The Daily Planet #16: Chip Whack-a-Mole

I have a hard time empathizing with those who worry about their competitors developing a doomsday weapon faster than you, but it's increasingly clear that AGI is driving such fears. At an extreme, decision makers in US (or China) might say to one another:

What if China develops AGI a day before we do, deploys it that very day and overwhelms our systems overnight, game over isn't it....

Lets say you have credible information that your opponent will develop AGI this week. Will you be tempted to launch pre-emptive strikes (maybe even nuclear strikes?) against your opponent?

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Nvidia_maxwell-chip.jpg#/media/File:Nvidia_maxwell-chip.jpg

On a less feverish pitch, AGI arms race is about as real as any race that's going on today. As today's Daily Planet says:

There are a few major gating factors to building powerful AI systems, and the only one the U.S. can stop from proliferation is compute.

The U.S. government has put export controls in place to stop China from gaining an edge in advanced technology, especially in making AI chips. However, Chinese companies like Huawei and SMIC are finding clever ways to get around these restrictions. They use tactics such as setting up shell companies, exploiting loopholes, and buying equipment through third parties or offshore factories. Huawei, in particular, is building a large domestic semiconductor manufacturing network with strong support from the Chinese government, spending billions to develop its own supply chain for AI chips and related technologies.

The scale and speed are staggering: we estimate the Huawei fab network will spend $7.3B on foreign wafer fabrication equipment in 2024, making it the 4th largest purchaser in the world. If SMIC and CXMT are included, both of which work closely with Huawei, they would be the 2nd largest purchaser in the world only behind TSMC, and far ahead of any US firm. More than half of this equipment currently comes from US companies.

Among other things, this tells us the new cold war is very different from the old one: since both sides inhabit the same economic system, i.e., global capitalism, they have plenty of actors whose economic interests conflict with their national interests. Nvidia wants to sell to China and is willing to pay Trump 15% in order to do so. Huawei also wants to sell to as many customers as possible.

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