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Comment by Aurornis | Hacker News Reader

> But it can definitely deal with companies opening international subsidiaries etc.

You’re still imagining this as a purely single-country issue.

The demand for AI data centers is global. If OpenAI, Anthropic, and xAI weren’t building them, other companies would step in to provide data center services for a fee. Now you have the same buildout, just less efficient and more expensive for the end consumers because we’re paying a new middleman for the compute.

The regulation maximalists would argue that we could then forbid companies from buying foreign data center capacity, but then that means other companies would appear in those other countries offering the AI inference service.

What you’re missing is that this is a global supply and demand issue and you can’t solve it with domestic regulations.

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There's solutions to everything you mention and as I said, usually when sanctions are applied to countries, companies and individuals are meant to deal exactly with this.

This could range from quanta mandates on the supply side (the RAM manufacturers themselves in this case) to imposing secondary sanctions on 'other companies [that] would step in to provide data center services for a fee'

If the US and the EU did this, these other companies would be mega careful about to whom and how they provide services to, the same way Chinese private companies today are generally super careful about not violating US sanctions.

> If the US and the EU did this, these other companies would be mega careful about to whom and how they provide services to,

There is currently more demand than supply in the entire world.

If the US and EU got together and told DRAM companies that we're going to sanction them if they don't give us cheap RAM, 10 other countries would roll out the red carpet to come bring that DRAM into their countries instead. The data centers would be built there. Then the US and EU would be compute-starved and have no choice but to go to these other countries for compute.

I suggest you read up on the history of attempts to control prices of oil throughout history. Oil is an order of magnitude bigger market than DRAM. If you think it's realistic to suggest that the EU and US could sanction entire countries into keeping some chip prices down so people can save a couple hundred dollars on their next laptop, this isn't a conversation grounded in reality.

> 10 other countries would roll out the red carpet to come bring that DRAM into their countries instead

These 10 countries need the US/EU market for their exports.

But you keep talking as if I am saying I want to sanction those who build more DRAM. No, I want more DRAM, not less!

> we're going to sanction them if they don't give us cheap RAM

That's not what the proposal was. The proposal was to limit the ability of AI goons to completely buy the DRAM market out so that everyone else is forced to pay substantially more.

If the problem is that it feeds into general inflation then it is suddenly not merely 'so people can save a couple hundred dollars on their next laptop'.

It's like oil, it feeds into everything; manufacturing, delivery of goods to your local supermarket, flights etc. etc. you can't simply say 'hey I don't drive a car so high oil prices don't affect me'.

If enterprises and consumers alike are forced to spend substantially more on DRAM, they won't be able to spend on other things and the whole economy will slow down.

I'd argue that's incentive enough.

> But you keep talking as if I am saying I want to sanction those who build more DRAM. No, I want more DRAM, not less!

The DRAM companies would be building more if they could.

You can't sanction your way into squeezing blood from a stone.

> If enterprises and consumers alike are forced to spend substantially more on DRAM, they won't be able to spend on other things and the whole economy will slow down.

If a country came along and declared that companies couldn't buy the resources they need from other companies, the second order effect would be every major company relocating their headquarters out of that country as soon as possible, along with a sharp decrease in startups being formed in that country.

The economic impacts of this level of command-and-control government would be devastating to the economy. Much more than having to spend a few hundred dollars more on a laptop every 5-10 years.

> The DRAM companies would be building more if they could.

You keep arguing as if there's only one side to this, the producers/DRAM companies who can't scale production fast enough.

But there's two sides to a market, the producers (DRAM makers) and the consumers, (AI industry). I am arguing for increasing the supply by taking some away from the AI industry. This is BECAUSE on the production side there's no way to address this fast enough.

The DRAM producers have also agreed to work together to raise the prices in the past and are probably rather enjoying it being their turn to get a ton of money again. d Free markets break down when cartels form, because then you wind up with an effective monopoly despite having multiple suppliers

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DRAM_price_fixing_scandal

https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_10_...

It's not in anybody's best interest to take away supply for the AI industry. For better or worse (and whether you believe it or not), AI technologies are coming that will be transformational. If the United States decides to handicap their AI industry, China will simply say "thank you very much" and develop these technologies first. Because of the nature of recursive self-improvement, the country that develops powerful AI first will most likely have an economic lead for quite a while.

It sucks that DRAM is so expensive, but it is for a good (economically useful) cause.

> but then that means other companies would appear in those other countries offering the AI inference service.

That might actually be the goal. A more fragmented market would mean each participant has less money, so they would try to watch their costs a bit more closely. The innovation rate (in non-cost-cutting areas) would probably decrease, maybe even substantially... which some people happen to consistently advocate for. A lot of lost efficiency would be reclaimed in a few years, but the whole system would be more stable, cheaper, and less centralized as a side effect.

Yeah, it would be suicidal to do that when it's your budget that gets the taxes from those giant corporations; who would want to willingly reduce their income for years? The rest of the world would benefit tremendously, but it could be a net plus (socially, politically, if not purely economically) in 5-7 years down the road - even in the country currently benefiting from the corporations the most. But that would be one to two lost elections too late, even if it turned true. So, while it won't happen, if it did, I don't believe we'd be worse for it.

> The demand for AI data centers is global

Not saying there isn’t demand, but it’s definitely artificially inflated by VC-fomo and circular-funding ~~fraud~~ shenanigans.

> If OpenAI, Anthropic, and xAI weren’t building them

One of these companies is responsible for buying up DRAM wafers, in what still appears to be an attempt to deny them to everyone else, and another one of these companies seemingly exists to launder money for a fascist billionaire.

>another one of these companies seemingly exists to launder money for a fascist billionaire.

Fascist trillionaire

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