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USA restricts Swiss access to AI computer chips

bluewin.ch

121–130 of 141 posts

Re: USA restricts Swiss access to AI computer chips

#121
A good example of how fragile technology really is.

First off, you need rare metals to make chips, so you need access to them. Then you need complex chip frabrication technology that a single company[1] in The Netherlands creates and owns. Then you need to build these incredible sterile and complex factories of which there are only a hand full across the global.

Or having built up a relationship to a country that can get you the chips that you can't manufacture yourself, either that country has a change of political system or a third country threatens you with sanctions if you continue to have dealings with that country.

It all seems to be built on shifting sources of silicon.

[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2021/11/24/asml-the-biggest-company-in-...

Re: USA restricts Swiss access to AI computer chips

#122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TIL that Turkey is considered a white nation. Either case Switzerlands demographics don't seem too different from their neighbors like Austria: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Austria I won't doubt that they have a Euro-centric immigration policy, but I'm curious why a landlocked nation in the center of Europe really needs anything else. I'm from a West African country and our immigration policy is arms…

> TIL that Turkey is considered a white nation. What is a white nation?

Sorry, I know it sounded like sarcasm but it's a real 'today i learned'.

https://aeon.co/essays/the-fantastic-science-of-turkeys-whit...

Apparently, there's a LOT of debate over if the Turkish are white, middle-eastern, or their own thing. I just always thought of them as being middle-eastern due to the ottoman empire.

Re: USA restricts Swiss access to AI computer chips

#124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is like mandating a minimum number of days people must not work This is exactly how it works in many European countries. By law, you can transfer a few vacation days to the next year (or have them paid out in some scenarios) but most of the time you’ll be strongly encouraged to simply use them all.

Which is dumb as hell. I didn't want to take more than 15 vacation days in 2024 and wanted to take much more/longer in 2025. Not possible because fucking eu politicians know what is better for me. Reasons like this are why EU is on a free fall.

> I didn't want to take more than 15 vacation days in 2024

You probably did not have to. Your employer could have simply paid you for your remaining days.

> and wanted to take much more/longer in 2025.

Again, you can do that. You can actually transfer your free days from year to year. This is not something the EU forbids so it may be dependent on how your country does it.

> Reasons like this are why EU is on a free fall.

It seems that the reason why EU is in a free fall, according to you, is your lack of understanding how things work.

Re: USA restricts Swiss access to AI computer chips

#125
post #44
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being from the US, I would say that US media does not portray Denmark at all. Except once every few years as Greenland hodlers. Pretty much everything I know about Denmark is from watching Danish language TV on Netflix.

> Except once every few years as Greenland hodlers Only definition of Hodler seems to be: a true believer in cryptocurrency Is there some secret project going on in Greenland? :-)

In this sense I meant hodl as in “hold”, “refuse to sell”. Completely unrelated to the lost Atlantean technology hidden under the ice, which can compute hashes 100x faster.

Re: USA restricts Swiss access to AI computer chips

#126
post #91

Switzerland restricts access to its own allies of weapons that it sold to other countries because of internal concerns about how that could affect the country in the future. This seems to be at least partially similar to that. At this point AI could absolutely be considered potentially threatening in the future.

That argument would bite itself in the ass. Switzerland doesn't have issues with selling arms to neutral countries. So the presumption would be that Switzerland might turn non-neutral and wage offensive war with this technology? But at the same time the underlying tone is "we're punishing you for 'not being as ally,' aka for being neutral". And during all of this the US is delivering recently purchased F35s to Switzerland as well.

Re: USA restricts Swiss access to AI computer chips

#127
post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It applies to everyone except 18 countries. Gonna post them here as many articles mention "18 key alies" without naming all of them: Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Republic of Korea, Spain, Sweden, Taiwan, and the United Kingdom.

I'm stunned they put Korea on the list, given this is dressed up as an anti-China measure, and Korean leaderships flipflops between anti-China and pro-China every ~4 years when the opposition replaces the government. There's also lots of cases of e.g. Korean Samsung employees happily moving to Chinese companies to leak IP for a boatload of cash.

TW semi employees also happily move to PRC. Korea got clipped too hard by CHIPs, Samsung needs AI unless you want PRC phones proliferate even more globally.

Re: USA restricts Swiss access to AI computer chips

#128
post #126
post #91

Switzerland restricts access to its own allies of weapons that it sold to other countries because of internal concerns about how that could affect the country in the future. This seems to be at least partially similar to that. At this point AI could absolutely be considered potentially threatening in the future.

That argument would bite itself in the ass. Switzerland doesn't have issues with selling arms to neutral countries. So the presumption would be that Switzerland might turn non-neutral and wage offensive war with this technology? But at the same time the underlying tone is "we're punishing you for 'not being as ally,' aka for being neutral". And during all of this the US is delivering recently purchased F35s to Switze…

>Switzerland doesn't have issues with selling arms to neutral countries.

That's a very poor case. Any country declaring itself neutral stops being neutral the moment it gets attacked by another country (see Belgium and Netherlands in WW2 when they declared themselves neutral but still got steamrolled by Nazi Germany anyway, and Ukraine today).

So then you won't be able to get any ammo or spare parts for those expensive Swiss arms you bought making them paperweights (again see Ukraine right now with it's Swiss Oerlikon AA guns on the German Gepards).

So why would anyone buy swiss arms then if the moment you actually need to use them to defend yourself you can't because the Swiss government puts an embargo on you?

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