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Comment by blackrock | Hacker News Reader

And to add to this, the new wrinkle in this TechWar, is how the USA just banned a Chinese university from buying Matlab.

Yes, Matlab.

They banned a university with a bunch of students from using a fancy calculator.

This is like banning the sales of Microsoft Excel to China.

The next interesting play, is what China will do to countermeasure this.

They will likely have to make their own Matlab program, thus eliminating all future profits for Matlab in China. And then, Matlab might even now have a new international competitor in this area.

Then, will China also ban Microsoft products in the future, in retaliation, after they make their own version of Excel.

If I were them, I would think that the American side is also next planning on banning the sales of Excel to China.

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I guess that's good news for the Octave project.

Unless we're fully heading towards 2 internets from the American side as well, I don't know how you would stop that from being downloaded in China. I would say they'll just go around the fire-wall...that kind of argument has not been persuasive as of late.

The software isn't banned in all of China yet though. Just organizations on the sanction list. So to retaliate in that way China would effectively be increasing the sanctions on themselves.

There's multiple competitors to matlab already that even some US schools use. It isn't as lopsided as Excel versus, uh... google sheets?

Well, the problem is that, China has likely invested and spent, hundreds of billions of dollars, and millions of man years, on American technology products.

They have built their own applications and business processes, on top of American technology systems.

American companies have benefited handsomely from this engagement with China. Their stock prices reflect that, in how much they earned from China, and how much future potential they will earn from China.

What the USA government is doing here, is saying that America is no longer reliable. Essentially, that they can take away their products on a whim.

This puts the onus of the risk on China. Why should they continue to spend and invest in American technology, when it can all be taken away, and their applications on top of it will be useless.

Imagine if a Chinese company spent 5 years, and millions of dollars, to build an application on top of the Microsoft Windows framework. Then one day, the American government says: Hey, we will no longer allow you to use Windows.

Now, your expensive program, is wasted, and is now worth less than a paperweight. Even a paperweight is more useful than your program.

Will this happen? Who knows. But it is clearly a risk. And it must be a violation of some WTO trading rules somewhere. Because something like this, is clearly a monopolistic and predatory action, akin to an all-out economic war, designed to force the Chinese to their knees, and which would force the Chinese side to counter-react to.

> it must be a violation of some WTO trading rules somewhere

The Trump administration has intentionally sabotaged the WTO's dispute resolution mechanism anyways, by blocking the appointment of judges: https://www.dw.com/en/wto-judge-blockage-could-prove-the-beg....

The US seems set on dismantling the post-war international order. That order reflected a form of enlightened self-interest, in which the US, though enormously powerful, subjected itself to various rules of international behavior and cooperation, with the understanding that the US would benefit if most countries followed those rules. The Trump administration takes a much more short-sighted, brute-force approach to international relations (ignore all rules and threaten everyone into giving you what you want). Maybe the most surprising thing is how little pushback he's gotten from inside the US. The US political class doesn't seem to care so much about the downfall of the post-war international order.

If you and I make a deal, and I profit handsomely from that deal, but you break the deal, does my profit invalidate the injury I suffer from you breaking the deal?

> Imagine if a Chinese company spent 5 years, and millions of dollars, to build an application on top of the Microsoft Windows framework. Then one day, the American government says: Hey, we will no longer allow you to use Windows.

> Now, your expensive program, is wasted, and is now worth less than a paperweight. Even a paperweight is more useful than your program.

Didn't this essentially happen with Android? I'm not as familiar with that market but it seems there's no need for imaginary scenarios.

And private firms do this kind of thing to each other all the time. Google is notorious for suddenly dumping things people depend on. And in hardware it is a big headache as you can unexpectedly lose the source to components of your product.

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