The ill-starred consequences of America’s Chinese chip war, johnmenadue.com

An interesting new article in the prominent American journal, “Foreign Affairs”, by three academics from Georgetown University, argues that “Washington should place less emphasis on slowing down China and more on improving its own innovative prowess.”

The authors stress how, with the most advanced chip-making, the quest is to secure yet higher operational speed using still less energy. Meanwhile, much can be achieved using tag-team-chips, where multiple less powerful chips, known as chiplets can form a single, higher-performing package. Other related strategies can also be used.

China is making effective use of these and other approaches as it works around the stated objective of US chip export controls, which are aimed, it is said, at: denying China the cutting-edge AI capabilities it could use to modernize its nuclear and conventional weapons. Although this is meant to be the laser-focus of US containment strategies, in fact, slowing China’s general high-tech development, is central to America maintaining its competitive economic advantage, according to US National Security Advisor, Jake Sullivan.

The writers also argue that this fundamental emphasis on export controls is suppressing US high-tech access to the massive, rapidly advancing Chinese market, thus denying serious income to that sector, while redirecting a large segment from the huge pool of Chinese spending power towards boosting Chinese chip development. Läs artikel