In a new front in the U.S.-China tech war, President Joe Biden's administration is facing pressure from some lawmakers to restrict American companies from working on a freely available chip technology widely used in China - a move that could upend how the global technology industry collaborates across borders.

So the US wants to ban US companies from working with the Chinese on Risc-V technology. I believe this is the reason why the RISC-V Foundation based itself in Switzerland, to avoid the US government from interfering with the spirit of open source. Your thoughts?

  • OtterEnglish
    11•1 year ago

    “I fear that our export-control laws are not equipped to deal with the challenge of open-source software - whether in advanced semiconductor designs like RISC-V or in the area of AI - and a dramatic paradigm shift is needed,” Warner said in a statement to Reuters.

    huh, well that’s not something I’ve had to think about before.

    Edit:

    I guess this a matter of what precedent is set, and limiting this kind of talk to a few distinct areas.

    It would be AWFUL for so many sectors if we start placing blockers on open collaboration and access to information. A non-tech example might be health research where sometimes limits make sense (ex. Independent research on diseases, when something has the potential to be weaponized), but for the most part there’s so much good that comes from open collaboration.

    There’s this feeling that’s sometimes pushed where “conflict is inevitable”, but it’s… not? It’s harder to work towards something together, and defaulting to conflict is the lazy way out.