this post was submitted on 10 Sep 2023
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The real problem is that the US has shown their hand: theo willingness to use sanctions purely for economic purposes makes those sanctions not only useless in the long run, but detrimental to the American goal of maintaining globalization (and thus reliance on American technology). I guarantee you that India is currently asking itself how it can develop a strong domestic semiconductor industry and that the African Union is trying to secure semiconductor supply from multiple players right now.
In fact, this crosses beyond semiconductors and into every technology that the West currently dominates. Aircraft, engines, materials science, pharmaceuticals... the weaponization of sanctions has pushed and will continue to push the world towards a deglobalized, multipolar entity where domestic capabilities are prized once again. In fact, I expect a mass hiring of PhD students into the Chinese academic system soon to elevate China's research capability while stealing talent away from the US.
Biden knew all of this. Why do it, then?
Is that why F-35 crash every other week?
Remind me, why's NASA using Soviet rocket engines?
Questionable, but aight
Germany would like a word
It's hard to argue that Boeing is churning out less efficient planes than Comac, that Comac is using the CFM LEAP, that the manufacturing of those engines uses technologies that no one else has mastered, and that the US approves the most new drugs by far.
These are essential not only for military applications but for logistical ones.
Sanctions really are the biggest own goal.
It would be the LEAP not the PD-14 in the MC-21, if not for sanctions. In normal conditions, it's a winner takes all market no matter how tiny the difference is every cent counts to carriers. Only the single most efficient engine available would've made sense and it turns out sanctions did just that.
The sanctions are the largest boon to Chinese semi tool companies; they were snubbed by big name Chinese tech beforehand. Now, fear and uncertainty of supply weighs down the western competition. ASML in China has been brought down to SMEE's level; next year, ASML can't sell anything more advanced than what SMEE can make.
SMIC would have the same issues as Global Foundries did with justifying the investment in 7nm. The few fabless companies in China that use leading edge processes are wedded to TSMC. If Huawei wasn't there as a guaranteed customer, SMIC wouldn't have been able to get their investment to pay off. Huawei didn't even consider domestic alternatives outside of what they themselves make before the sanctions. The Mi 10 Ultra, with a QCOM SoC, had more domestic parts than the Huawei equivalent.
Even advanced engines can't redeem the F-35 though, it's still slower than the JF-17.