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Non-Tech : Kirk's Market Thoughts -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sun Tzu who wrote (14478)	9/12/2022 11:19:59 AM
From: Kirk ©	2 Recommendations Recommended By Return to Sender Sun Tzu Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 27133

Yeah, probably many of the no votes would have been yes if it required 67 votes to pass. [ It passed the senate 64-33. ] One reason Finisar made a lot of money is it had two big factories in China for some of their advanced products. They were bought by II-VI which then went on to buy Coherent (then took the name and ticker) which probably also has significant manufacturing in China. It will be a mess to figure out a lot of this... and added costs for the companies for sure! US likely to expand tech export bans on China, but experts warn implications digitimes.com Judy Lin, DIGITIMES Asia, Taipei Monday 12 September 20220 A Reuters exclusive report quoted sources saying the Biden administration will broaden export curbs on US semiconductors used for artificial intelligence (AI) and chipmaking equipment in new regulations in October. It is evident that what used to be targeted bans on specific entities are now expanding to become a tech cold war containment. Experts warn the escalated measures may have unexpected implications to hurt US companies. "This is part of the ongoing efforts of the US government to try to restrict China's access to certain information that they have determined to be potentially injurious to US security concerns." Richard L. Thurston, who worked for Texas Instrument to deal with intellectual property issues with Japan during the US' first chip war in the late 1980s, and later became former general counsel at TSMC, told DIGITIMES that the current containment strategy may have been the wrong path to take. "They have failed to understand what China is capable or incapable of doing. Herein lies the problem when techno-security nationalism shows its ugly face. The issues, goals, and objectives become blurred and therefore responses are confused and inconsistent." "The strategy is to choke off China and they have discovered that chips are a choke point. They can't make this stuff, they can't make the manufacturing equipment," said Jim Lewis, a technology expert at CSIC, quoted by Reuters. "That will change." The companies that are likely to be impacted include KLA, Lam Research and Applied Materials. These companies have previously acknowledged to the public that they have received letters from the Department of Commerce, asking them to stop providing sub-14 nm processes equipment to China, unless they obtain the licenses approved by the Department of Commerce. The new regulation will also make the ban on supplying AI computing chips to China into formal codes, which will expand the list of companies beyond Nvidia and AMD to include Dell, HPE, and Super Micro Computer, restricting them not to ship computers containing Nvidia's A100 chip to China without Department of Commerce's permission. The report also said the US government plans to add additional Chinese supercomputing entities to a trade blacklist. The Biden Administration has changed its tactics of tech export ban on individual Chinese entities to a broader scope, requiring chip tool makers not to ship advanced equipment to China, and forbidding CHIPS Act subsidy recipients to expand advanced capacity in China for 10 years. But it is becoming a bipartisan consensus now. According to a Financial Times report, Republican lawmakers also have warned Apple that if it uses memory chips from China's YMTC, it is tantamount to "playing with fire", and will be subject to intense scrutiny from Congress. Many experts have warned that export sanctions will create unexpected implications for US companies. Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a Washington think tank noted that while the logic of denying aggressors critical technologies is evident in theory, the global integration of research, development, and manufacturing of advanced technologies means that limiting these technologies is difficult in practice. "Moreover, as the boundaries between military and civilian technologies continue to blur, the list of industries deemed critical to national security is growing, making it difficult to distinguish one from the other," the CSIS report pointed out. "As a result, more US firms than ever face uncertainty as they attempt to navigate cumbersome export control regulations that burden their talent acquisition and jeopardize business opportunities." Since China is trying to foster its own national champions in technology, the supply vacuum created by export bans will accelerate the adoption of non-US products, especially those of Chinese suppliers. A South China Morning Post report said the Chinese government has selected 8,997 industrial enterprises as "little giants", including semiconductor companies, which will enjoy "preferential treatment" aimed to develop stronger technological power for China in its competition with the US. China is the world's largest importing country for semiconductor chips and equipment. Although some commentators said the AI chip ban will set back China's progress in AI technology development, some experts warned that the new policy may instead accelerate China's push in developing its own AI chips. Many of its local companies, such as Alibaba, Huawei, Tencent, and Baidu have already been designing their AI chips in-house. Export bans on US chips would provide a good opportunity for those companies to expand their market share in China. Experts also warned that foundry service makers such as TSMC, GlobalFoundries, Samsung, and Intel might be restricted from making chips for Chinese IC design houses and the aforementioned conglomerates in the worst-case scenario.