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From /u/gwern (@gwern ?): analysis on China’s semiconductor industry.
Recent export controls are directly targeting the Chinese ability to fabricate cutting-edge chips. The subsequent effect on electronics prices and the much-maligned supply chain won’t be pleasant—especially for China, and especially if their industry is already slumping. Consequences for the rest of the world are left as an exercise to the reader.
Given the forum, it’s not surprising that the focus is on AI. I’m more interested in the geopolitical outlook. This is an incentive to retaliate, perhaps even against the other regional semiconductor fabricator. And it is suggested that the timing is a calculated insult to Chinese leadership, as they are apparently going through a periodic dog-and-pony show of elections. Gwern suggests that China would otherwise be raising hell.
The counterpart in US domestic politics: crunching semiconductor supply will not mix well with inflation. I don’t think adding $50 to the next iPhone will make or break Democrats, but it seems unlikely to help.
I want to place predictions, but I don’t have a good grasp of the metrics involved. Place your bets, I guess, for:
China taking economic action
China taking military action
Consequences on Chinese industry
Tech policy towards China becoming a wedge issue in American politics
Yes. They were trying with their usual stratagems and have come up empty.
I'm not sure how deeply you've looked into that. But «machine» is a bit of a misnomer, like calling 16-inch/50-caliber Mark 7 a «gun» or Wärtsilä-Sulzer RTA96-C an «engine» or maybe even Bagger 293 a «power shovel». TWINSCAN NXE:3600D has grown beyond anything that can be understood as a mere tool. There are very few of them in existence, each constructed with salivating contractors in a queue, each takes dozens of freight containers to transport and a small army of technicians to serve. ASML is similar to the Guild in Last Exile (or Navigators in Dune, if I'm to be less precise but more understandable) – their offering is maximally scarce, absolutely necessary to have a fighting chance, and impossible to slip through the cracks. They'd have loved to sell to the PRC, but it won't happen.
I'm pretty sure the navigators were called the Guild in Dune as well.
Yes, they were pretty much referred to mainly as "the Guild" in the first two books. The Navigators themselves are just a part of the Guild, there's also bankers and other non-mutated humans who do stuff in it.
Another analogy: ComStar, or if you will, the Mechanicus.
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