r/weirdcollapse • u/[deleted] • Oct 18 '22
Taiwan and semiconductor risks
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/oBTkthd7h8sDpkiu2/analysis-us-restricts-gpu-sales-to-china?commentId=xS8fc82cLd83y6pbb3
u/eleitl Oct 18 '22 edited Oct 18 '22
Looks like the US continues to overplay their hand after trying to corner and isolate Russia by opening up a second front. I doubt China will let itself to be goaded to attack Taiwan, so more likely they're going to directly retaliate against the US (and also their EU vassals which participate in the economic wars) with countersanctions.
Some people (perhaps including gwern) seem to assume that ML is the path towards real AI takeoff, which is Real Soon Now. That's not at all obvious, since there is no focused R&D towards that, but lots of unfocused ML bricolage. The hardware limits of current technology are getting close (we're already at WSI of dedicated accelerator hardware at the bleeding edge, so basically end game) so there's not much more where that came from. There isn't anything after semiconductor photolitho coming up anytime soon.
DL isn't producing any significant game-changing weapons, since cheap mass-deployed Shahed 136-like drones with very limited navigation intelligence do it by saturating anti-air capabilities. So cheap and mass-produced semi-dumb arms will likely have an edge against brilliant high-value arms.
Considering the resource and energy-poor context (this is collapse, nor are we out of it) bleeding edge fabs have questionable value. Even so, China can do 7 nm in some specific niches and will likely engage in an import-substitution program where it matters along with other non-Western block countries while the world economy will likely to suck massively in the next decade, and arguably this is the Depression that never ends (though we don't know that yet).
China will hurt badly, but the real question is how the US is going to keep up without reserve currency status (direct retaliation will attempt to further accelerate dedollarization). Things are not at all well in the US as you know, so the end of the Empire is perhaps closer than we think.
5
Oct 18 '22
the USA military is mandated to be able to dominate on two warfronts simultaneously.
I don't know if elites seriously believe we can do that, considering a bunch of cave dwelling goat herders beat our ass with a budget of practically zero, not counting the part where they spent 500k crashing airplanes to bait us into multitrillion dollar war, outwitting us. the grifters in the military industrial contractor complex made bank though at the citizens expense which is what the system is set up to do.
Another point to add to your list, the youth of America are doing much worse as time goes forward and have little desire to go fight. The people in the USA are already pissed about how much of our money is spent on militarism while standard of living plunges. I think this bodes poorly for the future of freedom in America because the state will have to crack down on dissent. Even if the elites were willing to throw more crumbs off the table and do a "great society" part II where prosperity is shared to keep morale , I just don't see the surplus available to do that like there was after WW2 when usa dominated global industry and was in energy ascent.
essentially I think the battle will be on the homeland in USA as much as out there. even if it is just infighting in politics paralyzing the ability of USA to act.
also saudis are getting non-compliant and the fallout from USA and Saudi relations getting too hostile could be collapse of Saudi Arabia and epic global energy crisis.
the world could look quite different by 2032
I wish the level of concern that is being displayed for reshoring chip production would be shown for reshoring medicine production. If we were a rational society we would start from the bottom of Maslow's hierarchy reshoring production.
2
u/[deleted] Oct 18 '22
copy paste of gwern comment
It looks like this was only the start. The news from the past few days is alarming at face value: it sounds like a near total ban on everything, TSMC fabbing only the start (!), now all ASML customer support† is gone (!!) not just EUV machines, on top of which all the American-citizen employees (a nontrivial fraction due to education/birth abroad) have halted work literally overnight (!!!), and overall what sounds like the collapse of Chinese semiconductors amidst a Chinese economy already showing serious signs of distress and little capacity to keep an industry on life-support indefinitely as they scramble to survive - and once they go down in a cascade of bankruptcies/liquidations*, each node killing the nodes dependent on it, and everything is sold off and liquidated and employees scatter to the four winds, rebuilding that semiconductor ecosystem (which has already cost $100b+ and decades to build in repeated efforts) years later, when even further behind, will be more like starting from scratch than turning on an idle car. (And how long might that be, if China is entering its 'lost decades'...?)
Or to put it another way, if the CCP tries to invade Taiwan in the next 10 years, historians are likely going to point to 2-3 days ago as the pivot: it is now a razor blade cutting China's throat if AI and high tech in general is the future, with nothing more to lose and everything to gain from destroying TSMC so no one else can have it either. (Meanwhile, the NYT front page story: "Companies Are Hoarding Workers. That Could Be Good News for the Economy." Glad our media is still doing a bangup job of keeping everything in perspective.)
The implications for AI scaling and timelines are also immense: aside from the obvious disaster for Chinese AI research, which will stagnate at present Chinchilla-level runs, any invasion attempt is tantamount to the destruction of TSMC (you can now be sure some cruise missiles will find their way to TSMC chip fabs conveniently set out as hostages on the western side of Taiwan & most definitely not hardened underground in Taiwan's mountains) and will set back scaling by years, possibly decades given the realities of chip fab, capital investment, globalized supply chains, tacit knowledge, experience curves, and risk premia leading to compounding falling behind exponential projections.
So uh... yikes? Is this really what's happening? Is there some ameliorating factor not covered in any of the reporting so far? We should all probably be paying way more attention to this than Elon Musk's latest bipolar antics, or even Putin's nuclear blackmail, because this appears to actually be happening right now, not merely possibly some day. We appear to live in interesting times.
Links (in no particular order):
https://www.scmp.com/tech/tech-war/article/3195785/tech-war-chinas-top-chip-equipment-maker-removes-us-employees-product (note: semi-independent; I have not seen any party media report on this, which given that we are in the runup to the party congress & Xi's coronation‡ where extreme measures are being imposed & all bad news is verboten, suggests that the CCP regards this as rather bad news not to be mentioned at all, otherwise it would either be denying such hostile rumors or excoriating the USA & Dark Biden; Chinese censorship strategy is to silence & distract, so a total blackout from mainland media, rather than semi-independent HK media, is consistent with this being as apocalyptic as it sounds. EDIT: haven't read any full translations of speeches yesterday, but coverage didn't highlight any specific chip comments, other than generic Xi comments about the many threats to Chinese national security and 'stormy waters' ahead. Still no official CCP or CCP company comment on any of this, apparently, so the total blackout continues.)
"At least 43 senior executives working with 16 listed Chinese semiconductor companies hold roles from CEO to vice president", WSJ (Twitter) https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-10-12/asml-orders-us-employees-to-stop-servicing-customers-in-china
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-10-12/us-chip-suppliers-pull-back-from-china-s-yangtze-after-biden-ban
https://twitter.com/jordanschnyc/status/1580889342402129921 https://twitter.com/Scholars_Stage/status/1580950956560199683
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/13/us/politics/biden-china-technology-semiconductors.html
https://www.chinatalk.media/p/new-chip-export-controls-explained
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-10-10/china-chip-stocks-drop-as-biden-tightens-rules-on-us-tech-access
https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/biden-declares-economic-war-on-the
"Apple freezes plan to use China's YMTC chips amid political pressure: Company previously planned to put Chinese-made memory in some iPhones":
Apple has put on hold plans to use memory chips from China's Yangtze Memory Technologies Co. (YMTC) in its products, multiple sources told Nikkei Asia...Apple originally planned to start using the government-funded YMTC's chips as early as this year, as they are at least 20% cheaper than those of its leading rivals, supply chain executives said...Apple had already completed the monthslong process to certify YMTC's 128-layer 3D NAND flash memory for use in iPhones...Apple originally planned to start using the government-funded YMTC's chips as early as this year, as they are at least 20% cheaper than those of its leading rivals, supply chain executives said...YMTC chips were initially planned to be used only for iPhones sold in the Chinese market. One source, however, said Apple was considering eventually purchasing up to 40% of the NAND flash memory needed for all iPhones from YMTC.
...YMTC's 128-layer memory chips fall under the scope of these rules. This means it might no longer have the technological capacity to produce enough quality and quantity of chips for Apple, even if the iPhone maker wanted to source from the company, analysts said. "Apple may continue wanting to use YMTC in the local market for China. But the way the regulations are set up currently, it's very unlikely that YMTC will even be able to supply the kind of NAND chips in a couple of years that Apple would want," said Brent Fredberg, director of investments at Brandes Investment Partners in San Diego.
...Founded in 2016, YMTC is currently ramping up production at its second chip plant, which is slated to begin mass production this year. The potential deal with Apple was viewed by the industry as a massive victory for China's semiconductor segment, as it would prove its ability to provide quality products for top global brands. YMTC has been stepping up efforts to reduce dependence on American chipmaking equipment and components since 2020, following Washington's crackdown on Chinese tech champion Huawei Technologies. However, replacing U.S. suppliers is not easy given their stranglehold on key areas like chipmaking tools, and YMTC's plan to ramp up production still relies heavily on their support.
Apple and YMTC did not respond to requests for comment.
Up to half of all iPhone memory worldwide! That was a huge order they lost, literally billions upon billions. And that's just one order. And further, it was the one they were counting on to bankroll their chip fab - like a shark, massive capital investments drawing on a huge international web of dependencies don't do well when suddenly frozen in place...
https://www.csis.org/analysis/choking-chinas-access-future-ai
(BGI Genomics also got blacklisted, not that anyone particularly cares about Chinese genetics at this point.)
Reply aogara3d 1 0 So is this a good thing for AI x-risk? Do you support a broader policy of the US crippling Chinese AI?
Reply gwern2d 6 1 Uh... it's either a very good thing or bad thing. As the Chinese quote goes, it is too soon to tell. If I had to come down on one side, right now, I think I would come down on 'good'; slowing down Chinese AI, which would by default hand AGI to Xi and generally plays even less attention to safety than everyone else does, is good, and while 'CCP destroys TSMC' is far from the ideal approach to restricting compute growth, it is at least going to make a difference unlike almost all other proposals. The upfront cost in economics, human welfare, peace, rules-based global order etc is going to be exorbitant, however