America's assassination attempt on Huawei is backfiring
economist.com
economist.com
This seems like an odd development. I can well understand why an organisation would want to drop Oracle RDBMS, but why move to another proprietary solution? The obvious replacement for Oracle's database is Postgres, no?
Is Huawei getting into the business of customizing their software to fit organisational processes then charging through the nose for that work?
And OpenGauss is based on Postgres:
The US-imposed export ban has completely backfired in this case. It's equivalent to China forcing everyone in their own market to subsidize direct competitors to US firms. The electric car subsidies DC is complaining about are nothing compared to this.
I remember when the export ban took effect. It took me about 5 minutes to figure out that the outcome would be a much stronger Chinese technology sector.
I can't decide if US leadership is really that dumb, or if there's some sort of conflict-of-interest / corruption / coercion at play.
After all, if all the US were worried about were back doored Huawei equipment (of which there's no evidence), why would it care if Huawei phones in China use Google services?
Force them to become market leaders across a broader part of the technology sector? That's been the effect of the export ban. How was it supposed to reduce the amount of wiretapping, etc. they can do?
The US has gone after Huawei in such an all-encompassing manner that it's impossible to maintain the fiction that this is just about preventing Huawei from spying on the US (something that Huawei has never done anyways, as far as anyone knows).
Deep state is bugging American devices so they have a very good reason to believe the other side is doing the same - evidence or not.
Unfortunately in this case, I think the deep state is really that dumb. They did not foresee the consequences. They expected Huawei to fade away with a whimper - and if you read the article, it was a pretty close call, so the expectation wasn't entirely unfounded.
Motive was curbing Chinese state actor influence and also industry, ie preventing Huawei from crushing Google or Apple. it's not very smart but it's kind of how they think about it.
On both sides, tech companies and state intelligence services are walking hand in glove. It's not about devices being bugged per se, it's about siphoning more and more data into their own data centers, controlling more and more of the info highways, and so on. Potential backdoors only play a very minor role IMO - anything can be backdoored these days, and state actors anywhere have the resources to get into anything.
It's more about the front doors, ie our chinese security camera talking to chinese servers... large scale data collection that's not hidden.
Bribes.
I’m speculating that the vast manufacturing knowledge transfer to China through offshoring is seen as a “bad thing” by western politicians, who then sought to limit China’s ability to do the same with semiconductors.
China will likely figure out EUV eventually, by hook or by crook. There’s only so much you can do to keep that knowledge contained, considering the amount of people who have the knowledge.
Maybe the article could have been framed in a less binary way: it didn’t slow them down as much as they hoped.
If this was the case we'd pull all manufacturing out of China completely. The knowledge transfer from the US to China when it comes to manufacturing, from basic goods up to modern tech, has been wild. With that comes a lot of information on how to advance technology.
https://beta.economist.com/briefing/2024/06/13/americas-assa...
> America’s policymakers are also learning from their mistakes. The gradual ratcheting-up of sanctions on Huawei, and especially the 28-month gap between the announcement of the most severe measures in 2018 and their implementation in 2020, gave the firm lots of time to prepare, China hawks lament. But the bigger lesson from Huawei’s torment has not yet sunk in: that cutting the firm off from Western technology did not stifle it, but instead increased its incentives to innovate. China is still years behind the West in chipmaking. Sanctions on high-powered semiconductors have raised costs and slowed the uptake of ai for thousands of firms, as intended. Hubble’s investments are still far from replacing Western lithography machines and other components. But if Huawei was a worry when America first declared war, it is a bigger one now.
Basically, the ad hoc and imprecise sanctions regime used by the Trump admin gave too much lead time for Huawei to begin indigenizing its capabilities.
This is a mistake the US learned from and can be seen with SMIC, YMTC, and other state run champions (BYD is a domestic champion but NOT state run).
I'd highly recommend listening to Rush Doshi if you want to understand the US's China policy - he's the NSC Advisor who was in charge of China policy in the Biden admin until a couple weeks ago.
The entire strategy being pursued by the Biden administration is extremely dangerous. Sullivan seems to believe that he's some sort of guru, but the goal he's pursuing - of wrecking Chinese high-tech sectors using blunt American power - will not only fail, but will also lead to enormous tensions between the US and China. You simply can't behave in that sort of arrogant way towards another major power. China isn't some little country like Venezuela or Cuba.
Who said that? The goal of the Sullivan principle was always a 2 Gen lead at scale [0]
[0] - https://www.belfercenter.org/event/competition-without-catas...
Anyhow, this is the core of the Sullivan Principle from back in 2019 (and in development even earlier)
"The United States will also have to safeguard its technological advantages in the face of China’s intellectual property theft, targeted industrial policies, and commingling of its economic and security sectors. Doing so will require some enhanced restrictions on the flow of technology investment and trade in both directions, but these efforts should be pursued selectively rather than wholesale, imposing curbs on technologies that are critical to national security and human rights and allowing regular trade and investment to continue for those that are not. Even these targeted restrictions must be undertaken in consultation with industry and other governments; failing to do so could Balkanize the global technology ecosystem by impeding flows of knowledge and talent. Such a development would neutralize a key U.S. competitive advantage relative to China: an open economy that can source the best global talent and synthesize the biggest breakthroughs from around the world. Meanwhile, overreach on technology restrictions could drive other countries toward China, especially since China is already the largest trading partner for most.
In this respect, the Trump administration’s loud and largely unilateral campaign against the participation of the Chinese company Huawei in the development of 5G infrastructure may provide a cautionary lesson. Had the administration coordinated with allies and partners in advance and tried some creative policymaking—for example, establishing a multilateral lending initiative to subsidize the purchase of alternatives to Huawei’s equipment—it might have had more success in convincing states to consider other vendors. It then might have been able to make the most of the two-year delay Huawei now faces in rolling out 5G following its placement on the U.S. Department of Commerce’s list of entities that cannot be supplied with American technology. Future efforts to restrict trade with China in the technology sector will require careful deliberation, advance planning, and multilateral support if they are to be successful; otherwise, they will risk undermining U.S. innovation."
- Jake Sullivan, 2019
> On export controls, we have to revisit the longstanding premise of maintaining “relative” advantages over competitors in certain key technologies. We previously maintained a “sliding scale” approach that said we need to stay only a couple of generations ahead.
> That is not the strategic environment we are in today.
> Given the foundational nature of certain technologies, such as advanced logic and memory chips, we must maintain as large of a lead as possible.
One month after this speech was given, the Biden administration put in place a whole series of measures aimed at preventing China from fabricating chips at or below 14nm.
That's why it was a shock when Huawei began selling phones with 7nm chips, produced by SMIC. Huawei specifically timed the launch to be during the visit of US trade representative Gina Raimondo, as a kind of middle finger to the US.
0. https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/20...
I’m not in a spot to dig it up, but processor tech was something the party decided was a national security issue long, long before any sanction was even whispered about.
No. I and policymakers I used to work with have been cognizant about this for around a decade now.
Check out the Sullivan Principle - technology will diffuse, but putting roadblocks to maintain the existing lead is critical.
> but processor tech was something the party decided was a national security issue long, long before any sanction was even whispered about
Absolutely, yet 10 years ago China was 2 generations behind, and with Huawei's announcement, they are still 2 generations behind.
The difference is almost $100B was spent by the PRC just to keep the status quo.
These are hard problems, and very targeted and swift sanctions DO make it harder
It seems like that is essentially humanity’s toughest challenge. Not the space race, not weapons, not global warming
Our hardest challenge is effective coordination
If we can solve that one, we can solve all the other ones pretty quickly
Well, we are very close to that. So I guess, yeah, let's move that way.
(At least until fast-growing populations appear from the fringes and refuse to integrate into the main memetic pool. That one is at least centuries away, so yeah, let's move that way.)
The article is just a huge gaslighting piece. The U.S. was trying to reduce exposure to Huawei equipment in U.S. and allied Critical Infrastructure. The Chinese government and intelligence services were using the equipment for espionage. Huawei was dumping (economic term for selling below market home price or sometimes manufacturing cost) 5G equipment on U.S. telecoms.
China already had good success with a similar model dumping large power equipment on regional utilities in the U.S. to the point where it's no longer economically feasible for it to be removed, and the U.S. was forced to pivot to attempting to mitigate (vs. eliminate) the risk.