US Looks To Restrict China's Access To Cloud Computing To Protect Advanced Technology (wsj.com) 84
The Biden administration is preparing to restrict Chinese companies' access to U.S. cloud-computing services, WSJ reported Tuesday, citing people familiar with the situation, in a move that could further strain relations between the world's economic superpowers. From the report: The new rule, if adopted, would likely require U.S. cloud-service providers such as Amazon.com and Microsoft to seek U.S. government permission before they provide cloud-computing services that use advanced artificial-intelligence chips to Chinese customers, the people said. The Biden administration's move would follow other recent measures as Washington and Beijing wage a high-stakes conflict over access to the supply chain for the world's most advanced technology.
Beijing Monday announced export restrictions on metals used in advanced chip manufacturing, days ahead of a visit to China by Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen. The proposed restriction is seen as a means to close a significant loophole. National-security analysts have warned that Chinese AI companies might have bypassed the current export controls rules by using cloud services. These services allow customers to gain powerful computing capabilities without purchasing advanced equipment -- including chips -- on the control list, such as the A100 chips by American technology company Nvidia.
Beijing Monday announced export restrictions on metals used in advanced chip manufacturing, days ahead of a visit to China by Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen. The proposed restriction is seen as a means to close a significant loophole. National-security analysts have warned that Chinese AI companies might have bypassed the current export controls rules by using cloud services. These services allow customers to gain powerful computing capabilities without purchasing advanced equipment -- including chips -- on the control list, such as the A100 chips by American technology company Nvidia.
Thanks from Ali Cloud's Jack Ma (Score:3, Informative)
Alibaba Jack Ma wish to thank the US govt for forcing US companies to give up market share without a fight!
That has worked so well for Baidu and Tencent in the past when Google and Facebook withdrawn from China.
Re:Thanks from Ali Cloud's Jack Ma (Score:4, Interesting)
It might even help the CCP keep a strong grip on the Chinese people.
Right now one of the easiest ways to use Tor in China is to bypass the Great Firewall by connecting to Microsoft Azure cloud servers. The connection is indistinguishable from a normal HTTPS connection to a website hosted in their cloud, but it really goes to a Tor node and gets routed through Microsoft's internal network and out of the country.
If MS is forced to withdraw Azure from China, that will be lost.
Re: Thanks from Ali Cloud's Jack Ma (Score:3)
Re: Thanks from Ali Cloud's Jack Ma (Score:4, Informative)
Their feelings are surprisingly positive.
"many Chinese believe that the country’s recent economic achievements—large-scale poverty reduction, huge infrastructure investment, and development as a world-class tech innovator—have come about because of, not despite, China’s authoritarian form of government."
"July 2020 polling data from the Ash Center at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government revealed 95% satisfaction with the Beijing government among Chinese citizens."
https://hbr.org/2021/05/what-t... [hbr.org]
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Their feelings are surprisingly positive.
That's not surprising at all when the only news they are allowed to see is positive. I would be surprised if their feelings were not positive, that's the intent and power of censorship.
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Censorship doesn't put food on the table or a roof over your head. Whatever the Chinese government is doing (or not doing), the Chinese people are quite a bit better off compared to where they were 10 or 20 years ago. It's certainly a much more noticeable difference than here in the US. We'll see if the next economic downturn will shake up the Hu's grip on power. My bet is on a internal coup if power is to change hands, though China does have a long history of rebellion whenever its emperor loses the "manda
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It's not obvious to me that Xi's censorship caused the Chinese economy to slow. There's many other factors like increasing wages and rising currency that reduced incentives for foreign investment.
As for freedom, if freedom is what makes countries succeed, then India, a liberal democracy, should be way ahead of China. Instead, they are less than half of China in terms of per-capita GDP by PPP, despite both governments being established around 1950. In fact, China is still growing faster than India despite th
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It's not obvious to me that Xi's censorship caused the Chinese economy to slow.
I did say it was his censorship and authoritarianism, but let's look specifically at his censorship.
Consider what happened to Jack Ma after he publicly criticized China's banks and regulators. His company was essentially taken from him and broken up. Without freedom of speech, people turn into sycophants, saying and doing what is wanted, instead of what is best for the economy (or for their own personal economic situation).
Totalitarian governments can have good governance if the right guy is in charge.
That's rare. After taking power, people usually get corrupted. This is true in a d
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That matches with what Chinese people tell me when I ask them about it. they see instability and strife in other countries, while China's economy keeps growing and their lives keep improving.
I asked a friend about the CCTV cameras on major roads that record every vehicle. You know they are there because they have a flash that goes off as you drive past at night. He was of the opinion that they keep him safe from bad people, and that he trusts the government to look after him and his family.
I thought it was
Re: Thanks from Ali Cloud's Jack Ma (Score:4, Insightful)
I wonder if there are any statistics on how Chinese people feel their government represents them, how free they feel and how hopeful they are about the future. It would be interesting to compare that to how US citizens feel about their government.
Yes, there are statistics on this. The problem is that the data gathering methodology would reveal much more than the data. China is a democracy on paper with overwhelming support for the current government. Not surprisingly, non-official surveys also reveal overwhelming support. After all, expressing criticism or non-support could be interpreted as a crime, depending on how government officials choose to view things.
In contrast, in the US, expressing criticism is not only legal but is widespread and arguably a national pastime. Americans argue about politics, sports, religions, and everything. It's what we do, especially complaining about Congress, the President, and now even the Supreme Court.
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I wonder if there are any statistics on how Chinese people feel their government represents them, how free they feel and how hopeful they are about the future. It would be interesting to compare that to how US citizens feel about their government.
Not surprisingly, non-official surveys also reveal overwhelming support. After all, expressing criticism or non-support could be interpreted as a crime, depending on how government officials choose to view things.
The best people to ask would be in Hong Kong. They actually had freedom but it has now been taken away. Of course it makes Winnie a very angry pooh bear that people are not happy about this.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/... [www.cbc.ca]
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Loss and gain of freedom is what it comes down to. Most Chinese people were farmers, and their lives were precarious. A bad harvest, a curable but deadly if not treated disease, war. Many of them are old enough to remember it.
From their point of view, things are a lot better now, and they have far more freedom. They have money, they can make choices about their lifestyle, their healthcare, where they live.
For people from Hong Kong, things have gone in the opposite direction. They had democracy and a lot mor
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Might as well pull the plug (Score:2)
Re: Canned Heat (Score:1)
Re:Stop it (Score:5, Insightful)
The US tried that with China for many years, starting with Nixon's visit. China isn't interested in the betterment of mankind, they are interested in the betterment of China. Or certain core segments of it at least.
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That pretty much sums it up.
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> The US tried that with China for many years, starting with Nixon's visit. China isn't interested in the betterment of mankind, they are interested in the betterment of China. Or certain core segments of it at least.
I think SuperDre's point is that they both need to stop using that kind of rhetoric on each other and really work on working together.
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It takes two to tango. China switched to belligerence years ago. The US can't even get them to open up military channels of communication now.
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> It takes two to tango. China switched to belligerence years ago. The US can't even get them to open up military channels of communication now.
That's an example of what now I'm saying : as long as we, China or the US, say things like you just said about the other we of course aren't working on working together.
Lets hope we are working on working together 'behind the scene' even though we both say, Chinese and US citizens too, that we can't or aren't, or that if we can't or aren't, it's the other's fault
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I'm merely stating some facts. Wishful thinking about "working together" isn't going to make China cooperate. You will notice that Blinken visited China recently, Yellen will be there in a couple of days, and there is talk of Biden visiting in the fall. Where is the reciprocation from China?
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> You will notice that Blinken visited China recently, Yellen will be there in a couple of days, and there is talk of Biden visiting in the fall. Where is the reciprocation from China?
I guess China is doing its part in its way if all those people are doing their part in their way.
I'm not saying you're cherry picking your facts. But there's always more going on. The more we don't tow the ongoing negative narrative in our respective nations about the others, maybe the more real work will be done by our gov
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I'm merely pointing out some objective facts, and I am not seeing any from you.
If "China is doing its part in its way" then that way clearly needs to change. Stonewalling is not a productive approach. Actions taking place in the public sphere definitely do matter, and what we are seeing at present from China is belligerence and a refusal to engage. The US on the other hand is making some appropriate overtures as I have shown. This is not an equivalent relationship, there is no similar behavior from
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> I'm merely pointing out some objective facts, and I am not seeing any from you.
I tend to avoid qualifying political events as objective facts. Events did of course happen but how they speak to more general states of affairs is far from, in my opinion, objective.
> If "China is doing its part in its way" then that way clearly needs to change. Stonewalling is not a productive approach ... This is not an equivalent relationship, there is no similar behavior from China.
I accept that from your perspective
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If only you could point to something that justifies your position, like I can. All kinds of things might be going on. Meanwhile we can see some things that are definitely happening.
"In written testimony to the House Armed Services Committee, principal deputy assistant secretary of defense for Indo-Pacific security affairs Jedidiah P. Royal said China had “a concerning lack of interest in the important lines of communication that underpin a stable defense relationship between our countries.”
"Expe
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> If only you could point to something that justifies your position, like I can. All kinds of things might be going on. Meanwhile we can see some things that are definitely happening.
Supposing I was immersed in China's politics, culture and media, and even if I could or wanted to, what would be the point of dressing up lists of events for each side and trying to weigh them on a scale of who is or isn't doing enough, while doing that in a meaningful way within the greater international context, while taki
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Not interested in your speculations. Obviously someone in China is acting in their own interests, and I think we can safely assume it is Xi. You are welcome to show evidence that he is attempting to cooperate.
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> Not interested in your speculations.
I'm weary and reluctant to post some events showing mutual involvement. Because as I tried to explain it's so easy to trivialize points that don't support one's perspective. For example, you write "Obviously someone in China is acting in their own interests, and I think we can safely assume it is Xi", which is a criticism that can be laid against both countries. Like X is only acting in X's interest and not for the greater good, where we can replace X with the US or
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What I'm seeing in your list is that there have been quite a few 'in China' items and hardly any outside of it. This reinforces my point, which is that this is not a relationship with an equivalent level of attempts at cooperation. You are welcome to think otherwise but the visible evidence doesn't support it.
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> What I'm seeing in your list is that there have been quite a few 'in China' items and hardly any outside of it. This reinforces my point, which is that this is not a relationship with an equivalent level of attempts at cooperation.
More meetings proffered by China than the US can also be construed as a visible sign the US is not attempting the same level of cooperation.
But it means neither that nor what you're saying it does. Why would it?
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If I repeatedly travel to your house trying to to communicate with you and you seldom or never visit me, I am obviously putting out more effort that you are. If your mom calls you on the phone every day and you never call her, who is investing more in the relationship? Is it you, because you are willing to answer the phone?
You are welcome to attempt to cast this as an equivalent relationship from the Chinese perspective, who cares? But most of the world is not China, and can clearly see the difference.
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> If I repeatedly travel to your house trying to to communicate with you and you seldom or never visit me, I am obviously putting out more effort that you are.
If I repeatedly send out invitations for you to travel to my house and you seldom or never sent invitations for me to travel to your house, I am obviously putting out more effort that you are.
> If your mom calls you on the phone every day and you never call her, who is investing more in the relationship? Is it you, because you are willing to a
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"If China sends out invitations regularly and the US doesn't", who told you that?
"your positions don't actually support the idea that China is less productively involved than the US"
I didn't say China is less productively involved. I said "China switched to belligerence years ago. The US can't even get them to open up military channels of communication now." This is demonstrably true. If you think that behavior is productive somehow it makes me wonder what they are trying to produce.
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> "If China sends out invitations regularly and the US doesn't", who told you that?
Right, we don't know why China is hosting a lot of meetings and the US isn't, Maybe it's because the US is offering to host meetings but China is passing more often or maybe it's because the US isn't offering to host as many meetings as China is. The point being we don't know the specifics, and even if we did it does mean it would be clear what that reflects specifically and even less what that means about the overall cont
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China has always had a tale of woe, I've lost interest in it at this point. Obviously they have "reasons for their current attitude", so what? Their attitude is routinely inappropriate as I have shown.
You are welcome to your opinions. I am not trying to persuade you. But I do think there is considerable evidence for my position, whereas you don't seem to have much.
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> You are welcome to your opinions. I am not trying to persuade you. But I do think there is considerable evidence for my position, whereas you don't seem to have much.
As I've explained I don't think disparaging remarks are based in fact or valid arguments, and when your arguments are valid I don't think they lead to the more general conclusions you seem to be trying to claim they do.
> Obviously they have "reasons for their current attitude", so what? Their attitude is routinely inappropriate as I hav
Re: Stop it (Score:3)
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Maybe you're just wrong.
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Around 1990 there was a general consensus that all world governments were headed towards liberal democracy. The Berlin Wall had fallen. The Soviet Union had disintegrated. China would soon open up markets to the world. The west poured massive amounts of investment into Russia and China under the banner of globalization. You don't go to war with your customers, after all.
Well, over 30 years later now it's quite clear that was a ruse. China and Russia have doubled down on authoritarianism and human rights
Re:Stop it (Score:4, Informative)
And in regard to russia, russia answered the call of the self declared 2 states in the east of the Ukraine to protect them from Kyiv, and the war is mainly in those two states. So it's not blatantly invading another country.
All completely wrong.
Both of those 2 states in the east of Ukraine voted for Ukrainian independence. So it is blatantly invading another country, which by the way they have invaded several times in history.
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And in regard to russia, russia answered the call of the self declared 2 states in the east of the Ukraine to protect them from Kyiv, and the war is mainly in those two states. So it's not blatantly invading another country.
All completely wrong.
Both of those 2 states in the east of Ukraine voted for Ukrainian independence. So it is blatantly invading another country, which by the way they have invaded several times in history.
Additionally, the "Russian–Ukrainian Friendship Treaty" of 1997 seemed to say that Russia recognized Ukraine's borders:
Under Article 2:
In accord with provisions of the UN Charter and the obligations of the Final Act on Security and Cooperation in Europe, the High Contracting Parties shall respect each others territorial integrity and reaffirm the inviolability of the borders existing between them
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
After being invaded by Russia in 2014
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SMT / Hyper Threading (Score:3, Insightful)
With the never ending SMT / Hyper Threading issues Intel is having, and to a lesser extent other CPUs are having. Probably a good idea.
But I still think you are crazy to put anything that is highly sensitive on "the cloud".
Good. China should be treated like North Korea (Score:5, Insightful)
The CCP is about as close to the Nazi Party as we have in this era so if you're wondering how people and corporations could have possibly worked with the Nazis, just watch how they work with China today
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Re:Good. China should be treated like North Korea (Score:4, Interesting)
Indeed. People still being stupid and falling for fabrications. The Big Lie is not only alive and well, it is doing better and better.
It _really_ is always the same crap with the human race.
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You have no idea what the Nazi party did. China has problems and the morality of their government is pretty questionable (but so is that of the US government, look for some recent Supreme Court decisions for some examples), but the Nazis were supremacists that pretty much wanted and tried to kill or enslave everybody not part of their Master Race. That is a bit different from China.
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The Supremes are also part of the US Govt. As a whole, the three sections of government help to keep everyone "honest", with balances of power tilting back and forth as time goes on.
For the people who believe "US Govt" means Joe Biden, and how he got "slapped down" means he attempted dictatorship, I can't recall any US president who did not get unfavorable decisions from the court from time to time (Biden may get more decisions against him at this time because the "non-political" Supreme Court is packed 6-3
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China has problems and the morality of their government is pretty questionable (but so is that of the US government, look for some recent Supreme Court decisions for some examples), but the Nazis were supremacists that pretty much wanted and tried to kill or enslave everybody not part of their Master Race. That is a bit different from China.
How? They're already killing or enslaving their internal ethnic minorities and also the Tibetans. Tell us how it's different.
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Have a look at what happend back in Nazi Germany. What China does is Kindergarden in comparison.
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Have a look at what happend back in Nazi Germany. What China does is Kindergarden in comparison.
China is slower but more inexorable. They are engaging in multiple simultaneous genocides and statistically everybody is like "meh"
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How could anyone take that shit seriously?
Some of us care about other people, even far away people we've never met and who hold views we disagree with like Uyghurs and Tibetans. Some of us, like you, don't. HTH, HAND.
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Well, I have been unable to find figures on Uyghurs killed by China. For the 3rd Reich, the holocaust got around 6M Jews killed in 4 years. They killed 3.3M Soviet POWs in something like 2 years. They killed around 2.5M non-Jew polish people. And a lot of others. One estimate (https://scottmanning.com/content/nazi-body-count/) is 21M dead in 12 years excluding battle-deaths.
There are only 12M Uyghurs and only 7M Tibetans. So even if China kills them all (which they are not trying to do) they still would fal
Re:This feels like corporate welfare... (Score:4, Insightful)
They're not banning Americans using Chinese cloud computing.
They're banning Chinese using American cloud computing.
The Chinese may retaliate in kind, but I doubt it, because that would be dumb. It would make more sense to retaliate in some other way that actually serves them.
Re: This feels like corporate welfare... (Score:2)
What cheaper alternatives? This order has nothing to do with commodity x86 systems and everything to do with custom AI processors like Nvidia's A100. Considering there are already restrictions, both governmental and economic, on getting large quantities of those processors, where exactly do you think China has access to cloud versions?
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Hahaha, you mean preventing China from getting access to state-of-the-art Artificial Stupidity is supposed to hold them back or something? What a complete and utter fail! This can only make them stronger.
Incidentally, on the research side you do not need all those accelerators. They may make things a bit cheaper, but that is it. All this will do is getting China an edge in optimization, because they will invest more effort into it.
Yes, I am aware these two things I stated are not really compatible with each
Worst Decision Ever (Score:2)
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Somehow the US thinks hurting US companies is a way to slow down China?
The idea isn't that China can't catch up. Of course China can build their own cloud data centers. That is something China can do.
The hope and intent of these policies is to allow supply chains and industries a chance to spring up in other countries (like India). Actually I think Mexico is right on the edge of springing up and becoming a technological super power as well. They have a lot of people with skills now.
How would this be enforced? (Score:2)
So, how would this prohibition be enforced? Politely ask cloud customers whether they are Chinese, and of course, at the same time reminding those customers that honesty is the best policy? What if Chinese companies ask non-Chinese companies to run their workloads for them on US cloud providers? Well, the cloud providers could be required to ask if their customers are working in proxy for Chinese companies. But what if there are several indirection hops between Chinese companies and US cloud providers?
This is on kindergarten level (Score:2)
Do they really think the Chinese do not have their own clouds? Are these people completely stupid? Alternatively, this whole "War on China" is basically a scam. Come to think of it, this sounds more and more likely. Ye old "find enemy on the outside to distract from domestic screw-ups".
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Ye old "find enemy on the outside to distract from domestic screw-ups".
Wag the Dog.
Just get a room (Score:2)
Honestly, US and China should just get a room, the sexual tension is obvious, and annoying, to everyone.
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It's not the US and China, it's the US and the CCP.
The Republicrats must be envious that the CCP can openly be a single party in power...
Cloud services (Score:2)
Why restrict them? This would be the perfect opportunity to salt a special set of training data with wrong answers.
Export Bans (Score:2)
this is getting idiotic (Score:2)