discoursedrome:

jadagul:

discoursedrome:

eightyonekilograms:

I’m kind of freaking out a little that people aren’t talking more about these Biden semiconductor sanctions to China. idk if it’s because there has been so much talk about sanctions, trade wars, etc. that everyone is semantically satiated on these phrases and now just tune them out?

This is actually a really huge action, in terms of what it does to the status quo. It’s an un-take-back-able foreign policy decision with huge consequences, and it was just… done, with no public deliberation. Like it was a change on aluminum tariffs from 60 to 61 cents/ton. And then the press also reported on it that way (even the opposition press! Conservative outlets aren’t talking about it either!)

Seems bad!

What I found disturbing about it was that, notwithstanding the usual little bit of mumbled patter about human rights abuses, there wasn’t even a thin pretext that it was being done in the interest of the world as a whole, or of the “rules-based international order” or liberal democracy or anything like that. The rationale is just overtly “it’s essential to US national interest that America suppress the technological advancement of any country that it perceives as a threat.” I’ll be curious to see if they try to strongarm allies into it the way they did with the Iran sanctions, or if they keep it unilateral to avoid the risk that it would damage their reputation. It’s going to be a difficult environment for US allies to navigate.

#politics#it’s a good thing for the US to build domestic fabrication capacity but this is kind of an alarming way to do it

I think you’re misunderstanding the move, but in a way that underestimates how important it is.

This isn’t industrial policy; it isn’t an attempt to shore up US domestic chip fabrication industry. It’s a declaration of a cold war against China and its allies: the policy is to deny China the ability to manufacture competitive military equipment without access to US supply lines.

That’s why the policy was rolled out so abruptly: it was a specific attempt to disrupt Chinese production without any chance for them to retool or adjust.

And apparently this was pretty effective; there’s this thread describing it as an “industry-wide decapitation”; for a more sober take see this interview with Kevin Wolf. Also interesting is this thread on which industries will be more/less affected by the ban. It’s obviously not yet clear whether this is going to work (that depends on how good a job each economic sphere does at promoting production and innovation over the next decades) but it seems suited to the stated purpose. (That last thread argues that it will effectively hamstring Chinese AI research, but also AI research is militarily irrelevant; if that’s true it may accomplish the immediate goal but not the medium-term goal.)

(I do think you’re wrong that it’s not being done “in the interest of liberal democracy”. It’s obviously a move to shore up the US/EU/Japan military bloc against a potential China/Russia bloc. We’re not trying to suppress technological innovation in Europe or Japan or Korea; we very actively want all of them to be able to produce their own defense stuff!)

The reason it’s dangerous is that, well, we’re declaring a cold war on China, and we don’t know how they’re going to react. One of the big disincentives to them invading Taiwan has been the prospect of getting cut off from US chip technology (see this thread by Tanner Greer), and obviously that’s not a disincentive any more. Just like Russia cutting Europe off from gas, once we’ve done it, we can’t threaten to do it in the future; the threat is stronger than the execution.

I almost wonder if we deliberately timed the move to right before the Party Congress, so it would take them longer to formulate an official response.

I agree that this seems to be part of the rationale, but this is the part I don’t approve of, because it comes off as offensive rather than defensive; it feels like it’s meant as a “preemptive strike” that takes imminent war for granted, which…well, if that’s correct then I suppose it’s the thing to do, but if it’s not correct then it could become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Well, I suppose the logistics/analysis/materiel for ground combat we’re contributing in Ukraine and the naval/coastal stuff we’d employ re: Taiwan are pretty distinct such that engagement in one theatre doesn’t limit the other, I guess the limiting factors would be diplomatic capacity, media & public attention, and political throughput (like, if the military-industrial complex has enough pull on enough Congressmen to get the funding and supply they want for a war, do they have it for two? What about Presidential ability to put a cause “on the agenda”?)