My Take | The chip war is now a patriotic war for China
- The tech fight is about economic survival for Beijing, but just another ‘war’ of choice for US politicians and technocrats. It’s easy to predict which side has the greater will to prevail
A leading Chinese telecoms company released a new smartphone and no less than the White House’s National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan was asked at a press conference to comment on America’s plan for a strategic response.
Is it just me or do others also find that a somewhat ridiculous spectacle? In any case, Sullivan said the US needed to analyse Huawei Technologies’ new phone chip in precise technical details.
“I’m going to withhold comment on the particular chip in question until we get more information about precisely its character and composition,” Sullivan told a White House briefing on Tuesday.
“What it tells us, regardless, is that the United States should continue on its course of a ‘small yard, high fence’ set of technology restrictions focused narrowly on national security concerns, not on the broader question of commercial decoupling.”
“Character and composition” … “national security concerns” – in the old Cold War days, that kind of response would have been if the Soviets had just tested a new type of nuclear bomb.
As many commentators have observed, it was no accident that Huawei released its latest phone during US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo’s high-profile mission to China.