US technology giants bat for the People's Liberation Army at the White Houseby Tom Rogan, National Security Writer & Online Editor
July 17, 2023 05:32 PM
Intel CEO Pet Gelsinger claims that he's a "Christian farm boy at heart" who believes "values are the most enduring thing leaders create."
Oddly for an American Christian farm boy, Gelsinger isn't terribly interested in the patriotic interest of ensuring that cutting-edge American technology isn't used to strengthen America's greatest military adversary. Equally tragic is the stance of Nvidia's Taiwanese-American CEO Jensen Huang.
Unconcerned that China wants to gain access to Nvidia's AI chips in order to build its unmanned warfare capacity to annihilate Taiwan's sovereignty, like Gelsinger, Huang regularly wails about U.S. restrictions on chip exports to China. Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon is similarly opposed to China-related high technology product restrictions, though he at least cannot be described as unpatriotic (Amon is Brazilian).
This is relevant for two reasons.
First, the semiconductor industry's lobbying group, the Semiconductor Industry Association, has just released a new statement. It describes the U.S. government's "Repeated steps ... to impose overly broad, ambiguous, and at times unilateral restrictions... " on semiconductor chip exports to China. It then offers the platitude that the White House should work with Beijing to "ease tensions and seek solutions through dialogue, not further escalation. And we urge the administration to refrain from further restrictions until it engages more extensively with industry and experts to assess [whether they are fit for purpose]."
The obvious implication of this arrogant statement is that the White House has moved too fast and too aggressively on chip exports to China. The opposite is true: The White House is acting too slowly on chip exports. But the timing of the Semiconductor Industry Association's message is very deliberate. ...
Washington Examiner
