When conspiracy theories go mainstream, you know you have a problem!
What are the Davos Elites really after?
Understanding that the system which gave them birth is toast, it may just be their own survival at the expense of everyone else!
Are they really trying to engineer a crash to their own liking by ignoring pesky but mostly correct economic orthodoxy? Your take is as good as mine at this stage although it is now a matter of months, maybe weeks before the masks fall off.
Forget Ukraine, it is a side show.
The real war is between the US and China. It is still about trade and technology at this stage but it is getting warmer by the day.
The challenge of China on the hegemony of the US is existential . It is THE story of the next 10 years.
Semiconductor stocks across the globe - in Hong Kong, Europe and certainly in the US - are tumbling after the Biden administration on Friday unveiled new restrictions on technology exports to China which are meant to undercut Beijing's ability to develop wide swaths of its economy, from semiconductors and supercomputers to surveillance systems and advanced weapons.
As noted earlier, the US Commerce Department on Friday unveiled sweeping new regulations that limit the sale of semiconductors and chip-making equipment to Chinese customers, striking at the foundation of the country’s efforts to build its own chip industry. The agency also added 31 organizations to its unverified list, including Yangtze Memory Technologies and a subsidiary of leading chip equipment maker Naura Technology, severely limiting their ability to buy technology from abroad.
The move is the Biden admin’s most aggressive yet as it tries to stop China from developing technological capabilities it sees as a threat. And, as Bloomberg notes, depending on how broadly Washington enforces the restrictions, the impact could extend well beyond semiconductors and into industries that rely on high-end computing, from electric vehicles and aerospace to simple gadgets like smartphones.
The two countries are now officially in an “economic war,” Dylan Patel, chief analyst at SemiAnalysis, said. A Chinese analyst said there is “no possibility of reconciliation” any longer.
Chinese state media and officials over the weekend raged against the action, warning of economic consequences and stirring speculation about potential retaliation. He Xiaopeng, chairman and CEO of Chinese EV maker Xpeng, warned last month that escalating US restrictions on chip exports will set back the nation’s autonomous driving sector.
“This is the US salvo against China’s efforts to build its domestic tech capabilities,” said Patel, who estimates the restrictions could reduce global technology and industry trade by hundreds of billions of dollars. “It’s the US firing back, making clear they will fight back.”
European and Chinese semiconductor stocks tumbled on the news. ASML Holding NV, the most advanced maker of equipment for producing semiconductors, fell more than 3%. Bellwether Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. fell as much as 5.2% in Hong Kong on Monday, the most since Aug. 15, as Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Charles Shum slashed his estimate on 2023 growth by 50%. Hua Hong Semiconductor Ltd. plunged 10%, while Shanghai Fudan Microelectronics Group Co. plummeted 25%. Naura fell by its daily limit of 10% in mainland China, the biggest fall since April.
signal about US policy on China: a very hawkish consensus is now cemented in place."
US officials said the new restrictions are necessary to stop China from becoming more of an economic and military menace. As a reminder, it was back in 2018 when we first explained that the "trade" war with China was really all about chips and semiconductors, preventing China from overtaking the US before it's too late. They are seeking to ensure the country’s chipmakers don’t secure the capability to make advanced semiconductors.
China “has poured resources into developing supercomputing capabilities and seeks to become a world leader in artificial intelligence by 2030,” said Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Export Administration Thea D. Rozman Kendler. “It is using these capabilities to monitor, track and surveil their own citizens, and fuel its military modernization.”
Reaction in China was furious. The nationalistic Global Times newspaper warned the “savage attack on free trade” would have dire consequences for the US.
“Only arrogant and ignorant people can truly believe that the US can block the development of China’s semiconductor or other technology industries by these illegitimate means,” it said in an editorial. “The US hegemony in science and technology that harms others without benefiting itself may bring some short-term difficulties to China’s semiconductor industry, but will in turn strengthen China’s will and ability to stand on its own in science and technology.”
Quoted by Bloomberg, China's Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said the measures are unfair and will “deal a blow to global industrial and supply chains and world economic recovery.”
“The reality is the US is determined to use chips as a tool to contain China,” Gu Wenjun, head of Chinese chip researcher ICwise, wrote in an online commentary. “There is no possibility of reconciliation.”
The new US regulations broadly limit chipmakers from selling to China artificial intelligence semiconductors and those that can be used for supercomputers. Nvidia Corp. warned in September that government restrictions on exporting AI chips to China could affect hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue, sending its stock tumbling. Chipmakers can request a Commerce Department exception to those rules. But they should presume such requests will be denied, senior officials said.
Commerce also put in place a raft of restrictions on supplying US machinery that’s capable of making advanced semiconductors. It’s targeting the types of memory and logic chips that are at the heart of state-of-the-art designs.
Specifically, the restrictions cover production of logic chips using so-called nonplanar transistors made with 16-nanometer technology or anything more advanced than that, 18-nanometer dynamic random access memory chips and Nand-style flash memory chips with 128 layers or more (the smaller the number of nanometers, the more capable the chip).
Stacy Rasgon and a team from Sanford C. Bernstein explained the restrictions on AI, supercomputers and advanced chip-making equipment, while pointing out that the standard CPUs used in personal computers and servers would not be blocked from export to China, as some had feared.
“The changes represent a further escalation, and we do not know what China might do in response,” the Bernstein analysts wrote. “Potential retaliation remains a risk.”
Well there is always an invasion or blockade of Taiwan, just as Biden is doing his best to drain the "emergency" petroleum reserve to win a few Democratic votes.
Finally, as Bloomberg notes, one key question is how the US rules will affect the ability of companies like ASML to sell into China. The Dutch company is effectively the most important supply chain company for chipmakers around the world.
ASML has had to strike a challenging balance between the US and China. It has been selling its deep ultraviolet, or DUV, machines to Chinese customers, but has held back from selling its more advanced extreme ultraviolet, or EUV, machines. Under the new Commerce Department restrictions, the company may be limited from selling DUV technology to Chinese customers too, Citigroup analysts wrote.
“We are assessing the potential implications of the new regulations, if any, and cannot comment at this moment,” said Monique Mols, a spokesperson for ASML.
According to Patel of SemiAnalysis, the unverified list is a serious threat to China’s tech ambitions. In the past, the Commerce Department cut off access to critical technologies for companies like Huawei when they were added to the so-called entity list, meaning the agency had gathered evidence against them. The unverified list simply means the Commerce Department can’t verify that a company’s activities are safe.
“That is huge,” he said. “They can pretty much blacklist any company they want in China within two months.”
Is this the real war?
Authored by Oscar Silva-Valladares via The Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosperity,
The recent ceremony of accession of four Ukrainian regions to Russia brought a speech from President Putin that outlined the reasons behind Russia’s current struggles, the character and identify of its foes and, more importantly, laid the groundwork for Russia’s next level of confrontation with the West beyond the ongoing military conflict in Ukraine. In his speech, Putin clearly defined the present fight as a worldwide battle in which Russia plays a leading role against the Deep State that ultimately runs the West and which uses all available tools - including military, economic, cultural, and social – in its attempt to preserve unipolar world domination
Putin’s words were directed to three distinctive audiences: the collective West, the Global South and Russia. He went back to Middle Ages history to remind the origins and impact of Western resource exploitation and colonialism in the Americas, Asia and Africa through imperialistic wars, racism, and slavery. He touched upon the military exploits of the 20th century led primarily by the US and its allies and its impact in Germany and Japan at the end of the Second World War, Korea in the 1950s, Vietnam in the 1960-70s and its latest failed adventures in Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Afghanistan. He also highlighted the dire days of Russia during the 1990s and the Western powers’ attempts to turn it into a dismembered and passive cheap natural resources outlet. Putin’s message to Russians had nationalistic and religious tones, touching on the defence of traditional family values as a call to arms against the threat caused by dwindling population growth. He also named US monetary printing as one of the key tools used by the Western establishment to achieve its self-preservation and supremacy goals, reminding that paper doesn’t feed nor warms human beings.
It would be tempting to see this speech narrowly as just another manifestation of Russia’s position in the big geopolitical battles, but what Putin has done is setting international rivalry in deep historical and cultural terms which have an undoubted appeal across the globe. Critics will see Putin’s benign characterization of Russia as a cynical ploy that hides the country’s role, through its commanding post in the Soviet Union, in the subjugation of Eastern European countries after World War II, but nevertheless the Global South will see things differently.
Putin’s scathing attack against the West is a multi-headed weapon as it rallied to the conservative segments of a population dismayed by globalism imposing a deeply disturbing agenda that goes against traditional views on family, marriage and sex, but it also has leftist tones, as his criticism also goes against the same globalism that is worsening wealth disparity, and even a libertarian appeal as he referred to the imposition of states of emergency, media control and sanctions on other societies as examples of Western made totalitarianism. Putin’s primary target was the Anglo-Saxon establishment, mainly the US and Great Britain, and he attempted to build a wedge within the West as he focused on sovereignty, a cry with resonance in countries like Hungary and Italy, and on traditional anti-war sentiments in Germany and Japan by remembering the horrors of the World War II bombings in Dresden, Hamburg, Cologne, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki.
An immediate consequence of Putin’s rhetorical escalation will be increased US pressure on the Global South to follow anti-Russian sanctions. To successfully counter this menace, and as Russia needs its continuous support, it will have to combine ideology with pragmatic and tangible support in terms of access to critical energy and food resources to the poorer countries. The recent abstentions of China, India and Brazil on a UN Security Council resolution calling for condemnation of the Ukraine referenda no doubt were driven by these countries’ expectations on Russia’s future actions.
Following the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union, and as it gradually abandoned socialism, Russia lost the powerful ideological appeal that it had during decades in the Global South and in the West’s anti-establishment segments. The most remarkable aspect of Putin’s recent speech is bringing back ideological confrontation into the forefront. This new battle looks to present the West’s defence of democracy, freedom, and sovereignty as hollow and hypocritical. A combined message of anti-colonialism and conservatism is a powerful tool but Putin’s indirect and subtle appeal to people power as the only way to finally counter the Deep State is even stronger. Putin’s identification of the Deep State as humanity’s foe may be his ultimate ideological legacy, something avoidable if the US would have resigned itself to be just a normal country and to focus primarily on its people’s prosperity.
This interview of Ben Norton is quite a broad and knowledgeable analysis of the whole world situation right now. Quite long but very info...
