
TSMC plans to halt chip supplies to Huawei in 2 months - ytch
https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Huawei-crackdown/TSMC-plans-to-halt-chip-supplies-to-Huawei-in-2-months
======
dnprock
I see this news as a loss for the US. It has to resort to regulations to stop
TSMC from doing business with Huawei. When you can't incentivize your ally,
that means your opponent's business is still very attractive. Regulations will
only cripple your ally. Taiwan may comply on the outside. But inside, they'll
cut under-the-table deals with China. They'll find loop holes to skirt
regulations.

Taiwan seems to be heading to be the next Hong Kong. Their political class is
still publicly resistant. But their business leaders are slowly surrendering.
At some point, the political class will follow. The US will then need to rely
on the activism of the young renegade "colonels" like Joshua Wong. Crippling
an ally can buy the US some time. But it is losing ground.

~~~
0xy
The US will defend Taiwan by any means necessary, including nuclear options.
If they don't, they've already lost to China. Chip superiority is everything.
If the US can't manufacture or source modern chips then it's over for them. US
leaders and the military know this to be true. Taiwan is not Hong Kong. The US
doesn't _need_ Hong Kong. The US _needs_ Taiwan.

~~~
peteretep
> The US will defend Taiwan by any means necessary

Under a normal president, sure. Under this one, who can’t decide if he hates
China or loves Xi? All fucking bets are off

~~~
LargoLasskhyfv
I find your lack of faith disturbing.

[0] [https://taskandpurpose.com/news/navy-aircraft-carriers-
south...](https://taskandpurpose.com/news/navy-aircraft-carriers-south-china-
sea)

------
chvid
SMIC, the mainland supplier expected to replace TSMC, successfully IPOs with a
massive jump:

[https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/16/smic-chinas-biggest-
chipmake...](https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/16/smic-chinas-biggest-chipmaker-
surges-in-shanghai-listing.html)

JUL 15 2020

SMIC, China’s biggest chipmaker, saw its shares surge 245% at the open on its
first day of trade in Shanghai.

SMIC issued issuing 1,685,620,000 shares at 27.46 yuan per share, raising
46.28 billion yuan ($6.62 billion). Shares were trading at 95 yuan at the
open.

~~~
robert_foss
SMIC isn't close to the same node as TSMC. A competitive high-end SOC could
not be manufacured by them.

~~~
Xixi
When Intel refused to make Apple's ARM processor for iPhones, TSMC was also
unable to build a competitive high-end SOC. And yet 13 years later, here we
are. Of course, Intel and TSMC both shop with ASML, and that's not a
possibility anymore for SMIC, so it's not a quite similar comparison...

Yet I think it's important to keep some perspective: this Chinese/US spat is
not a championship where a winner will be declared at the end of the summer.
There's no reason to believe that 50 years from now either China or US will
have collapsed. Xi Jinping dictatorial inclinations [1] are a threat of
course, as he might decide to consolidate his power at the expense of China.
But US recent [2] trend of politicians running on the hate of the other half
of the US population is also a tremendous existential threat.

In any case, assuming that both US and China still stand 50 years from now,
the only way for TSMC, Samsung or even Intel to stay ahead is, well, to stay
ahead. It's a never-ending marathon, and in that regard funneling Huawei money
into SMIC sounds very counter-productive.

[1] Moreso than his predecessors IMHO, with the notable exception of Mao. And
indeed, Mao was very good at keeping China poor, underdeveloped and starving.

[2] Is it really recent? I'm French, during my two stays in the US (first time
3 years, second time 5 years) I felt a major polarization of the population,
but it might have been there all along and I simply didn't notice.

~~~
ksec
>TSMC was also unable to build a competitive high-end SOC. And yet 13 years
later, here we are.

I think this doesn't paint an accurate picture. TSMC were "high end" sans
Intel. Since you cant Fab with Intel, TSMC was the best any Fabless Vendor
could get, now it just happen TSMC is also the best in industry.

Compared to SMIC, they aren't even close to TSMC, nor Samsung, or even Global
Foundry. In Tech lead, Volume and yield. To put things into perspective, they
will have to accelerate at 2x the speed of current industry's rate for the
next 5 years in other to be level with TSMC.

SMIC's 14nm is still no where near Samsung, or even Global Foundry ( GF ). And
GF has been shipping 14nm in volume for nearly 5 years now.

~~~
Xixi
You are right indeed, TSMC probably didn't need Apple cash to get to where
they are now. I forgot that for a very long time Apple was shopping at
Samsung...

------
bserge
I'm actually cautiously excited about new competition in high end
semiconductor fabrication. Huawei and China won't just sit around twiddling
their thumbs, they've got to manufacture chips somehow/somewhere.

~~~
systemvoltage
What you missed is the massive global interconnected supply chain that goes
into building the fab (not the building, but the process equipment and
software).

China’s isolationism will cause massive pains to do it all in house. If they
can, we are all fucked.

~~~
birdyrooster
Their monoculture provides a lower ceiling for capability than the world at
large. We aren't remotely fucked.

~~~
nafey
What you are calling monoculture is somewhere around 1/6th population of the
world. If you take into the account the inroads that China has made into
Africa, Middle East and Eastern Europe we might be seeing ourselves entering
another phase of the cold war.

~~~
threeseed
Those inroads are disintegrating.

The quality of the deliverables hasn’t been great, they have been poorly
managed and have left many countries either in significant debt or with
onerous obligations.

~~~
ethbro
That's the problem with state-driven investment. Most people are lazy and/or
greedy, and given a known state-sponsored payday, have no incentive to deliver
quality.

So even if the Chinese state may want the projects to go well, the conduit by
which the projects are funded and managed doesn't have much more than shame
and prison as sticks, and that's only for people who are caught.

------
knolax
Apparently this is the result of a May 15 rule change[0] to the Export
Administration Regulations[1], which affect anything exported from the US.

The lesson here is that if you're a foreign company that buys US software and
equipment, apparently the US government can tell you who you are and aren't
allowed to do business with.

[0] [https://www.commerce.gov/news/press-
releases/2020/05/commerc...](https://www.commerce.gov/news/press-
releases/2020/05/commerce-addresses-huaweis-efforts-undermine-entity-list-
restricts)

[1]
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Export_Administration_Regula...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Export_Administration_Regulations)

PS. Some hilarious quotes from the DoC announcement:

> "Huawei and its foreign affiliates have stepped-up efforts to undermine
> these national security-based restrictions through an indigenization effort.
> However, that effort is still dependent on U.S. technologies,” said
> Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross. “This is not how a responsible global
> corporate citizen behaves. "

Maybe it's just me but the term "global corporate citizen" just seems so
absurd and dystopian.

~~~
yannikyeo
Wondering if America government has the power to forbid foreign companies or
countries from using open source software such as Go, Rust, React, Kubernetes,
Docker, Ubuntu etc especially those with strong stewardship by US
corporations.

~~~
phkahler
That seems like a "no". Anyone can get access to those things as they are
freely downloaded. Access may get restricted but they can keep an old copy
indefinitely, and the internet is fairly useful for getting around arbitrary
blockages.

------
ArkVark
Why does this feel like the USA cutting Japan off from metal and oil shipments
months before WW2?

~~~
sambull
If foundations of geopolitics is anything real, then pitting the US vs China
would be the ultimate best outcome. The book believes China is the true threat
to Russia and "must, to the maximum degree possible, be dismantled".

As secondary goal would be the disruption of the US which also has been
propping China up.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundations_of_Geopolitics#Con...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundations_of_Geopolitics#Content)

~~~
ArkVark
"Russia should use its special services within the borders of the United
States to fuel instability and separatism, for instance, provoke "Afro-
American racists". Russia should "introduce geopolitical disorder into
internal American activity, encouraging all kinds of separatism and ethnic,
social and racial conflicts, actively supporting all dissident movements –
extremist, racist, and sectarian groups, thus destabilizing internal political
processes in the U.S."

They seem to be getting that part right...

~~~
AnthonyMouse
The interesting thing is how they're succeeding. We haven't exactly seen a
resurgence of the Klan of late, you might notice.

What's happening instead is that anything that can even be vaguely construed
as racist, even if it doesn't hold up under scrutiny -- especially then --
becomes the subject of mob focus and attack.

Because if you can convince the mob to "righteously" attack innocent targets
then you get fireworks. The mob is told that they're on the side of the angels
and the target is a despicable fascist who should burn in hell, so they cross
every line to take out the intolerable evil. Then it turns out the target
wasn't, in actual fact, the literal devil, and that gets other people hopping
mad at the mob over the real perils of mob justice. But by that point the mob
has moved on to the next target who we're again assured is a very bad person,
this time for real, promise.

It's tempting to go too far with this and come up with some kind of conspiracy
theory where BLM as a whole is nothing but a Russian plot, but there are far
too many real people in it for that.

What seems more likely is that you have an existing movement with many well-
intentioned people but no strong leaders, and all it takes is an adversarial
propaganda effort to whip enough of them into a frenzy and point them at a
false target that will purposely generate a backlash.

Then you've got two huge camps of honest people fighting each other over a
manufactured conflict which isn't even at the root of their genuine concerns.

~~~
g8oz
>>We haven't exactly seen a resurgence of the Klan of late, you might notice.

Are you serious? While the Klan may be played out new fascist/racist groups
are definitely on the march. Google "Boogaloo boys" as just one example.

~~~
AnthonyMouse
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boogaloo_movement](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boogaloo_movement)
:

> The specific ideology of each group varies, and views on topics such as race
> differ widely. Some are white supremacist or neo-Nazi groups who believe
> that the impending unrest will be a race war; other groups condemn racism
> and white supremacy.

> opinions on racism and attitudes towards law enforcement are among the views
> that differ the most between groups in the movement

> 4chan

> The term boogaloo alludes to the 1984 cult sequel Breakin' 2: Electric
> Boogaloo

> Hawaiian shirts

> satirical

It's the exact thing you would expect when the other side is desperately
searching for an enemy to smash. Literally attention-seeking trolls from 4chan
show up in a place and manner that causes people to pay attention to them.

Then law enforcement will take them seriously, because they have to, which
gives them exactly the false legitimacy they're after.

And in any event not much of a big bad fascist/racist group when they can't
even agree whether they're racists and the thing they do agree on is that
they're anti-government, i.e. the complete opposite of fascism.

------
singhrac
Doesn't seem to worry them too much:
[https://www.thestreet.com/investing/tsmc-posts-
record-q2-pro...](https://www.thestreet.com/investing/tsmc-posts-
record-q2-profit-sees-robust-chip-demand-in-2020)

~~~
kurthr
We do seem to be in a secular upswing in semiconductor demand, while TSMC
remains the last foundry standing at the 7nm node. It seems like Samsung and
Intel alternatives are bit too captive (internally competitive) for a large
mobile phone producer. I don't think it's about actual 5G chips themselves,
it's about ARM processors and mobile SoCs.

It's doubtful to me that UMC and Global Foundries will catch up, but I do
wonder at the long term effects. There are many billions of Yuan to spend on
solving this problem. In the past they could get enough of the right people to
move to China as they did with OLED.

~~~
ttul
The next shoe to drop will be if ASML cuts off Chinese chipmakers. ASML
absolutely dominates fab tech.

~~~
xxpor
Or the Dutch government bows to pressure from the US and makes the decision
for them.

~~~
jacquesm
Or maybe they did it by themselves because they are capable of independent
decision making. Just the other day someone here was loudly proclaiming we
shouldn't be interested in US politics from overseas because it doesn't affect
us. HN should make up its mind about this in a well reasoned way.

------
Nokinside
What this means is that TSMC stops producing Huawei designed chips. Huawei has
to buy third party designed and manufactured chips, most likely MediaTek.
Manufactured in TSMC factories but not Huawei designed or Huawei owned IP.

~~~
ytch
IIRC, if you want to use 5G/4G with MTK chip, you need to pay license fee to
QCOM? and US can still ban this.

~~~
Nokinside
No. MediaTek customers don't pay incenses fro QCOM.

US has not prevented Intel, AMD, or Qualcomm from selling their chips to
China. Why it would prevent Taiwanese companies doing so?

------
euix
The founder of SMIC on the mainland is actually Taiwanese and a former TSMC
executive. Loyalties cut across the strait both ways, westerners overemphasis
attachment to values and ideology over bloodlines and ancestry. It's true for
some but not for others. There are quite a lot of foreign engineers working on
the mainland, especially Taiwanese engineers. If you are a industry vet or got
some kind of special talent you can easily 3x your salary by moving to the
mainland from Taiwan.

For example, Justin Yifu Lin, the former World Bank chief economist was a
Taiwanese defector who to swam to Mainland China. Before he defected in the
(early 90's I believe) he was a rising star within the establishment in
Taiwan.

Short term definitively bad for Huawei, but the long term it should help the
development of the indigenous semiconductor industry on the mainland.
Necessity is the mother of invention and nowhere else is there the capital,
political will and now sheer necessity as there is on the Mainland.

A lot of "huaqiao" i.e. overseas Chinese that go back to the mainland (I
include Taiwanese people here) despite the repressive political atmosphere and
bad environmental quality, food safety are motivated by this. In the West you
can only go so far, back there, especially if you have specialized technical
knowledge, you have a chance to make an impact at scale that would never be
possible in the West.

I am not sure what the U.S. can really do about this without adopting
essentially the same repression as in China. I.E. control the flow of
personal. On the mainland if you are a leading expert in this field or that,
or belong to specific establishments (such as public security or state
security) you cannot exit the country without permission from higher up the
food chain.

Anyways, my point at the end, is the central point of competitive advantage or
a company or nation is human talent. You can restrict technology or natural
resources but it's human beings that make a company or a nation competitive.
So unless the U.S. finds a way to prevent talent from flowing to the mainland,
either from the U.S. and/or other parts of the world it is very hard to
prevent another country, especially such a big one from doing what you don't
want. And when they eventually do get to that point they will be twice as
bitter at you for having tried to stop them.

~~~
greatjack613
This piece smells like ccp propaganda. Read the above after considering those
muslims who are chained in a ccp re-education center in china.

@Dang can you investigate this. I feel like the ccp is directly targeting
hacker news to spread misinformation. Very scary.

~~~
dang
You guys need to understand that there are multiple categories of users who
might post something like that in good faith.

First, a lot of Westerners hold anti-Western views—for whatever reason. This
leads them to pro-China positions as a matter of tactics—the enemy of my enemy
etc.

Second, a lot of Westerners hold anti-US views. That's similar to category 1
but different. We see this from some Canadian, Australian, and European users,
and of course even from some American users—again, for whatever reason; people
are complicated. This sort of user will also take China's side in a China/US
conflict, for reasons of their own that have nothing to do with being Chinese
communists.

Third, there are Westerners of Chinese background, either immigrants or
children of immigrants, who have pro-China views because they identify with
the Chinese dimension of their family history. Sometimes the children of
immigrants have more strident views on these things than their parents. Where
the parents naturally sought to fit in as immigrants in the West, the next
generation tries to balance the two worlds by leaning back towards the country
of origin. This group is the most likely to sound like "CCP propaganda"
because they have deep knowledge of the culture and usually the language. And
of course, if they're first-generation immigrants, their English may not sound
native.

Fourth, there are Westerners of non-Chinese background who have spent a lot of
time in China, usually for work (less often for travel), who developed pro-
Chinese views, or complex/ambivalent views, simply by the natural process of
having spent time there. This sort of user often feels like their fellow
Westerners have a cartoonish and ignorant view of China, and wants to educate
them. Sometimes they 'educate' them by insulting their ignorance, which is
unhelpful. These users have native English and can sound like ardent
propagandists as well, but actually their motive is to correct what they
perceive as a distortion in Western public opinion. Their own views tend to be
critical of the CCP, but they dislike what they regard as ignorant anti-
Chinese views, and so will argue a pro-China position out of contrarianism.
They tend to favor friendly trade and political relations with China, and
since the trend of the last few years has been clearly against that, they can
come across as rather aggrieved.

Sometimes these categories also intersect: for example there are Canadian
children of Chinese-Canadian immigrants who speak Mandarin and have spent time
working at tech companies in China. Their views come from having grown up in a
Chinese-Canadian family and having spent time in China itself, and they feel
demeaned and even slurred by the generalizations about China that they see on
Western internet forums. They show up in the threads with counterarguments,
and their counterarguments are often intensely detailed because they have so
much personal experience with the topics.

Can you see how complex this situation is? Each of these categories is a
minority on HN, but HN is big enough that 'minority' can still mean thousands
of people, any of whom may comment in a thread like this—and no doubt there
are additional categories that I didn't list (edit: here's another: Westerners
with Chinese spouses). Any of these users can post what seem like absurdly
pro-CCP comments in a HN thread, for complicated reasons that come from their
own life experience. When they do that, other users run into their comments
with no idea of the background that would lead someone to post that way, and
it creates a shock experience. (For more on the shock experience, see [1] and
[2]). Basically, they go 'WTF?' and wonder how anyone could possibly post like
this.

Now here comes the pivot in the whole business. When you experience that
'WTF?', you have two choices. First choice, you can say "wow, I wonder how
different our experiences must be that you would post what seems to me like
such an obviously wrong and evil comment!" That fork leads to curious
conversation in which people get to know each other better. Second choice, you
can say "You must be a communist party shill! No one would post like this for
any other reason! How much are they paying you?" Which percentage of HN users
makes the first choice vs. the second choice? Exercise for the reader.

[1]
[https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20%22shock%20experience%22&sort=byDate&type=comment)

[2]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23308098](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23308098)

~~~
greatjack613
Thank you for the well written and thought out response. I do agree with you
that there are users who would post that in good faith, and I think your 4
categories of people make sense.

My concern was based on intuition which in turn was based on the fact that I
have seen a lot more pro ccp comments in recent months on HN, as well as
seeing that people who openly question the ccp in ways such as their human
rights records, diversity, IP theft, etc be downvoted when raising these
points. Although this may be anecdotal and is definitely not proof of
interference, I thought it would be wise to finally raise the issue with you.

Thank you for taking a look at this, and for all the work you do on keeping HN
a healthy environment.

~~~
dang
I think what you're perceiving as happening in HN comments is a consequence of
the macro social/geopolitical trend. There is a growing rift between the West
and China, and especially between the U.S. and China. It has complex
interactions with growing political divisions in the West (and especially the
U.S.). This cluster of topics is being increasingly covered in Western media,
in an increasingly polarized way. HN users are not coming to HN to talk about
this stuff from a blank slate—they're coming with pre-existing views that are
conditioned by whatever media and online sources they're engaged with, as well
as by their own life experience, as I described above.

What all that means is that we're likely to continue to see more pro- and
anti- comments on China-related topics, for reasons that are easily explained
by the dynamics in our own societies. Reaching for "CCP shill" as an
explanation is unnecessary, and to some extent is harmful because it reflects
an assumption that no one could hold certain views in good faith, when we know
for a fact that some people in fact do hold those views in good faith—again,
for reasons of their own life experience.

This does _not_ imply that we're closed to investigating claims of abuse and
manipulation. On the contrary, our contract with HN users is that if someone
is worried about abuse, they're always welcome to let us know at
hn@ycombinator.com and we will always take a look. I wrote new code the other
day to help with such investigations. Another part of our contract with HN
users is that we will tell the truth about what we find. The truth is that we
haven't found even a trace of anything like that on HN—just a lot of human
beings with very different backgrounds and very strong feelings. There's more
about this at
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23839602](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23839602)
from a couple days ago.

------
nimbius
article conveniently doesnt mention the fact that huawei's 5g chip isnt
sourced from an American design, rather its the Balong 5000 which has been
around since january of 2019. the 16 nm chipset can easily be cranked out from
Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC) in mainland
china, which is capable of 14nm runs. barring that, GlobalFoundries as they
havent expressed any serious interest in Americas trade war witch hunt
masquerading as a security concern.

~~~
0xy
According to the US DoJ they use technology which was stolen from US
companies, so it's at least partially American design.

~~~
zolosa
5G design stolen from America..sure

~~~
0xy
Huawei had an encrypted email address explicitly for stolen trade secrets and
offered bonuses up to employees who delivered stolen tech and secrets. [1]

[1] [https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/chinese-telecommunications-
de...](https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/chinese-telecommunications-device-
manufacturer-and-its-us-affiliate-indicted-theft-trade)

------
socialdemocrat
I don’t like the CCP but I also find it extremely distasteful how the US is
always bossing around their smaller allies. Alliance with the US is such a one
sided deal.

America is a poor role model. Through these actions it is really just telling
China that “night is right” It is like saying “When you become as powerful as
us, you also get to boss around small countries”

I really wish the world was not as dominated by a few hyper powers.

~~~
amelius
> I also find it extremely distasteful how the US is always bossing around
> their smaller allies.

Imo, you can boss around but only when you're acting like a "father figure" to
the rest of the world.

Right now, the US is acting more like a grown-up baby.

------
nix23
Oh nice they help to make Chinese chip manufacturing stronger...probably not
what Taiwan want's.

------
bhouston
If China didn't hate Taiwan enough...

~~~
m00x
I'm sure the feeling is reciprocated.

Taiwan is being bullied 24/7 by China. They even have Chinese military jets
doing "military exercises" in the Taiwan fly zones.

[https://www.voanews.com/east-asia-pacific/voa-news-
china/chi...](https://www.voanews.com/east-asia-pacific/voa-news-china/china-
sends-8-military-planes-taiwan-airspace-analysts-see-move)

~~~
lihan
The bully really stems of that some do not recognise "one China", which is not
the point of view in Beijing. You cannot say it's bully if Taiwan is part of
China.

If you have doubt, search "1992 Consensus".

~~~
qlk1123
Stop spreading artificial history like "1992 Consensus". It was not even
mentioned in the 1992 meeting.

~~~
lihan
The real history disagrees, they are widely available on the internet as well
as plenty of history references in real libraries.

~~~
qlk1123
George Orwell already demonstrated this long time before: Who controls the
present controls the past. Most Taiwanese have been realizing that the so-
called 1992 consensus is a total nonsense.

I believe you read Chinese, so please check:
[https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E4%B9%9D%E4%BA%8C%E5%85%B1%E8...](https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E4%B9%9D%E4%BA%8C%E5%85%B1%E8%AD%98#%E5%90%A6%E8%AA%8D%E4%B9%9D%E4%BA%8C%E5%85%B1%E8%AD%98%E7%9A%84%E6%94%BF%E9%BB%A8%E5%92%8C%E5%9C%98%E9%AB%94)

------
yalogin
TSMC's headquarters is in Taiwan. Wonder if these kinds of issues will make
China do to Taiwan what it did to Hongkong.

------
thethethethe
I feel like this plays into China's hand. Now Huawei and China will build up
their own microchip design and manufacture capabilities which will, at some
point, rival the west. Strictly from a strategic standpoint, it seems like
keeping China dependent on US technology is a good way to maintain hegemony

------
0xFFC
Excuse my ignorance, why Huawei just does not ditch TSMC (snapdragons) and
only improve/use HiSilicon Kirin?

~~~
trsohmers
"Snapdragon" is a core designed by Qualcomm (based on ARM IP), which is a
fabless semiconductor company, and has no relation to Huawei. TSMC is a
semiconductor foundry (fab) company that does not design any chips but
manufacturers them for other companies. Kirin is currently being manufactured
by TSMC for Huawei, but will not be in 2 months.

~~~
0xFFC
Okey, why they don’t manufacture Kirin in HiSilicon then?

~~~
tarlinian
HiSilicon does not own a fab. They're just like Qualcomm, a fabless design
house.

------
wef2323tg23
China will probably "buy" a lot of chip making experts around the world to
catch up. Anyway it's good to have more competition.

------
christophilus
What's to prevent China from re-branding Huawei, or something along those
lines? Then, US / UK / Taiwanese companies could say: we're no longer dealing
with Huawei. We're dealing with Uawei. It's different? China could do
something like that indefinitely, as a workaround, no? Or, China could just
have any number of new shell companies order TSMC parts, and then hand them
over to Huawei.

~~~
RcouF1uZ4gsC
> Then, US / UK / Taiwanese companies could say: we're no longer dealing with
> Huawei.

This is one of the big differences between laws and code, and many programmers
get this confused. In code, intention does not matter. What code you write, is
what the CPU executes.

In law intention matters. If you came before a judge and pleaded innocent
because Huawei changed their name to Uawei, the judge is going to laugh as
they sentence you to the same punishment as supporting Huawei.

~~~
bserge
He's downvoted but he's got a point. What if it's not as simple as just
changing their name? What if you dismantle Huawei and sell it off to "other"
companies, operating independently and/or cooperating with each other?

At some point it would be extremely hard to say "this is still Huawei".

The US gov should've banned all major Chinese companies, because that seems
like a big loophole to me. Even then it still seems like just a temporary
measure.

~~~
mlindner
I think they’re on the way to banning them, just a matter of time.

------
bigpumpkin
I've heard rumors that MediaTek, another Taiwanese chip company, could be
supplying Huawei[1]. How will it get around US sanctions?

[1][https://www.androidcentral.com/mediatek-huawei-silicon-
savio...](https://www.androidcentral.com/mediatek-huawei-silicon-savior-tsmc)

~~~
Klinky
MediaTek is fabless and relies on TSMC. I am sure MediaTek could be pressured
as well. Also going from in-house designed SoC/Modem to third-party is still
detrimental.

------
LatteLazy
I feel bad for the hard working people at huawei. But also, fuck the CCP.

~~~
dang
Please don't do this here. You may not owe the CCP better, but you owe this
community better if you're posting to it. We want curious conversation, not
denunciatory rhetoric. Those two are mutually exclusive.

The idea is: if you have a substantive point to make, make it thoughtfully; if
you don't, please don't comment until you do.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

Here's another way to look at it. When posting, ask this question: what's the
expected value of the subthread of which this is the root? If the answer, as
in this case, is "poor to destructive", please don't post.
[https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20%22expected%20value%22&sort=byDate&type=comment)

~~~
LatteLazy
I'm sorry, maybe I didn't fully explain my point or was too blunt about it? It
seems its too late to delete the root comment now so in future I'll try to be
a bit more detailed and not just post a one line conclusion...

------
AsyncAwait
All these things seem like desperate moves from a failing empire. I don't
believe for a second the U.S. cares about human rights here.

That doesn't mean I think the CCP is 'good', but 2 things can be true at the
same time.

EDIT: typo

~~~
3pt14159
For things like this there isn't a "the U.S." there's groups of people,
interest groups, political economy, political will, etc. If China were rapidly
liberalizing and didn't have stains on their reputation like the HK protest
lockdowns, minority subjugation, and horrible prison conditions it would be a
lot harder to push any of these changes through. As it stands, democrats and
republicans are both turning hawkish on China and the business interests that
used to dominate have started to turn sour too.

~~~
sudosysgen
But is it really? Were the people complaining about the war in Yemen or the
atrocities of Saudi Arabia or the horrors of the Iraq War able to meaningfully
change anything?

Or is it the case that the only time that human rights actually enact change
is when there is an underlying material interest, making them little more than
a veneer?

~~~
zanny
Well yeah, of course. Pretty much every US city is buried in homeless
populations because human decency is off the table if there isn't a profit
motive behind it.

You can look at the glass is half full view of this, though - thanks to
selfish interests an evil regime is being cut off from market access to spy on
people around the world. Its of mutual benefit to the capitalists that saw
this happen and the people whom China would have invaded the privacy of.

Of course that begs the question what Oppo, Xiaomi, etc are still doing in US
markets... just because they are using international SoCs doesn't mean their
assembly in China is trustworthy. But if you start asking _those_ questions
you start wondering about all the phones _assembled_ in China by external
companies like Apple or all the chips added to Samsung phones sourced from
China, etc.

~~~
sudosysgen
The question for me is twofold.

First, will isolating China from the US and it's client states actually do
anything to make the CCP act in a way that will respect human rights more? I
think it is pretty clear that won't be the case.

Second of all, is the entity that stands to benefit actually going to be
better for human rights? In this case it pretty much is a zero-sum game. This
is a bit more debatable, but I don't think that if the US won this Cold War
against China the situation for human rights in the world will become any
better.

Because of that, I can't get behind it, at all.

~~~
tomp
> I don't think that if the US won this Cold War against China the situation
> for human rights in the world will become any better.

That's true, but you need to contrast it with the other outcome - if China
wins, human rights everywhere are very likely to become much _worse_.

That itself is a really good reason to support the US / West.

~~~
coliveira
We are already in pretty bad shape. I particularly don't think this new "Cold
War" will have any winer, ever, other than the ones making money from it. Good
luck supporting these crimes.

------
themoviewindow
It is hard to feel sorry for them with all the blatant human rights abuse,
bullying neighbors and arm twisting weaker countries. As expected, this thread
is full of people responding with whataboutism!

------
slim
China will nationalize TSMC

~~~
trsohmers
Assuming when you say China you mean the UN recognized "China", then they do
not have any control over TSMC.

~~~
kevin_b_er
This is a threat to Taiwan that China will just invade it and take whatever,
including nationalizing TSMC.

~~~
lihan
It's an threat in some people's imagination.

