The West's Technological Edge in Geopolitical Competition

The US and its allies enjoy a significant technological advantage over China and Russia.  The Chinese are working hard to catch up but the West is not standing still. It is making huge investments in research and development to maintain this edge as it becomes increasingly clear that the outcome of the ongoing international geopolitical competition will largely be determined by technology. 

East-West Comparison of GDP, R&D. Source: IMF (GDP), OECD (R&am...

In 2019, the United States and its allies invested $1.5 trillion in research and development, far outpacing the combined Chinese and Russian R&D investment of half a trillion USD.  This gap will likely narrow if the East's GDP continues to grow faster than the West's, allowing for higher investment in technology. 

After the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the US, EU, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan have made it clear that the Western allies can and will use technology sanctions to control the behavior of China and Russia. 

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) will no longer fabricate computer chips for Russia, according to media reports. The ban will particularly affect Russia's Elbrus and Baikal processors, unless China agrees to step in to manufacture these chips, and risk additional US sanctions itself. Both Russian processors use mature 28 nm technology. The world's most advanced TSMC fabrication technology today is 5 nanometers. The best US-based Intel can do today is 7nm technology. China's SMIC (Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation) has the capability to produce chips using 14 nm technology.  Semiconductor chips form the core of all modern systems from automobiles to airplanes to smartphones, computers, home appliances, toys, telecommunications and advanced weapons systems.  

While China is the  biggest volume producer of semiconductor components in the world,  the Chinese design centers and fabs rely on tools and equipment supplied by the West to deliver products. Western companies dominate all the key steps in this critical and highly complex industry, from chip design (led by U.S.-based Nvidia, Intel, Qualcomm and AMD and Britain’s ARM) to the fabrication of advanced chips (led by Intel, Taiwan’s TSMC and South Korea’s Samsung ) and the sophisticated machines that etch chip designs onto wafers (produced by Applied Materials and Lam Research in the U.S., the Netherlands’ ASML Holding and Japan’s Tokyo Electron ), according to the Wall Street Journal

There is no question that the current western technology sanctions can seriously squeeze Russia. However, overusing such sanctions could backfire in the long run if the US rivals, particularly China and Russia, decide to invest billions of dollars to build their own capacity. This would seriously erode western technology domination and result in major market share losses for the US tech companies, particularly those in Silicon Valley. 

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Comment by Riaz Haq on September 1, 2022 at 8:52pm

India’s high-stakes bid to join the global semiconductor race
Chipmaking could be fantastically lucrative but precision engineering has not been a traditional national strength

https://www.ft.com/content/cbd50844-853e-4435-8028-f581d536a89a


The complexity of semiconductor production and supply chains means that manufacturers in a handful of east Asian countries, led by China, Taiwan and South Korea, have been responsible for much of global supply.

That is now changing. In July, the US passed the Chips and Science Act that includes $52bn of grants to support chipmaking and research and development. Meanwhile the EU is looking to build semiconductor resilience with its own €43bn Chips Act. 

While India does not yet make microchips commercially, it does contribute to the design of semiconductors because of its strong software base, says Mahinthan Joseph Mariasingham, a statistician and researcher with the Asian Development Bank.

“When it comes to manufacturing, India has lagged behind many of the other countries, partly because of its lack of facilitating infrastructure,” he says. “It was easy for them to get into the software market because it doesn’t require elaborate physical infrastructure.” 



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The factories outside Chennai, in India’s southern state of Tamil Nadu, are home to an array of global corporate names that lend credibility to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s “Make in India” campaign, which aims to turn Asia’s third-largest economy into a workshop to the world.

The state’s industrial parks host international investors such as Renault-Nissan and Hyundai, which have large car factories; Dell makes computers there and Samsung produces TVs, washing machines and fridges. There are enough suppliers to Apple (including Taiwan’s Foxconn and Pegatron, and the Finnish contract manufacturer Salcomp) that people in Tamil Nadu’s business community commonly refer to the American tech group, which does not discuss its suppliers, as “the fruit company”. 

Now India wants to take a step up the manufacturing value chain, with a high-stakes bid to begin making semiconductors. The Modi government has put $10bn of incentives on the table to tempt manufacturers to set up new “fabs” (semiconductor fabrication plants) and encourage investment in related sectors such as display glass. One plant is being planned in Tamil Nadu.

India’s ambition to enter the chipmaking business comes at a time of growing trade and geopolitical tension as western economies have pushed to decouple their supply chains from China, which has invested heavily to become a leader in the semiconductor industry.

The Covid-19 pandemic and Beijing’s draconian lockdowns have disrupted global chip supply and sent companies and governments on a hunt for alternative sources of production. India, which has cracked down on Chinese social media apps and phone producers against the backdrop of a long-running geopolitical dispute, is offering itself as a democratic alternative tech hub to China. 



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“From a geopolitics point of view, India is attractive . . . We are increasingly one of the largest consumers of semiconductors outside of the US and traditional markets,” says Rajeev Chandrasekhar, India’s minister of state for electronics and information technology.

Manufacturers are now lining up to take up the $10bn offer. Singaporean group IGSS Ventures has signed a memorandum of understanding with the Tamil Nadu state government for what its founder and chief executive Raj Kumar says will “very likely” be a wafer factory it wants to build within three years. The Israeli group ISMC, a joint venture between Israel’s Tower Semiconductor and Abu Dhabi-based Next Orbit Ventures, has signed a letter of intent with the state of Karnataka, home of India’s tech capital, Bangalore, to build a $3bn semiconductor chipmaking plant. And Foxconn has teamed up with Indian group Vedanta to build a semiconductor plant, surveying sites in the western Indian states of Gujarat and Maharashtra. 

Comment by Riaz Haq on September 7, 2022 at 9:53am

#Intel says it has no current plans to start #manufacturing #semiconductor #chips in #India. The comments came after India's transport minister said earlier in the day that the #chipmaker will set up a #semiconductor manufacturing plant in the country.

https://www.reuters.com/technology/intel-says-it-has-no-current-pla...

Comment by Riaz Haq on September 12, 2022 at 11:01am

China's dominance of manufacturing is growing, not shrinking
Country gaining market share in both low- and high-tech sectors

https://asia.nikkei.com/Opinion/China-s-dominance-of-manufacturing-...

William Bratton is author of "China's Rise, Asia's Decline." He was previously head of Asia-Pacific equity research at HSBC.

When it comes to discussions about China's manufacturing capabilities, there is an all-too-frequent disconnect between rhetoric and reality.

On the one hand, it is widely understood that Chinese producers are losing relative competitiveness. Higher labor costs, bitter trade frictions, rising geopolitical tensions and the domestic pursuit of zero-COVID are all encouraging exporters to leave the country.

China, it is thus argued, has passed "peak manufacturing" and its status as the world's manufacturer stands to be superseded by other countries in the region. By extension, this will materially impact China's economic trajectory and the region's evolving geopolitical balances.

On the other hand, there has been a lack of substantive evidence offered to support the above argument. Although anecdotes abound about certain companies relocating production out of China, the data suggests that such moves are not at the scale necessary to reverse the upward momentum of the country's manufacturing base, nor its international competitiveness.

The most obvious evidence of this is in trade flows.

It is not just that Chinese exports have remained remarkably robust despite COVID-related lockdowns. More than that, the latest numbers from the U.N. Conference on Trade and Development imply that Chinese producers have become more competitive in recent years, not less.

China's manufactured exports, for example, have been growing significantly faster than those of Germany, the U.S., Japan or South Korea. As a result, its share of global manufactured exports by value surged to a new high of 21% last year, compared to just 17% in 2017. The country is now a more important international supplier than Germany, the U.S. and Japan combined.

Furthermore, contrary to the view that supply chains are reducing their exposure to China, Chinese manufacturers have consolidated their primacy across the vast majority of sectors over recent years. In fact, what is particularly remarkable about China's evolving trade structure is that it has been able to simultaneously gain export share in both low- and high-technology industries, including those as eclectic as leather products, truck trailers and optical instruments.

Such gains are hardly indicative of an industrial base under stress. They instead highlight the hyper-competitiveness of China's producers, who increasingly dominate the East and Southeast Asian manufacturing landscape.

For all the chatter about companies leaving China and the changing geographies of supply chains, the reality is that it generated nearly half of the region's manufactured exports in 2021, compared to less than a third 15 years ago.

This competitiveness is derived from the complex and self-reinforcing interaction of multiple factors, many of which are a function of China's size. This allows the country to support far higher levels of domestic competition, innovation and specialization than its neighbors, and results in greater efficiencies and lower production costs, which regional rivals will always struggle to replicate. These scale benefits are subsequently magnified through aggressive industrial development policies that have no obvious precedent in terms of scope or ambition.

So China's manufacturing advantages must be viewed holistically, especially as it can be highly misleading, however tempting, to draw conclusions based on the trends of any specific factor.

Comment by Riaz Haq on September 12, 2022 at 11:02am

China's dominance of manufacturing is growing, not shrinking
Country gaining market share in both low- and high-tech sectors

https://asia.nikkei.com/Opinion/China-s-dominance-of-manufacturing-...

William Bratton is author of "China's Rise, Asia's Decline." He was previously head of Asia-Pacific equity research at HSBC.


The country's rapidly rising wages, for example, attract much attention. But it would be a mistake to assume that this signals the loss of competitiveness in more labor-intensive industries.

Rather, it reflects dramatic improvements in productivity and a broader structural shift into higher technology sectors. Furthermore, the use of national averages masks the diversity of China's labor force, with a substantial pool still on relatively low wages.

This is seen in the irrefutable fact that the country's manufacturers are still gaining export share across low-technology and labor-intensive industries, including textiles. In other words, their innate advantages are so substantial and so overwhelming that higher labor costs by themselves have no material impact on their competitiveness.

As such, despite all the frequently cited anecdotes, there is no real evidence that the factors underpinning China's competitiveness are being reversed. Rather, Asia's manufacturing industries will continue to concentrate in China, further entrenching its status as the core of the region's economic system.

This is the challenge for the rest of the region. No matter how hard they try, few countries, if any, will be able to replicate or match China's natural advantages. And this will have profound longer-term economic and geopolitical consequences.

Against the onslaught of highly competitive Chinese products, emerging economies will struggle to develop the manufacturing sectors they need to achieve and sustain productivity-led growth over the long-term.

But even more advanced nations are not immune from the pressures created by China, with the hollowing-out of their industrial structures a very real danger. The displacement of Japanese and South Korean manufacturers from the global telecommunications equipment and shipbuilding markets demonstrates just how quickly China can engage with its neighbors at their own games -- and win.

So for all the suggestions that China's grip on manufacturing is weakening, the reality could not be more different. It is not the Chinese producers that are losing influence, but their rivals across the region.

In fact, the natural forces driving the country's competitive advantages are now both so substantial and entrenched that the rest of Asia is seemingly engaged in an unfair trade fight -- and one it is unlikely to win. The region's slide toward a clearly defined economic core-periphery structure -- with China dominating and the rest being disadvantaged -- now looks inevitable.

In turn, this is creating dependencies which will prove evermore difficult to disentangle, no matter how strong the apparent political commitment in some countries to do so.

This is seen in how recent attempts to diversify imports away from Chinese producers have been constrained by the lack of credible alternative suppliers. It is noticeable that Australia and India, countries positioning themselves as regional rivals to China, have increased -- not reduced -- their reliance on Chinese manufactured imports over the last three years.

It is true that this manufacturing mastery may not have been developed as a deliberate geopolitical tool. But in the same way the U.S. was able to use its post-World War II industrial leadership to advance its own interests, the reliance on Chinese products will naturally give Beijing unrivaled power and influence within Asia. As such, China's future economic and political dominance of the Asian regional economy is set to be underpinned by its vibrant, dynamic and hypercompetitive manufacturing industries, whatever the country's doomsayers may claim.

Comment by Riaz Haq on September 15, 2022 at 7:16pm

Wisconsin Is Coming to India and Not in a Good Way
Analysis by Tim Culpan | Bloomberg

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/wisconsin-is-coming-to-indi...


The project is fantastical: A $19 billion investment into semiconductor and display-panel sectors, with the creation of 100,000 jobs in a state with little experience in technology manufacturing.

If voters and taxpayers in India’s northwestern Gujarat state are excited about this “ landmark investment” they ought to read up on recent Wisconsin history. The US state bought into a similar pipe dream in 2017 when then-President Donald Trump teamed up with then-Governor Scott Walker to lure Foxconn Technology Group, whose Taipei-listed flagship is Hon Hai Precision Industry Co. The Taiwanese company said it’d invest $10 billion and hire 13,000 workers.

Wisconsin never hit its targets. And neither will Gujarat.

What’s playing out today in India is eerily similar to what happened in the US Midwest five years ago, but this time the people and government of Gujarat have no excuse for not being aware of what’s likely to unravel. Americans were told clearly that the project in Mount Pleasant didn’t make sense. But still, they went ahead.

It’s inconceivable that Foxconn truly thought it would spend as much as $10 billion to build a high-tech manufacturing plant in the middle of US farm country. But, as founder and Chairman Terry Gou said early on in the planning phase: “There is such a plan, but it is not a promise. It is a wish.”

So when Vedanta Ltd. chairman Anil Agarwal says his company will invest 1.54 trillion rupees ($19.4 billion), we ought to take it as wishful thinking, rather than a promise. And we can also pause to bathe in the sweet irony of his chosen venture partner: Foxconn, the same name behind the Wisconsin project. Though, to be fair, the Taiwanese are less a driving force behind this India project and more a consulting partner. The numbers, choice of location, and project scope are mostly decided by Vedanta, which is bearing most of the financial burden.

Foxconn made various pledges in Wisconsin that never came to fruition, with a promise for a state-of-the-art 10G liquid-crystal-display panel factory being the most egregious. At least it never committed to assembling iPhones, the product for which Foxconn is most famous.

The Taiwanese company’s perfidiousness was in some respects spurred by local and national governments intent on selling to their voters (and taxpayers) the assurance that a $3 billion incentives package — the largest in US history — would be worth the expense. It will be the “Eighth Wonder of the The World,” Trump proclaimed at the groundbreaking ceremony in 2018.

Governments from Washington to New Delhi don’t want to offer corporate welfare to lure hum-drum projects like chip-testing and assembly. They want to send press releases and tweets that hail their territory’s move into the upper echelons of industrial society. To meet that PR goal, they often tie incentives not to reasonable evolutionary steps in economic development, but to extravagant plans that people never dreamed of.

And the recipients of such sweeteners are more than happy to oblige, safe in the knowledge that there’s almost no downside in overpromising and under-delivering. And those who doled them out — either long gone from office, or safely entrenched — won’t be required to foot the bill either. Scott Walker lost his re-election bid, in large part because of the failure of the Foxconn deal; however, he didn’t lose his home like dozens of Wisconsinites who were displaced to make way for the “wonder” that never was.

Comment by Riaz Haq on September 15, 2022 at 7:17pm

Wisconsin Is Coming to India and Not in a Good Way
Analysis by Tim Culpan | Bloomberg

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/wisconsin-is-coming-to-indi...

Now it’s India’s turn to dream, until such time comes that it must face reality.

Perhaps it’s a coincidence that the project went to the home state of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Neighboring Maharashtra state thought it was a shoe-in for the deal, going so far as to issue a statement two months ago announcing that the Vedanta-Foxconn venture would invest there.

Accusations and rancor were flying thick and fast in Maharashtra after Agarwal and Modi took to the stage to celebrate the winner. But in reality, the people of India’s second most-populous state may end up celebrating not that they lost the project, but that they dodged a bullet.

Indians — in Gujarat and Maharashtra in particular — can take this as a warning: You don’t want to be another Wisconsin.

Comment by Riaz Haq on September 23, 2022 at 9:43am

#Japan's #Toyota to stop #automobile #production in #Russia due to #supplychain disruption amid #UkraineWar & western #sanctions. "After 6 months, we have not been able to resume normal activities and see no indication that we can restart in the future". https://asia.nikkei.com/Politics/Ukraine-war/Toyota-to-terminate-au...

NAGOYA, Japan -- Toyota Motor said Friday it will exit from automobile production in Russia, citing difficulties supplying key materials and parts in the country amid the war in Ukraine.

The automaker suspended operations at its plant in St. Petersburg on March 4, after the Russian invasion began.

"After six months, we have not been able to resume normal activities and see no indication that we can restart in the future," Japan's top automaker said.

A protracted disruption would hurt Toyota's ability to support its employees, leaving it no choice but to end production in the country, it said. Mounting geopolitical risks in the region are believed to have contributed to the decision as well.

Toyota had continued to pay its factory workers after suspending production, reassigning them to maintenance and other tasks instead. Details regarding the termination process and treatment of employees at the St. Petersburg plant will be ironed out at a later time.

Toyota holds a larger market share in Russia than any other Japanese automaker. It produced 80,000 vehicles and sold 110,000 in the country in 2021.

It began locally producing vehicles in 2007 at St. Petersburg. The plant's lineup included the RAV4 sport utility vehicle and the Camry sedan in 2021.

Nissan Motor, another Japanese automaker, has extended its production freeze at its St. Petersburg plant to the end of December from the end of September.

Comment by Riaz Haq on September 29, 2022 at 7:59am

A White House official said Tuesday Russia’s sanctions-struck defense industry is creating an “opportunity” for U.S. and western defense firms to take a bite of Moscow’s share of the market.

https://www.defensenews.com/pentagon/2022/09/27/wh-aims-to-ease-arm...

“As a practical matter, countries that have had to rely on Russian equipment are going to find it very difficult to get even basic supplies from Russia’s defense industrial base,” said the NSC's Cara Abercrombie.


The remarks come weeks after the Biden administration notified Congress it would make $2.2 billion in new Foreign Military Financing grants available for Ukraine and former Warsaw Pact countries whose Soviet-made gear has been part of international aid to Ukraine.

“In NATO, that could be to transition our eastern flank partners to NATO-standard, western equipment. But certainly as we look to other countries in the Pacific, this is an opportunity as well, not just for the United States, but for western industry as well,” Abercrombie said.

The Pentagon’s chief weapons buyer, Bill LaPlante, said more “interchangeability by interoperability” among allies presents an opportunity, not just economically, but geostrategically. Linking industrial bases, or “friendshoring,” would mitigate supply chain shocks and be essential to the common defense of the U.S. and its allies, he said.

“As we have seen in Ukraine, the weapons and equipment provided by the U.S. and its allies are the best in the world,” LaPlante said in pre-recorded remarks at the ComDef conference. “Continuing to more closely integrate these capabilities with increasingly common standards for munitions, software and other components will provide even greater advantages moving forward.”

Though western sanctions have targeted Russia’s defense industry, Russia was in 2021 the second-largest arms exporter after the United States, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. Its chief clients are India, China and Egypt.

The head of Russia’s weapons export branch said earlier this year that Moscow’s arms export revenue in 2022 is likely to total about $10.8 billion, roughly 26% lower than reported for 2021.

This week, LaPlante is in Brussels convening a meeting of weapons buyers from more than 50 countries to better coordinate defense industrial efforts as they replenish weapons sent to Ukraine from their own stockpiles. The meeting is taking place under the auspices of the 50-nation Ukraine Defense Contact Group.

Dovetailing with Pentagon-led efforts to boost western and allied defense capabilities, the White House will continue the work of a Department of Defense “tiger team” seeking to streamline the U.S. process of selling arms around the globe, Abercrombie said.

“Within the National Security Council, I am looking at basically a baton pass,” Abercrombie said. “As DoD wraps up its initial analysis, we’ll be doing an interagency process to look at the collective [effort and] how can we make U.S. foreign military sales work better for our partners, or at least be a little faster.”

U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin in August established the task force to address the U.S. foreign military sales process, which spans the Pentagon and State Department. Abercrombie said the streamlining is meant to make the process more nimble without cutting corners.

Comment by Riaz Haq on September 29, 2022 at 8:00am

A White House official said Tuesday Russia’s sanctions-struck defense industry is creating an “opportunity” for U.S. and western defense firms to take a bite of Moscow’s share of the market.

https://www.defensenews.com/pentagon/2022/09/27/wh-aims-to-ease-arm...


Asked about trade restrictions by the European Union that could hinder U.S. defense exports, Abercrombie said the administration is seeking to reduce those barriers. Supply chain challenges make clear it’s “time to be looking for opportunities to work together to reduce the barriers,” she said.

The U.S.-led meeting of armaments directors in Brussels also highlights some of the headwinds for allied efforts to arm up. The gathering is aimed at addressing supply chain chokepoints for gun barrels, ball bearings and steel casings ― as well as how to sustain equipment for Ukraine on a long-term basis.

“Ultimately, more closely integrating with our allies and friends around the world will make us all more secure and resilient,” LaPlante said.

Comment by Riaz Haq on October 17, 2022 at 6:43pm

State Department Urges Silicon Valley to Aid National Security Effort
New cyber ambassador notes private sector has strengthened Ukrainian defense

https://www.wsj.com/articles/state-department-urges-silicon-valley-...

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.

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.

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.

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.

“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.

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.

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.

“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.

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.

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.

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.

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