Comment by logicchains

Comment by logicchains 6 months ago

5 replies

Limiting US GPU exports to unaligned countries is completely counterproductive as it creates a market in those countries for Chinese GPUs, accelerating their development even faster. Because a mediocre Huawei GPU is better than no GPU. And it harms the revenue of US-aligned GPU companies, slowing their development.

dr_dshiv 6 months ago

Interesting theory. Any evidence that this is how the world really works? (And, is there a catchy name for the phenomenon?)

  • jampekka 6 months ago

    Import substitution. Before the free trade ideology it was quite a popular and (usually) deliberate method for industrialisation and technological progress.

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Import_substitution_industri...

    • tartoran 6 months ago

      But also no external competition causes no pressure to improve.

      • dr_dshiv 6 months ago

        That’s why the Huawei story seems different.

        I think it’s about this attempt to block that actually makes the opponent stronger. The export restrictions were designed to weaken their competitiveness not enhance!

        The restrictions blocked asml and Samsung and others from trading with China. Now China can just replace them. It seems.

      • jampekka 6 months ago

        Seemed to work for the space and arms races for example.