widely used and small and easy to smuggle. Components of an EUV lithography machine, not so much.
Read today on the BBC that the Chinese are recruiting ex-RAF pilots to train their fighter pilots, particularly about the characteristics of Western equipment. Packages of over $250,000. There will always be people happy to enrich themselves at their country’s expense. Yes, I know, it isn’t illegal. But it’s the principle of the thing. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-63293582.amp
Time frame might be one thing, but I think strong planning and direction is another. No denying that CCP has achieved a lot of good things and taken a lot of people out of poverty. On the other hand, they’ve made a lot of mistakes and how they’ve gone about things leaves a lot to be desired. I had hoped as China developed, they would have also opened up and loosened up to take a more free and democratic approach. If anything, they’ve gone in the opposite direction, which when you look at what they did in Hong Kong, ultimately works against their long term aims - including reunification with Taiwan. Who in TW looking at how the Hong Kong one country two systems turned out would want to go in that direction? With a large population, you can expect to have a lot of domestic talent, but the unattractiveness of CN leads to a lot of brain drain as well as capital hiding/drains. Even local talent that remains can get squashed for relatively innocuous remarks (see Jack Ma). Perhaps China would be better off reunified with Taiwain… but under Taiwanese leadership…
Already have them, extreme ultraviolet imagers in the 5nm range are built in China, basically the same tech as in 12000ppi imagers used for banknotes.
Intel also started around 18 months ago to develop manufacturing capabilities within continental US https://www.abqjournal.com/2386350/i…o-upgrade.html Other investments in other US states, Mexico, Europe aimed at manufacturing chips in consumer markets. Catch-up growth is easy. When life starts throwing complicate questions and there’s no one to follow, it’s when authoritarianism reveals it’s weakness. I want to believe anyone around here above 35-40 YO have lived through an economic downturn and knows what to do. Things are not perfect, ups and downs, but it works. In contrast, I have the impression of some kind of self-deception in the Chinese narrative. Yes, the long-term thinking, national interest, it has always worked before…part reality, part propaganda. Thus the underlying risk of believing your own propaganda that has legitimated people in power. I have the impression there are few Chinese people in working age who have memory of things going wrong. Thus, when things go wrong, who knows what to do? How to react?
They might have a prototype, but nothing useful yet. The thing is that China has been working on this a long time. Way before even Trump arrived on the scene, though obviously accelerated since then. Maybe the US shut the gates too late as amoung the wasted resources, corruption and theft, China stilled hired a lot of Western expertise and maybe they are closer to achieving something than is publicly known. After all, it is easier to copy/follow knowing that something is possible rather than carving out the initial uncertain path.