John Garfield

.@WSJopinion is spot on. Brutal, but spot on. “In the first term he changed America’s China debate as a trade and security hawk. Eight years later he’s sounding like the post-Cold War “globalists” he denounces who thought the lure of commerce would make the world safer.”

@denisewu Europe can’t even adequately help Ukraine, a country on its border that it wants very much to help. It seems unlikely that it can offer much help to Japan, especially against a foe about which its feelings are… conflicted.

@denisewu Why are you surprised? Threats to Europe are threats to peace, democracy, and universal values. Threats to other countries are economic opportunities. This has been the European position for over a decade now.

Japan is currently facing harassment from China. Has Europe offered Japan any assistance? This is a common complaint from Asia. Europeans often ask for help, but when they need it, they remain silent.

Germany escaped the first China shock that hit the US economy because it produced higher end goods and because China needed the machinery that the Germans produced. The core of German industry is being threatened by China now because China has moved up the value chain, producing the machinery that it once had to import. The German-China shock will be even more severe than the US shock as machinery and cars are the heart of German industry. I hope Germans wake up to how their leaders sold their country out under the guise of promoting trade and "win-win" business opportunities with China. The list of culprits include Helmut Schmidt, Gerard Shröder and Rudolf Scharping. An export nation was seeking a huge market of consumers but the truth of the matter is, China never wanted to consume foreign goods. This was a Faustian bargain all along. Germans should re-read Goethe.

On H200: The pro selling to China theory relies on it being good for US interests to keep China on the US technology tree and forestalling Huawei IMO this ignores the singular flavor of US biz relationship with China since PNTR: In every case that US cos became intertwined with China they became LESS favorable to US interests and MORE malleable tools of the Chinese state

Right now, China is far behind the United States in chips that power the AI race. Because the H200s are far better than what China can produce domestically, both in capability and scale, @nvidia selling these chips to China could help it catch up to America in total compute. Publicly available analysis indicates that the H200 provides 32% more processing power and 50% more memory bandwidth than China’s best chip. The CCP will use these highly advanced chips to strengthen its military capabilities and totalitarian surveillance. Finally, Nvidia should be under no illusions – China will rip off its technology, mass produce it themselves, and seek to end Nvidia as a competitor. That is China’s playbook and it is using it in every critical industry.

@MsMelChen Neil Bush was honey trapped by the PRC in Hong Kong while working as an advisor for a Chinese semiconductor product backed by Jiang Zemin's son. cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITI… If they could entrap a former presidents brother, you can be sure there are a lot more Fang Fangs.

The Chinese have been cultivating influence amongst some of the most prominent American political families for DECADES. The Bush family's China friendship began in 1974 when George HW Bush served as de facto ambassador to Beijing. As president in 1989, Bush worked hard to smooth relations after Tiananmen, sending a secret delegation to Beijing just a month later. When Jeb Bush ran against Donald Trump in 2016, he was backed to the tune of $1.3 million by a Chinese couple named Gordon Tang and Haudan Chen who own a property development company in California called SingHaiyi. They had already appointed Jeb's brother, Neil Bush, as non-executive chairman of their company. Neil chairs the George HW Bush China-US Relations Foundation which has ties to a known united front body, the Chinese Peoples' Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries (CPAFFC). This is an agency that forms an integral part of the CCP's united front work. In June 2019, Chinese state media People's Daily enthusiastically reported Neil Bush opining that the US was using trade barriers as a "political weapon to bully China." He's on record saying that China is becoming more mature, and that US democracy is flawed and politicians are "brainwashing Americans into seeing China as a problem." In short, this isn't new. He has been spouting lines as if lifted directly from the CCP's Propaganda Department for years and he is actually DIRECTLY working with the united front, having been personally enriched by these liaisons.

You guys… The SAME DAY the admin approves sale of H200 chips to China, DOJ says this — about the *exact same chips* “These chips are the building blocks of AI superiority and are integral to modern military applications. The country that controls these chips will control AI technology; the country that controls AI technology will control the future.” We are sabotaging ourselves to make a buck. If this is the posture we’re taking, we’re asking for defeat.

@AlecStapp Because Jensen Huang lobbied for it, and he doesn't care about the geopolitical position of the United States. Nvidia needs to be broken up.

Massive own goal to export these AI chips to China. The H200 is 6x more powerful than the H20, which was previously the most powerful chip approved for export. Our compute advantage is the main thing keeping us ahead of China in AI. Why would we throw that away?

@joshrogin Combination of Nvidia lobbying from the outside and David Saks from the inside has reversed the export control strategy of Trump 1 and Biden.

Lenin: “The capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them.” Xi to Trump: “Sell us your advanced AI chips and we will kick you back 25%” Trump: “Deal!” 🤦‍♂️

Trump is very correctly going to face a very skeptical audience in Holland after selling China advanced NVIDIA chips

@joshrogin Given what Jensen Huang has said publicly, it doesn't seem like he cares. Nvidia ought to be broken up. They have more importance than many countries.

The Chinese market will ultimately be lost to Chinese competitors no matter what. Giving Chinese firms advanced US tech now doesn’t delay that - it just gives China a way to catch up with the United States even faster. Strategically stupid.

We’re getting nothing out of this. It’s a unilateral concession to the CCP. It’ll boost China’s frontier models, which will strengthen PLA training in scenarios that would target American troops. This is a bad move. Trump is getting bad advice from Jensen Huang and others.

When China started investigating them in 2020, the Prince Group's leadership started looking for a safe haven to call home, a former insider told me. The US wouldn't take them, but the UK left the door wide open. My latest for @thetimes w/@dicklp: thetimes.com/world/asia/art…

FT is closer than most in getting it right. Who has created the potential for kinetic conflict around Taiwan? Beijing. Whose diplomats frequently break decorum on the issue? Beijing's. Which side broke with tradition upon Takaichi's election? ... *Beijing has agency.*

Heard this from Alaskan fisherman this summer — Chinese destroying fishing populations.

Germany's bet on China has now turned into a downward economic spiral. “The present often appears paralysed,” CEO Nicola Leibinger-Kammüller told journalists in October when presenting annual results. This glum assessment captures the national mood. Europe’s largest economy is stuck in its fourth year of stagnation. 6mnths after conservative Chancellor Friedrich Merz took office, “the crisis in German engineering is gaining momentum at force”, says Dirk Pfitzer, a partner at Porsche Consulting. It is “very clear” that the slump is not cyclical and “won’t just disappear” in the next upswing. via FT