3 ms·

When has China become "Middle East" and does it means that these GPUs will be banned in Israel as well?

passwordoops 3y ago
The goal is to prevent resale to China. That goal is impossible, but this would add an extra step in their view and draws a clear line in the proverbial sand. Also pretty sure they mean "political" and not "regional" middle East, so Israel wouldn't be banned. I do feel bad for the researchers and techs over there with legitimate needs for these GPUs
- bushbaba 3y ago
  Those researchers likely can still use public cloud environments. Many middle eastern companies have a U.S. branch
- slim 3y ago
  It just means China has to buy them from Israeli companies. Watch exponential growth of H100 consumption in Israel ;-)
- prmoustache 3y ago
  > Also pretty sure they mean "political" and not "regional" middle East, so Israel wouldn't be banned. I am not sure there is a clear definition of that. But yes for some reason Israel and Turkia compete in Eurovision while Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and Egypt while these are also members of the UER. Sounds to me like the definition is more about the religion and language than political.| Having said that I checked again and Israel is not Middle-East, nor is Middle-East a real geographical area. For example according to wikipedia Egypt and Turkey are considered middle-east while Israel/Jordan/Syria/Lebanon are considered West Asia. Despite the fact that Egypt is more in the West than these 4 countries. We also make a strange distinction between Central-Asia and Middle-East which semantically should mean the same thing. All this to say that the title of the article and the umbrella word "Middle-East" should stop being used and governments as well as news outlets should be more specific.
  - passwordoops 3y ago
    It is funny how the term persisted considering the use of Near and Far East are out dated. But I'm not even sure we can say completely cultural because in some places I see Iran lumped in with the "Middle East" grouping. Might as well just go for an acronym a la BRICS
csomar 3y ago
This is just a ban on the UAE Tech sector (I don't think Saudi Arabia has any noticeable tech industry or their efforts will lead anywhere). The GPUs can be resold to China (either physically or through compute) from anywhere in the world. If there is a premium, some people (Chinese investors?) will do the job.
- numbers_guy 3y ago
  The Saudis have been paying lots of professors buttloads of money to pretend they are associated with Saudi universities. Recently I have been seeing professors at western universities claiming a dual appointment with some Saudi university.
  - csomar 3y ago
    This is more reputation washing than real research.
mike_d 3y ago
ME countries have relatively lax business laws if you pay the right people and financial/business records are hard to get ahold of as an international investigator. After US sanctions hit Russia, many of the companies magically were headquartered in the UAE months later. China was using a Syrian branch of an African company to funnel restricted computer equipment to Iran. Back in March a UAE based operation was sanctioned for washing Iranian oil via other Middle Eastern countries for sale on the global market.

The goal is to prevent resale to China. That goal is impossible, but this would add an extra step in their view and draws a clear line in the proverbial sand. Also pretty sure they mean "political" and not "regional" middle East, so Israel wouldn't be banned. I do feel bad for the researchers and techs over there with legitimate needs for these GPUs

bushbaba 3y ago
Those researchers likely can still use public cloud environments. Many middle eastern companies have a U.S. branch
slim 3y ago
It just means China has to buy them from Israeli companies. Watch exponential growth of H100 consumption in Israel ;-)
prmoustache 3y ago
> Also pretty sure they mean "political" and not "regional" middle East, so Israel wouldn't be banned. I am not sure there is a clear definition of that. But yes for some reason Israel and Turkia compete in Eurovision while Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and Egypt while these are also members of the UER. Sounds to me like the definition is more about the religion and language than political.| Having said that I checked again and Israel is not Middle-East, nor is Middle-East a real geographical area. For example according to wikipedia Egypt and Turkey are considered middle-east while Israel/Jordan/Syria/Lebanon are considered West Asia. Despite the fact that Egypt is more in the West than these 4 countries. We also make a strange distinction between Central-Asia and Middle-East which semantically should mean the same thing. All this to say that the title of the article and the umbrella word "Middle-East" should stop being used and governments as well as news outlets should be more specific.
- passwordoops 3y ago
  It is funny how the term persisted considering the use of Near and Far East are out dated. But I'm not even sure we can say completely cultural because in some places I see Iran lumped in with the "Middle East" grouping. Might as well just go for an acronym a la BRICS

csomar 3y ago

This is just a ban on the UAE Tech sector (I don't think Saudi Arabia has any noticeable tech industry or their efforts will lead anywhere). The GPUs can be resold to China (either physically or through compute) from anywhere in the world. If there is a premium, some people (Chinese investors?) will do the job.

numbers_guy 3y ago
The Saudis have been paying lots of professors buttloads of money to pretend they are associated with Saudi universities. Recently I have been seeing professors at western universities claiming a dual appointment with some Saudi university.
- csomar 3y ago
  This is more reputation washing than real research.

mike_d 3y ago

ME countries have relatively lax business laws if you pay the right people and financial/business records are hard to get ahold of as an international investigator. After US sanctions hit Russia, many of the companies magically were headquartered in the UAE months later. China was using a Syrian branch of an African company to funnel restricted computer equipment to Iran. Back in March a UAE based operation was sanctioned for washing Iranian oil via other Middle Eastern countries for sale on the global market.