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New phone sparks worry China has found a way around U.S. tech limits (www.washingtonpost.com)
submitted 1 year ago by Bebo@sffa.community to c/technology@beehaw.org
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As Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo was visiting China earlier this week, a sea-green Chinese smartphone was quietly launched online.

It was no normal gadget. And its launch has sparked hushed concern in Washington that U.S. sanctions have failed to prevent China from making a key technological advance. Such a development would seem to fulfill warnings from U.S. chipmakers that sanctions wouldn’t stop China, but would spur it to redouble efforts to build alternatives to U.S. technology.

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[-] elouboub@kbin.social 95 points 1 year ago

Tighten the restrictions again please. Back China into a corner so that they can innovate themselves out of it and we can have some proper competition. This is great news.

What a dumb assumption to make that China would crumble without Western tech. Do they think the rest of the world would just return to the dark ages ? Do they believe non-Westerners can't think? So dumb.

[-] agressivelyPassive@feddit.de 32 points 1 year ago

A lot of opinion for so little knowledge.

The assumption was never that China would "crumble", but that its pace would slow down. Nothing more. And that also was what was publicly said.

[-] WorldlyCaregiver@beehaw.org 9 points 1 year ago

There are lots of people who said that China's semiconductor industry would collapse. (Many still do think China itself will collapse, which is possible, but not very likely as they think it is.)

[-] agressivelyPassive@feddit.de 7 points 1 year ago

And that's just one "expert", this was never the intention and nobody responsible claimed that.

Claiming China will collapse within 3 days is kind of a hobby for many "experts" in various fields.

[-] MasterBuilder@lemmy.one 19 points 1 year ago

You assume too much, yourself. I think the point is the U.S. finally realized they were giving away critical technology to a nation that not so secretly plans to replace them.

Unfortunately, I think they were asleep too long, and China has enough knowledge to press forward without stealing from Americans.

Now, America must accept the fact they fucked up and have to compete as equals, which is much more difficult.

[-] unix_joe@lemmy.sdf.org 16 points 1 year ago

I am going to say the unspoken part out loud: it's rooted in Hitler's "Creators, Maintainers, Destroyers" view of race.

The fact that this article exists at all shows how deeply rooted the sentiment is, even if 95% of the people regurgitating it don't see themselves as racist or know that this is what their society has conditioned them to believe.

Asians only get tech by copying and stealing from the West. So when the "free market" West gets bothered by a little bit of competition and enforces protectionist measures, Asians who aren't willing to whore out their women to Westerners are supposed to come crawling back and accept sanctions as punishment for trying to be uppity. It's a shock to the system that China was able to keep innovating independently in a different direction, that can't easily be attributed to IP theft. It's not about the 7nm process; it's about the entire SoC.

There are a lot of dogwhistles and things left unspoken in these articles and TikTok videos (where I saw it first) and I'm sure the "well ackshually nobody ever said that" jackasses are ready to pounce on this comment so it's probably best to just leave it at this:

Unilateral protectionism has been a fucking disaster for consumers. All we got out of it was increased prices. A maxed out iPhone in 2016 cost $949. A maxed out iPhone in 2023 costs seventeen hundred fucking dollars and Samsung has done the same increase over that period. Less choice meant less competition and the duopoly was able to further entrench in their positions. This phone would be competitive with flagships at half the price. Why is that a bad thing?

[-] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Lol no. Hitler has nothing to do with it, and the racism that far predates him is always a factor, but isn't required in this case.

Professional innovators are delicate creatures that don't naturally do well in human societies. In the West, a rigid legal system has protected them from whatever established people they want to "disrupt" pretty much since WWII. In most other places, war and chaos (yes, thanks largely to the West) has disrupted that, and present day cronyism continues to hamper it.

The historical USSR was the same, good engineers making brilliant use of basic technologies and concepts developed in the West. There were no Soviet startups, and on the occasion researchers invented something new it tended to kind of go nowhere because they weren't appreciated fully by higher-ups. Their адрес programming language was invented 10 years ahead of C, but they finished the Cold War 10 years behind on computing.

[-] donuts@kbin.social 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

If we pay China and Taiwan to manufacture all of our stuff they probably don't even need to buy it from us as they can easily just copy it.

[-] admiralteal@kbin.social 28 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

It's absolutely bizarre that you grouped Taiwan and China together in this sentiment.

Taiwan being a silicon powerhouse is literally part of a deliberate strategy by western nations, especially the US, to combat Chinese manufacturing. They were supplied with science and technology. They have the license agreements. They're one of the cadre of nations that are currently waving protectionist flags against the "threat" of Chinese manufacturing.

It'd be like putting the Dutch in the list. Except even weirder, because there is not any semblance of abnormal diplomacy/hostility between Amsterdam and Beijing.

[-] MasterBuilder@lemmy.one 1 points 1 year ago

So you don't believe that Communist China could possibly get away with espionage against ethinic and cultural Chinese Taiwan?

Interesting.

You also don't appear to consider the clear intention of Communist China's plans to annex Taiwan.

Also interesting. Do you know the history behind the creation of Taiwan? If there was a "clear plan", I would say it was ill conceived.

[-] admiralteal@kbin.social 14 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Are you legitimately saying that we should treat Taiwan as the same as China just because its citizens are the same race? Jesus fucking christ, dude. Take a deep breath, look in the mirror, and reconsider that racist ass position.

Straight up Tankie shit, the rest.

[-] MasterBuilder@lemmy.one 1 points 1 year ago

No, but the fact you think that is telling. I'm saying it's a wholevlot easier for Chinese to spy on Chinese. Just like it's easier for Americans to spy on Americans.

How did you come to the conclusion I'm Communist out of that? Again, your assumptions are telling. Spend some time with a mirror.

[-] admiralteal@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago

Ah, who else does that logic apply to? We should treat South Korea the same as DPRK because they're all Korean, right? It's easy for Koreans to spy on other Koreans since they're all the same. And DPRK intends to one day annex South Korea! Ditto for Ukraine and Russia. I bet we can do a lot of these, where we racially categorize nations based on western cultural ideas that have nothing to do with local political conditions and declare them to be the same.

Fuck allll the way off you fucking racist fuck.

[-] MasterBuilder@lemmy.one 1 points 1 year ago

Are straw men all you have? When did I say we should treat Taiwan the same as China? I said they are the same culture and history. The same situation exists for Korea.

Anyway, you are just looking for a fight, so I'm disengaging since nothing I say will change your understanding of what I said.

[-] p03locke@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 1 year ago

Do you know the history behind the creation of Taiwan?

Yes, the creation of Taiwan... in 1624. Or, if you want to talk about the China's history of Taiwan, then it's 1945.

In either case, way too fucking far back to have any sort of diplomatic weight in a conversation, except as an excuse for racism.

[-] MasterBuilder@lemmy.one 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Where does the racism enter the picture? This is about the civil war in China, in which the non-communists were driven out to Taiwan in 1949.

The Communists took the mainland and intend to finally destroy their enemies.kind of the way north Korea wants to take over south Korea.

[-] donuts@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I'm simply referring to things like this, which I believe (but can't really prove, so I could be wrong) happens more often than we'd like.

I'm probably wrong. I'm not claiming to be an expert, and I'm not trying to equate Taiwan with China.

[-] lilShalom@lemmy.basedcount.com 1 points 1 year ago

They do buy our debt.

[-] regalia@literature.cafe 45 points 1 year ago

It was no normal gadget.

It's literally just a hauwei android phone lol

[-] Bebo@sffa.community 10 points 1 year ago

Super dramatic aren't they lol!

[-] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 10 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

The hype is that it's using a domestic CPU. It's unclear how good a CPU it is, but apparently it was made with a semiconductor process which is only several years behind cutting edge. That's not really surprising, though, I doubt there was all that much "hushed concern".

I imagine there's also a question of if the Chinese can scale production up at all, or if some precision German machine tool is an impassible bottleneck.

[-] Buttons@programming.dev 3 points 1 year ago

That's no normal gadget...

[-] regalia@literature.cafe 4 points 1 year ago

What can you do with it that you cannot already

[-] bandario@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 points 1 year ago

Send data to the CCP more faster and betterer.

[-] regalia@literature.cafe 6 points 1 year ago

Hard to beat tiktok

[-] WorldlyCaregiver@beehaw.org 18 points 1 year ago

I'm not sure why this is surprising or even notable, they've been using this 7 nm process since last year.

[-] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 2 points 1 year ago

Just an opportunity to highlight it again, I guess.

[-] Sina@beehaw.org 16 points 1 year ago

China having access to 7nm fabs is extremely worrying.

[-] robotrash@lemmy.robotra.sh 20 points 1 year ago

Why? I'm not super educated on this matter and can't find anything clear on why this would be bad

[-] DaDragon@kbin.social 20 points 1 year ago

Because it’s a sign they were able to get that manufacturing technology working. It means their equipment is better than it was up until very recently, and they were able to work out the kinks (mainly optics, iirc) stopping them from using ‘7nm’ nodes. It also means that the west is loosing the semiconductor production advantage it has.

Check out Asianometry, he does good videos on semiconductor manufacture, and I believe he did a video or two on China as well.

[-] krimsonbun@lemmy.blahaj.zone 30 points 1 year ago

oh no china make good tech? why is it worrying for me?

[-] HeartyBeast@kbin.social 11 points 1 year ago

The answer rather depends on where you live.

[-] robotrash@lemmy.robotra.sh 10 points 1 year ago

Yeah I have literally zero more information lol I'm in the US and feel like I should be concerned because "China" but I'd love a valid reason beyond "they're now capable of sustaining they're own technology".

[-] regalia@literature.cafe 4 points 1 year ago

They already were, but how they can use this dangerous advance semiconductor manufacturing to get a couple more fps on among us

[-] DaDragon@kbin.social 5 points 1 year ago

It's more of a weapon system and AI-model issue. Think of Russians using missiles filled with Chinese-manufacturered electronics rather than US ones. Now US sanctions are less effective (even in the face of all the smuggling that happens anyway).

In the same way, think of China training militarily useful AI models on hardware they no longer need the US to supply. Things like models for more effectively deadly biological or chemical compounds. Or even targeting and decision making algorithms. In a war, they would be able make their own hardware to support such efforts, rather than being reliant on the US.

Ultimately, it doesn't matter in times of peace, or if we were all able to get along with each other. But seeing as everyone is trying to have an advantage on all other potential enemies, this presents a problem.

[-] regalia@literature.cafe 3 points 1 year ago

You realize they've been doing chip making way longer then we have

[-] robotrash@lemmy.robotra.sh 25 points 1 year ago

That still doesn't tell me why I should be concerned. Another country having access to good technology doesn't set off alarm bells for me. I guess I need someone to spell out why them being less reliant on the West for tech is concerning. Especially considering how true the opposite has been (in regards to manufacturing) for ages.

[-] DaDragon@kbin.social 7 points 1 year ago

The issue arises when you look at it from a geopolitics point of view. The US (aka the West) loosing manufacturing and design dominance in the semiconductor space means that there is less bargaining power to force others to do what the US wants. In the case of China, US export embargos for cutting edge semiconductor technology was meant to cripple China's technological progress, especially in the semiconductor design/production and AI model space. (Think of whatever shenanigans US companies have been doing with AI models, and what China has already demonstrated on Western hardware.)

Semiconductors are integral to modern weapon systems. If you've been keeping up with the news, you'll remember that even Russian missiles have been found to contain western-made electronics. AKA Russia has been buying US technology and adding it into their own weapon systems, rather than designing, producing and using their own. That makes Russia reliant on having a stable source of US components, be it imported legally or in spite of sanctions. The same goes for China. The fear is that China will eventually be able to manufacture weapon electronics comparable to US designs. Stealing the designs from US sources isn't particularly difficult, its always been the manufacture of said components that caused issues for China. Seemingly, that gap has been closing.

In short it's basically the issue of the West having made China the factory of the world, them having learned/being able to steal designs, and them now having the ability to produce almost anything. That makes them a strategic threat to US interests.

Anything that makes someone less reliant on you is a net negative if you wish to remain 'in charge'.

[-] HakFoo@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 1 year ago

The less economic and tech dependencies China has on the West, the more free they are to act on their own accord.

The US is concerned about Taiwan-- they wrote a blank cheque of support because it was a DeMoCrAcY back when China was a far weaker economy and military, and it will now be very difficult and expensive to stop reunification. Using TSMC as a shield is no doubt part of policy-- "invade and we blow the tech world back to 2010" is a viable threat until other countries get 7/5/3nm.

But their fear is more general; they are losing their economic and geopolitical dominance, and one of their big bulwarks-- advanced tech-- is giving way. They're trying to hype up the fear and concern. Expect a lot more sabre rattling by the West.

[-] regalia@literature.cafe 12 points 1 year ago

Chip manufacturing advancements is awesome for everyone. Oh no, good technology advancements but Americans didn't make it!

[-] lazylion_ca@lemmy.ca 11 points 1 year ago

Any details on the phone?

[-] bandario@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 points 1 year ago

I looked at the previous 2 versions of this handset for my own use and didn't end up getting them. They have now dealt with most of the issues (no access to google play store apps etc) via Lighthouse, but it's still got a zany custom OS (EMUI) which features a bit of Chinglish and some pretty bizarre UI choices. The cameras are absolutely kickass in the Mate 50 pro, I would say better than iPhone 14 pro max without much hesitation at all.

On the downside, these devices almost certainly contain backdoors and may be phoning home regularly. The reality is, so is your Samsung, so is your Pixel, so is your iPhone. ALL of them have backdoors and are capable of recording and transmitting audio even when turned off. In this instance, I feel more comfortable giving a backdoor to the Chinese than any 5-eyes manufacturer. After all, what consequence is there for the Chinese to spy on me compared to my home country via a third party 5-eyes nation and their manufacturing partners? China has no bearing on my life.

[-] autotldr@lemmings.world 8 points 1 year ago

🤖 I'm a bot that provides automatic summaries for articles:

Click here to see the summary“The major geopolitical significance,” he said, “has been to show that it is possible to completely design [without] U.S. technology and still produce a product that may not be quite as good as cutting edge Western models, but is still quite capable.”

China’s official broadcaster, CGTN, in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, called the phone Huawei’s “first higher-end processor” since U.S. sanctions were imposed and said the chip it contains was made by Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp., a company partially owned by the Chinese government.

U.S. sanctions were intended to slow China’s progress in emerging fields like artificial intelligence and big data by cutting off its ability to buy or build advanced semiconductors, which are the brains of these systems.

“This shows that Chinese companies like Huawei still have plenty of capability to innovate,” said Chris Miller, a professor at Tufts University and author of the book “Chip War.” “I think it will also probably intensify debate in Washington on whether restrictions are to be tightened.”

“This development will almost certainly prompt much stronger calls for further tightening of export control licensing for U.S. suppliers of Huawei, who continue to be able to ship commodity semiconductors that are not used for 5G applications,” Triolo said.

For instance, Intel recently announced it will have to pay $353 million in termination fees to Israel’s Tower Semiconductor after failing to acquire Chinese regulatory approval for the acquisition.

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