Who says we won't just progress as well and they stay behind a couple of years?

Where is the evidence that China is catching up considered a fiat d accompli?

Do you presume that China is destined to always at least catch up in every sector or field ever? That stinks of Chinese Exceptionalism to me.

If they could just "catch up" they would, and whether we sell them chips wouldn't matter because they would want to create their own Nvidia and export chips and make money too.

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balarjin 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> Do you presume that China is destined to always at least catch > up in every sector or field ever? That stinks of Chinese > Exceptionalism to me.

Suppose you want to build something that requires technical knowledge (a GPU, a fighter jet, ...). You have engineers, but they don't yet know how to build it.

If no one on earth has ever built this thing, you need to consider the possibility that it can't be done at a cost you can pay. Perhaps it violates some law of physics, or it can't be manufactured without knowing some chemistry/physics that we are 100+ years from discovering.

If a company in some other country is already building this thing, you can be sure it is possible to build it. That is a critical piece of information! It means you don't need to discover (much) new physics. It means you can buy/steal a working copy and look at it to learn about it. It means there are engineers you can hire/spy on to understand their design process. It means you can more easily convince a bank/government to fund development, as they have proof your goals are achievable.

Inventing a thing is much harder than inventing a clone of a thing. The idea that China doesn't have the people and organization to copy things other countries make is the opposite of Chinese Exceptionalism. It is the belief that the Chinese are uniquely incapable of engineering work. This is obviously not true.

	▲	ericmay 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> The idea that China doesn't have the people and organization to copy things other countries make is the opposite of Chinese Exceptionalism. It is the belief that the Chinese are uniquely incapable of engineering work. This is obviously not true. Which broadly leads to two conclusions: They can't do it. If they could they would. If you could invest and create your own Nvidia, ASML, TSMC, &c. you would do that especially if you are China due to its stated goals and actions it takes that we can all see toward those goals. They can do it and so selling them the chips doesn't matter other than helping to speed up their ability to do it, so we don't want to sell them the chips and thus speed up their capabilities. But your viewpoint also holds true for the United States and Europe. Anything China can do we can also do, otherwise you're just supposing Chinese Exceptionalism.

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stackghost 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> fiat d accompli

The phrase is “fait accompli”, without a D, and is French for “accomplished feat”.

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dudefeliciano 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> Where is the evidence that China is catching up considered a fiat d accompli?

The ever closing gap between the capabilities of frontier models vs chinese open weight models.

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kridsdale1 8 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Models aren’t everything. You need physical infrastructure at scale for inference, which is where the economic power comes from. Chinese hardware makes double the heat and needs at least double the energy input.

	▲	Kbelicius 7 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		And 3 years ago they were producing no heat and required no energy because they did not exist. Clearly they are catching up
	▲	ImPostingOnHN 7 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		even if true, luckily for them, double the heat and double the energy input aren't an issue, and they have more physical infrastructure at scale too

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earthdeity 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

It's like the ever closing gap between the smartest kid in class and the kid who sits behind him copying his work.

That's not a strategy that leads to actually being the best.

	▲	chucklenorris 7 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Exactly. And we better keep it this way. The fact that we can block them from copying us today means that they will try that much harder to come up with their own answers. Remember, they are miles ahead in manufacturing hardware and the software is not a problem anymore. Whatever moat cuda represented is gone now.