Is Biden wrecking the Chinese semi-conductor industry?
Twitter thread from Jordan Schneider --
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1580889341265469440.html
"The US government's new export controls are wreaking havoc on China's chip industry.
New rules around "US persons" are driving an "industry-wide decapitation."
The following is the translation of a thread posted earlier this week by @lidangzzz.
"Lots of people don’t know what happened yesterday.
To put it simply, Biden has forced all Americans working in China to pick between quitting their jobs and losing American citizenship.
Every American executive and engineer working in China’s semiconductor manufacturing industry resigned yesterday, paralyzing Chinese manufacturing overnight.
One round of sanctions from Biden did more damage than all four years of performative sanctioning under Trump.
Although American semiconductor exporters had to apply for licenses during the Trump years, licenses were approved within a month.
With the new Biden sanctions, all American suppliers of IP blocks, components, and services departed overnight —— thus cutting off all service [to China].
Long story short, every advanced node semiconductor company is currently facing comprehensive supply cut-off, resignations from all American staff, and immediate operations paralysis.
This is what annihilation looks like: China’s semiconductor manufacturing industry was reduced to zero overnight. Complete collapse. No chance of survival.
(snip)
Summary from Lam Research, which is involved with these new sanctions:
1. All Chinese advanced computing chip design companies are covered by these sanctions, and TSMC will no longer do any tape-out for them from now on;
2. All autonomous-driving chips will be sanctioned as well;
3. The starting point for this round of sanctions is to go all the way up the food chain and ensure the elimination of all American products and technologies from the entire ecosystem;
4. Any company or individual who violates these sanctions face arrest by the US Department of Justice..
I will stress again:
This round of sanctions means annihilation for China’s semiconductor industry. This is nothing like the 10+ rounds of performative sanctioning during the Trump years —— this is a serious act of industry-wide decapitation.
Any Chinese company that survives is a company that hasn’t been fully sanctioned yet;
Any fully sanctioned Chinese company is 100% doomed; there’s no possibility of survival.
American citizens and permanent residents will predictably vote with their feet."
FWIW, while I think there is certainly a grain of truth in this thread, the impact into the medium term may be a bit overstated.
My guess is that companies like LAM out of an abundance of caution paused servicing in order to make sure they were complying with the law.
The regs, after all, are not intended to stop US firms from working in China behind the cutting edge, and if that is their impact they may be tweaked in the coming months.
That said, executives in China, many of whom do hold US passports, have a very difficult decision to make.
Given that many of China's most successful entrepreneurs in recent years in light of Zero Covid and Xi's leadership have decided to leave the country, these new regs may be the tipping point for a lot of China's most experienced talent in the chip space."
These articles discuss the issue:
https://www.outlookindia.com/international/explained-how-americans-in-chinese-tech-firms-might-have-to-choose-between-us-citizenship-and-job-news-230218
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/13/us/politics/biden-china-technology-semiconductors.html
Funny how Biden is actually being tough on China, and conservatives are worried about it of course.
= new reply since forum marked as read
If those executives and engineers are on their way back to the U.S., our 'made in America' semiconductor turnaround will be faster than we think.
Of course the president's and our party's opponents -- who like to call us 'commies' -- are worried.
They and 'dear leader' are witnessing the real art of the real Big Fuckin' Deal.
Thank you for this post.
