tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5848640164815342479.post3197271822550656962..comments2024-03-27T15:36:44.737-07:00Comments on Haq's Musings: The West's Technological Edge in Geopolitical CompetitionRiaz Haqhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comBlogger79125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5848640164815342479.post-45449546390715127272023-12-03T10:26:47.911-08:002023-12-03T10:26:47.911-08:00Arnaud Bertrand
@RnaudBertrand
Incredible, Gina Ra...Arnaud Bertrand<br />@RnaudBertrand<br />Incredible, Gina Raimondo implores US industry to respect her sanctions because: "America leads the world in AI… America leads the world in advanced semiconductor design. That’s because of our private sector. No way are we going to let [China] catch up."<br />https://scmp.com/news/world/united-states-canada/article/3243657/us-commerce-chief-warns-against-china-threat<br /><br />This is an incredible admission because the Biden administration's messaging - or shall I say propaganda - on their semiconductors sanctions has so far always been that it isn't to gain or maintain a competitive advantage over China, but solely to prevent China's military from accessing to certain technologies. See for instance what Janet Yellen said on exactly this: "[the sanctions are] tailored toward the specific national security objective of preventing the advancement of highly sensitive technologies that are critical to the next generation of military innovation and [are] not designed for us to gain a competitive economic advantage over any other country." (Src: https://washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/11/06/china-relationship-good-american-economy/ )<br /><br />Our Anthony Blinken: "One of the important things for me to do on this trip [to China] was to disabuse our Chinese hosts of the notion that we are seeking to economically contain them... However, what is clearly in our interest is making sure that certain specific technologies that China may be using to, for example: advance its very opaque nuclear weapons program, to build hypersonic missiles, to use technology that may have repressive purposes – it’s not in our interest to provide that technology to China. And I also made that very clear. So, the actions that we’re taking, that we’ve already taken, and as necessary that we’ll continue to take are narrowly focused, carefully tailored to advance and protect our national security. And I think that’s a very important distinction." (src: https://china.usembassy-china.org.cn/secretary-of-state-antony-j-blinkens-press-availability/ )<br /><br />Pretty much everyone knew this was 100% bullshit and all done for the purpose of America maintaining a competitive advantage in the technologies of the future, like AI. But now we have the Secretary of Commerce, who implemented these sanctions, say exactly that.<br /><br />https://x.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1731126664661459367?s=20<br /><br />Riaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5848640164815342479.post-14407265064715932952023-09-05T16:41:38.336-07:002023-09-05T16:41:38.336-07:00A new Huawei phone has defeated US chip sanctions ...A new Huawei phone has defeated US chip sanctions against China<br /><br /><br />https://qz.com/a-new-huawei-phone-has-defeated-us-chip-sanctions-again-1850803360<br /><br />The new Kirin 9000s chip in Huawei’s latest phone uses an advanced 7-nanometer processor fabricated in China by the country’s top chipmaker, Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. (SMIC), according to a teardown of the phone that TechInsights conducted for Bloomberg.<br /><br />Huawei’s latest smartphone, the Mate 60 Pro, offers proof that China’s homegrown semiconductor industry is advancing despite the US ban on chips and chipmaking technology.<br /><br /><br />The new Kirin 9000s chip in Huawei’s latest phone uses an advanced 7-nanometer processor fabricated in China by the country’s top chipmaker, Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. (SMIC), according to a teardown of the phone that TechInsightsconducted for Bloomberg<br /><br />A brief recent timeline of US chip sanctions against China<br />August 2022: The US Congress passes the CHIPS and Science Act, a law that approves subsidies and tax breaks to help jumpstart the production of advanced semiconductors on American soil.<br /><br /><br /><br />September 2022: The Biden administration bans federally funded US tech firms from building advanced facilities in China for a decade.<br /><br />October 2022: The US commerce department bars companies from supplying advanced chips and chipmaking equipment to China, calling it an effort to curb China’s ability to produce cutting-edge chips for weapons and other defense technology, rather than a bid to cripple the country’s consumer electronics industry.<br /><br /><br /><br />November 2022: The US bans the approval of communications equipment from Chinese companies like Huawei Technologies and ZTE, claiming that they pose “an unacceptable risk” to the country’s national security.<br /><br />May 2023: Beijing bans its “operators of critical information infrastructure” from doing business with Micron Tech, an Idaho-based chipmaker.<br /><br /><br /><br />“In the AI garden, the seeds are the AI software frameworks—which China already has access to. The plants in the garden are the AI models in use, which again are already available to Chinese AI companies. Nvidia provides the best shovels and pruning shears to tend the garden, but not the only means to tend it. So it doesn’t make sense to try to build a high wall around it...[T]o over-regulate these chips creates the risk that the US could fumble away its technology leadership. Would you rather have Chinese AI customers continue to fuel Nvidia’s growth and success? Or would you rather they spend their yuan to fuel the growth and success of Chinese suppliers?”<br /><br />—Patrick Moorhead, a tech analyst, writing in Forbes in July 2023<br /><br />One big number: China’s hoard of Nvidia chips<br />$5 billion: The value of orders that China’s tech giants have placed with Nvidia for its A800 and A100 chips, to be delivered this year, according to an August report by the Financial Times. The biggest internet giants—Baidu, ByteDance, Tencent, and Alibaba—have placed orders totalling $1 billion to buy around 100,000 A800 processors. Given that the US is mulling new export controls, Chinese companies are rushing to hoard the best chips on the market to train their AI models and run their data centers.<br />Riaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5848640164815342479.post-76545413504916842162023-07-09T07:29:44.062-07:002023-07-09T07:29:44.062-07:00The future of war: A special report
https://www....The future of war: A special report<br /><br /><br />https://www.economist.com/weeklyedition/2023-07-08<br /><br /><br />The third lesson—one that also applied for much of the 20th century—is that the boundary of a big war is wide and indistinct. The West’s conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq were fought by small professional armies and imposed a light burden on civilians at home (but often lots of misery on local people). In Ukraine civilians have been sucked into the war as victims—over 9,000 have died—but also participants: a provincial grandmother can help guide artillery fire through a smartphone app. And beyond the old defence-industrial complex, a new cohort of private firms has proved crucial. Ukraine’s battlefield software is hosted on big tech’s cloud servers abroad; Finnish firms provide targeting data and American ones satellite comms. A network of allies, with different levels of commitment, has helped supply Ukraine and enforce sanctions and an embargo on Russian trade.<br /><br />New boundaries create fresh problems. The growing participation of civilians raises legal and ethical questions. Private companies located outside the physical conflict zone may be subject to virtual or armed attack. As new firms become involved, governments need to ensure that no company is a single point of failure.<br /><br />No two wars are the same. A fight between India and China may take place on the rooftop of the world. A Sino-American clash over Taiwan would feature more air and naval power, long-range missiles and disruptions to trade. The mutual threat of nuclear use has probably acted to limit escalation in Ukraine: nato has not directly engaged a nuclear-armed enemy and Russia’s threats have been bluster so far. But in a fight over Taiwan, America and China would be tempted to attack each other in space, which could lead to nuclear escalation, especially if early-warning and command-and-control satellites were disabled.<br /><br />Silicon Valley and the Somme<br />For liberal societies the temptation is to step back from the horrors of Ukraine, and from the vast cost and effort of modernising their armed forces. Yet they cannot assume that such a conflict, between large industrialised economies, will be a one-off event. An autocratic and unstable Russia may pose a threat to the West for decades to come. China’s rising military clout is a destabilising factor in Asia, and a global resurgence of autocracy could make conflicts more likely. Armies that do not learn the lessons of the new kind of industrial war on display in Ukraine risk losing to those that do. ■<br /><br /><br />Riaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5848640164815342479.post-14523924120721432052023-07-09T07:27:22.506-07:002023-07-09T07:27:22.506-07:00The future of war: A special report
https://www....The future of war: A special report<br /><br /><br />https://www.economist.com/weeklyedition/2023-07-08<br /><br />Big wars are tragedies for the people and countries that fight them. They also transform how the world prepares for conflict, with momentous consequences for global security. Britain, France and Germany sent observers to the American civil war to study battles like Gettysburg. The tank duels of the Yom Kippur war in 1973 accelerated the shift of America’s army from the force that lost in Vietnam to the one that thumped Iraq in 1991. That campaign, in turn, led China’s leaders to rebuild the People’s Liberation Army into the formidable force it is today.<br /><br />The war in Ukraine is the largest in Europe since 1945. It will shape the understanding of combat for decades to come. It has shattered any illusions that modern conflict might be limited to counterinsurgency campaigns or evolve towards low-casualty struggles in cyberspace. Instead it points to a new kind of high-intensity war that combines cutting-edge tech with industrial-scale killing and munitions consumption, even as it draws in civilians, allies and private firms. You can be sure that autocratic regimes are studying how to get an edge in any coming conflict. Rather than recoiling from the death and destruction, liberal societies must recognise that wars between industrialised economies are an all-too-real prospect—and start to prepare.<br /><br /><br /><br />As our special report explains, Ukraine’s killing fields hold three big lessons. The first is that the battlefield is becoming transparent. Forget binoculars or maps; think of all-seeing sensors on satellites and fleets of drones. Cheap and ubiquitous, they yield data for processing by ever-improving algorithms that can pick out needles from haystacks: the mobile signal of a Russian general, say, or the outline of a camouflaged tank. This information can then be relayed by satellites to the lowliest soldier at the front, or used to aim artillery and rockets with unprecedented precision and range.<br /><br />This quality of hyper-transparency means that future wars will hinge on reconnaissance. The priorities will be to detect the enemy first, before they spot you; to blind their sensors, whether drones or satellites; and to disrupt their means of sending data across the battlefield, whether through cyber-attacks, electronic warfare or old-fashioned explosives. Troops will have to develop new ways of fighting, relying on mobility, dispersal, concealment and deception. Big armies that fail to invest in new technologies or to develop new doctrines will be overwhelmed by smaller ones that do.<br /><br />Even in the age of artificial intelligence, the second lesson is that war may still involve an immense physical mass of hundreds of thousands of humans, and millions of machines and munitions. Casualties in Ukraine have been severe: the ability to see targets and hit them precisely sends the body-count soaring. To adapt, troops have shifted mountains of mud to dig trenches worthy of Verdun or Passchendaele. The consumption of munitions and equipment is staggering: Russia has fired 10m shells in a year. Ukraine loses 10,000 drones per month. It is asking its allies for old-school cluster munitions to help its counter-offensive.<br /><br /><br /><br />Eventually, technology may change how this requirement for physical “mass” is met and maintained. On June 30th General Mark Milley, America’s most senior soldier, predicted that a third of advanced armed forces would be robotic in 10-15 years’ time: think of pilotless air forces and crewless tanks. Yet armies need to be able to fight in this decade as well as the next one. That means replenishing stockpiles to prepare for high attrition rates, creating the industrial capacity to manufacture hardware at far greater scale and ensuring that armies have reserves of manpower. A nato summit on July 11th and 12th will be a test of whether Western countries can continue to reinvigorate their alliance to these ends.<br />Riaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5848640164815342479.post-14061386344333222542023-07-06T16:47:22.952-07:002023-07-06T16:47:22.952-07:00India can aim lower in its chip dreams
https://ww...India can aim lower in its chip dreams<br /><br />https://www.reuters.com/breakingviews/india-can-aim-lower-its-chip-dreams-2023-07-05/<br /><br /><br />BENGALURU, July 5 (Reuters Breakingviews) - India’s semiconductor dreams are facing a harsh reality. After struggling to woo cutting-edge chipmakers like Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (2330.TW) to set up operations in the country, the government may now have to settle for producing less-advanced chips instead. Yet that’s no mere consolation prize: the opportunity to grab share from China in this commoditised but vital part of the tech supply chain could pay off.<br /><br />Prime Minister Narendra Modi wants to “usher in a new era of electronics manufacturing” by turning India into a chipmaking powerhouse. So far, the government has dangled $10 billion in subsidies but with little to show for it. Mining conglomerate Vedanta’s $19.5 billion joint venture with iPhone supplier Foxconn (2317.TW) has stalled; plans for a separate $3 billion manufacturing facility appear to be in limbo, Reuters reported in May. In a small win for the government, U.S.-based Micron Technology (MU.O) last week announced it will invest $825 million to build its first factory in India in Modi’s home state of Gujarat, though the facility will be used to test and package chips, rather than to manufacture them.<br /><br />Even so, the Micron investment could pave the way for the country to move into the assembly, packaging and testing market for semiconductors, currently dominated by firms like Taiwan’s ASE Technology (3711.TW) and China's JCET (600584.SS). It’s not as lucrative as making or designing them but global sales are forecast to hit $50.9 billion by 2028, according to Zion Market Research.<br /><br />An even bigger opportunity awaits in manufacturing what are known as trailing-edge semiconductors. Recently, New Delhi expanded fiscal incentives for companies to make these lower-end products in the country. It’s a far more commoditised part of the market but there’s much to play for. Analog chips, for example, are vital for electric cars and smartphones. Last year, sales grew by a fifth to $89 billion, per estimates from the Semiconductor Industry Association, outpacing growth for memory, logic and other types of chips.<br /><br />The majority of the world’s trailing-edge semiconductors are currently made in Taiwan and China. So rising geopolitical tensions between Washington and Beijing, as well as worries of military conflict in Taiwan, will make India an attractive alternative for companies like U.S.-based GlobalFoundries (GFS.O) that specialise in this segment. Booming domestic demand is another factor: the Indian market is forecast to hit $64 billion by 2026, from just $23 billion in 2019.<br /><br />Aiming lower could be just what India’s chip ambitions need.<br /><br />Follow @PranavKiranBV on Twitter<br /><br />(The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own. Refiles to add link.)<br /><br />U.S. memory chip firm Micron Technology on June 28 signed a memorandum of understanding with the Indian government to build a semiconductor assembly and testing plant, its first factory in the country.<br /><br />Construction for the $2.75 billion project, which includes government support, will start in August, according to Ashwini Vaishnaw, India’s minister of electronics and information technology in an interview with the Financial Times published on July 5, with production expected by the end of 2024.<br /><br />Riaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5848640164815342479.post-65403911298747515372023-06-01T20:55:21.015-07:002023-06-01T20:55:21.015-07:00#Modi's #semiconductor #manufacturing plan flo...#Modi's #semiconductor #manufacturing plan flounders as firms struggle to find #tech partners. Modi has made it top priority for #India's economic strategy to "usher in new era in electronics manufacturing" by luring global companies. #MakeInIndia<br />https://www.reuters.com/world/india/india-chip-plan-stalls-after-tower-intel-deal-setback-modi-2023-05-31/https://www.reuters.com/world/india/india-chip-plan-stalls-after-tower-intel-deal-setback-modi-2023-05-31/<br /><br />NEW DELHI/OAKLAND, California, June 1 (Reuters) - Big companies including a Foxconn joint venture that bid for India's $10 billion semiconductor incentives are struggling due to the lack of a technology partner, a major setback for Prime Minister Narendra Modi's chipmaking ambitions.<br /><br />A planned $3 billion semiconductor facility in India by chip consortium ISMC that counted Israeli chipmaker Tower as a tech partner has been stalled due to the company's ongoing takeover by Intel, three people with direct knowledge of the strategy said.<br /><br />A second mega $19.5 billion plan to build chips locally by a joint venture between India's Vedanta and Taiwan's Foxconn is also proceeding slowly as their talks to rope in European chipmaker STMicroelectronics (STMPA.PA) as a partner are deadlocked, a fourth source with direct knowledge said.<br /><br />Modi has made chipmaking a top priority for India's economic strategy as he wants to "usher in a new era in electronics manufacturing" by luring global companies.<br /><br />India, which expects its semiconductor market to be worth $63 billion by 2026, last year received three applications to set up plants under the incentive scheme. They were from the Vedanta-Foxconn JV; a global consortium ISMC which counts Tower Semiconductor (TSEM.TA) as a tech partner; and from Singapore-based IGSS Ventures.<br /><br />The Vedanta JV plant is to come up in Modi's home state of Gujarat, while ISMC and IGSS each committed $3 billion for plants in two separate southern states.<br /><br />The three sources said ISMC's $3 billion chipmaking facility plans are currently on hold as Tower could not proceed to sign binding agreements as things remain under review after Intel acquired it for $5.4 billion last year. The deal is pending regulatory approvals.<br /><br />Talking about India's semiconductor ambitions, India's deputy IT minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar told Reuters in a May 19 interview ISMC "could not proceed" due to Intel acquiring Tower, and IGSS "wanted to re-submit (the application)" for incentives. The "two of them had to drop out," he said, without elaborating.<br /><br />Tower is likely to reevaluate taking part in the venture based on how its deal talks with Intel pan out, two of the sources said.<br /><br />Riaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5848640164815342479.post-50849377111060604922023-05-30T20:25:22.873-07:002023-05-30T20:25:22.873-07:00India poised to deny funding for Vedanta-Foxconn c...India poised to deny funding for Vedanta-Foxconn chip venture - Bloomberg News | Reuters<br /><br /><br />https://www.reuters.com/world/india/india-poised-deny-funding-vedanta-foxconn-chip-venture-bloomberg-news-2023-05-31/<br /><br />May 31 (Reuters) - The Indian government is poised to deny crucial funding for Anil Agarwal's chip venture, Bloomberg News reported on Tuesday, a setback to the billionaire's ambition to build India's 'own Silicon Valley.'<br /><br />The authorities are likely to inform the venture between Vedanta (VDAN.NS) and Taiwan's Foxconn (2317.TW) that it won't get incentives to make 28-nanometer chips, the report said, citing people familiar with the matter.<br /><br />The venture's application seeking billions in government assistance hasn't met the criteria set by the government, the report said. The project is still in search of a technology partner and a manufacturing-grade technology license for the construction of 28nm chips, it added.<br /><br />Foxconn declined to comment on the report, while India's technology ministry and Vedanta did not immediately respond to Reuters requests for comment.<br /><br />The setback comes at a time when Agarwal's metals and mining conglomerate is already grappling with reducing its significant debt load.<br /><br /><br /><br />Last year in September, Vedanta and Foxconn – formally called Hon Hai Precision Industry Co Ltd – announced they would invest $19.5 billion to set up semiconductor and display production plants in the state of Gujarat, creating more than 100,000 jobs.<br /><br />"India's own Silicon Valley is a step closer now," Agarwal had said last year after the announcement.<br /><br />Riaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5848640164815342479.post-15575112381336528992023-05-29T16:49:38.956-07:002023-05-29T16:49:38.956-07:00The facts cannot be disputed. The United States ha...The facts cannot be disputed. The United States has recovered from the coronavirus pandemic faster than any major economy in the world. As Bloomberg’s Matthew A. Winkler recently pointed out, unemployment is stunningly low. Gross domestic product growth has grown at three times the average pace as under President Donald Trump, real incomes are rising, manufacturing is booming, and inflation has eased for 10 straight months. Even the budget deficit, which was at 15.6 percent of GDP at the end of the Trump presidency, has dropped to 5.5 percent of GDP at the end of last year.<br /><br />https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/05/26/america-supremacy-irresponsible-politics/<br /><br /><br />-------------<br /><br />A somewhat under-noticed development in recent years has been the United States’ rise as an energy powerhouse. Because of fracking and natural gas, the United States is now the world’s largest producer of liquid hydrocarbons. And as Columbia University’s Jason Bordoff has noted, America’s ability to ship liquefied natural gas has made it an energy superpower, able to provide or cut off energy to countries around the world. Add to these traditional energy sources the dramatic ramp-up of green energy, thanks to the vast tax credits and incentives in the Inflation Reduction Act, and you have a picture of truly astonishing, comprehensive energy capacity.<br /><br /><br />The U.S. military remains in a league of its own, far superior to those of its rivals in Russia or China. China is catching up to the United States, but the lead remains vast across many dimensions of warfare. And in Ukraine, as the Republican foreign policy adviser Kori Schake has noted, the United States, at minimal cost and with no American troops, is inflicting ruinous damage on Russia’s army. Washington is also transforming the Ukrainian army into the most powerful fighting force in Europe — giving it another potent ally. The great force multiplier of U.S. power remains its alliances. The United States has more than 50 treaty allies; China has one (North Korea). And it has about 750 military bases of some kind around the world; China has one (in Djibouti).<br /><br />Riaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5848640164815342479.post-20708805599666868582023-05-29T16:48:30.485-07:002023-05-29T16:48:30.485-07:00The facts cannot be disputed. The United States ha...The facts cannot be disputed. The United States has recovered from the coronavirus pandemic faster than any major economy in the world. As Bloomberg’s Matthew A. Winkler recently pointed out, unemployment is stunningly low. Gross domestic product growth has grown at three times the average pace as under President Donald Trump, real incomes are rising, manufacturing is booming, and inflation has eased for 10 straight months. Even the budget deficit, which was at 15.6 percent of GDP at the end of the Trump presidency, has dropped to 5.5 percent of GDP at the end of last year.<br /><br />https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/05/26/america-supremacy-irresponsible-politics/<br /><br />The picture is even better when viewed more broadly. The United States remains the world’s leader in business, especially in cutting-edge technology. Scholars Sean Starrs and Stephen G. Brooks found that, looking at the globe’s top 2,000 companies, Chinese firms come first in shares of global profits in only 11 percent of sectors, but U.S. firms are ranked first in 74 percent of sectors.<br /><br /><br />Or look at artificial intelligence, which most agree is the bold new frontier of technology, likely to shape every industry. U.S. companies such as OpenAI, Microsoft and Google produce the best applications on the market, and a host of other new start-ups are surging forward. As Paul Scharre points out in a Foreign Affairs essay, “Of the top 15 institutions publishing deep learning research, 13 are American universities or corporate labs. Only one, Tsinghua University, is Chinese.” He notes that while China publishes much more AI research than the United States, American papers are cited 70 percent more often. These U.S. advantages are likely to grow dramatically now that China has been blocked from the advanced chips that are absolutely essential to developing and using AI.<br /><br /><br />Follow Fareed Zakaria's opinions<br />Follow<br />Or consider finance. Despite the recent banking crisis, the biggest U.S. banks are now more dominant than they have ever been worldwide. They have passed rigorous stress tests and built up their capital reserves, and as a result they are now better positioned than their European and Japanese counterparts. China’s state-owned banks are saddled with huge government debt and cannot operate in the open global financial system because that would almost certainly trigger massive outflows of funds, as the Chinese people seek to move their money to safer locales. And despite many challenges and efforts to unseat it, the dollar remains the global reserve currency (as the International Monetary Fund’s managing director said recently), which gives the United States a financial superpower. (It is one that I worry we are misusing, which will trigger even more efforts to replace it. But there is no denying that the dollar, for now, reigns supreme.)<br /><br />Riaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5848640164815342479.post-27200986771485264892023-05-27T16:19:36.169-07:002023-05-27T16:19:36.169-07:00Kissinger: Beijing “expects…to be the dominant pow...Kissinger: Beijing “expects…to be the dominant power in Asia…The ideal solution…is a China so visibly strong that that will occur through the logic of events.”<br /><br />https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-great-strategist-henry-kissinger-turns-100-china-ukraine-realpolitik-81b6f3bb?st=8fjy2pvd3a8izr5&reflink=article_copyURL_share<br /><br />What Mr. Kissinger sees when he looks at the world today is “disorder.” Almost all “major countries,” he says, “are asking themselves about their basic orientation. Most of them have no internal orientation, and are in the process of changing or adapting to the new circumstances”—by which he means a world riven by competition between the U.S. and China. Big countries such as India, and also a lot of “subordinate” ones, “do not have a dominant view of what they want to achieve in the world.” They wonder if they should “modify” the actions of the superpowers (a word Mr. Kissinger says he hates), or strive for “a degree of autonomy.”<br /><br />Some major nations have wrestled with these choices ever since the “debacle of the Suez intervention” in 1956. While Britain chose close cooperation with the U.S. thereafter, France opted for strategic autonomy, but of a kind “that was closely linked to the U.S. on matters that affected the global equilibrium.”<br /><br />The French desire to determine its own global policy gave rise to awkwardness with President Emmanuel Macron’s recent visit to Beijing. While critics say he pandered to the Chinese, Mr. Kissinger sees an example of French strategic autonomy at work: “In principle, if you have to conduct Western policy, you would like allies that only ask you about what contribution they can make to your direction. But that is not how nations have been formed, and so I’m sympathetic to the Macron approach.”<br /><br />It doesn’t bother him that Mr. Macron, on his return from Beijing, called on his fellow Europeans to be more than “just America’s followers.” Mr. Kissinger doesn’t “take it literally.” Besides, “I’m not here as a defender of French policy,” and he appears to attribute Mr. Macron’s words to cultural factors. “The French approach to discussion is to convince their adversary or their opposite number of his stupidity.” The British “try to draw you into their intellectual framework and to persuade you. The French try to convince you of the inadequacy of your thinking.”<br /><br />And what is the American way? “The American view of itself is righteousness,” says the man famed for his realpolitik. “We believe we are unselfish, that we have no purely national objectives, and also that our national objectives are achieved in foreign policy with such difficulty that when we expose them to modification through discussion, we get resentful of opponents.” And so “we expect that our views will carry the day, not because we think we are intellectually superior, but because we think the views in themselves should be dominant. It’s an expression of strong moral feelings coupled with great power. But it’s usually not put forward as a power position.”<br /><br />Asked whether this American assertion of inherent unselfishness strikes a chord with other countries, Mr. Kissinger is quick to say: “No, of course not.” Does Xi Jinping buy it? “No, absolutely not. That is the inherent difference between us.” Mr. Xi is stronger globally than any previous Chinese leader, and he has “confronted, in the last two U.S. presidents,” men who “want to exact concessions from China and announce them as concessions.” This is quite the wrong approach, in Mr. Kissinger’s view: “I think the art is to present relations with China as a mutual concern in which agreements are made because both parties think it is best for themselves. That’s the technique of diplomacy that I favor.”<br /><br />In his reckoning, Joe Biden’s China policy is no better than Donald Trump’s: “It’s been very much the same. The policy is to declare China as an adversary, and then to exact from the adversary concessions that we think will prevent it from carrying out its domineering desires.”<br />Riaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5848640164815342479.post-29383896030651930152023-03-31T13:45:45.731-07:002023-03-31T13:45:45.731-07:00Opinion U.S. Central Command finally gets a taste ...Opinion U.S. Central Command finally gets a taste of disruption<br /><br />https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/03/30/ignatius-central-command-military-technology-ai/<br /><br />By David Ignatius<br /><br />If you’re wondering how a hidebound U.S. military is going to compete against smart, aggressive adversaries in the future, consider the example of Schuyler C. Moore, the recently appointed, 30-year-old chief technology officer of U.S. Central Command.<br /><br />Moore told me bluntly that in her new job of managing innovation at Centcom, 70 percent of the challenge is overcoming “bureaucratic processes, old ways of thinking and legacy systems.” She’s absolutely right. Those obstacles have frustrated would-be defense modernizers for decades. Now, it seems, Centcom may be empowering people to begin fixing them.<br /><br />Moore’s résumé is a reminder of what makes America exceptional. She’s an Asian American from California who studied at Harvard and was a champion platform diver there. But following an injury, she took a leave and taught school in Afghanistan. After Harvard, she got a master’s in strategic studies at Georgetown, worked for a fancy defense consulting group, advised the Defense Innovation Board and worked for Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.), an Iraq vet and defense reform advocate.<br /><br />Then Moore did something even more interesting. She joined the U.S. Navy Reserve as an intelligence officer. She was deployed to Bahrain last year as part of a new Centcom Navy unit called Task Force 59 that was experimenting with unmanned systems and artificial intelligence. After she served eight months there, Gen. Michael Erik Kurilla, the Centcom commander, named her his chief technology officer.<br /><br />This process of fusing high-tech brainpower with the military (and other parts of the U.S. government) is among the most important challenges facing the country. Imagine the impact if Moore’s story was replicated widely — and a generation of smart, creative women and men from diverse backgrounds decided it was cool to work on complex national security and social problems.<br /><br />Kurilla was the first regional combatant commander to name a CTO. He wanted to make Centcom a laboratory for innovation, after its frustrating decades of overseeing America’s “endless wars” in the Middle East. Necessity was the mother of invention at Centcom: As the United States reduced its footprint in the Middle East, Kurilla needed technology to replace some of the tens of thousands of troops and billions of dollars in weapons that had been part of America’s agonizing effort to police the region.<br /><br />The Pentagon needs speed and agility as it moves to embrace new technology. Our existing military-industrial-congressional complex, as Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) used to call it, excels at producing the aircraft carriers, fighter jets and submarines that are built by giant defense contractors. Smaller tech companies have some brilliant defense ideas, but often they can’t cross what’s known as the “valley of death” between innovation and production.<br /><br />The challenge for Moore and other modernizers is to advance that transition. She gave me some practical examples. Task Force 59 had acquired an unmanned surface vessel that could race across the seas at 80 knots. Unfortunately, it used a kind of fuel that wasn’t available in the Centcom area of operations. The task force pressed the vessel’s manufacturer, and in 90 days it had switched to a different fuel system. “In the Defense Department, that speed of change is unheard of,” Moore rightly says.<br /><br />Often, the military needs to exploit off-the-shelf technology from commercial companies. Moore says that’s what’s happening with a network of smart ocean sensors that were developed for the tuna-fishing industry by a Spanish company called Marine Instruments. These long-lived buoys can detect fish (or, with different programming, ships and subs) and using AI, can analyze the data and feed it back to a control center. The key, says Moore, is that commanders “have given us freedom to think outside the box.”<br /><br /><br />Riaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5848640164815342479.post-40084383504018783502023-03-26T12:47:31.065-07:002023-03-26T12:47:31.065-07:00Why Chinese Apps Are the Favorites of Young Americ...Why Chinese Apps Are the Favorites of Young Americans<br />It isn’t just the algorithms, but lessons from a cutthroat culture<br /><br /><br />https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-chinese-apps-are-the-favorites-of-young-americans-a9a5064a<br /><br />The concern around TikTok in Washington is drawing fresh attention to how Chinese apps have woven themselves into the fabric of young Americans’ lives—and what makes them so popular.<br /><br />Four of the five hottest apps in the U.S. in March were forged in China. Algorithms are often cited as their secret sauce. An often overlooked facet is how cutthroat competition for users at home has given Chinese firms a leg up over Western rivals.<br /><br />Much like during China’s rise to manufacturing dominance a few decades ago, Chinese tech companies have harnessed a labor pool of affordable talent to constantly fine-tune product features.<br /><br />The nonstop drive to get better even has a term in China’s tech industry: “embroidery.”<br /><br />“Everybody works on improving their craft, stitch by stitch,” said Fan Lu, a venture-capital investor who invested in TikTok’s predecessor Musical.ly.<br /><br />Seven-month-old Temu was the most downloaded app across U.S. app stores during the first three weeks of March, according to market-insights firm Sensor Tower. It was followed by TikTok’s video-editing partner app CapCut and TikTok itself. Fast-fashion retailer Shein came in fourth. Then came Facebook, the only non-Chinese app among the top five.<br /><br />One illustration of how immersed American consumers are in an app ecosystem created by Chinese companies: Under the hashtags #temuhaul or #sheinhaul, Gen-Z shoppers have taken to display the result of their shopping sprees in TikTok videos with captions such as “$50 worth of very RANDOM items on TEMU.”<br /><br /><br />-----------<br /><br />The popularity of the apps has gotten them caught in the crossfire of U.S.-China geopolitical tension—TikTok in particular. The Biden administration has threatened a possible ban on the app if ByteDance doesn’t sell its stakes in TikTok, citing national-security concerns. On Thursday, U.S. lawmakers pummeled TikTok’s Chief Executive Shou Zi Chew about Beijing’s potential influence over the app.<br /><br />Beijing has opposed a TikTok sale and said it would never require companies to illegally gather data from overseas. Meanwhile, a bill gaining momentum in Washington would result in a blanket ban of broad categories of Chinese technology, including American teenagers’ favorite apps, if it is passed.<br />Riaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5848640164815342479.post-56115965314621622642023-03-07T20:45:02.251-08:002023-03-07T20:45:02.251-08:00U.S., China Plunge Further Into a Spiral of Hostil...U.S., China Plunge Further Into a Spiral of Hostility<br /><br /><br />https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-china-plunge-further-into-a-spiral-of-hostilities-b9e539c0<br /><br />After tiptoeing toward a rapprochement, any fence-mending now has been postponed<br /><br /><br />Harsh new verbal attacks on the U.S. by Beijing’s top leadership demonstrate just how unsteady relations have become between the world’s two major powers.<br /><br />Just a few weeks ago, China and the U.S. were tiptoeing toward something akin to a diplomatic cease-fire. President Biden’s envoy was due in Beijing to craft a possible framework for high-level government-to-government dialogues and stabilize ties after years of bitterness.<br /><br />Then, a suspected Chinese surveillance balloon was detected crossing North America, casting a new shadow over relations. The fence-mending trip was postponed and relations between the two powers have plunged further into a spiral of recrimination and tension.<br /><br />This week, China’s leader, Xi Jinping, and his foreign minister accused Washington of suppressing China’s development and driving the two countries toward conflict.<br /><br />“Everything the other side does is seen as negative and done with evil intention,” said Suisheng Zhao, a China foreign-policy specialist at the University of Denver. “That is the Cold War mentality.”<br /><br />China’s leader, Mr. Xi, elevated the rhetorical tension with an accusation straight out of that bygone era, a breakdown both sides insist they don’t want. China, Mr. Xi charged, faces “all-around containment, encirclement and suppression” at the hands of Western nations in league with the U.S.<br /><br />On Tuesday, his new foreign minister, Qin Gang, followed up with a warning that unless the U.S. changes course “there will surely be conflict and confrontation.”<br /><br /><br />A spokesman for the National Security Council, John Kirby, when asked about the rhetoric from Beijing, said the Biden administration policy is unchanged: It seeks competition with China, not conflict.<br /><br />“There is nothing about our approach to this most consequential of bilateral relationships that should lead anybody to think that we want conflict,” he told reporters Tuesday. “We absolutely want to keep it at that level.”<br /><br />The breadth of discord in U.S.-China ties, however, shows the difficulties in constraining tensions. The Biden administration has continued Trump-era trade tariffs, sharpened controls on exports of advanced semiconductors and rallied allies and other countries to counter China’s influence around the world.<br /><br />Beijing has drawn closer to Moscow, including during its war on Ukraine, and stepped up military provocations against Taiwan, while last summer cutting off more of the few channels for U.S. dialogue that had existed, including military-to-military exchanges.<br /><br />Congress has added to the strains. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R., Calif.) said Tuesday he will meet with Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen when she travels to the U.S. this year. Beijing wants to isolate Taiwan and Ms. Tsai to force the island to unify with China. Mr. McCarthy’s predecessor, California Democrat Nancy Pelosi, infuriated Beijing last summer by visiting Taiwan.<br /><br />For years, Mr. Xi has sounded ever-darker in his assessments of international relations, though until this week he usually avoided criticizing the U.S. by name. In the past, he has also warned fellow officials to be ready for unpredictable events with dire consequences, known as black swans.<br /><br />Riaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5848640164815342479.post-35869185726806221612023-01-31T20:52:21.682-08:002023-01-31T20:52:21.682-08:00Derek J. Grossman
@DerekJGrossman
The US and India...Derek J. Grossman<br />@DerekJGrossman<br />The US and India are putting pedal to the metal on decoupling from China. Doubt it will work, but I'd like to be pleasantly surprised.<br /><br />https://twitter.com/DerekJGrossman/status/1620557287671869440?s=20&t=YeHyHyNZMB-9W9srZQN0eQ<br /><br />------------------<br /><br />U.S. Pursues India as a Supply-Chain Alternative to China<br />Biden administration turns to New Delhi as it seeks to steer critical technologies away from Beijing<br /><br /><br />https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-pursues-india-as-a-supply-chain-alternative-to-china-11675201893<br /><br />India’s national security adviser, Ajit Doval, led New Delhi’s delegation this week in meetings with Mr. Sullivan and Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo and other officials.<br /><br />The meetings underscore a broader U.S. effort to meet challenges from China through alliances with other countries. The Biden administration has given priority to Washington’s relationship with what is known as the Quad—an alliance between India, Australia, Japan and the U.S. that has focused on countering Beijing.<br /><br />“President Biden really believes that no successful and enduring effort to address any of the major challenges in the world today…is going to be effective without a close U.S.-India partnership at its heart,” a senior administration official said.Riaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5848640164815342479.post-8491198616275783842022-12-30T21:14:29.471-08:002022-12-30T21:14:29.471-08:00Putin to Xi: Russia seeks to strengthen military t...Putin to Xi: Russia seeks to strengthen military ties with China<br /><br />https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/12/30/russia-now-one-of-chinas-leading-suppliers-of-oil-and-gas-putin<br /><br /><br />The US has expressed concern over Beijing’s alignment with Moscow amid the ongoing invasion of Ukraine.<br /><br /><br />Russia’s ties with China are the “best in history”, President Vladimir Putin told his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping, as he said Moscow would seek to strengthen military cooperation with Beijing.<br /><br />The two leaders spoke via video link on Friday, and Putin said he was expecting Xi to make a state visit to Moscow in 2023. If it were to take place, it would be a public show of solidarity by Beijing amid Moscow’s flailing military campaign in Ukraine.<br /><br /><br />In introductory remarks from the video conference broadcast on state television, Putin said: “We are expecting you, dear Mr chairman, dear friend, we are expecting you next spring on a state visit to Moscow.”<br /><br />He said the visit would “demonstrate to the world the closeness of Russian-Chinese relations”.<br /><br />Speaking for about eight minutes, Putin said Russia-China relations were growing in importance as a stabilising factor, and that he aimed to deepen military cooperation between the two countries.<br /><br />In a response that lasted about a quarter as long, Xi said China was ready to increase strategic cooperation with Russia against the backdrop of what he called a “difficult” situation in the world at large.<br /><br />Earlier this month, Russia and China conducted joint naval drills, which Russia’s army chief described as a response to the “aggressive” US military posturing in the Asia-Pacific region.<br /><br />Xi “emphasized that China has noted that Russia has never refused to resolve the conflict through diplomatic negotiations, for which it [China] expresses its appreciation,” Chinese state broadcaster CCTV reported of the call.<br /><br />The Chinese leader told Putin that the road to peace talks on Ukraine would not be smooth and that China would continue to uphold its “objective and fair stance” on the issue, according to CCTV.<br /><br />“The Chinese side has noted that the Russian side has said it has never refused to resolve the conflict through diplomatic negotiations, and expressed its appreciation for this,” he was quoted as saying.<br /><br />Xi, however, made clear the ideological affinity between Beijing and Moscow when it came to opposing what both view as the hegemonic US-led West.<br /><br />“Facts have repeatedly proved that containment and suppression are unpopular, and sanctions and interference are doomed to failure,” Xi told Putin.<br /><br />“China is ready to work with Russia and all progressive forces around the world that oppose hegemonism and power politics…and firmly defend the sovereignty, security and development interests of both countries and international justice.”<br /><br />In February, China promised a “no limits” partnership with Russia, which set off alarm bells in the West. Beijing has refused to criticise Moscow’s actions in Ukraine, blaming the United States and NATO for provoking the Kremlin. It has also blasted the sanctions imposed on Russia.<br /><br />The US State Department on Friday expressed concern over China’s alignment with Russia. “Beijing claims to be neutral, but its behaviour makes clear it is still investing in close ties to Russia,” a spokesperson said, adding Washington was “monitoring Beijing’s activity closely.”<br /><br />Russia leading supplier of oil to China<br />Putin also said Russia has become one of China’s leading suppliers of oil and gas.<br /><br />“Russia has become one of the leaders in oil exports to China”, with 13.8 billion cubic metres of gas shipped via the Power of Siberia pipeline in the first 11 months of 2022.<br /><br />Russia overtook Saudi Arabia as China’s top crude supplier last month.<br /><br />Putin added that Russia was China’s second-largest supplier of pipeline gas and fourth-largest of liquefied natural gas (LNG). He said in December, shipments had been 18 percent above daily contractual obligations.<br />Riaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5848640164815342479.post-11026842507597847452022-12-25T13:11:23.537-08:002022-12-25T13:11:23.537-08:00Opinion A ‘good’ war gave the algorithm its openin...Opinion A ‘good’ war gave the algorithm its opening, but dangers lurk<br /><br />By David Ignatius<br /><br /><br />https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/12/20/ukraine-war-russia-tech-battlefield/<br /><br />Looking at the Ukraine war, we can see that our freewheeling entrepreneurial culture gives the West a big advantage over state-run autocracies such as China and Russia — so long as companies and CEOs share the same democratic values as Western governments. That’s why we need a broader public debate about the power of the technologies that are being put to noble use in Ukraine but could easily be turned to ignoble purposes in the wrong hands.<br /><br />Ukraine, which has suffered so much in this war, wants to be a techno-superpower when the conflict finally ends. Fedorov, who’s overseeing Kyiv’s digital transformation, explains it this way: “Let’s plan to turn Ukraine into the world’s ‘mil-tech valley,’ to develop the most innovative security solutions, so the world will become a safer and more digital place.”<br /><br /><br />But first, the Ukrainians freezing in the filthy trenches will need to prevail.<br /><br />Lt. Col. Harris, the commander of the camp in northeastern England, says he’s humbled amid the recruits there. Through five combat tours in Afghanistan and one in Iraq, though, he knows he has never faced anything as horrifying as many of them will see in a month or two.<br /><br />On the firing range, 10 Ukrainian recruits squeeze off shots from their AK-47s. They’re on the second day of live-fire exercises, with eight more to come. They’re accountants, cooks and college students; some unsteady with their weapons, others newly bold. As they take aim at targets 50 feet away, a British sergeant commanding the range barks at them through an interpreter: “You need to kill the enemy before he kills you.”<br /><br />And it’s as simple as that. This is a war of survival for Ukraine. But it should comfort the recruits that whatever their misery in coming months, they will have a level of technological support beyond anything the world has seen.Riaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5848640164815342479.post-1020962996797553802022-12-25T13:10:44.463-08:002022-12-25T13:10:44.463-08:00Opinion A ‘good’ war gave the algorithm its openin...Opinion A ‘good’ war gave the algorithm its opening, but dangers lurk<br /><br />By David Ignatius<br /><br /><br />https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/12/20/ukraine-war-russia-tech-battlefield/<br /><br />Fedorov said Ukraine is “massively” using software platforms “to deal with power shortages and in order to ensure telecom connection.” To repair electricity cutoffs and damaged energy infrastructure, the country uses Starlink terminals, Tesla Powerwall systems, and advanced generators and lithium batteries. It backs up all its important data on cloud servers.<br /><br />“For sure, I’m convinced that technologies will also allow us to build a bright and safe future,” Fedorov said. “Only the newest technologies could give us such an advantage to run and create the country we deserve as fast as possible.”<br /><br />But these technologies can also create 21st-century dystopias, in the wrong hands. The targeting algorithms that allow Ukraine to spot and destroy invading Russians aren’t all that different from the facial-recognition algorithms that help China repress its citizens. We’re lucky, in a sense, that these technologies are mostly developed in the West by private companies rather than state-owned ones.<br /><br />But what if an entrepreneur decides to wage a private war? What if authoritarian movements gain control of democratic societies and use technology to advance control rather than freedom? What if AI advances eventually allow the algorithms themselves to take control, making decisions for reasons they can’t explain, at speeds that humans can’t match? Democratic societies need to be constantly vigilant about this technology.<br /><br />The importance of the human factor is clear with Silicon Valley entrepreneurs such as Elon Musk, who illustrates the strength — and potential weakness — of America’s new way of war. If Musk decides he isn’t being paid enough for his services, or if he thinks it’s time for Ukraine to compromise, he can simply cut the line to his satellites, as he briefly threatened this fall.Riaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5848640164815342479.post-28802060944811303042022-12-25T13:10:00.561-08:002022-12-25T13:10:00.561-08:00Opinion A ‘good’ war gave the algorithm its openin...Opinion A ‘good’ war gave the algorithm its opening, but dangers lurk<br /><br />By David Ignatius<br /><br /><br />https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/12/20/ukraine-war-russia-tech-battlefield/<br /><br /><br />The Army began testing ideas about algorithmic warfare with individual units around that time as well. The first choice was the elite 82nd Airborne, commanded in 2020 by Maj. Gen. Christopher Donahue; it was part of the XVIII Airborne Corps, then headed by Lt. Gen. Michael “Erik” Kurilla. These two worked with Palantir and other companies to understand how the Army could use data more effectively.<br /><br />Simultaneously, the Pentagon was exploring the use of artificial intelligence to analyze sensor data and identify targets. This effort was known as Project Maven, and it initially spawned a huge controversy when it was launched in 2017. The idea was to write algorithms that could recognize, say, a Russian T-72 tank in drone surveillance images in the same way that facial recognition scans can discern a human face.<br /><br />The military’s AI partnership with Silicon Valley got off to a bad start. In 2018, engineers at Google, initially the leading contractor for Maven, protested so angrily about writing targeting algorithms that the company had to withdraw from the program.<br /><br />Maven has evolved. It’s now supervised by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, and it generates AI models on a fast, one-month cycle. A tech executive explained to me that companies now compete to develop the most accurate models for detecting weapons — tuning their algorithms to see that hypothetical T-72 under a snowy grove of fir trees, let’s say, rather than a swampy field of brush — and each month the government selects a new digital array.<br /><br />For a Pentagon that usually buys weapons that have a 30-year life span, this monthly rollover of targeting software is a revolution in itself.<br /><br />When Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, the U.S. Army had these tools in hand — and commanders with experience using them. Donahue had moved up to become head of the XVIII Airborne Corps, which transferred its forward headquarters to Wiesbaden, Germany, just after the Russian invasion. The 82nd Airborne moved to forward quarters near Rzeszow, Poland, near the Ukraine border.<br /><br />Kurilla, meanwhile, became head of Central Command and began using that key theater as a test bed for new technologies. In October, Kurilla appointed Schuyler Moore, a former director of science and technology for the Defense Innovation Board, as Centcom’s first “chief technology officer.”<br /><br />For the Army and other services, the impetus for this technology push isn’t just the Russian invasion of Ukraine, but the looming challenge from China — America’s only real peer competitor in technology.<br /><br />A tool for good and ill<br />In the age of algorithm warfare, when thinking machines will be so powerful, human judgment will become all the more important. Free societies have created potent technologies that, in the hands of good governments, can enable just outcomes, and not only in war. Ukrainian officials tell me they want to use Palantir software not just to repel the Russian invasion but also to repair Ukraine’s battered electrical grid, identify hidden corruption and manage the vast tasks of reconstruction.<br /><br />Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine’s minister for digital transformation and vice prime minister, explained in written answers to my questions how he plans to use technology not just to beat Russia but also to become a high-tech superpower in the future.Riaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5848640164815342479.post-11678923560394801372022-12-25T13:09:07.826-08:002022-12-25T13:09:07.826-08:00Opinion A ‘good’ war gave the algorithm its openin...Opinion A ‘good’ war gave the algorithm its opening, but dangers lurk<br /><br />By David Ignatius<br /><br /><br />https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/12/20/ukraine-war-russia-tech-battlefield/<br /><br />NORTHEASTERN ENGLAND — To see the human face of the “algorithm war” being fought in Ukraine, visit a company of raw recruits during their five rushed weeks at a training camp here in Britain before they’re sent to the front in Ukraine.<br /><br />They will soon have a battery of high-tech systems to aid them, but they must face the squalor of the trenches and the roar of unrelenting artillery fire alone. The digital battlefield has not supplanted the real one.<br /><br />At the British camp, instructors have dug 300 yards of trenches across a frigid hillside. The trenches are 4 feet deep, girded with sandbags and planks, and slick with mud and water at the bottom. The Ukrainian recruits, who’ve never been in battle before, have to spend 48 hours in these hellholes. Sometimes, there’s simulated artillery fire overhead and rotting animal flesh nearby to prepare the trainees for the smell of death.<br /><br />The recruits practice attacking the trenches and defending them. But mostly they learn to stay alive and as warm as they can, protecting their wet, freezing feet from rot and disease. “Nobody likes the trenches,” says Oleh, the Ukrainian officer who oversees the training with his British colleagues. (I’m not using his full name to respect concerns about his security.) “We tell them it will be easier in battle. If it’s hard now, that’s the goal.”<br /><br />The paradox of the Ukraine conflict is that it combines the World War I nightmare of trench warfare with the most modern weapons of the 21st century.<br /><br />“It’s hard to understand the brutality of contact in that front line. It’s Passchendaele in Donetsk,” explains Brigadier Justin Stenhouse, referring to one of the bloodiest battles of World War I. He oversees training for the British Ministry of Defense in Whitehall and arranged my visit to the training camp.<br /><br />Silicon Valley Pentagon<br />The Ukraine war has fused the flesh-and-blood bravery of these Ukrainian troops on the ground with the stunning high-tech arsenal that I described in Part 1 of this report. The result is a revolution in warfare. This transformation, rarely discussed in the media, has been evolving for more than a decade. It shows the lethal ability of the United States and its allies to project power — and it also raises some vexing questions about how this power will be used.<br /><br />One of the leading actors in this underreported revolution has been Palantir, which developed its software platform after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to help the CIA integrate data that was often in different compartments and difficult to share. News reports have frequently said that Palantir software helped track al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, but the company won’t confirm that.<br /><br />The Pentagon’s use of these ultramodern tools was encouraged by a very old-fashioned commander, Gen. Mark A. Milley, the gruff and often profane chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. When he was Army chief of staff in 2018, the service began working with Palantir and other tech companies to integrate data through a program called Army Vantage. Milley was frustrated by an antiquated data system that made it hard to gather details about what units were ready for battle. The Army, like so many government institutions, had too many separate repositories for information.<br /><br />Palantir technicians showed me an unclassified version of the Army database they helped create to address that problem. You can see in an instant what units are ready, what skills and experience the soldiers in these units have, and what weapons and ammunition are available. Logistics problems like this once took weeks to solve; now there are answers in seconds.<br /><br />“The U.S. military is focused on readiness today and readiness in the future,” Milley told me in an email last week. “In defense of our country, we’re pulling together a wide variety of technologies to remain number one, the most effective fighting force in the world.”Riaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5848640164815342479.post-57248042604905587722022-12-20T16:56:10.277-08:002022-12-20T16:56:10.277-08:00How the algorithm tipped the balance in Ukraine
h...How the algorithm tipped the balance in Ukraine<br /><br />https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/12/19/palantir-algorithm-data-ukraine-war/<br /><br /><br />A final essential link in this system is the mesh of broadband connectivity provided from overhead by Starlink’s array of roughly 2,500 satellites in low-earth orbit. The system, owned by Elon Musk’s SpaceX company, allows Ukrainian soldiers who want to upload intelligence or download targeting information to do so quickly.<br /><br />In this wizard war, Ukraine has the upper hand. The Russians have tried to create their own electronic battlefield tools, too, but with little success. They have sought to use commercial satellite data, for example, and streaming videos from inexpensive Chinese drones. But they have had difficulty coordinating and sharing this data among units. And they lack the ability to connect with the Starlink array.<br /><br />“The Russian army is not flexible,” Lesya, the Ukrainian officer, told me. She noted proudly that every Ukrainian battalion travels with its own software developer. Ukraine’s core advantage isn’t just the army’s will to fight, but also its technical prowess.<br /><br />Fedorov, Ukraine’s digital minister, listed some of the military tech systems that Ukraine has created on its own, in a response to my written questions. These include a secure chat system, called “eVorog,” that has allowed civilians to provide 453,000 reports since the war started; a 200-strong “Army of Drones” purchased from commercial vendors for use in air reconnaissance; and a battlefield mapping system called Delta that “contains the actual data in real time, so the military can plan their actions accordingly.”<br /><br /><br />The “X factor” in this war, if you will, is this Ukrainian high-tech edge and the ability of its forces to adapt rapidly. “This is the most technologically advanced war in human history,” argues Fedorov. “It’s quite different from everything that has been seen before.”<br /><br />And that’s the central fact of the extraordinary drama the world has been watching since Russia invaded so recklessly last February. This is a triumph of man and machine, together.<br /><br />Next: How “algorithmic warfare” evolved over the past decade — and some very human worries.<br />Riaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5848640164815342479.post-90478574971683622962022-12-20T16:53:33.308-08:002022-12-20T16:53:33.308-08:00How the algorithm tipped the balance in Ukraine
h...How the algorithm tipped the balance in Ukraine<br /><br />https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/12/19/palantir-algorithm-data-ukraine-war/<br /><br />by David Ignatius<br /><br />KYIV — Two Ukrainian military officers peer at a laptop computer operated by a Ukrainian technician using software provided by the American technology company Palantir. On the screen are detailed digital maps of the battlefield at Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine, overlaid with other targeting intelligence — most of it obtained from commercial satellites.<br /><br />As we lean closer, we see can jagged trenches on the Bakhmut front, where Russian and Ukrainian forces are separated by a few hundred yards in one of the bloodiest battles of the war. A click of the computer mouse displays thermal images of Russian and Ukrainian artillery fire; another click shows a Russian tank marked with a “Z,” seen through a picket fence, an image uploaded by a Ukrainian spy on the ground.<br /><br />If this were a working combat operations center, rather than a demonstration for a visiting journalist, the Ukrainian officers could use a targeting program to select a missile, artillery piece or armed drone to attack the Russian positions displayed on the screen. Then drones could confirm the strike, and a damage assessment would be fed back into the system.<br /><br />This is the “wizard war” in the Ukraine conflict — a secret digital campaign that has never been reported before in detail — and it’s a big reason David is beating Goliath here. The Ukrainians are fusing their courageous fighting spirit with the most advanced intelligence and battle-management software ever seen in combat.<br /><br />“Tenacity, will and harnessing the latest technology give the Ukrainians a decisive advantage,” Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told me last week. “We are witnessing the ways wars will be fought, and won, for years to come.”<br /><br />I think Milley is right about the transformational effect of technology on the Ukraine battlefield. And for me, here’s the bottom line: With these systems aiding brave Ukrainian troops, the Russians probably cannot win this war.<br /><br />“The power of advanced algorithmic warfare systems is now so great that it equates to having tactical nuclear weapons against an adversary with only conventional ones,” explains Alex Karp, chief executive of Palantir, in an email message. “The general public tends to underestimate this. Our adversaries no longer do.”<br /><br />“For us, it’s a matter of survival,” argues “Stepan,” the senior Ukrainian officer in the Kyiv demonstration, who before the war designed software for a retail company. Now, he tells me bluntly, “Our goal is to maximize target acquisitions.” To protect his identity, he stripped his unit insignia and other markings from his camouflage uniform before he demonstrated the technology. (The names he and his colleague used were not their real ones; I agreed to their request to protect their security.)<br /><br />“Lesya,” the other officer, was also a computer specialist in peacetime. As she looks at the imagery of the Russian invaders, on a day when their drones are savaging civilian targets in Odessa on Ukraine’s southern coast, she mutters a wish for revenge — and a hope that Ukraine will emerge from the war as a tech power. Although the Ukrainians now depend on technology help from America, she says, “by the end of the war, we will be selling software to Palantir.”Riaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5848640164815342479.post-31155255244994381852022-10-20T08:37:22.876-07:002022-10-20T08:37:22.876-07:00China’s Military Is Catching Up to the U.S. Is It ...China’s Military Is Catching Up to the U.S. Is It Ready to Fight?<br />The People’s Liberation Army is emerging as a true competitor but Beijing worries about the ability of its troops<br />A Chinese soldier held a flag during joint military exercises in Kyrgyzstan in 2016.<br /><br />https://www.wsj.com/articles/china-military-us-taiwan-xi-11666268994<br /><br />China’s military is emerging as a true competitor to the U.S. under Xi Jinping.<br /><br />The People’s Liberation Army now has hypersonic missiles that evade most defenses, a technology the U.S. is still developing. Its attack drones can swarm to paralyze communications networks. China’s naval ships outnumber America’s, and it launched its third aircraft carrier this summer, the first to be designed and built in the country. Its defense budget is second only to the U.S.’s. China’s military has more serving members, at around 2 million, compared with just under 1.4 million in the U.S.<br /><br />The question for Mr. Xi, which he has raised in public, is whether those forces are ready for battle.<br /><br />China hasn’t fought a war since a brief border clash with Vietnam in 1979. Unlike American forces, who have fought for most of the past two decades in Iraq and Afghanistan, China’s service members have virtually no combat experience—which some Chinese leaders have referred to as a “peace disease.” Finding a solution short of actual war has been a priority for Mr. Xi, especially as he seeks to prepare the country for a potential showdown with the U.S.<br /><br />“We must comprehensively strengthen military training and preparation, and improve the army’s ability to win,” Mr. Xi said on Sunday at the opening of the Communist Party’s twice-a-decade congress.<br /><br />The issue has become more pressing for Beijing as tensions build with Taiwan, which China sees as part of its territory. On Sunday, Mr. Xi reiterated that Beijing wouldn’t renounce the use of force in China’s effort to take control of the island.<br /><br />“The complete unification of the motherland must be realized, and it will be realized,” he said, drawing loud applause.<br /><br />-------<br /><br />An effort to make China’s different military branches work more closely together—so-called “jointness,” which is considered crucial to modern warfare—remains untested.<br /><br />“At present, there are not many commanders in the PLA who are truly proficient in joint combat,” one serving officer at the Zhengzhou Joint Logistics Support Center wrote earlier this year in a commentary in the PLA Daily, the military’s newspaper. “If this situation does not change, once there is a war, it will be very dangerous.”<br /><br />Outside analysts say the PLA appears to be making progress in bringing forces together for more complex joint exercises, helped by interaction with other militaries, especially Russia’s. Since Mr. Xi took power, China has increased drills with Russia to as many as 10 a year from one or two previously.<br /><br />Riaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5848640164815342479.post-88879746646091611432022-10-17T18:41:15.255-07:002022-10-17T18:41:15.255-07:00State Department Urges Silicon Valley to Aid Natio...State Department Urges Silicon Valley to Aid National Security Effort<br />New cyber ambassador notes private sector has strengthened Ukrainian defense<br /><br />https://www.wsj.com/articles/state-department-urges-silicon-valley-to-aid-national-security-effort-11665835204<br /><br />WASHINGTON—The State Department is expanding its outreach to U.S. technology firms to get them more involved in some of the world’s top national security challenges, from the war in Ukraine to growing competition with China, U.S. officials said.<br /><br />Secretary of State Antony Blinken will travel to Silicon Valley starting Sunday as part of the push to make cybersecurity among the State Department’s leading priorities. He will meet with corporate leaders “to highlight the key role for technology diplomacy in advancing U.S. economic and national security,” according to the State Department.<br /><br />Presidential administrations of both parties have long sought to forge strong ties with Big Tech, urging the companies to share cyber-threat intelligence, secure agreements on the production of advanced technologies or quietly cooperate on surveillance programs.<br /><br />At the State Department, cybersecurity has in years past often been seen as a second-tier priority ceded to other federal agencies, a perception a new dedicated cyber office is trying to change, current and former officials have said.<br /><br />“We have a profound stake in shaping our technological future, and American diplomacy has a key role to play in bolstering and drawing on our country’s unique strengths—one of which is our industrial and innovation base,” Mr. Blinken said in a statement to The Wall Street Journal ahead of his trip.<br /><br />Last year, the State Department established a new bureau of cyberspace and digital policy, and Mr. Blinken named former technology executive and former Marine Corps officer Nathaniel Fick to lead it. The bureau’s budget in the 2022 fiscal year was $41.2 million, including a diplomatic engagement budget of $18.2 million.<br /><br />Mr. Fick, the nation’s first ambassador-at-large for cyber, said the war in Ukraine underscored the need for greater alignment of cyber defensive capabilities among countries in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. The government must be a better intermediary between U.S. tech firms and foreign governments in need of their services, he said.<br /><br />“There’s a lot of capability out there in the private sector that is being deployed to strengthen Ukraine’s digital defenses,” said Mr. Fick, who was confirmed by the Senate in September.<br /><br />Since the start of the war in Ukraine, large U.S. tech firms like Microsoft Corp. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google unit have been sharing cyber insights with Kyiv and the public about the activities of suspected Russian hackers. Major Western tech companies have suspended operations or withdrawn from the country. Twitter, Inc., Meta Platforms Inc.,’s Facebook, and Alphabet’s YouTube and Google have cracked down on fake feeds and hackers, while Elon Musk’s Space Exploration Technologies Corp., also has been providing satellite internet access.<br /><br />The Biden administration has treated the cyber threats—especially ransomware—as a top-tier national security issue, with waning global digital freedom, and disinformation sponsored or deployed by adversary nations among other concerns.<br /><br />U.S. officials also have sought to faster declassify and disseminate intelligence on cyber threats to tech companies and operators of infrastructure such as hospitals, election systems and energy providers. The administration also has created minimum cybersecurity requirements on natural gas and oil pipelines following the Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack last year, and has implemented or is working on similar rules for other business sectors.<br /><br />Riaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5848640164815342479.post-326511763093158042022-10-16T15:39:42.104-07:002022-10-16T15:39:42.104-07:00https://www.wsj.com/articles/american-executives-i...https://www.wsj.com/articles/american-executives-in-limbo-at-chinese-chip-companies-after-u-s-ban-11<br /><br />Other companies that face being affected include Chinese flash memory chip designer GigaDevice Semiconductor Inc., an up-and-coming designer of flash chips used in automobiles and personal computers. GigaDevice’s deputy chairman, Shu Qingming, and a director, Cheng Taiyi, hold U.S. passports, the company’s latest annual report says.<br /><br />GigaDevice didn’t respond to requests for comment.<br /><br />KingSemi Co., 688037 -0.79%▼ which produces the most advanced coating and development equipment in China and supplies giants including Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., TSM -4.05%▼ told investors that it is assessing the impact of the new directives. An executive director, Chen Xinglong, holds a U.S. green card, the company’s latest annual report says.<br /><br />While the withholding of talent—along with all the other restrictions—could significantly slow the Chinese chip sector’s advancement, it won’t be enough to kill it, said Anne Hoecker, a partner at management consulting firm Bain & Co. in its semiconductor group.<br /><br />“There’s one thing China has been very consistent about—their need to build up an indigenous source of semiconductors,” she said. “They will continue to put a lot of money in it, and they will continue to progress.”<br /><br />Many companies, including KLA Corp. and Lam Research, have already suspended the work of engineers and other less-senior staffers in China while they seek clarity on the rules, or licenses to continue their work, The Wall Street Journal previously reported.<br /><br />Naura Technology Group, which has a unit making semiconductor equipment, issued warnings to its American employees within mainland China to suspend work with clients that it believes fall under the new restrictions while it awaits more clarity, a spokesman said. Those employees have continued to perform other tasks at the company, he said.<br /><br />ASML, the Dutch chip equipment maker, confirmed it sent an internal email to its U.S. employees on Wednesday, asking U.S. staff—both U.S. citizens and foreign nationals living in America—to refrain from servicing, shipping or providing support to any of its customers in China until further notice.<br /><br />The new rules also could affect employees of Chinese companies that have operations in the U.S. Yangtze Memory Technologies Co., China’s leading memory chip maker, maintains a Santa Clara, Calif., office, with more than a dozen employees in the U.S., according to LinkedIn. They include a director of engineering, the head of U.S. NAND design, and the head of North American sales.<br />Riaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5848640164815342479.post-73374505968783006822022-10-16T15:38:38.979-07:002022-10-16T15:38:38.979-07:00American Executives in Limbo at Chinese Chip Compa...American Executives in Limbo at Chinese Chip Companies After U.S. Ban<br />At least 43 senior executives working with 16 listed Chinese semiconductor companies hold roles from CEO to vice president<br /><br />https://www.wsj.com/articles/american-executives-in-limbo-at-chinese-chip-companies-after-u-s-ban-11665912757<br /><br /><br />American workers hold key positions throughout China’s domestic chip industry, helping manufacturers develop new chips to catch up with foreign rivals. Now, those workers are in limbo under new U.S. export control rules that prohibit U.S. citizens from supporting China’s advanced chip development.<br /><br />At least 43 senior executives working with 16 publicly listed Chinese semiconductor companies are American citizens, according to an examination of company filings and official websites by The Wall Street Journal. Many of them hold C-suite titles, from chief executive to vice president and chairman.<br /><br />Almost all of the executives moved to China’s chip industry after spending years working in Silicon Valley for U.S. chip makers or semiconductor equipment firms, according to the companies’ filings. Their work histories reflect the free flow of talent across companies and borders over the years. Some were drawn to China through initiatives including the country’s “Thousand Talents” program, which was introduced in 2008 by the Chinese government to boost research standards.<br /><br /><br />The Commerce Department this month imposed export controls over an array of chips and chip-making technology, marking the U.S.’s biggest salvo against China’s tech industry so far.<br /><br />In a rare move that caught the industry off guard, it also sought to restrict the use of American know-how by barring U.S. persons from supporting China’s advanced chip development or production without a license. The department defines U.S. persons to include U.S. citizens, permanent residents, people who live in the U.S., and American companies.<br /><br />Several companies, including Beijing-based Naura Technology Group Co. 002371 1.39%▲ and Dutch equipment maker ASML Holding NV, have suspended their American employees from continuing work that could now be restricted while they seek clarity on the rules, the companies have said.<br /><br />Restricting Chinese companies’ access to U.S. talent delivers a direct blow to the heart of China’s attempt to move up the technology chain, said Dane Chamorro, a Washington, D.C.-based head of global risk and intelligence at business consulting firm Control Risks.<br /><br />“The technology is nothing without the people there to make it work,” he said.<br /><br />For many senior executives at Chinese companies, the rule will likely force them to decide between their jobs and their U.S. citizenship or permanent resident status, Mr. Chamorro said. The rules require all U.S. persons to apply for a license to continue working in Chinese advanced chip development.<br /><br />Among prominent U.S. executives in China is Gerald Yin, founder and chairman of Advanced Micro-Fabrication Equipment Inc., or AMEC, one of China’s largest chip-making equipment vendors. He and six current senior managers and core researchers at AMEC are American citizens, according to the company’s website and its latest annual report.<br /><br />Mr. Yin, whose company is listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange, spent almost 20 years working at Silicon Valley companies including Intel Corp. and Applied Materials Inc., where he was chief technology officer of its Asian unit before he left to found AMEC.<br /><br />The Shanghai-based company, which makes etching machines key to turning silicon wafers into semiconductors, is viewed as a rising national champion in the sector, though it still lags behind global leaders such as Lam Research Corp. and Applied Materials. In its latest annual report, the company said it received more than $50 million in subsidies from the Chinese government in 2021.<br /><br />AMEC and Mr. Yin didn’t respond to requests for comment.Riaz Haqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522781692886598586noreply@blogger.com