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Nvidia and its partners built a system to bypass U.S. export restrictions

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Re: Nvidia and its partners built a system to bypass U.S. export restrictions

#111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are not our largest trade partner. Both of the last two administrations were driving pretty hard to distance from PRC. Given that, animosity from normal folk or lack thereof seems kind of vague/irrelevant?

Sorry I was thrown by calling it good politics. I guess you could call it that ignoring the people and interests the administration allegedly represents but that doesn't make much sense. Unless you consider american enterprise to be the primary clients of the government, which I suppose there's a good argument for. Regardless, china is our third largest trade partner and severing that connection would still absolutel…

> severing that connection would still absolutely destroy our economy and quality of life

Probably, who knows. I'm just making an observation. Maybe after being useful to help win the Cold War they are now considered by the powers that be more of an annoyance or a competitive threat? Your guess as to why this is the policy is as good as mine.

Re: Nvidia and its partners built a system to bypass U.S. export restrictions

#112

Nvidia is obviously a US company, but the chips themselves are manufactured in Taiwan. And of course China sees Taiwan as a rogue province, at at least treats invasion there as "on the table". While the US may decide to actively support Taiwan, at the very least a war over that will disrupt production. Should Taiwan fall, and China choose to ban exports from there to the US, then the fun and games would really start.…

> As long as back-channels exist to supply the chips to China, then there's less incentive for China to control Taiwan. The ban exists as good politics (we don't ship to our adversaries) while the back-channels ensure they aren't forced into a position no-one wants them to be in. Funny I was just literally thinking about this a few minutes before I opened this thread. I think the TSMC restrictions on China is really…

> First, it’s a huge revenue loss for Taiwan.

and whose capacity will be sacrificed to fulfill this lost revenue potential?

Re: Nvidia and its partners built a system to bypass U.S. export restrictions

#113
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> China doesn't want the model of a free, democratic society of chinese people to exist, because it proves that the CCP's authoritarianism isn't the only "good" model. Can I ask what led to you generating this idea? As someone in Taiwan it really stood out to me as an odd take. First, considering Taiwan to be a democratic society of "Chinese" people is odd. The vast majority of Taiwanese wouldn't use the English word…

From the perspective of a third party and trying to understand things in a way that separates politics from reality (like PG says arguments involving identity are impossible to resolve), both Taiwanese and what might be called CCP-ese are largely political. Chinese has the rare quality of historically referring to ethnicity, language and culture to a degree not seen in most other peoples. There's also a final and mos…

> ethnically, linguistically and culturally Chinese

Again I ask - where is this impression coming from? And for what definition of "Chinese?" Can you please write the specific term you're thinking of in Mandarin to be more clear? In English "Chinese" means too many things, especially with the CPC changing the definition over the last 50 years or so. To be fair, the same thing is happening in Mandarin, so it would help if you could clarify.

Regardless, for most of the definitions of "Chinese," the theory doesn't seem to match reality, nor is the framing correct.

First of all, regarding an ethnological and linguistic concept of "Chinese" (translated many ways), we should reject efforts by the CPC to claim to speak for people that have this identity - which is exactly what they're trying to do. Reject CPC cultural imperialism. Such a claim to Taiwan (and Singapore, Malaysia, New Zealand, Australia, etc places containing many "Chinese" people) should be rejected out of hand.

Second of all, Taiwan is not ethnically or culturally "Chinese" for basically all definitions of "Chinese." It so happens that Mandarin is the language written on government documents, true, though... that's not really "Chinese," is it? It's the language of the Empires of Beijing. There are many other languages that existed in the history of Chinese empires. And throughout that whole time, Empires would choose, based on their convenience, who is "Chinese" and who isn't. Sometimes a lot of languages would get amalgamated into that convenient descriptor to serve imperial purposes. The CPC are the latest to do this, this time in the name of "global Chinese communism."

Regarding culturally, Taiwan really isn't culturally "Chinese," in fact over the last few decades Taiwan has engaged in that process by which a culture develops itself in opposition to another one. See masculine and feminine cultures over the years, the Greeks and the Turks, the Brits and the French, etc. Much of Taiwanese culturally identity specifically forms around rejecting whatever the CPC claims, or riffing on whatever cultural heritage was imported by the Qing or KMT. Sure, some of the same holidays are celebrated, but are all cultures that celebrate Christmas, British? (or, white?) (or..... arabian? considering the origin of christianity) Not to mention the history of Taiwan as a colonized place has injected a wide diversity of cultures. Portuguese, Japanese, etc. There's also indigenous culture which is actively uplifted and many Taiwanese celebrate these holidays, eat indigenous food, etc. Indigenous art emblazons basically every single retaining wall in the country.

Ethnically, there isn't necessarily a "Chinese" ethnicity, again a term invented to describe all the people ruled by a given empire. Of course there's "Han" but that is "Han," not "Han Chinese," a new word used to engage in ethnonationalism. And, it really doesn't describe Taiwan all that well, since again, it is a wildly colonized and immigrated place.

The CPC is attempting to soft-power claim Taiwan through Han ethnonationalism and so I'm quite prickly about this subject.

Re: Nvidia and its partners built a system to bypass U.S. export restrictions

#114
post #58
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there's less incentive for China to control Taiwan. a very minor effect imho. china doesn't want to control taiwan due to any economic reasons. It's ideological. China doesn't want the model of a free, democratic society of chinese people to exist, because it proves that the CCP's authoritarianism isn't the only "good" model. Look at how hong kong was cracked down; china took the opportunity to do it, when the econ…

> China doesn't want the model of a free, democratic society of chinese people to exist, because it proves that the CCP's authoritarianism isn't the only "good" model. Can I ask what led to you generating this idea? As someone in Taiwan it really stood out to me as an odd take. First, considering Taiwan to be a democratic society of "Chinese" people is odd. The vast majority of Taiwanese wouldn't use the English word…

Taiwan and democracy are two of the CPC's Five Poisons: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Poisons#Chinese_Communist...

Authoritarian regimes, the CPC among them, regularly claim that democracy is a western concept that cannot function in other cultures. The existence of successful Asian democracies like Taiwan, Japan or South Korea undermines this claim.

Re: Nvidia and its partners built a system to bypass U.S. export restrictions

#115
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Neither party wants to look “bad for the economy You mean like the horrific jobs numbers that came out that nobody is covering either? Like bad like that??

BLS numbers look pretty boring; Oct was +12000; nothing extreme either way. Am I missing something?

Usually it is 10x that in a month.

AIUI there were strikes and other factors affecting the numbers, but not necessarily indicating significant harm to the economy/jobs long term.

Re: Nvidia and its partners built a system to bypass U.S. export restrictions

#116
post #35

Nvidia is obviously a US company, but the chips themselves are manufactured in Taiwan. And of course China sees Taiwan as a rogue province, at at least treats invasion there as "on the table". While the US may decide to actively support Taiwan, at the very least a war over that will disrupt production. Should Taiwan fall, and China choose to ban exports from there to the US, then the fun and games would really start.…

> there's less incentive for China to control Taiwan. a very minor effect imho. china doesn't want to control taiwan due to any economic reasons. It's ideological. China doesn't want the model of a free, democratic society of chinese people to exist, because it proves that the CCP's authoritarianism isn't the only "good" model. Look at how hong kong was cracked down; china took the opportunity to do it, when the econ…

Its not ideological, its to break out of the physical constraints setup by the US, to gain access to the pacific, and to the rest of asia. Simple geopolitics, just check a map.

Re: Nvidia and its partners built a system to bypass U.S. export restrictions

#117
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there's less incentive for China to control Taiwan. a very minor effect imho. china doesn't want to control taiwan due to any economic reasons. It's ideological. China doesn't want the model of a free, democratic society of chinese people to exist, because it proves that the CCP's authoritarianism isn't the only "good" model. Look at how hong kong was cracked down; china took the opportunity to do it, when the econ…

But Chinese citizens know the US exists? This feels like projection. The US wants to act as if stock markets and political yard signs are the only usable system.

Who doesn't have stock markets? Ok, there's a list [1], and Cuba and North Korea are there, but China has several exchanges.

Who doesn't have political yard signs? I'd be surprised if China doesn't have them; they just might not be so varied.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_without_a_...

Re: Nvidia and its partners built a system to bypass U.S. export restrictions

#118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As long as back-channels exist to supply the chips to China, then there's less incentive for China to control Taiwan. The ban exists as good politics (we don't ship to our adversaries) while the back-channels ensure they aren't forced into a position no-one wants them to be in. Funny I was just literally thinking about this a few minutes before I opened this thread. I think the TSMC restrictions on China is really…

> First, it’s a huge revenue loss for Taiwan. and whose capacity will be sacrificed to fulfill this lost revenue potential?

I don’t understand what you mean by capacity.

Re: Nvidia and its partners built a system to bypass U.S. export restrictions

#119

Nvidia is obviously a US company, but the chips themselves are manufactured in Taiwan. And of course China sees Taiwan as a rogue province, at at least treats invasion there as "on the table". While the US may decide to actively support Taiwan, at the very least a war over that will disrupt production. Should Taiwan fall, and China choose to ban exports from there to the US, then the fun and games would really start.…

In the event of a invasion TMSC in Taiwan will cease to function. "TMSC and its Dutch chip machine supplier ASML have made joint plans to remotely disable the machines in the event of an invasion."

https://9to5mac.com/2024/05/21/chinese-invasion-of-taiwan-ts...

Re: Nvidia and its partners built a system to bypass U.S. export restrictions

#120

They should cancel their patents or software copyright on the cuda apis as a response. The only reason they are dominant is because of their software control.

CUDA is not merely software control. Let's face it: it's tied to their architecture and evolves with their architecture. Ignore whatever patent and software copyright you are talking about, they are simply the best at implementing this programming model.

If you port CUDA over and want high performance, you must build very similar GPUs. And can you beat NVIDIA on building their own GPU architecture without much space for innovation?

And yes, this does mean that NVIDIA themselves is also facing increasingly absurd constraints and after a few generations CUDA as a programming model may not be sustainable any more.

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