Pulling Its Weight
"There's a great deal of unease in Washington."
"The defense, intelligence agencies and others are concerned that advanced chipmaking capabilities are going to China."
James Lewis, analyst, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Washington
"Qualcomm has a balancing act."
"Most of the world's PCs are made in China, and most of the world's smartphones, too, so they have to play along."
Willy Shih, Harvard Business School
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VCG |Getty Images As Washington fiddles, China is investing billions in U.S. startups with cutting-edge products that
could have military applications
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U.S. technology giant Qualcomm is actively assisting the government of China in its development of drones. Oh, it's also involved in helping China with its artificial intelligence program, with mobile technology and with supercomputers. And here we thought that the Chinese advance into these technologies owed to the expertise of Chinese invention...? Qualcomm has been very busy as an enabler for China.
It is involved with Huawei, helping it to make a presence in overseas markets, all in support of aspirational China's "go global" campaign in its development plans to launch multinational brands. Funding, expertise and engineering in aid of Beijing's creation of a program superpowering its technology, all enabled by an American technology giant. Does this make sense? Perhaps not nationalistically, but if the focus is on growing the bottom line, fairly likely so.
Loyalty to national adherence and support of national security not quite as vitally of-the-moment as making an investment that will pay off handsomely in the future in corporate financial gain. Genuflecting to the God of Lucre. And while American companies are known to protect intellectual property and trade secrets, anxious not to give rivals the opportunity to make gains over their own, when it comes to China, it's their way or no way.
And doesn't everyone and his uncle want entry to the giant Chinese marketplace of opportunities? To do that, gaining access equates with sacrifice. Either transfer technology, take part in joint ventures, reduce pricing and give opportunity to players in China, or forego that limitless opportunity affinity corporate interests are so keen on honing. In obeisance to the reality of China's President's aspiration to see that Chinese companies, its military and its government end up dominating artificial intelligence and semiconductors. It's their game or no game at all.
Even while the U.S. Congress considers how it can best restrict China's acquisition of advanced technology through the imposition of tougher rules preventing the purchase of U.S. assets and limiting technology transfers, companies like Qualcomm squelch any possible corporate conscience and proceed full speed ahead. America's security requirements? Forgetabout it. Teaming with China, borders dissolve.
American dependence on its restricted and advanced military, space and defense programs is becoming suddenly and worryingly vulnerable. Advanced Micro Devices and Hewlett Packard Enterprises are also not immune to this new enterprise of working with Chinese companies in the development of server chips, and in so doing willingly creating robust rivals of their own creative products. Intel is involved with China, building high-end mobile chips, competing in that arena with Qualcomm.
Even IBM is prepared to transfer technology to essentially break into the mainframe banking business; there are no sacred cows left other than lucrative undertakings. Qualcomm, as the globe's dominant mobile phone chip maker was fined in 2014 in China for anticompetitive action, and to restore its advantage in China it agreed to lower prices in China, to move some of its manufacturing to Chinese partners and to move to upgrade China's technology capacities.
Qualcomm's president, Derek K. Aberle, met Chen Miner in Guizhou in March. In a government hall, Mr. Aberle pledged in the presence of Chen, a confidant of President Xi Jinping, to "continually cooperate" with the Chinese government.
Labels: AI, China, Complicity, Corporate Interests, Technology, United States
posted by Pieface @ Friday, August 25, 2017
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