That's one way of framing it, but China has worked this way for a while now. China has great jet engines now, but it took them decades to get there once they were deprived of foreign assistance. It's not hard to see the new chip sanctions having an identical chilling effect, deterring a land invasion of Taiwan until China's lithography is self-reliant and competitive. Right now, they are arguably forced to import foreign technology if they want cutting-edge or competitive AI hardware, similar to where they were with engine design.
Maybe they do turn things around, in the long-run. But the US can invest just as hard, and they haven't burned their bridges with ASML/TSMC. On top of that, the US can license IP from companies like ARM that previously weren't even shared with China to avoid unlicensed clones. The US wants their IP and global industry to prop them up here, and I don't think it's crazy to suggest they've got the upper-hand right now.
Important to contextualize "a while" is really last 10 years - post Tianamen weapons sanctions catchup was still in era where PRC tertiary production was fraction of current talent production with massive brain drain. Turbojet catchup was contingent on 10 years of generational tertiary catchup, 10 years of integrating talent into workforce, which semi is benefitting from out of gate/not as cripplingly bottlenecked on. Hence catchup gap/rate likely lessened under current conditions where there's increasingly less talent shortage, with trend of outright talent advantage, i.e. PRC IC white paper from 2018 targetted pumping 30k IC talent per year, now likely around ~550k/700k they think needed for entire domestic IC supply chain (was at ~400k in 2018). Meanwhile everyone else is projecting talent shortfall, so the ultimate catchup is post 2030s when PRC has 700k+/700k semi with likely surplus while western semi try to maintain lead with talent shortage, all the while PRC indigenous semi will chip away at the 300B+ IC imports currently being paid to western semi to support their R&D towards maintaining lead.
> forced to import foreign technology
Question is how long / at which point will PRC be fine with with relying indigenous, rumored indigenous 12nm production line coming online soon. Industrial policy can spam that... then what are the incentives? I argue they would be MORE incentivized to disrupt/degrade TSMC responsible for ~90% of high end nodes even with after CHIPS that disproportionately support the west. The fastest way for PRC to close gap then is to deny west advanced nodes, already largely denied to it. Some PRC planner is crunching the math that if everyone forced to make do with mostly 12nm chips, then PRC is going to have advantage in cost/scale in production AND renewable energy for operation costs. The flip side of the competitive coin and TSMC delimma is to make adversaries less competitive via denial. US can maintain peacetime advantage with lawfare, PRC can erode that advantage with warfare.
> US can invest just as hard, and they haven't burned their bridges with ASML/TSMC
But will it be as effective? Developments around Intel not promising. Even with CHIPs there's no sign US is going to plug talent shortage gap. US can buy the machines, build the fabs, the current bottle neck is still US talent production with respect to semi. Are they going to figure out how to get US fab workers to work as hard as TWnese even with proper compensation?
Also PRC hasn't burnt bridges with ASML/TSMC, US export controls attempted to burn that bridge against their wishes. But current ASML net sales to PRC due to stockpiling ~50% of their global total. They'd be happy to sell kitchen sink to PRC absent export controls.
> they've got the upper-hand right now
I don't think anyone's disputing that. I'm pointing out the contraints to catch timeframe for PRC is likely smaller than vs aviation, and ability for western semi to keep gap less due to current projected talent shortfalls. And once PRC establishes comprehensive semi supply chain, one that does not require multinational coordination, it will have certain competitive advantages. Also the entire point is to pivot away from western tech stack to avoid the ip/licensing fees and chip away US dominance in computing in general. PRC getting their semi up = starting condition for PRC eventually competing against trillions of value of US SaaS. PRC not just unhappy US control semi hardware, it's also unhappy US controls global software/appstore ecosystems. But that IMO much harder and broader battle, but one that is coming.
Maybe they do turn things around, in the long-run. But the US can invest just as hard, and they haven't burned their bridges with ASML/TSMC. On top of that, the US can license IP from companies like ARM that previously weren't even shared with China to avoid unlicensed clones. The US wants their IP and global industry to prop them up here, and I don't think it's crazy to suggest they've got the upper-hand right now.