Live data from Hacker News

Arm China Has Gone Rogue

semianalysis.substack.com

481–490 of 686 posts

Re: Arm China Has Gone Rogue

#481

This is difficult to parse in my Western mind. I've grown up with a constant understanding of implicit liberties, so much so that I have the freedom to openly _discuss_ my general distrust of the government. The events that float by in HN are outliers: threats of more risk, but statistically unusual enough that they're stories of interest. This means that living and acting in a country where your very _thoughts_ are…

Remember that nobody was threatened or, as a result, morally offended by China until the last few years when we figured out we couldn't keep them at the bottom of the value chain forever. How do we live in a society where we can just be aimed at a new foreign enemy and all of our free, enlightened citizens go along every time? Russia (support afghanistan), Iran (support Iraq), Iraq (support gulf emirates), Al Qaeda,…

> Remember that nobody was threatened or, as a result, morally offended by China until the last few years when we figured out we couldn't keep them at the bottom of the value chain forever.

I was helping companies figure out how to isolate IP from their Chinese branches 10+ years ago. This is not new, and definitely not “the last few years”.

Re: Arm China Has Gone Rogue

#482

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Naive question here: why China is able to close its market to foreign companies? Same thing for trade sanctions on Iran which impacted European companies but not China (if I'm not wrong). Seems they don't play by the same rules as anybody else.

There aren't any real rules, it's just whatever you have the power to get away with. Also it's not like there's some supreme world government that can actually enforce these rules...

How is that any different than the US???

Re: Arm China Has Gone Rogue

#483
post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Basically every large corporation in existence has deep government ties, but CCP bad

Last time I checked the US wasn't harvesting organs, running concentration camps, blatantly committing genocide and ethnic cleansing. Yes, CCP bad.

In fact, the US is doing all of those things.

Re: Arm China Has Gone Rogue

#484

This is difficult to parse in my Western mind. I've grown up with a constant understanding of implicit liberties, so much so that I have the freedom to openly _discuss_ my general distrust of the government. The events that float by in HN are outliers: threats of more risk, but statistically unusual enough that they're stories of interest. This means that living and acting in a country where your very _thoughts_ are…

I know that businesses in China are tied to the CCP in inextricable ways, but this take on the story doesn't make sense to me. This article was about a private takeover of a semiconductor business, what does it have to do with free speech, surveillance, or the government taking over anything?

Re: Arm China Has Gone Rogue

#485

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> why China is able to close its market to foreign companies? Because we assumed that prosperity would lead to liberal democracy. That underwrote complacency while profit motivations took root.

> Because we assumed that prosperity would lead to liberal democracy. That underwrote complacency while profit motivations took root. this might be a formal narrative, but the simple truth is that we did it because it made powerful people rich and entrenched specific factions in both parties

I don't think people buy goods made in China because they like seeing the rich get richer.

Re: Arm China Has Gone Rogue

#486

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What security risk? This Mr. Wu did something bad inside China, without any evidence that he was colluding with the national and local government of China. How is that translate to security risk at US domestic? And all these Chinese stem students already contributed critical work to the boom of high tech industry. You are not appreciting their hard work, and link a speculation to national security risk?! How heartles…

I have no strong opinions on this, but for background, there are a bunch of Silicon Valley types like Eric Weinstein (Thiel Capital) who maintain that there are sinister undertones to the growing influence of Chinese immigrants in Tech and Higher Education. https://djonesvi.medium.com/eric-weinstein-on-the-secretly-c... Obviously that can veer into uncomfortable conclusions i.e. is it true, or is this kind of racist?

maybe both, but i was just reading the other day about the CCP setting up offices/groups/whatever basically everywhere. even around american colleges though its more low key. many chinese (ethnically, many are not even citizens) overseas join the party because they either worry about problems with relatives in mainland china, or some think itll help their careers, or they may think itll help grease the wheels if and when they return. a lot of them just spend hours studying speeches by xi for their club, apparently.

i think whats more worrying is that ive recently become concious of what i say about china online, and i have no connection at all to china. would it be a problem for me tomorrow? probably not, but 20 years from now? maybe.

Re: Arm China Has Gone Rogue

#487

This is difficult to parse in my Western mind. I've grown up with a constant understanding of implicit liberties, so much so that I have the freedom to openly _discuss_ my general distrust of the government. The events that float by in HN are outliers: threats of more risk, but statistically unusual enough that they're stories of interest. This means that living and acting in a country where your very _thoughts_ are…

> This means that living and acting in a country where your very _thoughts_ are monitored is practically an alien concept for me. How do you live and decide with a government over you that can grab control at any time they wish?

SOOOOO NO. In this case, ARM China has one oddball dude who is playing Robinhood to the World Order Intellectual Property Policing Regime that has been absolute & tyrannical. No country in the world DARES tries to do a single thing on their own.

We're just getting wind that 10 years ago, Microsoft and IBM showed up and told New Zealand, who was dangerously considering thinking for themselves, that they had to fall in line, and sure enough, they bought the influence they needed[1].

Your wind up is 100% about fear, about a country where liberties are constrained, data monitored & controlled. And yet this story is something utterly different. This occurrence is different. It's not about your personal liberties being stepped on. This is where a person within a nation finds a way to use that nation to seize control of that arm of the business. But what's wild here to me is: that person is going to act like Robinhood. They've stolen intellectual property, freed it from the shackles & chains the rest of the world says it has on it. The rest of the world restricted the liberty of this information, the rest of the world prevented discussion of this information, the rest of the world monitored how it was used. The rest of the world backed ARM Holding LTD's exclusive right to determine the fate of the chips used almost everywhere on the planet, at all manners of scale, and no one absolutely no one had a single say about that. That's what Intellectual Property meant to the world.

This sounds like a total nutjob episode, aboslutely wacked out single-actor hijinks. But holy shit, this is about freeing something that has been locked up for a long time, and it's fucking epic.

[1] https://wiki.endsoftwarepatents.org/wiki/IBM_and_MS_deciding...

Re: Arm China Has Gone Rogue

#488
post #470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remember that nobody was threatened or, as a result, morally offended by China until the last few years when we figured out we couldn't keep them at the bottom of the value chain forever. How do we live in a society where we can just be aimed at a new foreign enemy and all of our free, enlightened citizens go along every time? Russia (support afghanistan), Iran (support Iraq), Iraq (support gulf emirates), Al Qaeda,…

Disagree. Not only have Americans pointed out their disagreement with Chinese government for as long as I’m aware, one of our core foreign policy concepts was that doing commerce with China would push them to liberalize and adopt more Western values in their government. As another commenter noted, what’s happened so far is that the quality of life has improved for so many Chinese that they seem willing to accept this…

American foreign policy was wrong-headed because it envisioned China happily assimilating into a world order which recognized US as rightful hegemon of all oceans and most land. This was more of an unspoken assumption, the spoken version had all the stuff you said.

Why would they accept that? There's a billion and a half of them and they work harder. They're going to have regional hegemony over their area as a matter of arithmetic.

Re: Arm China Has Gone Rogue

#490

China has been doing this for, what, 30-40 years now? How is this news? It is astonishing to me how many people have been, apparently, sleeping under a rock for decades, and are just now announcing their bitter realizations that China is not a free market open to Western companies. Hillary Clinton did one of these announcements within the past year or so, and my eyes rolled right out of the back of my head.

> China has been doing this for, what, 30-40 years now? How is this news? Company take-overs maybe. But to say that this is like the past is either ignorant or misleading. The stakes here are so much different than a mere spat over corporate property. This is the modern right to build computing machines. One rogue element in China has hijacked not merely a company, but a volume of IP that circumscribes probably hundr…

[deleted]
Post reply on HN