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Comment by blackeyeblitzar | Hacker News Reader

There might be things the US knows that maybe even the Polish government doesn’t - for example maybe there are Polish firms that have business ties to China and have funneled chips or other tech there previously. Or maybe there are implications based on local laws. I’m speculating, but I think there are possibilities that explain the split.

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Now you have to explain the limitations they also included on Portugal (but not on Spain). Portugal being one of the most pro USA European countries and a NATO founding member.

Or Lithuania, arguably[0] the most anti-China member of NATO. *That's* the NATO ally (!) they chose to blacklist, with their anti-China chip export ban?

[0] https://apnews.com/article/business-china-beijing-global-tra... ("EU launches WTO action against China over Lithuania dispute")

Maybe we just admit they are incompetent.... :-)

I doubt Lithuania has the budget to buy enough chips for the cap to matter.

> Or Lithuania, arguably[0] the most anti-China

Also one one of the biggest resellers of various products to Russia and other economically affiliated countries they don't even produce locally. e.g. https://www.tridge.com/news/strange-news-of-the-day-lithuani...

Also countries like Lithuania are not blacklisted. They are still allowed to buy GPUs/etc. below a certain cap. Realistically their domestic demand is nowhere near the cap. So what's' the problem exactly? (unless they want to resell those chips to third parties)

The problem is putting US allies like Lithuania and Poland in the same tier as communist countries like Laos or Vietnam.

I'd put it another way, if demand is below the cap, then why have the cap? Why destroy relations for free? It's not like you can't do something if they are found to sell chips to China.

So that companies in less reliable countries like Lithuania couldn't purchase high numbers of GPU and resell them to Russia/China/etc. through countries like Kazakhstan etc. (like they do now with other products).

> if demand is below the cap, then why have the cap?

It might be for Lithuania. But the same 50,000 cap applies to Poland.

Anyway:

> Individual companies headquartered in tier two countries—for [...] can access significantly higher limits if they apply for their own national validated end user status. That process involves making verifiable security commitments, [...]. If a company obtains this status, its chip imports won’t count toward the country’s overall maximum cap

So this isn't an export ban as such.

This isn't a problem. See article [EN][0]. Simply put we are significantly below the cap. If somehow we would manage to hit the cap it definitely should be an alarm for investigation. I feel more folks are unhappy because EU was divided into two parts with this.

[0] https://www.lrt.lt/en/news-in-english/19/2461209/will-lithua...

I am not offering any specific or real life explanations. Just highlighting that there are many possible theoretical explanations that are reasonable but not apparent to the public. It may even just be that they started with a small whitelist that will expand over time.

You're right, stay vigilant, Who knows how many CCPs are still hiding around us? it's necessary to watch out for your allies.

Scenes like these are happening... and you could be next

Jeez what a paranoid sad viewpoint. With that approach, you will never find proper friends, lose all current ones, and attract biggest scum around. Talking about states of course.

US alone is meaningless, powerless and insignificant and needs friends and peers more desperately than ever, containing less than 5% of the world population. Sure you can go North Korea style but why lose everything that was gained so hard.

> Jeez what a paranoid sad viewpoint

*whoosh*? Not sure, but that's either a videogame meme or some repurposed good ol' mid-20th Commie paranoia.

> less than 5% of the world population

85% of the world's handguns though.

(Yes, I made that up. Wikipedia says it's only 46%).

(Serious question: How do you apply export sanctions to one bit of a single market? Is this just theatre?)

CCP is winning over these countries because of their investment in them. The more we isolate the stronger CCP grip is.

And yet the ubiquity of US tech accounts for the majority of our lifestyle right now. Every US tech company going dark overnight means practically everything goes into a digital dark age.

The US has the world by the proverbial balls. It would take years before everyone can fully divest itself of US tech.

> Every US tech company going dark overnight means practically everything goes into a digital dark age.

This is a foolishly dangerous assumption. America's premier digital exports are things that many other nations consider entirely unnecessary. The App Store? Illegal in parts of Europe. ChatGPT? Questionably valuable from the start. Facebook, X/Twitter, WhatsApp and iMessage are all NSA informants. We have examples of countries kicking FAANG out of their market, and these countries are perfectly successful in the long run.

You are very focused on the American lifestyle. I suspect you would be very surprised by how little Europe cares about American software businesses.

Right people are woefully ignorant of the repercussions of isolationism. CCP investments in these countries is winning them over.

This, but probably worse. Even the Russian government doesn’t know how many spies they have in Poland.

no, the US is just washing its hands of europe/ukraine the same way it washed its hands of Afghanistan.

The EU will probably be locked out of the upcoming US negotiations with Russia the same way the Afghan government was locked out of American negotiations with the Taliban in Doha.

I suppose they want to constrain total supply, so need sheer numbers of countries for whom they can cut it. I guess from a purely utilitarian PoV, it's inevitable that a fraction of sold chips will end up in China et al. So there may be no suspicion of foul play.

But, f*k me, the optics are terrible.

Well US needs our AI experts to work in US and for US not in PL. Wojciech Zaremba or Piotr Sankowski and others.

Both need eachother.

Poland couldnt enable them, I guess

Yes you are right, limit does not matter as our academia doesn't have money to use all Tier II limit (I think not even quarter of it).

Private sector is not going to make AI data center or research center in PL because power grid is one step from collapse and nuclear power plants are "planned" but I don't believe we will have one in 10 years.

So my comment is more of a playful kickback on parent speculating about ties with China - I can put my own speculation as well.

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