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IMHO it is not stupid. It's the forever challenge of communicating with non-technical people. These topics/questions/points are so badly written that people wh

IMHO it is not stupid. It's the forever challenge of communicating with non-technical people. These topics/questions/points are so badly written that people who understand the topic can actually make use of them to create effective rules. If you ever discussed requirements for something with non-technical people, that's the way it goes... I'm curious to understand, on your view, what would be more effective measures?

monocasa 3y ago
> I'm curious to understand, on your view, what would be more effective measures? If you absolutely wanted action, investing in US based RISC-V chips would maintain US leading edge capacity in the space. However, arguably no action is one of the most effective options. Quite a bit of RISC-V leadership is already based (or has one foot in) the US. Between Tenstorrent via Jim Keller, Ventana, and Rivos, the leading edge designs are US based. Cutting them off from the works convinces the rest of the world to invest even harder to these American companies. Protectionism here kneecaps these US companies and creates more competitors to them.
- hashtag-til 3y ago
  I think there is plenty of evidence that companies can be successful and at the same time compliant in not giving strategic technological advances to oppressive regimes that will weaponise such tech.
  - monocasa 3y ago
    I think for leading edge technology, if these regimes can reproduce your work at all, whether they do so is more about the incentive structures in place. By restricting access, you provide the incentives for them to truly indigenously invest in the technology. By restricting access, you actually remove all control of the technology you had in the first place. After a bunch of back and forth, the US blocked access to Intel chips used in the Sunway Tianhe-2 supercomputer. The next version, the Sunway TaihuLight, was the fastest supercomputer in the world for two years, running on indigenously designed Chinese chips.
  - Dylan16807 3y ago
    Instruction set specs are not a strategic technological advance that can be weaponized. They just say what a chip should do. They don't help you make one that's more sophisticated than a basic unoptimized microcontroller, and "basic unoptimized microcontroller" is something you can get random college graduates to do.
pjc50 3y ago
Effective to what end? "It's illegal to talk about certain things, but only if you know Chinese nationals are listening" is an insane position to take, especially in the context of the US's otherwise extremely liberal approach to free speech. Or are we arguing that people's private work is in fact some kind of state secret?
- oasisaimlessly 3y ago
  ITAR and EAR would like a word. "It's illegal to talk about certain things, but only if you know Chinese nationals are listening" has applied to a lot of things for a long time.
  - OhMeadhbh 3y ago
    There was a case a while back when a satellite guy answered a question about power requirements for a cubesat while overseas for the launch. When he got home the FBI talked to him about violating ITAR. I think he was able to work it all out with the application of multiple tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees. But the first rule of ITAR club is you do not talk about ITAR club related technical details when at a launch facility in southern Russia.
dkjaudyeqooe 3y ago
I think the existing measures are well targeted and effective. There's no point trying to stop people from participating in standards, research or discussions, since they're all inherently open. But restricting access to EUV machines and other proprietary high performance implementations makes sense. Of course both of those are independent of ISA.

monocasa 3y ago

> I'm curious to understand, on your view, what would be more effective measures? If you absolutely wanted action, investing in US based RISC-V chips would maintain US leading edge capacity in the space. However, arguably no action is one of the most effective options. Quite a bit of RISC-V leadership is already based (or has one foot in) the US. Between Tenstorrent via Jim Keller, Ventana, and Rivos, the leading edge designs are US based. Cutting them off from the works convinces the rest of the world to invest even harder to these American companies. Protectionism here kneecaps these US companies and creates more competitors to them.

hashtag-til 3y ago
I think there is plenty of evidence that companies can be successful and at the same time compliant in not giving strategic technological advances to oppressive regimes that will weaponise such tech.
- monocasa 3y ago
  I think for leading edge technology, if these regimes can reproduce your work at all, whether they do so is more about the incentive structures in place. By restricting access, you provide the incentives for them to truly indigenously invest in the technology. By restricting access, you actually remove all control of the technology you had in the first place. After a bunch of back and forth, the US blocked access to Intel chips used in the Sunway Tianhe-2 supercomputer. The next version, the Sunway TaihuLight, was the fastest supercomputer in the world for two years, running on indigenously designed Chinese chips.
- Dylan16807 3y ago
  Instruction set specs are not a strategic technological advance that can be weaponized. They just say what a chip should do. They don't help you make one that's more sophisticated than a basic unoptimized microcontroller, and "basic unoptimized microcontroller" is something you can get random college graduates to do.

pjc50 3y ago

Effective to what end? "It's illegal to talk about certain things, but only if you know Chinese nationals are listening" is an insane position to take, especially in the context of the US's otherwise extremely liberal approach to free speech. Or are we arguing that people's private work is in fact some kind of state secret?

oasisaimlessly 3y ago
ITAR and EAR would like a word. "It's illegal to talk about certain things, but only if you know Chinese nationals are listening" has applied to a lot of things for a long time.
- OhMeadhbh 3y ago
  There was a case a while back when a satellite guy answered a question about power requirements for a cubesat while overseas for the launch. When he got home the FBI talked to him about violating ITAR. I think he was able to work it all out with the application of multiple tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees. But the first rule of ITAR club is you do not talk about ITAR club related technical details when at a launch facility in southern Russia.

dkjaudyeqooe 3y ago

I think the existing measures are well targeted and effective. There's no point trying to stop people from participating in standards, research or discussions, since they're all inherently open. But restricting access to EUV machines and other proprietary high performance implementations makes sense. Of course both of those are independent of ISA.