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RISC-V Foundation moving to Switzerland over trade curb fears

379 points by thesausageking 7y ago

spamizbad 7y ago
The fact that Tom Cotton knows about RISC-V blows my mind. What doesn’t shock me though is his complete misunderstanding of how open standards work.
- petre 7y ago
  He most likely found out about it with the news that the foundation is moving overseas. Maybe lawmakers will get the message eventually?
- gumby 7y ago
  I’m sure the reporters called his office and spoke with an aid and received a generic and knee-jerk response based on what the reporter said. I don’t think he knows nor cares about risc-v nor the topic. Assuming what I wrote above is how it happened (95% likely) it should not reflect poorly on him. I have a low opinion of the man but I doubt this quote reflects anything on how he might vote if some related issue comes to the senate floor.
lone_haxx0r 7y ago
“The Chinese Communist Party is trying to circumvent our export control system to support national security threats like Huawei - we cannot let it succeed,” This is just comedy.
- m0zg 7y ago
  Why is this "comedy"? That's exactly what they are trying to do. Moreover, the US taxpayer is paying for it all. https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/2019-11-18%20PSI%20Staff%20Report%20-%20China's%20Talent%20Recruitment%20Plans%20Updated.pdf https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/2019-11-18%20PSI%...
  - spamizbad 7y ago
    If your worried about China recruiting your talent maybe, like, make them want to stay in the US? This is one example of how elites in this country get to have their own form of socialism whereas say a humble computer scientist must be subjected to the whims of the invisible hand for the sake of preserving market efficiency.
    - m0zg 7y ago
      But you can't make foreign intelligence assets "stay in the US" as it were. I bet every single large tech company in the US has rather substantial numbers of Chinese (and other countries') spies embedded within it. They also get caught again, and again, and again. And remember it's only the idiots who carry secrets on their person that get caught, rather than just upload data straight to some servers in China. I bet there's quite a bit of that going on as well. The recent few cases are just baffling. The guy resigns and gets caught on the border exfiltrating trade secrets. For one thing, why resign? Just go - you'll get fired automatically when you don't return. For another, why carry this stuff in your suitcase? Just upload it to AWS in encrypted form sail through the customs with no problem at all. They are clearly not sending their best.
      - ngcc_hk 7y ago
        Or this explicit list of talents https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thousand_Talents_Program https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thousand_Talents_Program Strange and I still do not understand why they so explicit about it. The key is you cannot easy reside, study, work in China key U and technology program freely. But seems you can in Usa. An one sided war with one side powerful but leaking key assets. Hence all these shooting using software and chip.
      - throwawaypolicy 7y ago
        > But you can't make foreign intelligence assets "stay in the US" as it were You can though, it's called defecting. There's a long history of it. E.g. see this list of defectors from the soviet union: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Soviet_and_Eastern_Bloc_defectors https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Soviet_and_Eastern_Blo...
- dang 7y ago
  Please don't take HN threads into ideological or nationalistic flamewar. It's off topic here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
mikeyouse 7y ago
What exactly did people expect to happen with this bizarre trade war? Instead of pressuring 'bad actor' countries with more free trade and something like TPP, levying pointless tariffs was obviously going to drive any joint international groups overseas. Just brainless stuff.
- losteric 7y ago
  It's also domestic corruption, trading tariff waivers for corporate political support (or at least silence)
  - kortilla 7y ago
    Do you consider it corruption to offer free money in exchange for votes (I.e. many of the contenders for the Democratic primary in the US)?
    - corporate_shi11 7y ago
      “A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury.” - Alexander Fraser Tytler
      - eru 7y ago
        Switzerland has been around as a (relatively) small government democracy for quite a while. There are regular direct democracy polls on spending and taxes.
        corporate_shi11 7y ago
        Switzerland also doesn't have many poor people.
        newyankee 7y ago
jimbob45 7y ago
"[Too tight of regulation forces companies overseas]" This is why no one takes economists seriously. Not that he's right or wrong, just that his read on the situation is totally wrong.
- mikeyouse 7y ago
  You're misquoting him.. > The foundation’s move from Delaware to Switzerland may foreshadow further technology flight because of U.S. restrictions on dealing with some Chinese technology companies, said William Reinsch, who was undersecretary of commerce for export administration in the Clinton administration. > “There is a message for the government. The message is, if you clamp down on things too tightly this is what is going to happen. In a global supply chain world, companies have choices, and one choice is to go overseas,” he said. What's controversial about that? If Chinese companies want to contribute to Open Standards and US laws put all of the IP at risk, of course they're going to move to a better jurisdiction to serve their purposes.
  - 6510 7y ago
    I was thinking the same thing but then it struck me they might be US companies who are much more intimately familiar with government doctoring. It might even be Berkley?
  - stjohnswarts 7y ago
    This is a case where I would trust them because it -is- open source. However I support US efforts to keep Huawei out of core communications structures, at least in the USA, and hopefully Europeans will follow with US or Continental suppliers. Microchips make it very, vey easy to bury backdoors for Chinese intelligence agencies as well as put in encryption weaknesses. Say what you want about the US but there are pathways to prevent you from being railroaded by the government if you're willing to stand up to them. This isn't so in China, where you just get disappeared or imprisoned if you don't tow the party line.
Abishek_Muthian 7y ago
I appreciate and welcome this move by RISC-V foundation. With semiconductor industry being used as a major soft power, countries which don't have such power betting on RISC-V[1], it's wise to move to a neutral country. My only gripe being, there aren't many neutral countries which can stand up to powerful militarized nations. Edit: The reason, I mentioned lack of military power of neutral countries is because of the existence of law such as 'Hague Invasion Act'[2] which allows U.S. to invade Hague to liberate its personnel tried at International Criminal Court for war crimes. Neutral countries need military power to protect its Neutrality! [1]https://shakti.org.in https://shakti.org.in [2]https://www.hrw.org/news/2002/08/03/us-hague-invasion-act-becomes-law https://www.hrw.org/news/2002/08/03/us-hague-invasion-act-be...
- pgeorgi 7y ago
  In this case Switzerland seems to be a pretty good choice: compulsory military service, difficult terrain, nuclear power plants (and with them the infrastructure to build the bomb)
  - Abishek_Muthian 7y ago
    Conscription is not as effective as a regular volunteer force. Atomic weapons or other WMD goes against the ethos of neutral countries which traditionally are pro-Human Rights. But I understand where you are coming at, perhaps it is because major military nations poses A-Bombs. I guess, if they are democratic countries we have no choice but to hope that their citizens can prevent it from getting used; My real worry is the non-democratic/pseudo democratic countries with A-Bombs. Edit : N-Bomb->A-Bomb.
    - pgeorgi 7y ago
      > Conscription is not as effective as a regular volunteer force. Switzerland's terrain wouldn't see regular war but guerilla warfare (including mined bridges and everything). Having trained marksmen in almost every household helps a lot in such a situation. > Atomic weapons or other WMD goes against the ethos of neutral countries which traditionally are pro-Human Rights. I think Switzerland would adopt a "whatever it takes" approach when attacked. At least that's what they credibly project, and so it's unlikely that they'll end up having to play it out.
coliveira 7y ago
This is a great move. It is time to punish countries that impose restrictions on technology. I don't want to be a prisoner in a place where technology is simply considered "illegal" because it doesn't further the interests of the ruling class.
- onepointsixC 7y ago
  This specifically furthers the interests of a ruling class, the Chinese Communist Party. It is explicitly giving the CCP an American funded and developed technology which they can use for further development of racially profiled mass surveillance for the continued genocide of the Uyghurs. This is an awful move.
  - DethNinja 7y ago
    lol that’s a huge jump from developing open source cpu without backdoors to genocide of Uyghurs.
    - onepointsixC 7y ago
      It's not at all. RISC-V Foundation can develop open-source CPU's in the US as they have thus far. They are moving explicitly to circumvent US export restrictions to China. The CCP's mass surveillance in Xin Jiang is incredibly sophisticated[1]. It is simply not possible for them to accomplish this computationally without state of the art hardware which they will now have a new avenue to acquire. [1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/22/world/asia/china-surveillance-xinjiang.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/22/world/asia/china-surveill...
      - wsy 7y ago
        The impact on China's mass surveillance capabilities is negligible, because RISC-V work is open source already. What the foundation avoids by moving to Switzerland is fragmentation of their ecosystem due to US foreign policy decisions. Note that China is already among the technology leaders in the world. Even if cut off from the remaining world, they would have no issue in manufacturing and operating sophisticated surveillance infrastructure. So I can't see how the foundation would help suppressed minorities in China by staying in US.
ngcc_hk 7y ago
If it is fully open may be. But given it is sponsored by huawei abd alibaba that is a move to side with chinazi. It would not work.
ngcc_hk 7y ago
It is not a trade war it is Cold War 2.0. You can side with Soviet Union and trade with them in 1.0 I supposed. Ruling class? You meant the communists in china? Talk to the Turks and hongkongers and explain what is the interest of ruling class.
- corporate_shi11 7y ago
  You're getting downvoted because people would rather criticize capitalist democracy than a nominally communist dictatorship. Many on HN, like many Leftist "intellectuals" probably would (and/or did) sympathize with the Soviets.
  - x0054 7y ago
    Ironically no one is downvoting him. Just you.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
  - tomc1985 7y ago
    > Many on HN, like many Leftist "intellectuals" probably would (and/or did) sympathize with the Soviets. On what grounds do you base such an absurd accusation?
  - Taniwha 7y ago
    But the problem here is not with a communist dictatorship, it's with a capitalist republic run by a capricious idiot who's likely to do something stupid like claim everyone's open source work on risc-v as belonging to him and his country - the smart thing to do here is to move somewhere more stable which is what's happening
  - atoav 7y ago
    You’d probably call me a leftist although I don’t have any group that I would feel at home with. It is quite hard for me to find any idiot in my friends circles that would defend the soviets or sympathize with them. As somebody who studied philosophy and reads quite a lot I can assure you that the amount of left intellectuals who are still defending the SU is equally low — at least in Europe. So what you are postulating here seems to be colored strongly by your own world view and where you live. Instead of offering us a interesting new perspective that would help leftists to leave their own bubbles, your comment seems to only show your own lack of experience in that area. You might have missed for example that “the left” is usually much more fractured and less uniform than the right: most things you could validly criticise have pretty certainly already been criticised by another left fraction or even within one fraction. So doing as if there was any unified opinion here says rather more about your own bias than anything of substance about the other side. Many US observers often seem to paint a black and white picture of what is much more nuanced. E.g. saying that everybody who doesn’t support the silly ideas of your president is automatically on the side of the Russians certainly boldly outlines your views, but suffers from the significant disadvantage of not describing reality. Let me assure you: especially conservative Europeans are fed up with how the US acts on trade lately.
known 7y ago
IKEA is registered as Stichting Ingka Foundation a Dutch-registered, tax-exempt, non-profit-making legal entity https://archive.md/4iQp https://archive.md/4iQp
- eru 7y ago
  Wrong thread?
  - Snetry 7y ago
    Probably but still interesting to know
ngcc_hk 7y ago
Btw it looked very strategic move by chinazi. Is any other especially mobile one moves like this?
- dang 7y ago
  Would you please stop using HN for nationalistic battle and posting flamebait? You've been doing that a lot lately, and we ban accounts that do that. Fortunately your account has posted good (for HN) comments before that; please do that here, and not this. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
anfilt 7y ago
Considering the chinese goverment the trade war make sense. However, Risc-V decision makes equal sense. Staying neutral and moving to place where they can avoid politcal pressure is good for an open foundation.
chj 7y ago
It is interesting to see Switzerland becoming a technology hub in the post blockchain era.
- rolltiide 7y ago
  speculation drives innovation
- NonEUCitizen 7y ago
  Switzerland has been a tech hub for a very long time.
  - gumby 7y ago
    At the beginning of the Second World War it was still an impoverished agrarian country. I personally don’t consider that a very long time. This opinion is due to the longer tenure as tech “hub” of various places in the UK, France, and USA. There is some great tech coming out of Switzerland but I’m not sure there’s a really a connection between hosting standards organizations and having a technical infrastructure.
- stjohnswarts 7y ago
  was there ever a blockchain era? All I ever heard of was the blockchain bubble? Sure it's useful but it's not the end of all traditional exchange and contracts like it's most religious adherents subscribed to.
  - wayoutthere 7y ago
    There was blockchain hype, but it was mainly among young adults. Those of us who are older have been through enough hype cycles to know that the tech is only as good as the people running it, and "a shadowy cabal of exchange owners whose names we don't know" is honestly way worse than "a shadowy cabal of publicly traded banks".
- ninkendo 7y ago
  > post blockchain era There was a blockchain era?
nine_zeros 7y ago
Great work. Let over politicized countries fight each other while the rest of the world moves ahead. >“The Chinese Communist Party is trying to circumvent our export control system to support national security threats like Huawei - we cannot let it succeed,” Representative Mike Gallagher, a Republican from Wisconsin, told Reuters. I mean, one cannot make this more obvious. The rest of the world really doesn't want to be subservient to US paranoia
- pnako 7y ago
  The rest of the world is doing the exact same thing. Sovereign nations should control their own technical infrastructure and not rely on American, Chinese, Russian or European technology. Open source is certainly a big step in the right direction toward a world where we can better rely on technology. But we're not there yet, when it comes to hardware.
- tanilama 7y ago
  Yep Truth is, no one can stop any one doing anything. Free market can dissuade your competitors from creating their own supply chain because that won't make economical sense. But once that illusion is gone, the ones that are getting hurt is the current market leaders.
- onepointsixC 7y ago
  Ah yes, let's do business without concerns of morality. Make western funded technology available CCP SOE's. After all, they gotta power their "exciting" and "innovative"[1] algorithms with some sort of architecture. Less we miss anyone[2]. [1]https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2019/11/12/chinese-firm-sold-cctv-cameras-nhs-advertised-racial-profiling/ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2019/11/12/chinese-firm... [2]:https://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2019/sep/23/footage-blindfolded-shackled-prisoners-china-video https://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2019/sep/23/footage-...
  - wayoutthere 7y ago
    Morality is simply "things I like" and "things I don't like". It's not a good basis for policy, especially when moral standards vary significantly between individuals. It's a fool's errand to try to impose your morals on another person as if they were somehow superior (though that arrogance is the foundation of the American psyche). You literally just can't.
peter_retief 7y ago
One has to wonder if this isn't pressure from the Chinese regime.
- RealStickman 7y ago
  More being sick of the US' controlling attitude.
  - peter_retief 7y ago
    Probably some of that but there is a scary attempt to regulate the world by a ruthless regime. Its a question that must be asked, sadly
    - NohatCoder 7y ago
      Indeed, and relocating away from that regime is a good first step in cutting ties.
      - onepointsixC 7y ago
        Imagine being this excited to stick it to the US so a totalitarian country could have access to a US-funded technology for use of genocide.
        Dylan16807 7y ago
        It's open source, everyone has access no matter what.
syntaxing 7y ago
I was just reading on the state of union memo released this past September by the RISC-V foundation. I'm kind of curious how the economics works. I was under the impression that a good chunk of the funding came from US tax payer money (a mixture of UC Berkeley and DARPA). I know that RISC-V is starting to become more popular so they're definitely self fundable in the near future by many other means. I'm curious if the funding methodology from the US gov will change as the globalization landscape changes in the coming years.
tanilama 7y ago
Good move. Let 'open' stay true to its very meaning. It is a good chance , or may I say the best chance for RISC-V to seize influence, because now the will and capitals are aligned to make an alternative ecosystem that is not controlled by US single handedly.
neiman 7y ago
Is RISC-V fear is theoretical or is it based on some specific example(s) that happened to them, or some other foundation, in the past?
- Tepix 7y ago
  It's pressure in general. Look at what ARM has gone through in the last months.
  - porker 7y ago
    > Look at what ARM has gone through in the last months. What has it gone through? I haven't seen any news stories specifically about this.
    - my123 7y ago
      https://news.yahoo.com/uk-chip-designer-arm-complying-u-rules-huawei-113839005--finance.html https://news.yahoo.com/uk-chip-designer-arm-complying-u-rule... They resumed after the ban was kinda temporarily suspended... but there's a risk.
      - FailEEStudent 7y ago
        Well, not really. RISC-V is open-source so export controls don't apply so it seems to be more of a theoretical risk right now. https://www.ucop.edu/ethics-compliance-audit-services/compliance/export-controls/export-faq.html https://www.ucop.edu/ethics-compliance-audit-services/compli... As for ARM, they initially stopped shipments to Huawei (it was an internal email that got leaked) but since it used less than 25% US-origin technology, US export controls don't apply and ARM could ship it
        my123 7y ago
        It's more complex than that, Cortex-A76 for example was designed by ARM's team in Austin, TX...
stjohnswarts 7y ago
Good, I hope they can insulate themselves and be very successful in their pursuits.
Merrill 7y ago
It's a logical choice. Switzerland is where ISO, IEC, and ITU among other international standards organizations are located.
quack01 7y ago
Does anyone have figures on how much money the US federal government has spent to develop the RISC architecture?
- nabla9 7y ago
  RISC-V originated from 5 year project called Parallel Computing Laboratory (Par Lab) at UC Berkeley. Par Lab received no direct federal funding. It was funded mainly by Intel and Microsoft and State of California.
  - riversflow 7y ago
    Was that funding tax deductible?
  - quack01 7y ago
    This may have been true in the early years, but my understanding is that DARPA has played a large role in funding the development of RISC architecture. [1] [1] https://riscv.org/2018/07/ieee-spectrum-article-darpa-plans-a-major-remake-of-u-s-electronics/ https://riscv.org/2018/07/ieee-spectrum-article-darpa-plans-...
- dependenttypes 7y ago
  RISC and RISC-V are different things.
gonational 7y ago
> wants to ensure that universities, governments and companies outside the United States can help develop its open-source technology Read as: > wants to ensure that China... Let me see if I understand this correctly. US tax dollars funded (in part, via UC Berkeley) this technology, and now this organization is moving outside of the US specifically so that it can work with China in ways that the US would not appreciate. And we (“we” being an audience almost entirely based in the Occident) are all cheering this on? Do you think they are worried about that US blocking them from working with Oxford, or with the Spanish government? This is because they got money from Alibaba. Is this the same group that was defending South Park and bashing on the NBA just weeks ago? Gimme a fuckin break.
- Isinlor 7y ago
  Both sentiments are pointed in the same direction - more freedom. Also, Blizzard, South Park, NBA are part of popular culture in the west. Cooperation with China is endangering that culture, so you see backlash. Standards related to RISC-V are not part of popular culture and there is no danger of Chinese censorship. There is however danger of USA protectionism. And yes - I can see Americans using microchip intellectual property against Europeans. EU is right there on the list of trade foes with China and Russia according to USA president.
  - swiley 7y ago
    I’m all for cooperation with China and the diminishment of national culture (not forgetting it but also accepting others) and a better understood global culture. What I’m not ok with (and why I think there’s backlash toward the cooperation with China by these companies) is the way the Chinese government treats people. Harvesting organs from political prisoners and the violence toward protesters isn’t ok. Ever. I don’t care if it’s Trump or Merkel or Xi that’s doing it it’s not ok and that’s not something people should cooperate with.
  - some_random 7y ago
    > USA protectionism Is it just maybe possible that the US public is waking up to the ongoing genocide, ethnic cleansings, and widespread human rights violations in China, which may lead to the state being sanctioned like so many other despicable regimes?
geogra4 7y ago
wonder if IEEE will also move someday. the US tried to stop Huawei employees from peer reviewing papers https://pandaily.com/ieee-forced-to-ban-huawei-employees-from-peer-reviewing-papers/ https://pandaily.com/ieee-forced-to-ban-huawei-employees-fro...
gumby 7y ago
I was a minor foot soldier in the export control wars of the 1990s (via Switzerland too, as it happened). These rules were stupid then and are terrible now. Americans would be less safe had foreign contributions to cryptography been kept out. In addition these export rules act as price subsidies for foreign companies (much as the recent agricultural tariffs have helped Brazilian farmers). If you consider it a national security issue, just note that 1940s Germans had to develop everything themselves while the allies developed and swapped around technology with trans-national teams.
microtherion 7y ago
I'm not sure this move accomplishes that much. It seems none of the technology is moving abroad, just the legal seat. And on trade issues, Switzerland moves pretty much in lockstep with the US, at least officially (cf. Iran sanctions). To me, this smacks of the kind of legalist thinking that software engineers are prone to: Assuming that if some legal construct is implemented according to some rules, governments and the legal system will disregard the actual physical reality, and will refrain from employing their political leverage. Then again, I'm sure the RISC-V Foundation has professional legal advice at their disposal.
- pavon 7y ago
  I curious about what the legal implications of this really are. As a layman, it seems to me that US Export Control laws still exist, so if any of the technical data being discussed in the standards meetings would be considered an export before, it still will now. The change is that the liability has shifted off of the Foundation and onto the American members. If the Foundation as a whole couldn't determine its legal responsibilities, the individual members aren't going to have any more clarity. Any chilling effect of US law and policy will therefore result in US members reducing their participation, rather than members of other countries being uncertain about their ability to use the technology. However, given that much of the early work was done by US institutions, if any US contributions were considered to be unallowable exports, that would surely include contributions that already make up foundations of the specification. This move won't undo that, and thus could result in a worst of both worlds situation where members in other countries can't make use of current standards (if they want to export to the US), and US members can't contribute to future standards. Of course this is all assuming that RISC-V standards are actually covered by US export control laws, and that those laws will be enforced. Probably nothing would come of this either way, although the pessimist in me worries that this move itself might trigger protectionists in the US government to go looking for reasons why RISC-V technology might infringe.
  - FailEEStudent 7y ago
    Open-source information isn't export controlled but technical data is. You can imagine this causes alot of consternation with standards organizations b/c that line isn't exactly clear. I was just speaking to legal counsel at GSMA and their response was "no one knows what the law is unless the government says we violated it".
antpls 7y ago
Switzerland isn't a magical neutral land on Earth. It's a neutral place from the point of view of Europe because its terrain is difficult to practice for troops. On a virtual level (software, intellectual, legal), Switzerland is not more neutral than any other small country on Earth. It could have been Iceland. Automatically centralizing to Switzerland everything considered 'neutral' (neutrality is a debatable concept btw) is risky, stereotyping and doesn't look legit.
- thesausageking 7y ago
  I don't view this move as "centralizing" to Switzerland. They've left the US over concerns about the legal and regulatory environment there. Switzerland is a reasonably neutral in the on-going trade and IP disputes, so it a good choice for now. If that changes, the RISC-V foundation could always move again and relocate to Iceland or Singapore or somewhere else. As it becomes more and more common for teams and companies/foundations to be globally distributed, I think we'll see more of this movement, with talent flowing to the countries that have the most favorable environments.
dependenttypes 7y ago
> These groups are concerned U.S. authorities may decide that some closed-door technical discussions ... I do not see why they would not do open-door technical discussions then. Transparency is good.

The fact that Tom Cotton knows about RISC-V blows my mind. What doesn’t shock me though is his complete misunderstanding of how open standards work.

petre 7y ago
He most likely found out about it with the news that the foundation is moving overseas. Maybe lawmakers will get the message eventually?
gumby 7y ago
I’m sure the reporters called his office and spoke with an aid and received a generic and knee-jerk response based on what the reporter said. I don’t think he knows nor cares about risc-v nor the topic. Assuming what I wrote above is how it happened (95% likely) it should not reflect poorly on him. I have a low opinion of the man but I doubt this quote reflects anything on how he might vote if some related issue comes to the senate floor.

lone_haxx0r 7y ago

“The Chinese Communist Party is trying to circumvent our export control system to support national security threats like Huawei - we cannot let it succeed,” This is just comedy.

m0zg 7y ago
Why is this "comedy"? That's exactly what they are trying to do. Moreover, the US taxpayer is paying for it all. https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/2019-11-18%20PSI%20Staff%20Report%20-%20China's%20Talent%20Recruitment%20Plans%20Updated.pdf https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/2019-11-18%20PSI%...
- spamizbad 7y ago
  If your worried about China recruiting your talent maybe, like, make them want to stay in the US? This is one example of how elites in this country get to have their own form of socialism whereas say a humble computer scientist must be subjected to the whims of the invisible hand for the sake of preserving market efficiency.
  - m0zg 7y ago
    But you can't make foreign intelligence assets "stay in the US" as it were. I bet every single large tech company in the US has rather substantial numbers of Chinese (and other countries') spies embedded within it. They also get caught again, and again, and again. And remember it's only the idiots who carry secrets on their person that get caught, rather than just upload data straight to some servers in China. I bet there's quite a bit of that going on as well. The recent few cases are just baffling. The guy resigns and gets caught on the border exfiltrating trade secrets. For one thing, why resign? Just go - you'll get fired automatically when you don't return. For another, why carry this stuff in your suitcase? Just upload it to AWS in encrypted form sail through the customs with no problem at all. They are clearly not sending their best.
    - ngcc_hk 7y ago
      Or this explicit list of talents https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thousand_Talents_Program https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thousand_Talents_Program Strange and I still do not understand why they so explicit about it. The key is you cannot easy reside, study, work in China key U and technology program freely. But seems you can in Usa. An one sided war with one side powerful but leaking key assets. Hence all these shooting using software and chip.
    - throwawaypolicy 7y ago
      > But you can't make foreign intelligence assets "stay in the US" as it were You can though, it's called defecting. There's a long history of it. E.g. see this list of defectors from the soviet union: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Soviet_and_Eastern_Bloc_defectors https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Soviet_and_Eastern_Blo...
dang 7y ago
Please don't take HN threads into ideological or nationalistic flamewar. It's off topic here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

mikeyouse 7y ago

What exactly did people expect to happen with this bizarre trade war? Instead of pressuring 'bad actor' countries with more free trade and something like TPP, levying pointless tariffs was obviously going to drive any joint international groups overseas. Just brainless stuff.

losteric 7y ago
It's also domestic corruption, trading tariff waivers for corporate political support (or at least silence)
- kortilla 7y ago
  Do you consider it corruption to offer free money in exchange for votes (I.e. many of the contenders for the Democratic primary in the US)?
  - corporate_shi11 7y ago
    “A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury.” - Alexander Fraser Tytler
    - eru 7y ago
      Switzerland has been around as a (relatively) small government democracy for quite a while. There are regular direct democracy polls on spending and taxes.
      - corporate_shi11 7y ago
        Switzerland also doesn't have many poor people.
        newyankee 7y ago

jimbob45 7y ago

"[Too tight of regulation forces companies overseas]" This is why no one takes economists seriously. Not that he's right or wrong, just that his read on the situation is totally wrong.

mikeyouse 7y ago
You're misquoting him.. > The foundation’s move from Delaware to Switzerland may foreshadow further technology flight because of U.S. restrictions on dealing with some Chinese technology companies, said William Reinsch, who was undersecretary of commerce for export administration in the Clinton administration. > “There is a message for the government. The message is, if you clamp down on things too tightly this is what is going to happen. In a global supply chain world, companies have choices, and one choice is to go overseas,” he said. What's controversial about that? If Chinese companies want to contribute to Open Standards and US laws put all of the IP at risk, of course they're going to move to a better jurisdiction to serve their purposes.
- 6510 7y ago
  I was thinking the same thing but then it struck me they might be US companies who are much more intimately familiar with government doctoring. It might even be Berkley?
- stjohnswarts 7y ago
  This is a case where I would trust them because it -is- open source. However I support US efforts to keep Huawei out of core communications structures, at least in the USA, and hopefully Europeans will follow with US or Continental suppliers. Microchips make it very, vey easy to bury backdoors for Chinese intelligence agencies as well as put in encryption weaknesses. Say what you want about the US but there are pathways to prevent you from being railroaded by the government if you're willing to stand up to them. This isn't so in China, where you just get disappeared or imprisoned if you don't tow the party line.

Abishek_Muthian 7y ago

I appreciate and welcome this move by RISC-V foundation. With semiconductor industry being used as a major soft power, countries which don't have such power betting on RISC-V[1], it's wise to move to a neutral country. My only gripe being, there aren't many neutral countries which can stand up to powerful militarized nations. Edit: The reason, I mentioned lack of military power of neutral countries is because of the existence of law such as 'Hague Invasion Act'[2] which allows U.S. to invade Hague to liberate its personnel tried at International Criminal Court for war crimes. Neutral countries need military power to protect its Neutrality! [1]https://shakti.org.in https://shakti.org.in [2]https://www.hrw.org/news/2002/08/03/us-hague-invasion-act-becomes-law https://www.hrw.org/news/2002/08/03/us-hague-invasion-act-be...

pgeorgi 7y ago
In this case Switzerland seems to be a pretty good choice: compulsory military service, difficult terrain, nuclear power plants (and with them the infrastructure to build the bomb)
- Abishek_Muthian 7y ago
  Conscription is not as effective as a regular volunteer force. Atomic weapons or other WMD goes against the ethos of neutral countries which traditionally are pro-Human Rights. But I understand where you are coming at, perhaps it is because major military nations poses A-Bombs. I guess, if they are democratic countries we have no choice but to hope that their citizens can prevent it from getting used; My real worry is the non-democratic/pseudo democratic countries with A-Bombs. Edit : N-Bomb->A-Bomb.
  - pgeorgi 7y ago
    > Conscription is not as effective as a regular volunteer force. Switzerland's terrain wouldn't see regular war but guerilla warfare (including mined bridges and everything). Having trained marksmen in almost every household helps a lot in such a situation. > Atomic weapons or other WMD goes against the ethos of neutral countries which traditionally are pro-Human Rights. I think Switzerland would adopt a "whatever it takes" approach when attacked. At least that's what they credibly project, and so it's unlikely that they'll end up having to play it out.

coliveira 7y ago

This is a great move. It is time to punish countries that impose restrictions on technology. I don't want to be a prisoner in a place where technology is simply considered "illegal" because it doesn't further the interests of the ruling class.

onepointsixC 7y ago
This specifically furthers the interests of a ruling class, the Chinese Communist Party. It is explicitly giving the CCP an American funded and developed technology which they can use for further development of racially profiled mass surveillance for the continued genocide of the Uyghurs. This is an awful move.
- DethNinja 7y ago
  lol that’s a huge jump from developing open source cpu without backdoors to genocide of Uyghurs.
  - onepointsixC 7y ago
    It's not at all. RISC-V Foundation can develop open-source CPU's in the US as they have thus far. They are moving explicitly to circumvent US export restrictions to China. The CCP's mass surveillance in Xin Jiang is incredibly sophisticated[1]. It is simply not possible for them to accomplish this computationally without state of the art hardware which they will now have a new avenue to acquire. [1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/22/world/asia/china-surveillance-xinjiang.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/22/world/asia/china-surveill...
    - wsy 7y ago
      The impact on China's mass surveillance capabilities is negligible, because RISC-V work is open source already. What the foundation avoids by moving to Switzerland is fragmentation of their ecosystem due to US foreign policy decisions. Note that China is already among the technology leaders in the world. Even if cut off from the remaining world, they would have no issue in manufacturing and operating sophisticated surveillance infrastructure. So I can't see how the foundation would help suppressed minorities in China by staying in US.

ngcc_hk 7y ago

If it is fully open may be. But given it is sponsored by huawei abd alibaba that is a move to side with chinazi. It would not work.

ngcc_hk 7y ago

It is not a trade war it is Cold War 2.0. You can side with Soviet Union and trade with them in 1.0 I supposed. Ruling class? You meant the communists in china? Talk to the Turks and hongkongers and explain what is the interest of ruling class.

corporate_shi11 7y ago
You're getting downvoted because people would rather criticize capitalist democracy than a nominally communist dictatorship. Many on HN, like many Leftist "intellectuals" probably would (and/or did) sympathize with the Soviets.
- x0054 7y ago
  Ironically no one is downvoting him. Just you.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- tomc1985 7y ago
  > Many on HN, like many Leftist "intellectuals" probably would (and/or did) sympathize with the Soviets. On what grounds do you base such an absurd accusation?
- Taniwha 7y ago
  But the problem here is not with a communist dictatorship, it's with a capitalist republic run by a capricious idiot who's likely to do something stupid like claim everyone's open source work on risc-v as belonging to him and his country - the smart thing to do here is to move somewhere more stable which is what's happening
- atoav 7y ago
  You’d probably call me a leftist although I don’t have any group that I would feel at home with. It is quite hard for me to find any idiot in my friends circles that would defend the soviets or sympathize with them. As somebody who studied philosophy and reads quite a lot I can assure you that the amount of left intellectuals who are still defending the SU is equally low — at least in Europe. So what you are postulating here seems to be colored strongly by your own world view and where you live. Instead of offering us a interesting new perspective that would help leftists to leave their own bubbles, your comment seems to only show your own lack of experience in that area. You might have missed for example that “the left” is usually much more fractured and less uniform than the right: most things you could validly criticise have pretty certainly already been criticised by another left fraction or even within one fraction. So doing as if there was any unified opinion here says rather more about your own bias than anything of substance about the other side. Many US observers often seem to paint a black and white picture of what is much more nuanced. E.g. saying that everybody who doesn’t support the silly ideas of your president is automatically on the side of the Russians certainly boldly outlines your views, but suffers from the significant disadvantage of not describing reality. Let me assure you: especially conservative Europeans are fed up with how the US acts on trade lately.

known 7y ago

IKEA is registered as Stichting Ingka Foundation a Dutch-registered, tax-exempt, non-profit-making legal entity https://archive.md/4iQp https://archive.md/4iQp

eru 7y ago
Wrong thread?
- Snetry 7y ago
  Probably but still interesting to know

ngcc_hk 7y ago

Btw it looked very strategic move by chinazi. Is any other especially mobile one moves like this?

dang 7y ago
Would you please stop using HN for nationalistic battle and posting flamebait? You've been doing that a lot lately, and we ban accounts that do that. Fortunately your account has posted good (for HN) comments before that; please do that here, and not this. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

anfilt 7y ago

Considering the chinese goverment the trade war make sense. However, Risc-V decision makes equal sense. Staying neutral and moving to place where they can avoid politcal pressure is good for an open foundation.

chj 7y ago

It is interesting to see Switzerland becoming a technology hub in the post blockchain era.

rolltiide 7y ago
speculation drives innovation
NonEUCitizen 7y ago
Switzerland has been a tech hub for a very long time.
- gumby 7y ago
  At the beginning of the Second World War it was still an impoverished agrarian country. I personally don’t consider that a very long time. This opinion is due to the longer tenure as tech “hub” of various places in the UK, France, and USA. There is some great tech coming out of Switzerland but I’m not sure there’s a really a connection between hosting standards organizations and having a technical infrastructure.
stjohnswarts 7y ago
was there ever a blockchain era? All I ever heard of was the blockchain bubble? Sure it's useful but it's not the end of all traditional exchange and contracts like it's most religious adherents subscribed to.
- wayoutthere 7y ago
  There was blockchain hype, but it was mainly among young adults. Those of us who are older have been through enough hype cycles to know that the tech is only as good as the people running it, and "a shadowy cabal of exchange owners whose names we don't know" is honestly way worse than "a shadowy cabal of publicly traded banks".
ninkendo 7y ago
> post blockchain era There was a blockchain era?

nine_zeros 7y ago

Great work. Let over politicized countries fight each other while the rest of the world moves ahead. >“The Chinese Communist Party is trying to circumvent our export control system to support national security threats like Huawei - we cannot let it succeed,” Representative Mike Gallagher, a Republican from Wisconsin, told Reuters. I mean, one cannot make this more obvious. The rest of the world really doesn't want to be subservient to US paranoia

pnako 7y ago
The rest of the world is doing the exact same thing. Sovereign nations should control their own technical infrastructure and not rely on American, Chinese, Russian or European technology. Open source is certainly a big step in the right direction toward a world where we can better rely on technology. But we're not there yet, when it comes to hardware.
tanilama 7y ago
Yep Truth is, no one can stop any one doing anything. Free market can dissuade your competitors from creating their own supply chain because that won't make economical sense. But once that illusion is gone, the ones that are getting hurt is the current market leaders.
onepointsixC 7y ago
Ah yes, let's do business without concerns of morality. Make western funded technology available CCP SOE's. After all, they gotta power their "exciting" and "innovative"[1] algorithms with some sort of architecture. Less we miss anyone[2]. [1]https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2019/11/12/chinese-firm-sold-cctv-cameras-nhs-advertised-racial-profiling/ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2019/11/12/chinese-firm... [2]:https://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2019/sep/23/footage-blindfolded-shackled-prisoners-china-video https://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2019/sep/23/footage-...
- wayoutthere 7y ago
  Morality is simply "things I like" and "things I don't like". It's not a good basis for policy, especially when moral standards vary significantly between individuals. It's a fool's errand to try to impose your morals on another person as if they were somehow superior (though that arrogance is the foundation of the American psyche). You literally just can't.

peter_retief 7y ago

One has to wonder if this isn't pressure from the Chinese regime.

RealStickman 7y ago
More being sick of the US' controlling attitude.
- peter_retief 7y ago
  Probably some of that but there is a scary attempt to regulate the world by a ruthless regime. Its a question that must be asked, sadly
  - NohatCoder 7y ago
    Indeed, and relocating away from that regime is a good first step in cutting ties.
    - onepointsixC 7y ago
      Imagine being this excited to stick it to the US so a totalitarian country could have access to a US-funded technology for use of genocide.
      - Dylan16807 7y ago
        It's open source, everyone has access no matter what.

syntaxing 7y ago

I was just reading on the state of union memo released this past September by the RISC-V foundation. I'm kind of curious how the economics works. I was under the impression that a good chunk of the funding came from US tax payer money (a mixture of UC Berkeley and DARPA). I know that RISC-V is starting to become more popular so they're definitely self fundable in the near future by many other means. I'm curious if the funding methodology from the US gov will change as the globalization landscape changes in the coming years.

tanilama 7y ago

Good move. Let 'open' stay true to its very meaning. It is a good chance , or may I say the best chance for RISC-V to seize influence, because now the will and capitals are aligned to make an alternative ecosystem that is not controlled by US single handedly.

neiman 7y ago

Is RISC-V fear is theoretical or is it based on some specific example(s) that happened to them, or some other foundation, in the past?

Tepix 7y ago
It's pressure in general. Look at what ARM has gone through in the last months.
- porker 7y ago
  > Look at what ARM has gone through in the last months. What has it gone through? I haven't seen any news stories specifically about this.
  - my123 7y ago
    https://news.yahoo.com/uk-chip-designer-arm-complying-u-rules-huawei-113839005--finance.html https://news.yahoo.com/uk-chip-designer-arm-complying-u-rule... They resumed after the ban was kinda temporarily suspended... but there's a risk.
    - FailEEStudent 7y ago
      Well, not really. RISC-V is open-source so export controls don't apply so it seems to be more of a theoretical risk right now. https://www.ucop.edu/ethics-compliance-audit-services/compliance/export-controls/export-faq.html https://www.ucop.edu/ethics-compliance-audit-services/compli... As for ARM, they initially stopped shipments to Huawei (it was an internal email that got leaked) but since it used less than 25% US-origin technology, US export controls don't apply and ARM could ship it
      - my123 7y ago
        It's more complex than that, Cortex-A76 for example was designed by ARM's team in Austin, TX...

stjohnswarts 7y ago

Good, I hope they can insulate themselves and be very successful in their pursuits.

Merrill 7y ago

It's a logical choice. Switzerland is where ISO, IEC, and ITU among other international standards organizations are located.

quack01 7y ago

Does anyone have figures on how much money the US federal government has spent to develop the RISC architecture?

nabla9 7y ago
RISC-V originated from 5 year project called Parallel Computing Laboratory (Par Lab) at UC Berkeley. Par Lab received no direct federal funding. It was funded mainly by Intel and Microsoft and State of California.
- riversflow 7y ago
  Was that funding tax deductible?
- quack01 7y ago
  This may have been true in the early years, but my understanding is that DARPA has played a large role in funding the development of RISC architecture. [1] [1] https://riscv.org/2018/07/ieee-spectrum-article-darpa-plans-a-major-remake-of-u-s-electronics/ https://riscv.org/2018/07/ieee-spectrum-article-darpa-plans-...
dependenttypes 7y ago
RISC and RISC-V are different things.

gonational 7y ago

> wants to ensure that universities, governments and companies outside the United States can help develop its open-source technology Read as: > wants to ensure that China... Let me see if I understand this correctly. US tax dollars funded (in part, via UC Berkeley) this technology, and now this organization is moving outside of the US specifically so that it can work with China in ways that the US would not appreciate. And we (“we” being an audience almost entirely based in the Occident) are all cheering this on? Do you think they are worried about that US blocking them from working with Oxford, or with the Spanish government? This is because they got money from Alibaba. Is this the same group that was defending South Park and bashing on the NBA just weeks ago? Gimme a fuckin break.

Isinlor 7y ago
Both sentiments are pointed in the same direction - more freedom. Also, Blizzard, South Park, NBA are part of popular culture in the west. Cooperation with China is endangering that culture, so you see backlash. Standards related to RISC-V are not part of popular culture and there is no danger of Chinese censorship. There is however danger of USA protectionism. And yes - I can see Americans using microchip intellectual property against Europeans. EU is right there on the list of trade foes with China and Russia according to USA president.
- swiley 7y ago
  I’m all for cooperation with China and the diminishment of national culture (not forgetting it but also accepting others) and a better understood global culture. What I’m not ok with (and why I think there’s backlash toward the cooperation with China by these companies) is the way the Chinese government treats people. Harvesting organs from political prisoners and the violence toward protesters isn’t ok. Ever. I don’t care if it’s Trump or Merkel or Xi that’s doing it it’s not ok and that’s not something people should cooperate with.
- some_random 7y ago
  > USA protectionism Is it just maybe possible that the US public is waking up to the ongoing genocide, ethnic cleansings, and widespread human rights violations in China, which may lead to the state being sanctioned like so many other despicable regimes?

geogra4 7y ago

wonder if IEEE will also move someday. the US tried to stop Huawei employees from peer reviewing papers https://pandaily.com/ieee-forced-to-ban-huawei-employees-from-peer-reviewing-papers/ https://pandaily.com/ieee-forced-to-ban-huawei-employees-fro...

gumby 7y ago

I was a minor foot soldier in the export control wars of the 1990s (via Switzerland too, as it happened). These rules were stupid then and are terrible now. Americans would be less safe had foreign contributions to cryptography been kept out. In addition these export rules act as price subsidies for foreign companies (much as the recent agricultural tariffs have helped Brazilian farmers). If you consider it a national security issue, just note that 1940s Germans had to develop everything themselves while the allies developed and swapped around technology with trans-national teams.

microtherion 7y ago

I'm not sure this move accomplishes that much. It seems none of the technology is moving abroad, just the legal seat. And on trade issues, Switzerland moves pretty much in lockstep with the US, at least officially (cf. Iran sanctions). To me, this smacks of the kind of legalist thinking that software engineers are prone to: Assuming that if some legal construct is implemented according to some rules, governments and the legal system will disregard the actual physical reality, and will refrain from employing their political leverage. Then again, I'm sure the RISC-V Foundation has professional legal advice at their disposal.

pavon 7y ago
I curious about what the legal implications of this really are. As a layman, it seems to me that US Export Control laws still exist, so if any of the technical data being discussed in the standards meetings would be considered an export before, it still will now. The change is that the liability has shifted off of the Foundation and onto the American members. If the Foundation as a whole couldn't determine its legal responsibilities, the individual members aren't going to have any more clarity. Any chilling effect of US law and policy will therefore result in US members reducing their participation, rather than members of other countries being uncertain about their ability to use the technology. However, given that much of the early work was done by US institutions, if any US contributions were considered to be unallowable exports, that would surely include contributions that already make up foundations of the specification. This move won't undo that, and thus could result in a worst of both worlds situation where members in other countries can't make use of current standards (if they want to export to the US), and US members can't contribute to future standards. Of course this is all assuming that RISC-V standards are actually covered by US export control laws, and that those laws will be enforced. Probably nothing would come of this either way, although the pessimist in me worries that this move itself might trigger protectionists in the US government to go looking for reasons why RISC-V technology might infringe.
- FailEEStudent 7y ago
  Open-source information isn't export controlled but technical data is. You can imagine this causes alot of consternation with standards organizations b/c that line isn't exactly clear. I was just speaking to legal counsel at GSMA and their response was "no one knows what the law is unless the government says we violated it".

antpls 7y ago

Switzerland isn't a magical neutral land on Earth. It's a neutral place from the point of view of Europe because its terrain is difficult to practice for troops. On a virtual level (software, intellectual, legal), Switzerland is not more neutral than any other small country on Earth. It could have been Iceland. Automatically centralizing to Switzerland everything considered 'neutral' (neutrality is a debatable concept btw) is risky, stereotyping and doesn't look legit.

thesausageking 7y ago
I don't view this move as "centralizing" to Switzerland. They've left the US over concerns about the legal and regulatory environment there. Switzerland is a reasonably neutral in the on-going trade and IP disputes, so it a good choice for now. If that changes, the RISC-V foundation could always move again and relocate to Iceland or Singapore or somewhere else. As it becomes more and more common for teams and companies/foundations to be globally distributed, I think we'll see more of this movement, with talent flowing to the countries that have the most favorable environments.

dependenttypes 7y ago

> These groups are concerned U.S. authorities may decide that some closed-door technical discussions ... I do not see why they would not do open-door technical discussions then. Transparency is good.