If there’s one thing most of us in the United States can agree upon, it’s that the rise of China as a global superpower is bad for the us. Since the United States-Chinese trade agreement was signed some 25 years ago, China has spent a lot of time, money and effort on educating its workforce to be one of the most productive manufacturing economies in the world. If you have a special requirement for a widget, China is probably the best place to go and get it made.
A lot of manufacturing has moved to China, much of it is highly advanced. But for non-Chinese companies the research and design is still done elsewhere. You can famously find the phrase “Made in China, designed by Apple in California” on a lot of Apple products. The pandemic and other political headwinds have started a shift though. China has adopted a zero covid policy which can shut down parts of entire cities in China for a couple of days at a time when someone is believed to have come into contact with someone that has tested positive for COVID-19. This is obviously disruptive to manufacturing and companies like Apple have started to shift some of their manufacturing away from China.
The constant saber rattling that the Chinese government does with regards to Taiwan has most of the west concerned about China in a military sense as well. The U.S. has a defense treaty with Taiwan, meaning if Taiwan is attacked, the U.S. is obligated to intervene and help them. China spends the second most of any country on their military (the U.S. is still first by a large margin) and if they were to decide to invade Taiwan we might find ourselves in a military conflict with China.
One of the ways to slow down the military progress of China is to slow its technological advancements. The current U.S. administration has recently made moves to keep companies headquartered in the U.S. from providing China with advanced microchip manufacturing technology. Microchips are extremely important for modern warfare. As we’ve seen in Ukraine, Russia isn’t able to replace their advanced long range missiles because they can’t get microchips to put in them.
China does have a robust research and development sector, and they are able to produce their own microchips. But these chips are using a process that is roughly ten years out of date. They’ll eventually catch up, but it could take them a decade or more to do so. One application of these advanced microchips is to power systems that rely upon artificial intelligence to make decisions in nanoseconds that can determine the outcome of a battle.
By preventing China from manufacturing more advanced microchips we’re preventing them from adding AI capabilities to their next generation of fighter aircraft and other military assets that would make good use of it.
Our economies are heavily integrated. No one wants a conflict with China. And one good way to prevent that is to ensure that they know they’ll lose any conflict they might start.
— Jason Ogaard is a software engineer who formerly lived in Hutchinson. He welcomes your technology questions, and he’ll answer them in this place. Please send your questions to technobabble@hutchinsonleader.com.
