Tag Archives: politics

US Chip Export Restrictions

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They’re beginning to bite in the People’s Republic of China, according to “people familiar.”

Shortages of advanced semiconductors are so acute that the government has begun intervening in how the output of China’s largest contract chip maker, Semiconductor Manufacturing International, is distributed, according to people familiar with the matter. Chinese authorities are trying to give priority to the needs of tech conglomerate and national champion Huawei Technologies, which uses SMIC technology to make artificial-intelligence chips, the people said.

Say the report is accurate, the mythical nature of the source notwithstanding. What is the PRC doing about it besides allocating domestic production from the center?

Up against restrictions, some semiconductor companies such as Shanghai-based MetaX are designing chips on older, more available technology, bundling two or more smaller chips together to compensate for more limited computing power. Bundling strategies at Chinese companies have resulted in electricity-guzzling data centers, prompting multiple local governments to start subsidizing their power bills, people familiar with the matter said.

And they smuggle American chips that have been banned from export to the PRC. The PRC also will solve its data center energy problem.

The correct answer to this, though, is not to remove the export restrictions. The correct answer is to do our own workarounds of this type, learn the details of the PRC’s workarounds, and learn how the PRC solves its own data center energy shortage problems at the same time we work out solutions to our own data center energy shortage problems. Doing that would better prepare us for future such shortages, and it would enable us to better target restrictions on American goods, not just chips, headed for the PRC, whether directly or via third (and fourth) party nations.

Waffling Weasel Words

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Recall Heritage Foundation‘s MFWIC Kevin Roberts’ full-throated and enthusiastic embrace of Tucker Carlson who did his own bearhug of antisemitic, racist, and misogynist bigot and Hitler fan Nick Fuentes. Roberts’ behavior has badly—perhaps irrevocably—damaged the Foundation. Now Roberts is further demonstrating his unfitness. Regarding his embrace, Roberts began with a pseudo-apology.

That didn’t play well anywhere, so he fired his chief of staff who wrote the statement he read into the camera.

That didn’t work, either, so,

[H]e blamed the audience: “Not as many people as I thought were ready for a little bit of nuance[.]”

No, wait—

Roberts changed tack. “Sometimes you can make a mistake with the best of intentions,” he said Monday. “My mistake was not saying we aren’t going to participate in cancel culture—we’re not. My mistake was letting that…override the central motivation that I had,” which was “fighting against antisemitism in all its forms.”

The Roberts doth waffle too much, methinks.

It’s time for the Heritage Foundation to terminate Roberts for cause. If it will not separate him from the Foundation in any manner, it’s time for the rest of us to put the Foundation away from us.

Interesting Idea

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This one from President Donald Trump (R), who has one on occasion.

I am recommending to Senate Republicans that the Hundreds of Billions of Dollars currently being sent to money sucking Insurance Companies in order to save the bad Healthcare provided by ObamaCare, BE SENT DIRECTLY TO THE PEOPLE SO THAT THEY CAN PURCHASE THEIR OWN, MUCH BETTER, HEALTHCARE, and have money left over[.]

The idea wants study to identify any hidden implications, good or bad. It also wants a couple of criteria attached. One is a means test for eligibility for the payments. The Federal Poverty Guidelines do a good job of locating the threshold for poverty. Anyone or any family with income above the poverty guideline is, by definition, not living in poverty, and so should be ineligible.

The other criterion is a sunset clause. The subsidies, even as direct payments to the individuals, should have a hard expiration date beyond which they end, irrevocably (or as nearly so as a Congress can make a statute, which frankly isn’t much). The duration of the payments should be only long enough to allow the individual and family make their own budgetary adjustments, plus what might be called an engineering slop cushion—perhaps six months.

All in all, though, this is a good initial consideration.

Mamdani’s Nod in the General Direction of Stability

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The newly elected Mayor of New York City, the Socialist Zohran Mamdani, has indicated he’s taking the City’s crime problem seriously with his claim that he would like to retain Jessica Tisch, the city’s Police Commissioner.

I have questions, though.

With what authority would Tisch have actually to deal with crime and to pursue the criminals that commit them? Would she have free rein, or would he try to keep her hemmed in? He is, after all, on record calling to defund the nation’s largest police force and accusing it of racism. He was speaking from his heart then; is he now speaking merely politically, or has he evolved his views?

Assume he’s serious, even if merely arguendo. A couple follow-on questions arise. What will he do regarding both city prosecutors who decline to prosecute the criminals and that subset of them who also attempt to prosecute the victims for their heinous efforts to defend themselves?

In those few cases where the suspect actually faces trial, what will he do about city judges who insist on turning those suspects loose on no bail, and what will he do about the ordnances and State laws (over the latter which he has little influence) that mandate many of those no-bail releases?

What Will She Do with that Intelligence?

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Mexico’s President Claudia Scheinbaum doesn’t want to deal with Mexico’s cartels (mostly drug, but they’re into sex- and child-trafficking, also, and a few other…industries) violently. Her predecessor also swore off hard-style confrontations, insisting on dealing with them with hugs. Scheinbaum wants to increase intelligence efforts in dealing with them, even including a willingness to receive intelligence from the US government. But no more help than that.

Sheinbaum said her government had accepted the US offer for help in obtaining information and intelligence, but she rejected US intervention in Mexico’s affairs. “Intervention isn’t justice,” she said.

That “intervention” was an offer to assist—not to do for or to do instead—Mexico in dealing with the cartels kinetically, which is to say, violently.

Last week, Carlos Manzo, the anti-cartel mayor of Uruapan, the largest city in the state of Michoachan, the state immediately west of Mexico City, was hugged several times, fatally so, by the cartels. Even so,

[Sheinbaum] pledged to continue with her policy of strengthening Mexico’s National Guard, concentrating on the use of police intelligence to take down violent criminals while addressing the social causes of crime.
Sheinbaum criticized political opponents who she said were taking advantage of Manzo’s killing to attack the government, and said she had ordered an investigation into the surge in antigovernment posts on social media.

When those violent criminals and/or their cartel supporters resist being “taken down?” Will she continue to answer their violence with her own hugs? So far, her response is limited to inflicting lawfare violence on those impudent enough to criticize her government’s handling of the cartels. Why not hug them, too, instead?

Scheinbaum apparently has no serious use for that intelligence, American or her own nation’s.

This is what a failing narco- and trafficking-centric nation looks like.