It is interesting to see Switzerland becoming a technology hub in the post blockchain era.
> post blockchain era
There was a blockchain era?
RISC-V Foundation moving to Switzerland over trade curb fears
151–160 of 289 posts
Re: RISC-V Foundation moving to Switzerland over trade curb fears
#152Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Hague invasion act" =:-O The US truly are the bully in the room.
How is that bullying? The US doesn’t submit to the jurisdiction of the ICC, which is voluntary. (India isn’t a member either.) Clinton never submitted it to the Senate for ratification. Prosecution of an American by the ICC would therefore be an act of aggression and military response would be warranted. The US, in general, is defensive of its sovereignty. We have our own institutions and we are very protective of th…
> In my view, the real question is why others are so willing to give up their sovereignty and right to self determination?
Because in doing so in the form of an agreement, others can be made to give up their freedom to do bad things while you also give up the freedom to do those bad things? Like the normal social contract, but explicit and on a larger scale.
This dates even to the 1899 Hague Convention, which the US was very keen on following earlier work by Abraham Lincoln. The way to get the enemy to treat your prisoners of war humanely is to agree to treat theirs humanely, and this held fairly well even in the horrors of WW2.
The post-Holocaust international order is devoted to the idea that there is always a risk of rogue states deciding to end the freedoms of their citizens or engage in mass murder and other crimes against humanity. There are also risks of states turning on one another and escalating economic disputes to actual wars. In order to guard against these, supranational institutions were built. Not just the United Nations and the ICC, but the whole Bretton Woods system, the WTO, the NATO mutual defence organisation, the ECHR, and the EU and its antecedants.
How can the US ask China to end its human rights abuses, and expect to be taken seriously, when the US refuses internal or external accountability for its own human rights abuses and war criminals? The official position of the United States, having determined that Edward Gallagher was deliberately murdering civilians and prisoners of war, is that he should be pardoned and have his position reinstated? That's fine and no reason for imposing sanctions on the United States?
Yes, this is a tu quoque argument, but at the level of international propaganda it works.
Re: RISC-V Foundation moving to Switzerland over trade curb fears
#153Earlier quoted context omitted.
The US has a strong commitment to pardoning its war criminals and human rights violators. https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-usa-trump-warcrimes-pardon... This, incidentally, is why it's hard to take seriously the idea that US positioning against China is aimed at genuinely improving human rights and not just using them as rhetorical cover.
...while at the same time US law seem to magically apply everywhere in the world. Extradition to the US is very common. Not to mention https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraordinary_rendition
> while at the same time US law seem to magically apply everywhere in the world.
Like how non-USA financial institutions have to care about whether their clients could be considered USA citizens, just because USA law says so.
Or like USA export control laws apply to devices which were not manufactured in the USA, just because the device includes an USA-manufactured screw or something like that.
Re: RISC-V Foundation moving to Switzerland over trade curb fears
#154> wants to ensure that universities, governments and companies outside the United States can help develop its open-source technology Read as: > wants to ensure that China... Let me see if I understand this correctly. US tax dollars funded (in part, via UC Berkeley) this technology, and now this organization is moving outside of the US specifically so that it can work with China in ways that the US would not appreciat…
Both sentiments are pointed in the same direction - more freedom.
Also, Blizzard, South Park, NBA are part of popular culture in the west. Cooperation with China is endangering that culture, so you see backlash.
Standards related to RISC-V are not part of popular culture and there is no danger of Chinese censorship. There is however danger of USA protectionism.
And yes - I can see Americans using microchip intellectual property against Europeans. EU is right there on the list of trade foes with China and Russia according to USA president.
Re: RISC-V Foundation moving to Switzerland over trade curb fears
#155> wants to ensure that universities, governments and companies outside the United States can help develop its open-source technology Read as: > wants to ensure that China... Let me see if I understand this correctly. US tax dollars funded (in part, via UC Berkeley) this technology, and now this organization is moving outside of the US specifically so that it can work with China in ways that the US would not appreciat…
I think your analysis is correct. Before jumping to the “US is a bully” narrative, one should consider:
- they whole problem here is that Hauwei and other state-sponsored Chinese firms are flooding the market with below-cost, compromising devices in order to give the Chinese government broad access to sensitive information [0]
- Hong Kong is dying under the Chinese boot [1]
- China is running concentration camps [2]
Our community isn’t used to thinking about open source software - or technology in general- in the context of geopolitics. We seem to agree IBM was wrong to help the Nazis manage the Haulocaust [3] but don’t apply that logic to China. Yet. Maybe our children will; that’s on us.
This is another skirmish in the long war around the Chinese Rise. America is by no means perfect, but I think we’ll miss Pax Americana when it’s gone. We need to search our souls and find our spines.
[0] https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/17/18264283/huawei-security-...
[1] https://www.vox.com/2019/11/18/20970453/hong-kong-protests-2...
[2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/fina...
Re: RISC-V Foundation moving to Switzerland over trade curb fears
#156This is a great move. It is time to punish countries that impose restrictions on technology. I don't want to be a prisoner in a place where technology is simply considered "illegal" because it doesn't further the interests of the ruling class.
This specifically furthers the interests of a ruling class, the Chinese Communist Party. It is explicitly giving the CCP an American funded and developed technology which they can use for further development of racially profiled mass surveillance for the continued genocide of the Uyghurs. This is an awful move.
Re: RISC-V Foundation moving to Switzerland over trade curb fears
#157Earlier quoted context omitted.
The bigger criticism I heard about the TPP was extending America's Intellectual Property laws even further across the globe. And the secrecy was annoying as well. What anti-consumer, anti-worker and anti-environment clauses are you referring to? Of course, from the standpoint of mainstream economic theory, trade agreements are moot for their stated purpose: everyone is better off just opening up to unilateral free tr…
> The bigger criticism I heard about the TPP was extending America's Intellectual Property laws even further across the globe. The IP issues were the big criticism within the tech community, because we care a lot about IP laws, but AFAICT not the big issue for unions, left-wing orgs, right-wing populists, etc who were much, much more concerned about tariffs, workers rights, etc and had barely anything to say about IP…
Good points.
I was also reading economists' opinions. Though as you can guess, they are quite in favour of lowering tariffs.
Re: RISC-V Foundation moving to Switzerland over trade curb fears
#158Earlier quoted context omitted.
“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury.” - Alexander Fraser Tytler
That doesn't make sense. The voters already collectively own the treasury of their state. And how exactly is it a requirement for a democracy to exist that it implements your favorite policies?
> The voters already collectively own the treasury of their state.
The situation is bit more complicated than that.
The voters aren't one monolithic entity. So government has lots of principle-agent problems. Check out Public Choice theory (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_choice).
Re: RISC-V Foundation moving to Switzerland over trade curb fears
#159Great work. Let over politicized countries fight each other while the rest of the world moves ahead. >“The Chinese Communist Party is trying to circumvent our export control system to support national security threats like Huawei - we cannot let it succeed,” Representative Mike Gallagher, a Republican from Wisconsin, told Reuters. I mean, one cannot make this more obvious. The rest of the world really doesn't want to…
Ah yes, let's do business without concerns of morality. Make western funded technology available CCP SOE's. After all, they gotta power their "exciting" and "innovative"[1] algorithms with some sort of architecture. Less we miss anyone[2].
[1]https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2019/11/12/chinese-firm...
[2]:https://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2019/sep/23/footage-...
Re: RISC-V Foundation moving to Switzerland over trade curb fears
#160> wants to ensure that universities, governments and companies outside the United States can help develop its open-source technology Read as: > wants to ensure that China... Let me see if I understand this correctly. US tax dollars funded (in part, via UC Berkeley) this technology, and now this organization is moving outside of the US specifically so that it can work with China in ways that the US would not appreciat…
I think your analysis is correct. Before jumping to the “US is a bully” narrative, one should consider: - they whole problem here is that Hauwei and other state-sponsored Chinese firms are flooding the market with below-cost, compromising devices in order to give the Chinese government broad access to sensitive information [0] - Hong Kong is dying under the Chinese boot [1] - China is running concentration camps [2]…
> Our community isn’t used to thinking about open source software - or technology in general- in the context of geopolitics
I'm old enough to remember when open-source distributions had special "non-US" sections for cryptography that actually worked.
All I ask is that if you have a "this software may not be used to run an internment camp" license, it gets even-handedly applied.