Since August 4, the CCP has started the largest military exercise in the Taiwan Strait in history, and has not stopped provoking Taiwan so far. But the CCP also has the Achilles heel of lacking cutting-edge technology and relying heavily on the United States for chip technology.
The United States has reservations about the CCP’s military exercise around Taiwan, but then immediately announced three measures to limit the CCP’s chip capabilities, suppressing the development of the CCP’s military power at the source.
The three restrictions include: first, if the U.S. government is subsidized, it will not be able to expand advanced chip production in China in the next 10 years; second, it is prohibited to sell production tools capable of producing chips below 14 nanometers to China; The four technologies of the “Technology” standard establish new export controls.
These three measures limit the CCP’s ability to produce and design advanced chips locally, slow down the development of the CCP’s chip industry, widen the gap in chip technology between the United States and China, and block the advancement of the CCP’s military technology at the source. It is foreseeable that if the CCP continues to be aggressive internationally, the decoupling of chips and technology between the United States and China will further accelerate.
Modern warfare is partly a technological battle, and chips are the brains of modern weapons.
A “Javelin” missile that contributed to the war in Ukraine has more than 250 chips, a CH-53K helicopter of the US Marine Corps has more than 2,000 chips, and an F-35 has more than 3,000 chips.
Artificial intelligence could revolutionize warfare. U.S. Senator Mike Rounds said defending against AI-capable adversaries without using AI would be a disaster in future wars.
At present, the cutting-edge chip industry chain is firmly in the hands of the United States and its allies, including China and Russia, which rely heavily on American chips and advanced technologies.
In this Russian-Ukrainian war, the key role of chips is striking. Russia cannot produce high-end chips, and its weapons lack precision strike capabilities. They can only bombard indiscriminately with intensive artillery fire, causing a large number of civilian deaths.
The M142 Haimas rocket launched by the U.S. aided Ukraine was accurate to the meter level, with a response of only 16 seconds, and accurately hit the ammunition depots, bridges and transportation lines behind the Russian army. As soon as Haimas came on stage, Ukraine got help on the battlefield.
The Russian Air Force’s mainstream air-launched cruise missile, the Kh-101 (ALCM), relies heavily on U.S. chips, and Ukrainian intelligence claims to have found at least 35 U.S.-made chips in it. Without these American chips, Russian missiles and most weapons would not function. “
Ukrainian experts say the chips do not necessarily come directly from the manufacturer, as a large, unregulated market for recycled chips has emerged in China, which could be a larger source of these chips, many of which appear to be fairly old.
Likewise, the CCP is highly dependent on the US-led chip technology industry chain.
In 2021, less than 7% of China’s domestic chips are produced by Chinese chip manufacturers, and they are low-end mature processes.
Min-Hua Chiang, a researcher at the Heritage Foundation, an American think tank, said in an article that the Biden administration is wrong to describe the U.S.-China competition as a technology competition. Because in most areas, there is no technological competition between the two countries, only China’s dependence on the United States.
According to World Trade Organization statistics, China’s trade deficit in integrated circuits and electronic components, including that of Hong Kong, has nearly doubled in a decade.
Over the past decade, China has become the largest buyer of U.S. intellectual property in the Asia-Pacific region. China’s growing chip deficit reveals a key fact: The CCP’s technological self-reliance remains a distant dream. Some analysts believe that it may take decades for the CCP’s chips to become independent and independent, and it is almost impossible to surpass the United States.
And a large number of weapons development of the Chinese military also relies heavily on American chips or chip design software.
Stewart Randall, a consultant in Shanghai, said, “In my 10 years in China, I have never encountered a chip designer who does not use Synopsys or Cadence products.”
Jiang Minhua analyzed, “It took the Chinese leadership for 10 years to understand that its dream is basically based on foreign technology input. When the import of foreign technology is terminated, the internal defects are like a domino effect. Exposed. So the dream turned into a nightmare, and U.S. export restrictions only accelerated the exposure of internal weaknesses in China.”
