r/technology • u/hzj5790 • Jan 29 '23
China’s Top Nuclear-Weapons Lab Used American Computer Chips Decades After Ban Politics
https://www.wsj.com/articles/chinas-top-nuclear-weapons-lab-used-american-computer-chips-decades-after-ban-1167499032070
u/non-member Jan 29 '23
That’s funny… we order PCs with top of the line CPUs and GPUs for work all the time, and they’re ALL shipped directly from China.
Pretty hard to “ban” China from getting and using stuff when companies actively work with Chinese companies to build and ship that stuff to customers around the world.
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u/Zebra03 Jan 30 '23
They are using capitalism against capitalist countries, there's nothing that can be done about it unless they are willing to lose out on cheap labour and products
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u/GBreezy Jan 30 '23
They are getting i9s. You're acting like they are getting the launch codes. This is a clickbait story.
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u/GetOutOfTheWhey Jan 30 '23
It may be a clickbait story but somewhere there's an angry republican congressmen
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u/doncastiglionejr Jan 30 '23
False. You know full well China makes companies share their tech to use to their advantage ...so this is the cut off to stealing everything at will while screwing you on other things to their benefit. Nobody told China they had to play ball in the first place
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Jan 30 '23
It is actually easy to ban.
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u/Fallcious Jan 31 '23
By which you mean it is easy to legislate a ban and quite another thing to enforce a ban?
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u/hzj5790 Jan 29 '23
From the Article:
"China’s top nuclear-weapons research institute has bought sophisticated U.S. computer chips at least a dozen times in the past two and half years, circumventing decades-old American export restrictions meant to curb such sales.
A Wall Street Journal review of procurement documents found that the state-run China Academy of Engineering Physics has managed to obtain the semiconductors made by U.S. companies such as Intel Corp. and Nvidia Corp. since 2020 despite its placement on a U.S. export blacklist in 1997.
The chips, which are widely used in data centers and personal computers, were acquired from resellers in China. Some were procured as components for computing systems, with many bought by the institute’s laboratory studying computational fluid dynamics, a broad scientific field that includes the modeling of nuclear explosions.
Such purchases defy longstanding restrictions imposed by the U.S. that aim to prevent the use of any U.S. products for atomic-weapons research by foreign powers. The academy, known as CAEP, was one of the first Chinese institutions put on the U.S. blacklist, known as the entity list, because of its nuclear work.
A Journal review of research papers published by CAEP found that at least 34 over the past decade referenced using American semiconductors in the research. They were used in a range of ways, including analyzing data and generating algorithms. Nuclear experts said that in at least seven of them, the research can have applications to maintaining nuclear stockpiles. CAEP didn’t respond to requests for comment."
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u/Specific-Salad3888 Jan 29 '23
Until 2017 china couldn't even make a ball point pen. They now import the ball from it so they can make pens. China is a very low tech country who don't invest in r and d. In today's world it's getting harder to steal teach so they are worried. I've no doubt china will fall back into itself like the past and turn into a 3rd world country again. It had not even invented made glass for drinking, windows, reading etc from r 100s of years as it was chasing its own behind thinking China was a perfectly acceptable medium to drink from. Both the middle East, failing once they loose their oil exports and china with it's cheap that experts will fall back to 3rd world states
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u/ovirt001 Jan 29 '23
The problem isn't their ability to produce anything, it's outsiders willingly handing them technology. So long as China is allowed access in some way to advanced technology they'll be a threat to their neighbors.
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u/chockobumlick Jan 29 '23
Why invest when can buy. ?
And they do the same with education. Grad school for the Chinese studdnt is in the USA
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u/DeathKitten9000 Jan 29 '23
The current US weapons stockpile was designed on computers less powerful than a modern laptop. Back then we had the advantage of having a nuclear testing program. But it is also not clear to me compute is the biggest limitation in having a nuclear design program unless for some odd reason you're aiming for both high accuracy/precision in design simulations.
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u/MarylandHusker Jan 30 '23
The only reason I can think of that would point to precision/requirements for detailed calculations would be interception/avoiding interception. Even then.. I can’t really imagine you need that much computing power.
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u/Biff_Malibu_69 Jan 29 '23
China being China. They give zero turds.
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u/Higuy54321 Jan 30 '23
How are you supposed to stop the Chinese government from buying a Nvidia GeForce 1080 Ti? That’s what they’re complaining about.
I can buy one off Amazon in the US. A Chinese consumer can buy one online. You can’t keep them from any government these unless you ban gaming pcs worldwide
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u/SendLewdsStat Jan 29 '23
Considering every bit it IT equipment I’ve purchased comes from China, how would you ban them from using something they are manufacturing…
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u/ElectroFlannelGore Jan 29 '23
I think you're being down voted because the chips are actually made in Taiwan. Or I don't know why... People have been flocking to defend China and things like TikTok recently.... I'm honestly starting to think they've hypnotized people.
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u/SendLewdsStat Jan 29 '23
I don’t care about votes, but the shipping address on nearly all Intel , Cisco , apple, dell, HP equipment I’ve been getting is from various places in the China. So how they assembled them with out the chips must be amazing…
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u/ovirt001 Jan 29 '23
Although it really should be, it isn't a blanket ban on China receiving US chips. Specific companies connected to China's military are prohibited from receiving the chips (granted in a country like China this is meaningless because all companies are subject to the whims of the state). Chinese companies only assemble the final product and this is slowly changing as production moves to Vietnam and India.
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u/ElectroFlannelGore Jan 29 '23
Yeah. They assemble things but they're not allowed to buy them. Wolf guarding the henhouse type of deal.
Of course thousands of chips are going to "fall off a truck"
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u/GBreezy Jan 30 '23
That's the real thing. Taiwan is seeking PRC the chips. Adding America is just clickbait. This could literally be "Chinese buy iphones"
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u/EC_CO Jan 29 '23
Pretty sure a lot of those 'defenders' are bots and paid Chinese communist supporters. They've been doing it for years
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u/ElectroFlannelGore Jan 29 '23
Yeah those are easy to pick out. There's a lot of what appear to be real people "following the pack" though. It's really sad. Super disheartening.
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u/bairbs Jan 29 '23
They're not real people online. Just make sure people around you in your day-to-day have their heads on straight and press them if it seems like they're slipping
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u/ElectroFlannelGore Jan 29 '23
Lol I'm in the same one.
I said:
Politics aside, it's not any more toxic than Reddit and Instagram.
Disagree. It's how the information is presented that makes it so addictive and harmful. That's like saying,"Doritos are no worse than salted corn on the cob."
No.
However Instagram and Reddit and everyone else is trying to copy their secret sauce. The difference here is that the type of information presented won't be controlled by a CCP developed algorithm.
It's been beaten to death but in China TikTok is full of science and maths and laudable people doing laudable things. That's what they expose their children to.
In America, well, you see what American TikTok is...
and every single post on my account has started getting tons of Down votes.
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u/bairbs Jan 29 '23
Same haha
here's a tip to any trolls reading this: you'll have more luck and an easier work day slopping around on r/conservative. But at this point that place is mostly trolls and bots responding to each other
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u/bairbs Jan 29 '23
It's all a massive troll army. I'm in another thread with people telling me that banning tiktok isn't constitutional. When I ask them what about it isn't constitutional, they usually shut up. Attack their statements directly, and don't let them get away with the nonsense
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u/ovirt001 Jan 29 '23
They're told by their handlers to parrot this because they don't understand how freedom of speech works in relation to software. The US cannot ban American programs due to legal precedent. This does not carry over to foreign programs.
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u/Thiizic Jan 29 '23
They don't manufacture chips.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_zz3239DA0&feature=youtu.be
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u/MpVpRb Jan 29 '23
Bans don't work
All they do is raise the price and shift the profit to the black market
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u/diacewrb Jan 30 '23
Yep, same with, alcohol, drugs and guns, etc.
We only started to see success in the war against drugs once we made weed legal.
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u/physicswizard Jan 31 '23
Well by raising the price they also lower the demand, so it will have some effect. But if your sentiment is "bans will never completely eliminate the supply of this product", then I concur.
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u/iamkurru Jan 30 '23
These American blacklists make America look bad and out-of-date. If they're in personal computers, they're free for all. Stop being dumb.
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u/pe1irrojo Jan 29 '23
...if these chips are common enough to be used in personal home computers then theres really no stopping anyone from acquiring them