Miscellaneous News

[GulfLander]

The Chinese mainland will hold a commemoration to mark the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Taiwan from Japanese colonial rule and its return to the motherland. A spokesperson of the Taiwan Affairs Office of the State Council said the event will invite representatives from all walks of life, including Taiwan compatriots. Visits and exchange activities will also be held before and after the event. The spokesperson also criticized Taiwan's Democratic Progressive Party authorities for banning Taiwan compatriots' participation.

 

[9dashline]

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View attachment 163056
I'm very curious who will blink first. I imagine Germans are applying some pressure to the Dutch now.

And to think initially many in this forum was concerned China would just let this Nexperia thing slide

I now think China was just looking for an oppurtunity to do REE ban...so there will not be a reversal to the way things were, no matter what

 

[FriedButter]

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I'm very curious who will blink first. I imagine Germans are applying some pressure to the Dutch now.

Earlier in the day, VW said their factories being paused was due to holidays and not Nexperia. Can they keep their story straight for once.

The spokesperson for the automaker told Reuters that the brief production halt had been “long planned” to manage inventory and align with autumn holidays

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[iewgnem]

China’s dominance of electronics production is as great as the US’s dominance of software? I don’t see any evidence of that.

Japan and especially South Korea are formidable global competitors here, they still control much of the high end electronics markets and have factories outside of China. Unless you’re talking about rare earth inputs into the electronics chain. In which case I agree, but the whole bet in this kind of strategy is that the US & its allies can develop rare earths processing capabilities more easily than the world can switch from US software.

I’m not saying I agree but the bet is not entirely ridiculous. More importantly, software and finance are the only major industries the US commands this level of dominance in. There is no other threat that would even be credible.

You don't seem to understand the difference between real stuff and artificial stuff.

Chinese supply chain dominance is real physical things, it require real energy, real production, real capital. Japan and South Korea has their niches and are spokes in the global supply chain, but only China has the entire supply chain and China is the hub to which South Korea and Japan attaches. China's export ban on just a single Nexperia packaging plant for mature nodes is enough to shut down the entire western auto industry, that should give you a clue to the implication of trying to live without China.

American "dominance" in software is an artificial choice to use American software, software that China has but people has chosen not to use. For the US and its allies to develop rare earth processing, they need to physical construct things, build things, find the energy to power them, find the people to do them, teach people to do them. For people to switch to Chinese software, people simply need to run an installer. The two are a dozen orders of magnitude apart in difficulty.

What US wants to do isn't just an incentive to use Chinese software, it forces companies to do so. Even if one company choose to lose Chinese supply chain in exchange for software, it just take a single competitor who does make the switch to turn the choice into life and death for your company.

This is the exact same situation as Americans who think they can ban China from using USD: the reality is it's the ability to interface with real, physical things in China that gives American software, and US dollar its value, without that access, American software become useless, as does the USD. The ability to use iOS becomes meaningless if there are no iPhones.

 

[proelite]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1980957928791437360

That's not what she said.

 

[iewgnem]

Earlier in the day, VW said their factories being paused was due to holidays and not Nexperia. Can they keep their story straight for once.

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Classic Europeans, only finding out after Dutch guy returns from Beijing that VW telling everyone they're running out of chips is bad for "negotiations", lol

 

[9dashline]

You don't seem to understand the difference between real stuff and artificial stuff.

Chinese supply chain dominance is real physical things, it require real energy, real production, real capital. Japan and South Korea has their niches and are spokes in the global supply chain, but only China has the entire supply chain and China is the hub to which South Korea and Japan attaches. China's export ban on just a single Nexperia packaging plant for mature nodes is enough to shut down the entire western auto industry, that should give you a clue to the implication of trying to live without China.

American "dominance" in software is an artificial choice to use American software, software that China has but people has chosen not to use. For the US and its allies to develop rare earth processing, they need to physical construct things, build things, find the energy to power them, find the people to do them, teach people to do them. For people to switch to Chinese software, people simply need to run an installer. The two are a dozen orders of magnitude apart in difficulty.

What US wants to do isn't just an incentive to use Chinese software, it forces companies to do so. Even if one company choose to lose Chinese supply chain in exchange for software, it just take a single competitor who does make the switch to turn the choice into life and death for your company.

This is the exact same situation as Americans who think they can ban China from using USD: the reality is it's the ability to interface with real, physical things in China that gives American software, and US dollar its value, without that access, AMerican software become useless, as does the USD.

Yup, the dude is essentially arguing bitcoin is worth more than gold

Software is just info, it can be copied, in age of LLM code is now commodity

REE is actual stuff...

There is a good reason China stocking up on gold but banned bitcoin

Now China is making its trade partners use WPS and forcing them off MS Word

America thinks it has a software moat... its in for rude awakening

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[iewgnem]

Wouldn't this just make cracks and software piracy ubiquitous across the globe? Back to the golden age of internet piracy like the old Napster/eMule days?

Pirating software isn't even that meaningful when even major global corporations are committing to open source.

Companies don't commit to open source because they're altruistic, it's because they correctly understand the real value of software is in adoption, not sales of licenses. TikTok is free, Meta and Alibaba are spending billions on open source models, Huawei is releasing open source AI toolkits, Nvidia's release CUDA for free to sell their GPUs, companies don't fight over making money from selling licenses, companies fight over users and ecosystem.

It's actually pretty on brand for the geriatric US government to still live in the era of software licenses.

 

[Temstar]

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Germany will step in to pay around 11,000 local employees working at U.S. military bases whose paychecks have been affected by the government shutdown in Washington, the finance ministry said Wednesday.

贱不贱呐？

 

[FairAndUnbiased]

The Trump administration is banking on the idea that it is easier for the rest of the world to replace what China makes than for the rest of the world to replace what the US makes - e.g. rare earth mines and refineries can be stood up (at cost) for the industries that need them, but US software (which would include Windows, Google Search, Android, iOS, hardware device drivers, etc.) will be much harder to replace. Countries would be told that, if they want continued access to any US software, they would need to cut China off from trade.

This is probably the greatest leverage the US actually does have, since its software ecosystem does dominate the world. I've mentioned this many times before - the US is a financial and software super power. Google Search and Microsoft Bing controls about 95% of ALL global search. Similarly for operating systems like iOS and Android. It is the one industry where US dominance is at the level of Chinese dominance in rare earths, so it makes perfect sense for Trump to use it as leverage in the extra-territorial sanctions game.

But of course, just like with China and rare earths, you get to play this card only once. Once you play it, the resultant economic devastation will set off a trend of "de-risking" from US software that could permanently cripple its dominance. What's more, the software industry makes up a MUCH larger share of the US economy than rare earths does the Chinese economy, so the financial impact to the US could be devastating.

The real question, though, is how much the rest of the world stands to gain from siding with the US vs. China. The intimidation tactic here is essentially a bluff: if the Global South falls in line with the US then this move would be equivalent to the US telling the rest of the world "you can't trade with China" and them saying "okay." China would be isolated and that could cause severe consequences for its living standards and industrial development, as what would follow soon after - if the US got the Global South to agree - is probably a resources embargo (iron ore, minerals, food, etc.) It'd be like turning into North Korea.

But that's why it's a bluff. The US wants China to fear this outcome, but there isn't confidence that the Global South will actually follow through. If the alternative happens, where the Global South decides that it'd rather just replace US software, or operate separate software ecosystems, then it's the US and its close allies that will become North Korea. This is why it is the nuclear option. Once it is out, there is no coming back.

China has software thats being squeezed by the US but no physical law says they can't be scaled up.

There is the very real physical problem of stellar nucleosynthesis, planetary differentiation and physical chemistry preventing rare earths from being easily replaced.

I guess 1 is easier to solve than the other.