7 ms·

> This will take time. Decoupling is not an instantaneous process. China spent two decades becoming the workshop of the world; the rest of the developing world

by Jupe 3y ago

> This will take time. Decoupling is not an instantaneous process. China spent two decades becoming the workshop of the world; the rest of the developing world isn’t going to mirror that accomplishment in one or two years. It is all about dependency trees. The US decides to divert imports from China to other countries, which in turn may import from China. This reminds me of my day-to-day work so much; especially w.r.t. transitive dependency management. So: If service A is 100% dependent upon service B which is 100% dependent upon service C, then service A is 100% dependent on service C. At some point you need redundancy to protect against disruptions, outages, supply chain issues, policy changes, wars (either physical or economic), etc. My (probably silly) question is: Does anyone know of "building block" or "core" services (such as authentication, authorization, BLOB storage, data storage, queuing) which are multi-cloud by design? Meaning service X offers SLAs for service endpoints hosted in AWS, GCP and Azure? If/when any of these "go down", consumers can (automatically?) flip a switch to route to another cloud service implementation?

couchand 3y ago
This has always been one of the selling points of CockroachDB, the ability to seamlessly run multi-cloud redundancy.
- Jupe 3y ago
  Awesome - good to know. Thanks! I'll read this later: https://www.cockroachlabs.com/blog/multi-cloud-deployment/ https://www.cockroachlabs.com/blog/multi-cloud-deployment/
A_D_E_P_T 3y ago
> It is all about dependency trees. The US decides to divert imports from China to other countries, which in turn may import from China. This is already happening with more than ~80% of products that are "Made in Vietnam" and at least ~40% of products that are "Made in Korea." Not only do the raw materials come from China, but most of the work is done in China. The product is shipped overland from a Chinese factory to Vietnam or Korea, then some screws are tightened, some paint is slapped on, or a label is applied, and the product is re-exported. Among other things, this is effective for tariff evasion. And it's usually at least somewhat legitimate. It doesn't take much to make a product that's assembled in China "Made in Vietnam," even in a legal sense. Consider: https://casetext.com/case/ferrostaal-metals-corp-v-us https://casetext.com/case/ferrostaal-metals-corp-v-us Basically, there was a tariff on Japanese steel. US-based plaintiffs -- steel distributors -- sent that steel to New Zealand, had it galvanized, and re-exported it to the USA as a "Made in New Zealand" product. A Judge holds that the galvanization process (which is laughably cheap) is enough to render the steel "Made in New Zealand." When all's said and done, Chinese factories haven't slowed down and Chinese GDP is still rising (by more than American GDP) which tells you that the "decoupling" has to be in some respect illusory.
- FreshStart 3y ago
  How is this suddenly possible against the "physics" of free market forces, that were unable to move when it was about wages, workers rights or the environment? Almost as if it's all made up..
- Jupe 3y ago
  Agreed. I'm no macro-economist; I was trying to relate the dependency tree aspect back to my are of work. But, you appear correct, the decoupling does appear to be an illusion.
- throwawaymaths 3y ago
  > When all's said and done, Chinese factories haven't slowed down and Chinese GDP is still rising (by more than American GDP) which tells you that the "decoupling" has to be in some respect illusory. Can we really know that anymore? China has stopped publishing a majority of economic indicators.
  - reisse 3y ago
    If you don't believe Chinese statistics, you can check that US import from China is back to pre-COVID volumes and rising. Honestly, I'm tired of this "oh they're totalitarian, so we cannot believe their statistics when it's good" stance. It looks so much like a comfortable self-deceit.
    - throwawsf 3y ago
      [flagged]
    - prepend 3y ago
      > Honestly, I'm tired of this "oh they're totalitarian, so we cannot believe their statistics when it's good" stance. It looks so much like a comfortable self-deceit. I’m tired of it too, but I think it’s better than “not use any data points” or “trust the super subjective data points put out by a totalitarian regime so they aren’t comparable to other countries.” I don’t think the US is perfect, but economic indicators that they put out are probably as good as they get, all things considered.
norswap 3y ago
The article addresses this point directly.
bluGill 3y ago
GM traces all their dependency trees down to the mines or other sources of raw materials. This is often 6-7 levels deep. However they know what to watch for in the news and so when something happens they can jump to find an alternate, which often gives them 3 months before the production lines stop. They also do this so that they know nobody is using slave labor.
- davoneus 3y ago
  Yeah, I'm not convinced, given GM's (and most automakers) reaction to Covid and the continuing chip shortage. Maybe things have changed; I'd certainly be glad to hear it. But we all know of Wall Street's long history of hatred towards physical inventory.
  - giantrobot 3y ago
    > But we all know of Wall Street's long history of hatred towards physical inventory. Accounting and taxes on physical inventory are pretty stupid and cause a lot of Wall Street's hate for inventory. The more costs there are to storing inventory the less desirable or even viable it is to store inventory.
  - bluGill 3y ago
    GM miscalculated what COVID would do and made mistakes. Having information isn't always enough to make the right decisions. All we know from COVID is GM isn't perfectly able to mitigate issues, but they still try.
  - wewtyflakes 3y ago
    When all countries shut down, it does matter? There is no alternate or backup. What could you have reasonably expected GM to do, even if they had perfect information?
    - lostapathy 3y ago
      Not cancel all their orders and end up at the end of the line for chips.
nonethewiser 3y ago
There is also on shoring, which isn’t switching China from a direct to transitive dependency.
cnj 3y ago
Answering your technical question: Some companies let you deploy their "building blocks" onto multiple clouds (you typically choose the exact region/availability zone), and then also allow you to build proper multi-cloud deployments. There is usually no switch to flip, but these deployments (if properly setup) should tolerate if one region/cloud goes down. Two examples from the top of my head: Confluent Kafka: https://developer.confluent.io/courses/hybrid-cloud/intro/ https://developer.confluent.io/courses/hybrid-cloud/intro/ MongoDB Atlas: https://www.mongodb.com/docs/atlas/cluster-config/multi-cloud-distribution/ https://www.mongodb.com/docs/atlas/cluster-config/multi-clou... For higher level services, I can't think of an example. For the examples above, you're still thinking at VM level, whereas you typically don't do that if you purchase a higher level service.
no_wizard 3y ago
In order for automatic switching to work though, you'd have to propagate everything between all 3 services, at all times, no? Isn't that cost prohibitive?
- dghlsakjg 3y ago
  That’s exactly it. It’s not that hard to store files on x number of cloud services. It’s very hard to convince the money people that we should double our cloud storage bills in case all of AWS goes down.
csomar 3y ago
Let's say you have a dependency A from China. But all the software developers that work and specialize in A, live in China. If you ban dependency A, what you'll have is a dependency B from Mexico that is calling dependency A. In order to really replace A, you'll need to hire, train and form software developers specializing in A. This is both time consuming and expensive. This falls in the same line of some people (economists) who think that printing money will generate wealth. Sounds familiar?
throwaway290 3y ago
Every new level of dependency is an opportunity to refactor and swap deeper dependency out. There is a big diff between using library A and using your own frontend B that now depends on A but can swap it out easily for X.

by Jupe 3y ago

couchand 3y ago

This has always been one of the selling points of CockroachDB, the ability to seamlessly run multi-cloud redundancy.

Jupe 3y ago
Awesome - good to know. Thanks! I'll read this later: https://www.cockroachlabs.com/blog/multi-cloud-deployment/ https://www.cockroachlabs.com/blog/multi-cloud-deployment/

A_D_E_P_T 3y ago

> It is all about dependency trees. The US decides to divert imports from China to other countries, which in turn may import from China. This is already happening with more than ~80% of products that are "Made in Vietnam" and at least ~40% of products that are "Made in Korea." Not only do the raw materials come from China, but most of the work is done in China. The product is shipped overland from a Chinese factory to Vietnam or Korea, then some screws are tightened, some paint is slapped on, or a label is applied, and the product is re-exported. Among other things, this is effective for tariff evasion. And it's usually at least somewhat legitimate. It doesn't take much to make a product that's assembled in China "Made in Vietnam," even in a legal sense. Consider: https://casetext.com/case/ferrostaal-metals-corp-v-us https://casetext.com/case/ferrostaal-metals-corp-v-us Basically, there was a tariff on Japanese steel. US-based plaintiffs -- steel distributors -- sent that steel to New Zealand, had it galvanized, and re-exported it to the USA as a "Made in New Zealand" product. A Judge holds that the galvanization process (which is laughably cheap) is enough to render the steel "Made in New Zealand." When all's said and done, Chinese factories haven't slowed down and Chinese GDP is still rising (by more than American GDP) which tells you that the "decoupling" has to be in some respect illusory.

FreshStart 3y ago
How is this suddenly possible against the "physics" of free market forces, that were unable to move when it was about wages, workers rights or the environment? Almost as if it's all made up..
Jupe 3y ago
Agreed. I'm no macro-economist; I was trying to relate the dependency tree aspect back to my are of work. But, you appear correct, the decoupling does appear to be an illusion.
throwawaymaths 3y ago
> When all's said and done, Chinese factories haven't slowed down and Chinese GDP is still rising (by more than American GDP) which tells you that the "decoupling" has to be in some respect illusory. Can we really know that anymore? China has stopped publishing a majority of economic indicators.
- reisse 3y ago
  If you don't believe Chinese statistics, you can check that US import from China is back to pre-COVID volumes and rising. Honestly, I'm tired of this "oh they're totalitarian, so we cannot believe their statistics when it's good" stance. It looks so much like a comfortable self-deceit.
  - throwawsf 3y ago
    [flagged]
  - prepend 3y ago
    > Honestly, I'm tired of this "oh they're totalitarian, so we cannot believe their statistics when it's good" stance. It looks so much like a comfortable self-deceit. I’m tired of it too, but I think it’s better than “not use any data points” or “trust the super subjective data points put out by a totalitarian regime so they aren’t comparable to other countries.” I don’t think the US is perfect, but economic indicators that they put out are probably as good as they get, all things considered.

norswap 3y ago

The article addresses this point directly.

bluGill 3y ago

GM traces all their dependency trees down to the mines or other sources of raw materials. This is often 6-7 levels deep. However they know what to watch for in the news and so when something happens they can jump to find an alternate, which often gives them 3 months before the production lines stop. They also do this so that they know nobody is using slave labor.

davoneus 3y ago
Yeah, I'm not convinced, given GM's (and most automakers) reaction to Covid and the continuing chip shortage. Maybe things have changed; I'd certainly be glad to hear it. But we all know of Wall Street's long history of hatred towards physical inventory.
- giantrobot 3y ago
  > But we all know of Wall Street's long history of hatred towards physical inventory. Accounting and taxes on physical inventory are pretty stupid and cause a lot of Wall Street's hate for inventory. The more costs there are to storing inventory the less desirable or even viable it is to store inventory.
- bluGill 3y ago
  GM miscalculated what COVID would do and made mistakes. Having information isn't always enough to make the right decisions. All we know from COVID is GM isn't perfectly able to mitigate issues, but they still try.
- wewtyflakes 3y ago
  When all countries shut down, it does matter? There is no alternate or backup. What could you have reasonably expected GM to do, even if they had perfect information?
  - lostapathy 3y ago
    Not cancel all their orders and end up at the end of the line for chips.

nonethewiser 3y ago

There is also on shoring, which isn’t switching China from a direct to transitive dependency.

cnj 3y ago

Answering your technical question: Some companies let you deploy their "building blocks" onto multiple clouds (you typically choose the exact region/availability zone), and then also allow you to build proper multi-cloud deployments. There is usually no switch to flip, but these deployments (if properly setup) should tolerate if one region/cloud goes down. Two examples from the top of my head: Confluent Kafka: https://developer.confluent.io/courses/hybrid-cloud/intro/ https://developer.confluent.io/courses/hybrid-cloud/intro/ MongoDB Atlas: https://www.mongodb.com/docs/atlas/cluster-config/multi-cloud-distribution/ https://www.mongodb.com/docs/atlas/cluster-config/multi-clou... For higher level services, I can't think of an example. For the examples above, you're still thinking at VM level, whereas you typically don't do that if you purchase a higher level service.

no_wizard 3y ago

In order for automatic switching to work though, you'd have to propagate everything between all 3 services, at all times, no? Isn't that cost prohibitive?

dghlsakjg 3y ago
That’s exactly it. It’s not that hard to store files on x number of cloud services. It’s very hard to convince the money people that we should double our cloud storage bills in case all of AWS goes down.

csomar 3y ago

Let's say you have a dependency A from China. But all the software developers that work and specialize in A, live in China. If you ban dependency A, what you'll have is a dependency B from Mexico that is calling dependency A. In order to really replace A, you'll need to hire, train and form software developers specializing in A. This is both time consuming and expensive. This falls in the same line of some people (economists) who think that printing money will generate wealth. Sounds familiar?

throwaway290 3y ago

Every new level of dependency is an opportunity to refactor and swap deeper dependency out. There is a big diff between using library A and using your own frontend B that now depends on A but can swap it out easily for X.