US media: The US chip blockade against China will permanently harm the chip industry

U.S. President Biden recently signed the "Executive Order on Handling U.S. Investment in Certain National Security Technologies and Products in Relevant Countries," authorizing the U.S. Department of the Treasury to prohibit, restrict, and supervise U.S. investors from investing in specific areas in certain countries and regions. Especially in the three fields of semiconductors and microelectronics, quantum information technology, and artificial intelligence. The annex to the executive order focuses on China.

The White House stated that this executive order is a supplement to the existing export control and entry screening tools of the United States, and will be promoted in a "small courtyard and high wall" manner, with the purpose of "eliminating the impact on the United States caused by the development of such sensitive technologies by relevant countries." security threat".

American financial media CNBC believes that the issuance of this executive order is equivalent to declaring that "the United States has entered a national emergency" in order to curb China's "rapid progress" in technology and products. British Reuters stated that on the issue of semiconductors, the United States has "targeted China" and hopes to weaken China's "efforts to establish high-tech industries."

This is not the first time that the United States has targeted China on chip issues. As early as the period of former President Trump, China and the United States had many frictions over semiconductor issues, and this friction continued to escalate after Biden took office.

The New York Times stated that last October, the Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) under the U.S. Department of Commerce issued an export control document targeting China’s chip industry. “The 139-page document was filled with cumbersome bureaucratic jargon. And the detailed technical details... are actually equivalent to a declaration of war against China. "Biden's new decree can be regarded as an extension of this document and "an act of war."

Among the huge government agencies in the United States, BIS was once the most inconspicuous one. It has the smallest funding among the 13 bureaus under the U.S. Department of Commerce, with only about 350 employees. But BIS monitors trillions of dollars worth of transactions around the world. During the Cold War, BIS played an important role in import and export controls against the Soviet Union. In recent years, it has focused its work on chips and targeted China.

Chips are regarded as the lifeblood of the modern economy. They are the brains of all electronic devices and systems from mobile phones to toasters, from data centers to credit cards. They are also an important driving force for the development of quantum computing and artificial intelligence technologies. Previously, it was reported that the training of ChatGPT by the American technology company OpenAI was based on 10,000 of the most advanced chips.

Chips are not an inexhaustible resource, and their limited production capacity determines the ceiling for the development of various countries in key areas. According to CNN, currently, countries’ huge demand for artificial intelligence is facing challenges from the limitations of the global chip supply chain. "The chip shortage is affecting businesses large and small, including those platforms that are at the forefront of artificial intelligence development. Industry insiders predict that the situation will not materially improve for at least a year."

The annual report released by Microsoft Corporation in the United States in August gave a similar conclusion. The report predicts that there may be a sustained shortage of global artificial intelligence chips in the future. The report also mentions for the first time the availability of graphics processing units (GPUs) and the risk factors they face.

GPUs can help run the countless calculations involved in training and deploying artificial intelligence algorithms. CNN believes that Microsoft’s recognition of GPU highlights the fact that obtaining higher computing power will become a key bottleneck in the development of artificial intelligence. It will directly affect companies that are developing artificial intelligence tools and products, and indirectly affect enterprises and end users who want to use related technologies.

This may explain part of Biden's motivation for signing a new executive order restricting China.

The New York Times reported that the United States has launched a series of controls on China with the intention of weakening China's ability to produce and even purchase the most high-end chips. "The logic of this measure is simple. The impact of advanced chips and the supercomputers and artificial intelligence systems they drive will be extremely wide-ranging and of great significance." Gray, director of the Wadhwani Center for Artificial Intelligence and Advanced Technology at the Center for Strategic and International Studies Gorey Allen told the New York Times that the core of the problem is that "the United States wants to influence China's artificial intelligence industry" and "semiconductors are the means to achieve this goal."

The US radio station "Voice of America" ​​said that a series of US controls seem to only slow down rather than stop China's development of artificial intelligence. John Neufer, chairman of the U.S. Semiconductor Industry Association, said in a statement to the New York Times that the upgrade of chip control poses a major risk to the global competitiveness of related U.S. industries.

"China is the largest semiconductor market in the world. As long as our companies do business there, they can continue to grow, innovate and stay ahead of global competitors." Neufer called on the U.S. government to "avoid lasting damage to the chip industry and avoid incidents." Upgrade in the future”.

Wright Kress, chief financial officer of artificial intelligence computing company Nvidia, expressed similar concerns in June: "In the long term, banning the sale of our data center graphics processing units to China will result in the United States' related industries permanently losing their position as the world's largest One of the opportunities to compete and lead in the market.”

Such calls seem unable to stop the U.S. government from continuing to put pressure on companies. The Wall Street Journal stated that the White House is exploring restrictions on leasing cloud services to Chinese artificial intelligence companies.

The U.S. government’s actions stem from anxieties about ensuring the existing unipolar world order. "Voice of America" ​​quoted an unpublished report from the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation of the United States as saying that China is ahead of Europe in the number of artificial intelligence start-ups and is catching up with the United States.

On August 10, the spokesperson of the Chinese Ministry of Commerce responded to a reporter’s question regarding the US administrative order on foreign investment review, saying that the US restricts the overseas investment of its own companies and engages in “decoupling and disconnection” in the investment field under the guise of “removing risks”. It seriously deviates from the principles of market economy and fair competition that the United States has always advocated, affects normal business decisions of enterprises, undermines international economic and trade order, and seriously disrupts the security of global industrial and supply chains. China expresses serious concern about this and reserves the right to take measures. It is hoped that the United States will respect the laws of market economy and the principle of fair competition, refrain from artificially hindering global economic and trade exchanges and cooperation, and refrain from erecting obstacles to the recovery of world economic growth.