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Arm China Has Gone Rogue

semianalysis.substack.com

41–50 of 686 posts

Re: Arm China Has Gone Rogue

#41
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless by "safe" you mean "maximizing profits at all costs" I disagree.

Maximizing short term profits.

It has been established that the KPIs and bonuses of most corporate executives are tied to the quarterly returns.

From their perspective, is there an incentive to maximize long term profit?

Re: Arm China Has Gone Rogue

#43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Author here. They specifically said they are not working with foreign companies. While they have exclusive rights to arm architecture in china, they cannot do anything outside china.

You can put your hands on Zhaoxin boards in the west despite those also ostensibly being China only as well. And software bifurcation is the real problem, and would be handled at layer not exclusive to China.

Chips themselves can be sold, yes. The IP cannot be licensed to non Chinese based semi firms.

Re: Arm China Has Gone Rogue

#44
Western executives are in over their heads dealing with China. I don't think they even realized who was holding their leashes until China decided to start yanking on them a bit.

Re: Arm China Has Gone Rogue

#45

I'm not sure what anyone expected when we cut China off of chip IP. We did the same thing in the US, we had a policy of just straight up encouraging people to memorize patents before they immigrated over, and paying for their family to immigrate with them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Slater

I can understand the value of memorizing designs, plans, and technical drawings that are kept as proprietary information, but why bother memorizing a patent? Patents are public information and are only valid in the specific country granting the patent. Without additional local filings, foreign patents are not valid in America and vice versa.

Re: Arm China Has Gone Rogue

#46
post #5

This is the standard Chinese operating model, as I understand it. Accept foreign subsidiary investment on condition of 51% Chinese ownership, transfer the technology, then turn around and compete with the parent. It was a similar story with maglev trains.

And cellular and networking and and and

Re: Arm China Has Gone Rogue

#48

So, I cannot see this sort of thing stopping, until we see a point where non-Chinese investors revolt when they hear about the company they've invested going into China, rather than cheering. If investors have had such a change of heart at this point, I have not seen it.

This story is visceral, it's now reached a broader audience. Boards of directors who weren't aware now are on notice.

Re: Arm China Has Gone Rogue

#49

Are there examples of mainland-grown IP/technology breakthroughs that resulted from such "transfers"? It seems so far that this does enable China to further catch up and massively expand the use of the captured technology, but are there instances of them qualitatively surpassing it? I'm sure China has enough resources for advancements beyond replication, as much as it's capable of showcasing something to the rest of…

Some of the most competitive products in some categories are from China, for example in drones. It's only a matter of time until they work their way up the chain. Remember the Tim Cook quote how it's difficult to fill a room with machinists in US, while in China you can fill 3 football fields with them.

That is confusing cause and effect. Because companies move their manufacturing operations to china it becomes harder to manufacture in the US. They did not initially move to China because of a lack of dometic skilled workers, but because of lower costs. The result of that move was, after a delay, the de-skilling of the US labor force, creating the lack of domestic skilled workers we have now. To recover from that would require a reverse migration of manufacturing activity which would, after a delay, create more skilled workers in the US.

Skills follow activity, they do not lead activity. You learn by doing.

If you want to develop good bridge building skills, then build a lot of bridges. As a result of that process, you will, after a delay, have a labor pool that knows how to do it well, and the bridges you build later on will be higher quality than the bridges you started out building.

You do not wait for the labor pool to sprout up like mushrooms spontaneously from the ground, so there are all these bridge builders standing around with nothing to do, and then you decide that you'll have them fill up a few rooms and and hire some of them to build a bridge.

Re: Arm China Has Gone Rogue

#50
post #44

Western executives are in over their heads dealing with China. I don't think they even realized who was holding their leashes until China decided to start yanking on them a bit.

They don't care because they'll be long gone and next generations will be dealing with the problem. Same as engineers who come in at the start of a project and do a number on the architecture, get their accolades and bonus, leave to their next gig, and let the suckers deal with the BS they built.
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