Semiconductors and the unspoken U.S. tech policy on China, with Paul Triolo

Sinica Podcast

Kaiser Kuo

Culture, China News, Hangzhou, Chinese, International Relations, Chongqing, Beijing, Sichuan, Currentaffairs, China, Politics, Chengdu, Shanghai, Guangzhou, China Economy, News, China Politics, Business, Film, Shenzhen

4.8 • 676 Ratings

🗓️ 15 July 2022

⏱️ 68 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

This week on Sinica, Kaiser chats with Paul Triolo, Senior VP for China and Technology Policy Lead at Dentons Global Advisors ASG, formerly and probably better known still as Albright Stonebridge Group. Paul provides an in-depth overview of today’s semiconductor landscape, from export control issues, to the unstable equilibrium between U.S., China, and Taiwan’s industries. He walks us through the strategic importance of semiconductors in U.S. national security considerations — and how unintended consequences of our current policies toward China might actually end up undermining U.S. national security.

04:45 – An overview of semiconductor geopolitics and supply chains

20:33 – Why the U.S. is cutting China off from advanced semiconductor technologies

27:02 – The shift in technology export controls from Trump to Biden

32:08 – The CHIPS Act and subsidies for the semiconductor industry

37:43 – Deterrence and Taiwan’s semiconductor industry as a “silicon shield”

46:16 – Lessons learned from the chip shortage

52:30 – Why is the U.S lighting a fire to Chinese self-sufficiency efforts?

57:57 – The implications of Pelosi’s planned visit to Taiwan

A transcript of this podcast is available at SupChina.com.

Recommendations:

Paul: Rob Dunn, A Natural History of the Future; and Ryan Hass, Stronger: Adapting America's China Strategy in an Age of Competitive Interdependence

Kaiser: The Boys on Amazon Prime

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the Cynica podcast, a weekly discussion of current affairs in China, produced in partnership with SUPChina.
0:15.2	Subscribe to SubChina's daily, newly designed China Access Newsletter to keep on top of all the latest news from China from
0:21.7	hundreds of different news sources. Or check out all the original writing on our website at
0:26.3	subchina.com. We've got reported stories, essays and editorials, great explainers, and trackers,
0:32.3	regular columns, and of course, a growing library of podcasts. We cover everything from China's fraught foreign relations
0:39.0	to its ingenious entrepreneurs, from the ongoing repression of Uyghurs and other Muslim people
0:43.7	in China's Xinjiang region to Beijing's ambitious plans to shift the Chinese economy onto
0:49.1	a post-carbon footing. It's a feast of business, political, and cultural news about a nation that is reshaping the world.
0:57.7	We cover China with neither fear nor favor.
1:00.9	I'm Kaiser Guo coming to you from Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
1:05.5	Semiconductors have assumed a place of enormous importance in conversations about China in recent years.
1:15.5	To be sure, it's become quite cliche now to say that silicon is the new oil.
1:20.2	Okay, sure, there's other people who say water is the new oil or data is the new oil.
1:29.7	But just as Americans are occasionally made acutely aware of just how much the economy can be shocked by oil, shocked by oil supply shortfalls as we were in 1973 or more recently during the colonial pipeline hack just last year. Or, you know,
1:34.9	of course, after the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February, we have, you know, felt the impact
1:41.5	of a shortage of semiconductors very acutely recently.
1:45.9	This resulted in big problems for sectors where, you know, not so very long ago,
1:50.7	we didn't immediately think of semiconductors as being quite so vital, like the automotive
1:56.0	sector.
1:57.3	The fact that so much of the world's supply of advanced semiconductors comes from Taiwan, and that
2:02.8	tensions across the Taiwan Strait have ratcheted up so much in recent years has, of course,
2:07.3	added two concerns, and not just here in the U.S., but certainly in China too.
	...

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