As long as they don't ban consumer chips, nothing really matters that can really destroy Chinese tech progress. Consumer chips are the cutting edge of Chip making anyway. So, if you are not banning consumer chips into China then what is preventing China from using those consumer chips to do whatever they want?
If the goal is to prevent Chinese supercomputer progress, then again nothing preventing China from using US made or Taiwan made server side CPU and GPU to develop large Supercomputers.
If the goal is AI progress prevention, then as I discussed in my previous posts, consumer CPU and GPU can also train AI models.
So, the only thing US can do is destroy Chinese brand of Phones or Laptop companies from creating their products. And even if China has no phone or laptop industry, they can still buy from abroad and still make progress.
And consumer chips is not bannable at all. Nothing preventing millions of chips to be re-exported by other countries. Nothing can prevent Foreign phones or laptops from ever entering China from countries.
Even the most sanctioned countries in the world have iphones and US made laptops roaming around. Blackmarket for these things is simply not stoppable. So what will prevent China's tech progress?
But all this bans and sanctions have super-charged Chinese self-reliance push for Chips. A self-goal of highest proportion by US and the west.
Looks like they are even banning consumer chips (RTX4090) already out of stock at Chinese retailers according to random comments on the internet.
Actually, the prevention of the Chinese supercomputer progress was attempted almost 10 years ago when the US banned Intel's Xeon Phi co-processor and other server grade chips. Obviously progress continued nonetheless and the ban can be considered a failure.
Really no different from the Wolf Amendment which , let's use this quote from a think-tank
When we say the Wolf Amendment 10 years on, did it accomplish its purpose? If you look at what was Congressman Frank Wolf's purpose, which was to try to isolate the Chinese into more closely abiding with our norms in human rights, it did not accomplish its purpose at all. If we're looking at slowing their program or keeping them from developing a space program, it did not do that at all.
Yes it is a own goal.
Most American politicians are driven by hunger for power, narcissism, and a dash of racism in the case of many anti-China hawks.
They believe this kind of legislation makes them look tough on China, more electable, and I think many of them have a racist belief that Chinese people cannot innovate. All of those guys like Cotton, Cruz, DeSantis, Schumer, they are all lawyers, probably never even walked into a Science building at a university to see all the Chinese people there. I will stop here because it is OT, but just have to point out how DUMB these people are.
