Last October, the United States Bureau of Industry and Security
issued a document that, underneath its 139 pages of dense
bureaucratic jargon and minute technical detail, amounted to a
declaration of economic war on China. The magnitude of the act
was made all the more remarkable by the relative obscurity of its
source.
In recent years, semiconductor chips have become central to the
bureau’s work. Despite the immense intricacy of their design,
semiconductors are, in a sense, quite simple: tiny pieces of
silicon carved with arrays of circuits. The chips are the
lifeblood of the modern economy and the brains of every
electronic device and system, including iPhones, toasters, data
centers and credit cards. A new car might have more than a
thousand chips, each one managing a different facet of the
vehicle’s operation. Semiconductors are also the driving force
behind the innovations poised to revolutionize life over the next
century, like quantum computing and artificial intelligence.
OpenAI’s ChatGPT, for example, was reportedly trained on 10,000
of the most advanced chips available.
Though delivered in the unassuming form of updated export rules,
the Oct. 7 controls essentially seek to eradicate, root and
branch, China’s entire ecosystem of advanced technology. If the
controls succeed, they could handicap China for a generation; if
they fail, they may backfire spectacularly, hastening the very
future the United States is trying desperately to avoid.
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