Are we still pretending that Elon bought this for some kind of mission instead of a thiel, sachs, musk venture of delivering a highly tuned propaganda platform to the GOP for 2024 in the misguided estimation that this will put them into the inner circle of power ?
That may not even be necessary at this point. Chinese nationals I know all went to US/Australia/UK universities but their younger siblings seem to be much more enamored with the Chinese universities in tier 1 cities instead. Combination of growing nationalism and decreased prestige with graduating with an international degree.
For a long time (basically forever) China hasn't really invented anything of it's own. China has a large, complex, and well run espionage network responsible for stealing trade secrets from western companies. There's a great book, Disunited Nations, that talks about it in gory detail. Essentially, China will steal anything it can and build it locally. Espionage like this is generally expected (even among allies) but the scale at which China operates this is breathtaking. Majority of the large scale hacks they have done in recent history are targeting organizations with special IP (for example military technology).
So, knowing this I would assume they will simply use this system to get access to patents for the chips they need and begin fabrication themselves. This blow slows them down but doesn't stop them. To stop them, you'd need to stop their well oiled espionage machine.
It was the Chinese that pushed through RISC-V at the end of the day.
They are allocating absolutely ridiculous amounts of capital towards building their own lithography expertise now.
Trump pretty much forced Biden's hand when he stuck his dick in ASMLs relationship with China. By playing that card so early Biden effectively has to cut off access to TSMC, GlobalFoundries and Samsung for it to actually stick and not just have wasted the biggest and most important trade card W.R.T semiconductors.
People often talk about and accuse the Chinese government of being bad for its people, but in the absence of a better alternative their government is still the best thing for the people. What else would the people of China support?
If you really want to accuse the government of being bad then you must offer a better alternative. There was a point in time where any Chinese person would have given an arm and a leg for a visa to a western country. That’s now changing with the rising middle class in China. But if we really wanted to say the government is bad, then we also need to welcome their best and brightest, grant visas, and offer them an alternative.
Otherwise think about the impossible situation you levy on the ordinary Chinese citizen with rhetoric like “hey we don’t like how your government treats you because your government sucks, but also you can’t join our team. Therefore we will just fight you (in war) and you can either fight against us or help us fight your government (oh but sorry you still cannot join us).” Obviously the average Chinese person will most likely still support their own way of life and government, no matter how bad you think their government is for them, because at the end of the day you are not really doing anything better for them.
Even if you go and “liberate” them from the tyranny then what? Install a puppet government like in Afghanistan? Grant them all citizenship and annex it as part of the US (there are more Chinese people there so they would “take over” if that happened especially if we really believe in one vote per person)?
Also the 1 billion people capitulating to Taiwan is like government by minority. Not sure if anyone fully thought out that plan. In an actual democratic government, Taiwan would get subsumed by mainland China if the two countries merged.
Where does this meme come from that China is this horror show held together only by torturing and enslaving their population into submission? The Chinese government gets its legitimacy from thousand year old traditions and the fact that the people there have more than doubled their incomes every decade and accordingly it enjoys massive public support. The American government is basically the exact opposite of that.
Where does this meme come from that China is this horror show held together only by torturing and enslaving their population into submission?
History? Until Deng's reforms created a private market in food, block and village Chinese Communist Party (CCP) committee had absolute power of life and death over those under it through their issuing of food ration coupons. This data from some Chinese grad students I knew who lived through that and the transition, plus it was generally known. See also how the one child policy was implimented. They also still execute a lot of people, and politically a lot of corruption cases which sometimes go that far are clearly Xi and his new Tsinghua clique eliminating competition. Which has created a great many enemies in the CCP, that is its ruling class especially now with the suppression of tech companies.
At a higher level, the estimated 70 million people the CCP killed after gaining power in 1949? That may be high, a lot of it is from Mao's enemies, but on the other hand we keep increasing the estimates of deaths from the Cultural Revolution. Which Mao used to regain power after his very costly Great Leap Forward and the ensuing famine per those estimates killed tens of millions and cost him de facto paramount position.
Post-Mao and the Gang of Four the rulers of China made various agreements to ensure such things would not happen again. Xi and his new clique shredded them, and for a less contentious than the issues with Xinjiang Muslims example look at the brutality of Xi's Zero COVID policy. If Xi navigates the current every five year congress meeting to get his third term there's no reason to expect things to get better. Very possibly the same if he fails and is effectively deposed.
Those thousand year old traditions? Mao did his very best to stamp them out, especially in the Cultural Revolution. I would wonder if they're done at any greater than a cargo cult level today, although that might be enough for the public. Except of course those members of metro areas that are getting smashed when a few cases of COVID are found in them, those "owning" real estate, or those without a social safety net where 4 grandparents depend on 2 parents who depend on 1 child for the extremes of the effects of the one child policy.
For the economics you cite, also see how the residential property bubble is bursting now. That's not necessarily the fault of Xi, was inevitable sooner or later, but it is happening now in concert with other negative things including backlash like this very uncertain in its effects US chip tech embargo (the US Commerce Department has a great deal of discretion in what it will license someday).
It’s like with bank cards where everyone in the judicial system for years agreed that they were safe and only when it couldn’t denied anymore suddenly it took another 3 years for the system to reflect that.
A) cryptography is hard. Chances of Sony getting it right are not good. Chances of critical flaws being found later are basically infinite.
B) 99.9% doesn’t exist with technology. Once it’s broken the exploit can be scaled.
