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Comment by acdha | Hacker News Reader

Being quick to jump to conspiracy theories means you’ll have trouble being taken seriously when something real happens. I’d go with the most parsimonious explanation: Google doesn’t have plans to ship anything soon and isn’t going to commit to supporting an entire platform they don’t need.

Especially given their slash-and-burn management culture, I wouldn’t read anything more into it than nobody at Google thinking that they’re going to be promoted for working on that. I am curious whether we’ll see Qualcomm or someone else step up to do the work.

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OP did not openly endorse flat earth or suggest lizard people run the world. Speculation about tech that is at the center of geo-political tensions is bound to happen and it's only natural to question if government pressure is at play.

The US has already enacted GPU bans and investigated and killed technology transfer deals. The US Commerce Department just this month is "working to review potential risks and assess whether there are appropriate actions under Commerce authorities that could effectively address any potential concerns" with regards to RISC_V. [1] That's the same department that pressured AMD to lower performance on China products before refusing to gran them an export license.

[1] https://www.theregister.com/2024/04/24/us_commerce_china_ris...

What makes something a conspiracy theory is that it ignores simple explanations in favor of something untestable and perfectly concealed. In this case we have a very simple explanation which is highly parsimonious - Google doesn’t see a business benefit yet from committing support – but we’re being asked to believe that instead the men in black visited Google to sabotage China by … not supporting an architecture which China doesn’t depend on and could easily support on their own if they did?

Your reference to other actions undercuts your argument: when the US government has acted in the past, it has generally done so officially – not the CIA subverting Crypto-AG, but Commerce using market pressure openly. I wouldn’t say it’s impossible that they could act behind the scenes but if they were competent enough to do that so quietly I’d expect them to pick a higher impact target.

Is the idea of government pressure automatically a conspiracy theory?

In the absence of any evidence or even a sensible motive, what is it? There’s no reason to think Google’s stated reason isn’t true, and as an attempt to obstruct China it would be rather pointless to go after something they have almost no deployed usage of which is starting behind things they do use.

It is their guess at what is happening without proof. That is the definition of a theory. It is about two entities secretly working together to do something harmful. That's a conspiracy.

So... I mean... yeah. The comment is a perfect example a conspiracy theory. Both in literal textbook definition and the broader cultural understanding of the term.

Two entities, not publicly, very minor harm from reduced competition, you could say the same thing about a huge fraction of discussions between two companies.

Government pressure isn't some big deal, it happens all the time.

For the broader cultural understanding, it needs to be something where making it public wouldn't be extremely boring.

GP did not "jump to conspiracy theories." They asked a reasonable question. I would agree that it doesn't pass Occam's Razor, but there has been plenty of talk from US gov about concerns over China passing the US, and with ARM specifically. There was even an article about it on HN not too long ago. Furthermore the US gov has been putting a ton of pressure on big tech companies to get them to do things without formal laws or regulation.

I hate when people jump to conspiracy theories with a passion, but I'm also beginning to hate when people overly dismiss reasonable theories as "conspiracy theories." It's important that we don't expand the definition of conspiracy theory to a meaningless height. This is what happened with the "Lab Leak" theory of Covid, which only served to "prove" the conspiracy theorists right and was and has been a major setback for people who want to call out conspiracy theories for what they are. If we expand the definition to include theories that are reasonable, then "conspiracy theory" ceases to be meaningful and we now lack a word that we really need, considering humans are prone to conspiracy thinking and it needs to be called out when it happens.

They did jump to a conspiracy theory: there’s no evidence that Google’s stated reason is hiding an ulterior motive, and as a way to hinder China it’d have very little impact since Chinese companies aren’t dependent on it.

This is not the place to relitigate the lab leak mess but I will note that the conspiracy theorists were continually in a state of wrongness. They contributed nothing but noise because they were starting with the conclusion and confabulating as needed to support it. You can and should expect people to back claims up with logic and evidence.

> as a way to hinder China it’d have very little impact since Chinese companies aren’t dependent on it

Have you missed the whole "China developing RISC-V as an alternative path forward" thing then?

Not all, it just doesn’t work as a conspiracy theory.

China is currently using x86, ARM, MIPS (Loong arch) at scale. If RISC-V makes sense for them, they can use it with Linux now. Now, think about what happens if the hypothetical men in black manage to keep Google from supporting it. China has an enormous tech sector, so if it’s economically viable to use RISC-V for phones or tablets they can pay a couple of developers to support RISC-V in an Android fork, which is going to be popular if RISC-V is working for anyone else in the world, and their domestic market alone is large enough to support it. If that doesn’t make sense, they’ll continue using the same ARM devices they’re currently using because the men in black can’t tell anyone to stop using that platform.

Given how many US companies are looking into RISC-V, it’s also hard to see a ban being sustainable. If RISC-V starts to become competitive, American companies are not going to tolerate being shut out. If it doesn’t, being shut out won’t harm China.

You calling them "men in black" doesn't make this more of a conspiracy, it just makes you look silly. Call them "US Senators"[1] or "US lawmakers"[2]. It's a lot more descriptive, though admittedly it does make your assertion that this is a "conspiracy theory" sound pretty weak...

Also, you saying that China could reimplement RISC-V support in Android is a completely different discussion. That's a discussion about how effective the US government actions would be, not whether they were doing anything (which you want to call a conspiracy theory despite there being plenty of evidence that this is happening). You might find this article[3] and this discussion of it [4] interesting, or you might just think the entire thread is full of conspiracy theorists.

At a certain point though, the person calling people "conspiracy theorists" actually becomes the conspiracy theorist. It's not about rhetorical tricks like saying "men in black", it's about evidence.

[1] https://www.reuters.com/technology/us-china-tech-war-risc-v-...

[2] https://www.reuters.com/technology/us-lawmakers-press-biden-...

[3] https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/2023/regarding-proposed-u...

[4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38163412

> You calling them "men in black" doesn't make this more of a conspiracy, it just makes you look silly. Call them "US Senators"[1] or "US lawmakers"[2].

If you read those links, notice how this is all happening officially in public? That’s why I referred to the conspiracy theory as such because we are left to believe that there’s some well-concealed shadow operation duplicating those efforts despite it being a poor return on their investment.

Similarly, reading your latter two links would help you understand why it wouldn’t be effective. Andrew makes the case well that even the official measures being discussed would not impede China, and the conspiracy theory would be even weaker.

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