Those Xeon chips are mainstream server chips, are they not? And this restriction seems to affect only a few Chinese entities. So what's to stop China from getting the same chips from Intel through another company? Is the U.S. just going to play whack-a-mole with them?
Also, the reason given for this is so hilarious. China is using the supercomputers to "research nuclear explosions". China is doing WHAT?! Stop the presses! China is going to have a nuke!
That said, I think this is a good outcome for China. It will just force them to build out their own chips (okay, on top of ARM, MIPS, OpenPOWER or even RISC-V - but why not?!). More competition for Intel is a good thing.
I agree, we should be pushing for more dominant companies outside of the US, given how abhorrently hostile they are to "foreigners".
Citizenship of the internet does not entitle you to the same rights as a US citizen, and we should stop acting like the US government gives a solitary fuck about anybody who wasn't born in the US, and protesting with our wallets doesn't work so well when there is no usable alternative.
so yes, I applaud the idea of another country developing comparable silicon to Intel, and I applaud the idea of each country having it's own webmail provider.
and every time the US government does something which treads on those who are feeding it money, it makes me a little happy that one day they'll annoy everyone enough to not put up with it.. even if the services are better.
Yeah I was thinking much the same. I really do believe that we should just remove the downvote button entirely, too many people abusing it for the wrong reasons. An entirely upvote-oriented site would work reasonably well. You could still flag offensive comments if need be.
Wow, he was busted for exporting FPGAs that were rated for the wrong temperature range. I'm not saying it wasn't nefarious, but it is crazy that Automotive grade is completely legal at -40C - 125C and but go a little colder to milspec (-55C - 125C) and you are going to jail.
> Also, the reason given for this is so hilarious. China is using the supercomputers to "research nuclear explosions". China is doing WHAT?! Stop the presses! China is going to have a nuke!
The ability to computationally model nuclear explosions is strategically important. This permits development of new nuclear weapons designs without violating the Comprehensive Test Ban treaty.
Tianhe-2 uses Xeon Phi, not the mainstream Xeon processors. By the way, even mainstream Xeons can have very different performance depending on the specific model.
Is the US slowly bowing out of the international tech scene?
China is still going to get their processors from somewhere, the difference is if they don't get them from US companies then no money gets added to the US economy when they do buy their chips.
This type of government interference doesn't hurt Chinese businesses at all, but could damage or destroy US-based businesses that may depend on foreign customers to stay afloat. This only serves to hurt US business and limit the amount of money being added to the US economy by Chinese consumers. It feels like a spiteful, self-destructive move to me.
From what I could decipher from the end of the article, it sounded like China has already migrated away from Intel's architecture and replaced it with a different architecture they could get their hands on more reliably—meaning even if the US were to reverse their decision about this denial list, the damage to Intel is already done. This may have killed the demand for Intel's products in China, even if they were free to sell them.
If you owned a Volkswagen car and required specialized parts which were were denied to you, and you upgraded to a different make of car like Volvo, what good would Wolkswagen spare parts serve to you? You're not going to switch back to VW just because the spare parts are available on the market again…you've moved on by that point.
As we say where I live: «L'avion c'est en vol!» (“The plane has taken off” ~= That Ship has sailed)
I really can't imagine this has any impact on any chinese intelligence agency whatsoever. Tianhe-2 is already the #1 supercomputer - what possible difference could a minor (it's not an order of magnituge faster, and software doesn't scale perfectly anyhow) upgrade make?
It cuts off one avenue by which a foreign country might gain useful information from within American companies. China in particular is notorious for their industrial espionage.
That’s actually a hilarious statement, considering how notorious the US is for their industrial espionage. Both china and the US are equally bad in that situation, and both equally try to fully observe every single step any of their people does.
Not the same, though. The US does quite a lot of original research. Industrial espionage in this context is more about predicting the adversary's moves, not stealing their IP.
The 'stealing' part takes on many forms. One of them is:
> Russia understandably became upset when its star export appeared as an indigenously produced J-11 in China – without a licensing agreement.
In short, China has a pretty large technological gap, and does anything necessary to shorten the gap as quickly as possible.
And that's the government. There's no indication that private Chinese companies are any better in this regard. In fact, you can even find 'counterfeit' cars.
One wonders why US companies outsource their manufacturing there. Their technology will be 're purposed', without any need of industrial espionage, by the standard definition of it.
It's funny, because technically Tianhe-2 is the world's fastest supercomputer based on Linpack, but most of that comes from the Xeon Phi accelerators, which to my knowledge has been a total flop on the HPC scene. It's almost like a brilliant evil plan to make the Chinese chase a futureless accelerator platform.
It's naive to assume that America makes all the processors.
Intel and AMD have fabs all over Europe and the Middle East. Germany and Israel are known for their processor fabs.
Processor makers are multinationals, not national companies. Both AMD and Intel are bigger than the US.
If China stops buying from major multinational US companies, the entire Western tech industry will be hurt. No American jobs are lost when a German AMD fabricator has less demand.
Any company that wants to have a presence in the US must abide by the list as far as I know. Even further to the point AMD and Intel are actually headquartered in the US...
The point was to say that this is a Western problem not an American problem, because the ramifications against multinational companies are multinational.
Most Intel fabs are in the US, particularly the new ones. Only one Intel fab is in Israel. All but one 14nm Intel fabs are in the US (the exception is in Ireland). The Intel fab in China is 65nm.
While I'm excited that Intel may experience greater competition (resulting in lower profits and faster development) I wouldn't have expected this to be the mechanism.
> ... Uncle Sam has put this supercomputer centre, together with National University of Defense Technology in Changsha, the system’s creators, and Tianjin centre, among others, on so a so-called “Denial List”, which prevents any high technology from the USA to be sold to these sites.
If I understand correctly Intel can't sell them any tech nor can anyone else in the US.
I bet there's some secret info that we don't get to know that would make this bizarre move make more sense. Maybe China is using this computer to crack military servers or something.
I'm not willing to give the government the benefit of the doubt anymore. I can't recall any instance historically where they have turned out to have been right based on some secret information, even though they often intimate that they have some.
I read jeffbush's comment as a broad one, rather than narrowly about trade restrictions. The government is often right based on secret information, but selection biases are strong.
Usually though most things are declassified eventually. Even Really Big Secrets like Enigma, CIA memos on the bay of pigs or similar eventually gets released - so you would think that we would know their old successes.
Many intelligence successes throughout history are known. Most of them are small, undramatic events like a particular military move being successfully anticipated and countered. Few of them are large, dramatic events.
I probably should have defined that more narrowly to foreign policy. The military is generally fairly effective with battlefield intelligence in times of war. Congress and the president seem to be a different story.
This particular (and rather creepy) metaphor gets used by some business-side people and press in a general context, not just when talking about Japan. It's been around for decades.
It's a figure of speech, not a cultural reference. It's a term used for pragmatic openness between companies. Avoiding secrets. I prefer using the term 'lay your cards on the table'. Less charged.
Guess the Chinese were on the right track when they started their programs for domestic CPUs and other computing parts. With a bit of luck, the rest of the world gets useable alternatives to Intel and therefore cheaper chips out of it.
And by the way few people do math "heavy lifting" with x86 CPUs today, they would rather do it in a GPU
China has the fabs and the expertise (or at least it is getting there). It's a non issue.
"They have taken the best that the USA has developed (some of key Alpha, GPGPU and MIPS architects left US over the course of past four years, a lot of them due to non-renewed visas) and discarded due to corporate shenanigans, and the continued developing it much farther than anyone expected both on hardware and software side.
"
> And by the way few people do math "heavy lifting" with x86 CPUs today, they would rather do it in a GPU
This depends on the workload, really; some workloads are quite GPU-unfriendly. In any case, the supercomputer in question---Tianhe-2 [2]---derives most of its computing power from the Xeon Phi [1], a x86-ish many-core vector processor which looks much like a GPU.
Denying the chinese access to Intel chips for their flagship supercomputing facility only promotes indigenous Chinese chip manufacturing. Given that there's no reason why Chinese chip design and manufacturing could not match and/or exceed western designs, this choice potentially accelerates the rate at which Western dominance over high tech goods is eroded.
Furthermore, by denying Intel chips in such a high profile manner, this will likely cause all sorts of antagonization, and reduce the ability to pressure/guide Chinese growth and development in directions that are more beneficial for American/Western interests.
This wouldn't have been a surprise for the Chinese. Intel would have been told a long time ago, and so likely would the university in question.
It also won't be a scenario that China hasn't planned for. The reason that China's been building up its chipmakers over the last few years is for precisely this scenario; reducing the reliance on American tech. They've been doing this quite successfully; Cisco now aren't able to do business with the Chinese government, iirc.
Lastly, Tianhe-2 was a $400 million computer. The decision to block American collaboration on a project valued at a considerable fraction of $1 billion isn't made by some office clerk; it will have been considered at the highest levels of at least the military, but most likely the government in general.
It's a diplomatic maneuvre specifically designed to hurt China. Intel's just been caught in the crossfire. They could easily be pacified (for example, by giving them a supercomputer contract in the US).
In terms of the Chinese reaction, antagonization is probably the point.
Here's what one of NSA's former chiefs, Michael Hayden, had to say just a week ago (probably unaware this was going to happen):
> By the time I became NSA director in the late 1990s, however, the calculation was no longer that simple. We still wanted an MTOPS advantage, of course, but we were fast realizing that our preferred limits were undermining the global competitiveness of the U.S. computer industry — the very industry on which we relied for our success. It was becoming clear that the overall health of that industry was more important than any MTOPS advantage against a specific target country. We still insisted on limits with regard to places such as Cuba and North Korea, but we became far more forgiving elsewhere.
This, of course, had a powerful, positive commercial impact, but the NSA didn’t flip its position for commercial reasons. We did it for security reasons. On balance, this change made us stronger, not weaker, over the long haul, since retarding exports would inevitably retard the technological progress that was both our economic and our security lifeblood.
That early lesson has caused me to continue to challenge arguments that technological protectionism furthers national security. It might, but then again, it could have the opposite effect if it freezes development, alienates allies, feeds distrust or invites the creation of similar barriers abroad. I would recommend these broader considerations to those in the U.S. security enterprise with responsibility for evaluating these trade-offs today.
These are his views, and by extension were the views of the US establishment until at least 10 years ago, but probably until more recently, and are views presumably shared by at least some the people who made the decision - but they still decided to not let the export go ahead.
Which tells me that either the doctrine has changed in the last 10 years, or that this deal doesn't fit into his model, or that this is a diplomatic maneuvre. My guess is one of the latter two, although I could be wrong.
And yet, the US won't sell Iran nukes or China F-22s.
The world we live in is far from free market, for everything from solar panels to textiles [0].
A really obvious place in which one might actually want the opposite of a free market is in military tech.
Exporting the tech behind a computer that'll presumably be used for mostly military purposes is something that could be expected to be frowned upon in certain circumstances.
> And yet, the US won't sell Iran nukes or China F-22s.
But still be the main sponsor of various terrorist organizations.
However, that's a different story. The thing that is upsetting here though it is that this is about a country with a legit, well-respected government, that is not known for violent anti-Americanism, etc. Oh and the population-wise biggest country in the world, often considered the only competitor to the US.
Because it's not like selling them weapon parts or military tech, it's generic processing power. There's not much reason to slightly annoy their construction of supercomputers.
Or maybe they are arranging for a "special batch" of CPUs to make their way to China like they did with IBM 360s in the cold war. That only lead to oil pipeline failures...
Yes, I was referring to this, made possible by "special" IBM System/360s that the Russians thought were black market, but that they were intended to get...
I find it interesting to consider valuations for the two costs in allowing the chips to be used.
Intel chip revenue, and future business growth = +X
Security concerns, and future security concerns = -Y
I really wonder what the value of X-Y is, i.e., what's the net benefit? It's hard to reason about as a member of the public without inside information. Y is particularly opaque in this case.
Also I really think the narrative of China versus or competing with the US is overcooked. It's my feeling that both countries have far more pressing domestic and regional concerns than each other, and could stand to benefit far more from mutual strength than from any adversity. I guess the narrative makes for compelling reading tho, on both sides, for public consumption. Maybe similar to how the West vs Russia narrative of the Cold War promoted scientific activity.
I just think the world's substantially moved on from such binary narratives, because as countries have developed and strengthened economic relationships, they actually have less to worry about in terms of conflict with each other. Then again, I guess a lot of what happens is opaque to reasoning about form the outside.
So perhaps this is not a US vs China thing at all. Maybe there's some other strategy at play.
> It's my feeling that both countries have far more pressing domestic and regional concerns than each other
However domestic concerns that are hard to solve can benefit from (made-up) external concerns. It has also been used to enforce power internally.
Other than that domestic concerns have the problem that solving them can change status quo and give the fact that such decisions of course are made by people that are currently in power it might play a role in keeping that power, also by distracting from the fact that it might not be to the benefit of the people.
That of course doesn't have to be the main case and probably isn't here, but of course that is a pattern, basically like evolution or evolving systems (not just biologically). Status quo of being alive and dominant usually means that this dominance will be used to keep it, which often results in stagnation, which may lead to the benefit becoming a handicap later - like when you are too specialized to status quo.
The US (government wise) seems to lately struggle a bit with the world being/becoming multi polar. Like not talking in a bad way, but of course one has to consider that we are basically just past a century that was basically about an unipolar world with the US as the only superpower and even if society and especially individuals change more quickly such a huge structure tends to be a bit slower, which is something we can see when we look for example at old/ancient laws, institutions, etc. that still exist.
From a startup perspective: You might consider the old economy slow, but governments and especially the structures surrounding them are even slower.
On the other hand it might also be related to something like "I am pissed at you, so you don't get it. Take that" things that sometimes happen, often causing big effects despite just being a temporal disagreement on some completely unrelated topic. After all there is just ordinary people working behind the scenes.
From a startup perspective I think it's an interesting opportunity the kinds of companies that will emerge to enhance government. I find it somewhat weird that there are basically no companies, well known and high growth, doing really integrated things with governments. Maybe I'm missing something here, and I just feel like there could be a mini boom possible in startups that provide some kind of enhancements.
Of course there are traditional ones like Palantir and veteran spin offs for intelligence and military procurement. And there's the big and small DoD contractors in Maryland. And I've also at various times heard about startups that aim to "digitize" government in terms of putting forms and processes in the cloud.
In some ostentatiously liberal places like in South America it seems these kind of digitisation startups are more popular, because there they're proud of how "progressive" they are :)
I just feel there has to be way way more possibilities. Maybe I'm just out of the loop tho, and there's lots of movement.
Basically I like government, because I feel the fundamental principle is noble: safeguarding order for the people. And I feel like all the things which don't work, like corruption, are simply inefficiencies which will be removed as the model (and maybe the tech) evolves.
Status quo is often raised as a criticism of government, and status quo is government's core purpose, and doesn't necessarily mean it's sinister or stagnant, tho those sides can emerge.
I think it really works that while everyone is rushing ahead to push their own agendas, there's large groups who are mostly trying to safeguard the order we already have. It seems to be not like an evil, and instead a necessary balance.
So I don't think status quo needs to equal corruption, or lack of innovation: you can find better ways to maintain what you have!
Also the issues that are sometimes attributed to the status quo attribute of government I believe stem from other things. The narrative of a crusty elite few concocting repressive schemes to hold onto the power they're so afraid the proles will somehow steal from them, even tho the proles haven't interfered with said elites success in the first place -- just seems like something too much out of a hero villain trope from the popular consciousness, and lacking in fidelity or explanatory power for reality. I'd go so far as to say this is the "Disney delusion" because the spectre of such fictional villains is alike to something conjured by the finest Disney cartoons! :)
Another cognitive dissonance is people attribute the outsized evils effected by governments to so called outsized evil of the people in them. It's actually because power is a force magnifier, so ordinary evil, or which there is plenty even in
everyday life, is given outsized expression through the lens of governments. Actually, with how chaotic individuals are I find it an amazing miracle that governments are as peaceful and stable as they are. Which no doubt stems from the conspicuous effort of people involved.
So while it's a sometimes a common narrative to sledge governments, for a number of reasons only some of which I touch on here, I feel a more balanced view of them is clearer. And without a clear view, how can we operate effectively?
None of which is to say that there aren't plenty of opportunities to create improvements in governments, a fact which, given the stakes, seems surprising more startups aren't magnetically drawn to it. An important point is I feel one reason contributing to lack of sexiness of government for startups is incorrect stories about government that we are inclined to tell.
I basically think that ordinary people don't reason usefully about power, because they feel it's something somewhat incomprehensible to them, so they fallback to tools like the fake hero villain story above, comfortable "creation" myths which seem to explain the ...
This kind of thing can creep up when you least expect it. I'm a native speaker, I've had a solid and reliable intellectual understanding of these distinctions since grade school, and yet somehow on a paper a few years back I substituted "weather" for "whether" throughout the whole thing. Not because I had forgotten the distinction, but because I just wasn't paying attention.
I guess you have a fair point. And I'm certain I've made such mistakes as well, it's just that I can't stand those two particular errors for whatever reason :) Maybe I'm getting old...
It is interesting that even nobody think China should sue Uncle Sam at WTO. If it happened in the other direction, American will think go to court first for sure. just like the rare metal affair when China bannned it from US.
Meta: there's something funny about the very aggressive, sarcastic way the article is written. Not journalistic at all and pretty annoying to read even though there is good information in it.
> You may think they are not up to the mark, but remember how fast British ARM architecture became the dominant processing architecture in the world. And this group doesn’t need to worry about the antiquated x86 ISA, worry about satisfying the dumbed down shareholder masses, or overpaying their marketing and sales staff, as well as the fat check, golden parachute-protected CxOs.
Denying tech sales to China, at this stage is just causing minor nuisance. In not-so-far future China is going to be much stronger economy than US ever was. If they want the bigger computers, they will have the bigger computers. Just calculate any "damage" done with those export rules on Chinese military - is it $2B more that needs to be spent in order to get the same capability? Or $20B? You can just watch that money float right past you to their domestic HPC and CPU industries. In effect, US is trying it's damnest to make China competitive in the one major high tech export industry that it still has undisputed world leadership in.
Only circumstance this would make any sense would be if you were sliding fast and inevitably to open conflict, and causing them setbacks worth of a few months to a couple of years would be vital. Since that is not the case, this has nothing but "strategic blunder" written all over it.
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 152 ms ] threadAlso, the reason given for this is so hilarious. China is using the supercomputers to "research nuclear explosions". China is doing WHAT?! Stop the presses! China is going to have a nuke!
That said, I think this is a good outcome for China. It will just force them to build out their own chips (okay, on top of ARM, MIPS, OpenPOWER or even RISC-V - but why not?!). More competition for Intel is a good thing.
Citizenship of the internet does not entitle you to the same rights as a US citizen, and we should stop acting like the US government gives a solitary fuck about anybody who wasn't born in the US, and protesting with our wallets doesn't work so well when there is no usable alternative.
so yes, I applaud the idea of another country developing comparable silicon to Intel, and I applaud the idea of each country having it's own webmail provider.
and every time the US government does something which treads on those who are feeding it money, it makes me a little happy that one day they'll annoy everyone enough to not put up with it.. even if the services are better.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loongson#Supercomputers
sometimes CBP/FBI/etc. happen to do their job :)
http://www.fbi.gov/sanfrancisco/press-releases/2015/san-fran...
The ability to computationally model nuclear explosions is strategically important. This permits development of new nuclear weapons designs without violating the Comprehensive Test Ban treaty.
China is still going to get their processors from somewhere, the difference is if they don't get them from US companies then no money gets added to the US economy when they do buy their chips.
This type of government interference doesn't hurt Chinese businesses at all, but could damage or destroy US-based businesses that may depend on foreign customers to stay afloat. This only serves to hurt US business and limit the amount of money being added to the US economy by Chinese consumers. It feels like a spiteful, self-destructive move to me.
Also, there are other considerations at hand, such as making life harder for foreign intelligence agencies.
If you owned a Volkswagen car and required specialized parts which were were denied to you, and you upgraded to a different make of car like Volvo, what good would Wolkswagen spare parts serve to you? You're not going to switch back to VW just because the spare parts are available on the market again…you've moved on by that point.
As we say where I live: «L'avion c'est en vol!» (“The plane has taken off” ~= That Ship has sailed)
The 'stealing' part takes on many forms. One of them is:
http://thediplomat.com/2013/11/how-china-plans-to-use-the-su...
> Russia understandably became upset when its star export appeared as an indigenously produced J-11 in China – without a licensing agreement.
In short, China has a pretty large technological gap, and does anything necessary to shorten the gap as quickly as possible.
And that's the government. There's no indication that private Chinese companies are any better in this regard. In fact, you can even find 'counterfeit' cars.
One wonders why US companies outsource their manufacturing there. Their technology will be 're purposed', without any need of industrial espionage, by the standard definition of it.
Intel and AMD have fabs all over Europe and the Middle East. Germany and Israel are known for their processor fabs.
Processor makers are multinationals, not national companies. Both AMD and Intel are bigger than the US.
If China stops buying from major multinational US companies, the entire Western tech industry will be hurt. No American jobs are lost when a German AMD fabricator has less demand.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_manufacturing_sit...
AMD is now a fabless company. They contract with other companies that own fabs.
Just to add they use GlobalFoundries (US) but also TSMC
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TSMC
There are several outside of the US http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_semiconductor_fabricati...
http://www.hpcwire.com/2015/04/08/chinese-supercomputing-org...
While I'm excited that Intel may experience greater competition (resulting in lower profits and faster development) I wouldn't have expected this to be the mechanism.
> ... Uncle Sam has put this supercomputer centre, together with National University of Defense Technology in Changsha, the system’s creators, and Tianjin centre, among others, on so a so-called “Denial List”, which prevents any high technology from the USA to be sold to these sites.
If I understand correctly Intel can't sell them any tech nor can anyone else in the US.
A lot less flashy and baity though.
All we really hear about on the outside is the screwups. The successes are silent.
That's not a catch, that's an unfalsifiable statement. Here's another way to end your comment for which there is a lot more evidence:
All we really hear about on the outside are the big screwups. All the normal screwups and marginal successes are silent.
Here's a great article on just how crappy the record of these secret organizations is:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/entries/3662a707-0af9-...
Kimonos are Japanese, not Chinese.
EDIT: I understand that 'opened the kimono' is already a phrase but it seems like it was used because the article is about china.
Yes, but it looks like the author thought they were being clever by using that specific phrase, given the article was about China.
And by the way few people do math "heavy lifting" with x86 CPUs today, they would rather do it in a GPU
China has the fabs and the expertise (or at least it is getting there). It's a non issue.
"They have taken the best that the USA has developed (some of key Alpha, GPGPU and MIPS architects left US over the course of past four years, a lot of them due to non-renewed visas) and discarded due to corporate shenanigans, and the continued developing it much farther than anyone expected both on hardware and software side. "
This depends on the workload, really; some workloads are quite GPU-unfriendly. In any case, the supercomputer in question---Tianhe-2 [2]---derives most of its computing power from the Xeon Phi [1], a x86-ish many-core vector processor which looks much like a GPU.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xeon_Phi
[2] http://top500.org/system/177999
I don't really understand why people are complaining about this one?
Furthermore, by denying Intel chips in such a high profile manner, this will likely cause all sorts of antagonization, and reduce the ability to pressure/guide Chinese growth and development in directions that are more beneficial for American/Western interests.
It also won't be a scenario that China hasn't planned for. The reason that China's been building up its chipmakers over the last few years is for precisely this scenario; reducing the reliance on American tech. They've been doing this quite successfully; Cisco now aren't able to do business with the Chinese government, iirc.
Lastly, Tianhe-2 was a $400 million computer. The decision to block American collaboration on a project valued at a considerable fraction of $1 billion isn't made by some office clerk; it will have been considered at the highest levels of at least the military, but most likely the government in general.
It's a diplomatic maneuvre specifically designed to hurt China. Intel's just been caught in the crossfire. They could easily be pacified (for example, by giving them a supercomputer contract in the US).
In terms of the Chinese reaction, antagonization is probably the point.
> By the time I became NSA director in the late 1990s, however, the calculation was no longer that simple. We still wanted an MTOPS advantage, of course, but we were fast realizing that our preferred limits were undermining the global competitiveness of the U.S. computer industry — the very industry on which we relied for our success. It was becoming clear that the overall health of that industry was more important than any MTOPS advantage against a specific target country. We still insisted on limits with regard to places such as Cuba and North Korea, but we became far more forgiving elsewhere.
This, of course, had a powerful, positive commercial impact, but the NSA didn’t flip its position for commercial reasons. We did it for security reasons. On balance, this change made us stronger, not weaker, over the long haul, since retarding exports would inevitably retard the technological progress that was both our economic and our security lifeblood.
That early lesson has caused me to continue to challenge arguments that technological protectionism furthers national security. It might, but then again, it could have the opposite effect if it freezes development, alienates allies, feeds distrust or invites the creation of similar barriers abroad. I would recommend these broader considerations to those in the U.S. security enterprise with responsibility for evaluating these trade-offs today.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/dont-let-america-be-b...
Which tells me that either the doctrine has changed in the last 10 years, or that this deal doesn't fit into his model, or that this is a diplomatic maneuvre. My guess is one of the latter two, although I could be wrong.
The world we live in is far from free market, for everything from solar panels to textiles [0].
A really obvious place in which one might actually want the opposite of a free market is in military tech.
Exporting the tech behind a computer that'll presumably be used for mostly military purposes is something that could be expected to be frowned upon in certain circumstances.
[0] - http://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-launches-new-trade-challenge...
But still be the main sponsor of various terrorist organizations.
However, that's a different story. The thing that is upsetting here though it is that this is about a country with a legit, well-respected government, that is not known for violent anti-Americanism, etc. Oh and the population-wise biggest country in the world, often considered the only competitor to the US.
I think that's a big deal.
http://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/computing/hardware/us-sus...
http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/articles/2014-08-07/chinas-huawe...
http://techreport.com/news/28092/xeon-phi-chips-will-fuel-18...
Intel chip revenue, and future business growth = +X
Security concerns, and future security concerns = -Y
I really wonder what the value of X-Y is, i.e., what's the net benefit? It's hard to reason about as a member of the public without inside information. Y is particularly opaque in this case.
Also I really think the narrative of China versus or competing with the US is overcooked. It's my feeling that both countries have far more pressing domestic and regional concerns than each other, and could stand to benefit far more from mutual strength than from any adversity. I guess the narrative makes for compelling reading tho, on both sides, for public consumption. Maybe similar to how the West vs Russia narrative of the Cold War promoted scientific activity.
I just think the world's substantially moved on from such binary narratives, because as countries have developed and strengthened economic relationships, they actually have less to worry about in terms of conflict with each other. Then again, I guess a lot of what happens is opaque to reasoning about form the outside.
So perhaps this is not a US vs China thing at all. Maybe there's some other strategy at play.
However domestic concerns that are hard to solve can benefit from (made-up) external concerns. It has also been used to enforce power internally.
Other than that domestic concerns have the problem that solving them can change status quo and give the fact that such decisions of course are made by people that are currently in power it might play a role in keeping that power, also by distracting from the fact that it might not be to the benefit of the people.
That of course doesn't have to be the main case and probably isn't here, but of course that is a pattern, basically like evolution or evolving systems (not just biologically). Status quo of being alive and dominant usually means that this dominance will be used to keep it, which often results in stagnation, which may lead to the benefit becoming a handicap later - like when you are too specialized to status quo.
The US (government wise) seems to lately struggle a bit with the world being/becoming multi polar. Like not talking in a bad way, but of course one has to consider that we are basically just past a century that was basically about an unipolar world with the US as the only superpower and even if society and especially individuals change more quickly such a huge structure tends to be a bit slower, which is something we can see when we look for example at old/ancient laws, institutions, etc. that still exist.
From a startup perspective: You might consider the old economy slow, but governments and especially the structures surrounding them are even slower.
On the other hand it might also be related to something like "I am pissed at you, so you don't get it. Take that" things that sometimes happen, often causing big effects despite just being a temporal disagreement on some completely unrelated topic. After all there is just ordinary people working behind the scenes.
Of course there are traditional ones like Palantir and veteran spin offs for intelligence and military procurement. And there's the big and small DoD contractors in Maryland. And I've also at various times heard about startups that aim to "digitize" government in terms of putting forms and processes in the cloud.
In some ostentatiously liberal places like in South America it seems these kind of digitisation startups are more popular, because there they're proud of how "progressive" they are :)
I just feel there has to be way way more possibilities. Maybe I'm just out of the loop tho, and there's lots of movement.
Basically I like government, because I feel the fundamental principle is noble: safeguarding order for the people. And I feel like all the things which don't work, like corruption, are simply inefficiencies which will be removed as the model (and maybe the tech) evolves.
Status quo is often raised as a criticism of government, and status quo is government's core purpose, and doesn't necessarily mean it's sinister or stagnant, tho those sides can emerge.
I think it really works that while everyone is rushing ahead to push their own agendas, there's large groups who are mostly trying to safeguard the order we already have. It seems to be not like an evil, and instead a necessary balance.
So I don't think status quo needs to equal corruption, or lack of innovation: you can find better ways to maintain what you have!
Also the issues that are sometimes attributed to the status quo attribute of government I believe stem from other things. The narrative of a crusty elite few concocting repressive schemes to hold onto the power they're so afraid the proles will somehow steal from them, even tho the proles haven't interfered with said elites success in the first place -- just seems like something too much out of a hero villain trope from the popular consciousness, and lacking in fidelity or explanatory power for reality. I'd go so far as to say this is the "Disney delusion" because the spectre of such fictional villains is alike to something conjured by the finest Disney cartoons! :)
Another cognitive dissonance is people attribute the outsized evils effected by governments to so called outsized evil of the people in them. It's actually because power is a force magnifier, so ordinary evil, or which there is plenty even in everyday life, is given outsized expression through the lens of governments. Actually, with how chaotic individuals are I find it an amazing miracle that governments are as peaceful and stable as they are. Which no doubt stems from the conspicuous effort of people involved.
So while it's a sometimes a common narrative to sledge governments, for a number of reasons only some of which I touch on here, I feel a more balanced view of them is clearer. And without a clear view, how can we operate effectively?
None of which is to say that there aren't plenty of opportunities to create improvements in governments, a fact which, given the stakes, seems surprising more startups aren't magnetically drawn to it. An important point is I feel one reason contributing to lack of sexiness of government for startups is incorrect stories about government that we are inclined to tell.
I basically think that ordinary people don't reason usefully about power, because they feel it's something somewhat incomprehensible to them, so they fallback to tools like the fake hero villain story above, comfortable "creation" myths which seem to explain the ...
I'm not a native English speaker and I know the difference, and for some reason this particular mistake and "their/they're/there" makes me choke.
Like I said, totally nitpicking on an otherwise interesting article but still...
"...with true blue CPUs possibly faster per socket then even the next generation Xeon Phi..."
/rant
Interesting. What kind of dialects are you referring to?
> You may think they are not up to the mark, but remember how fast British ARM architecture became the dominant processing architecture in the world. And this group doesn’t need to worry about the antiquated x86 ISA, worry about satisfying the dumbed down shareholder masses, or overpaying their marketing and sales staff, as well as the fat check, golden parachute-protected CxOs.
Only circumstance this would make any sense would be if you were sliding fast and inevitably to open conflict, and causing them setbacks worth of a few months to a couple of years would be vital. Since that is not the case, this has nothing but "strategic blunder" written all over it.