The geopolitics of semiconductors; BJP music before and after Modi; is Biden doing to the economy what Trump did to politics? The science of cooperative AI
Deeply researched piece on China’s efforts to create a domestic semiconductor industry. Over a hundred Chinese companies have been placed on a trade blacklist prohibiting most American technology to be sold to them without a license. That has spurred an aggressive effort by Beijing to identify and replace risky parts and suppliers. The question is whether Washington might not unwittingly have contributed to a recent flourishing of chipmaking companies in China. The article seems to support this view. The effort to localize production has been the opportunity of a lifetime for a new generation of Chinese chip champions. Why? The sense of emergency helps concentrate the mind, brings public authorities and the private sector together and generally speeds up everything. U.S. sanctions may have removed the main domestic obstacle to the goal of China's chip self-sufficiency effort, which is the lack of cooperation by China's own local buyers, and the vertiginous rise of YMTC has shown just what China is capable of in the chip industry. The company is said to be in the process of developing a 192-layer chip that one industry analyst referred to as the "Himalaya."
I enjoyed reading the recent Jugalbandi, a political biography of Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Lal Krishna Advani, the two most important BJP leaders before Modi. A jugalbandi in classical Indian music is a duet of two solo musicians. You might be thinking the jugalbandi takes place between Advani and Vajpayee, but the real duet is one between the Indian people and its leaders. Often the latter are pushed forward by profound changes in public views, but leaders may also be attracted by the possibilities these changes open. One thing is certain: the music will continue after Modi, as the silent days of the old Congress establishment will not return.
Read this Megan Greene column. It describes the new mood after Biden. The old economic thinking suddenly looks antiquated, as Biden attempts to do in the economy what Trump did to politics. If multiple equilibria are possible, economic outcomes depend on decision and will. If Trump transformed politics into fantasy, Biden is convincing everyone that economic reality is more malleable than we thought. Conflicts can be overcome not through distribution but by expanding the horizons of possibility. We live in the age of GameStop where economic truth is no longer a limit.
About time we start to think within the framework of AI. Instead of opposing the supposed faults of AI to a pristine age of natural virtue, why not recreate the old virtues within AI? To help humanity solve fundamental problems of cooperation, scientists need to reconceive artificial intelligence as deeply social.