All: if you want to comment on HN on a divisive topic like this, please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and make sure you're commenting in the intended spirit: curious, thoughtful, respectful conversation across differences. Note, for example, this guideline—we really mean it:
"Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive."
Many users can't seem to resist hurling flamebait and feeding flamewars. Please don't be one of those. This is not a site for smiting enemies or being an internet warrior, regardless of how right your views are or you feel they are, and regardless of how much badness there is to denounce. None of that is what we want here, because it's repetitive, predictable, and self-reinforcing. HN threads thrive on diffs, not repetition. Diffs are what's interesting.
There is a diff between not being a troll and being respectful of alleged human rights abuses. Suggesting that we must be respectful in the light of massive human rights violations is how those human rights violations get to take place. This is the same sort of peak Silicon Valley technocrat mindset that led to things like apologizing for not sourcing parts from forced labor in China and sites like reddit holding on to jailbait, involuntary porn/voyeur, and literal hate subreddits out of fear of taking any stance.
I'm saying you have to be respectful of this community and its rules if you want to participate here. That's reasonable: you're getting something, so it's fair for you to give something in return. The HN guidelines explain clearly what you need to give.
Angry internet noun phrases like "peak Silicon Valley technocrat mindset" are a distraction from this, not to mention (god help us) porn/voyeur. All we're trying to do is have an internet forum that doesn't suck. IMO that's a goal that benefits everybody here, and everybody here should do their part.
Users hurling nationalistic insults and ideological talking points at each other goes in exactly the wrong direction for that. This shouldn't be hard to see. It also, by the way, does nothing to help vulnerable human beings, and invoking something noble like that to excuse garden-variety internet mudslinging is a smidge distasteful.
I think the intention is more to try an avoid every comment just being "China bad, F*ck Intel"
We all know there are human rights abuses in China, but no amount of emotional comments on an HN thread is gonna fix that. It would be more productive to have some sort of more thought provoking conversations.
The maximum effect a comment on here can have is making a statement that changes someone's mind. Overly emotional, shallow, or terse responses aren't going to have that effect.
I get your point, but disregard for decorum here isn't going to solve any of those problems. At best it's shouting into a void, at worst your fooling yourself into thinking you're part of the solution while fixing nothing.
I think he meant to not devolve to into calling everyone a tankie bot or genocide denier if I were to ask you what non-editorial non NED or weapons manufacturer funded primary data you're referring to when you talk about "massive human rights violations".
So should we start criticizing every american company, person and entity in every thread concerning anything american since US government kills innocent civilians on an even bigger scale than Chinese government? Because you know that is exactly happening.
Wall St. does not care, so these companies can not care. Apple just gave BOE 20% of their OLED business to diversify away from Sanding and LG:
Note that BOE is being propped up by the CCP to the tune of $100M a year in losses over the past decade as economic warfare against SK.
Manufacturing is where today’s wars are being fought because these people know it gives them the power over those that would complain otherwise.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Intel’s supply chain now has components that couldn’t be built without a lot of delays if the CCP snapped their fingers (since they have also funded the conglomeration of specialty materials companies: these new companies are cheap when all you have to do is devalue your currency (is. steal a few dollars from all your citizens)).
Hopefully these conflicts stay entirely in the economic and manufacturing realm, because real war is hell.
You can't expect an independent company to take on a nation, the US and other Western governments either need to admit they don't care about human rights or commit to flat out banning trade with China
People talk about potential war with China without realizing China has been waging war on the West for decades, China's military doctrine counts economic warfare as equal to kinetic(traditional) warfare. These state backed companies are arms of the military being used to crush foreign nations and Western governments do nothing. Trillions of dollars in damage but they don't care because bombs didn't do the damage and many of the politicians got rich by allowing it to happen
Totally agree. In addition, billions of dollars every year are spent on various propaganda wars through advertising firms, political campaigns, and policy groups to convince people that the current state of manufacturing and nationality in the world is both inevitable and desirable.
Forget about the trillions of dollars--the real casualties are social stability, self-sufficiency, and the overall individual strength of the "west". The grandchildren of the people who invented the modern supply chain are wholly incapable of rebuilding it or in most cases even understanding it. How many people involved in the "national discourse" know what a kilowatt is, or have any idea what the country imports and why?
Many of these large companies dont believe the claims of human rights violations in Xinjiang because the research is shoddy and funded by problematic orgs that have massive ulterior motives (mostly winning large defense contracts) .
Some of you are just as confident of what is going on in Xinjiang, with 0 evidence, as you were of Iraq's WMDs it seems. Ask yourself how much you really know.
As someone that's been there, I agree with this sentiment. I also happen to know people with cotton farms there, I even know how much they make, and nobody around is using slave labor.
(and no I do not support / happy with the CCP - this is just what I've seen/experienced)
Interestingly, small companies like FairPhone work to improve their suppliers' labor conditions.
Intel of all the companies is in a position to do the same or more. However they choose to whitewash their brand by blaming the chinese government of their lack of care. Their hypocrisy backfired, and they let China win on all counts.
Ironically they ended up helping whitewash the chinese government.
For once they could try. They can have rules for their suppliers and factories, and enforce those. Other companies do. Even a tiny company like FairPhone does. But no, they chose for decades the cheap labor, and now they turn around and say "no more" just to defend their reputation.
In any case, apparently their apologies to China will not stop them from moving away from Xinjiang working, even if just for show.
They could do a better audit of their supply chains. I'm guessing silica is a big thing for them? Excuse my lack of knowledge on raw materials for processors, just jumping to silica = silicon. I do know the region produces a bunch of it used in solar panels.
Intel could also refuse to sell chips to companies that facilitate this genocide - and they are soon going to be forced to more broadly than the current sanctions list.
I don't know if any companies like DJI, surveillance camera companies, etc use intel chips but with the new law just passed companies like Intel will have to do a better job making sure their product does not come from or is used to facilitate uyghur human rights abuses.
A quick search shows as of 2019, Fairphone's suppliers included the Chinese company O-Film [0], which at the time was using forced labor from Xinjiang. They probably had no way of knowing this; Apple [1] was burned by the same firm. The company transported Uyghur victims to a factory southern China (Jiangxi in the Bloomberg article), so Xinjiang wasn't indicated as part of the supply chain anywhere.
How much actual impact do these kinds of corporate efforts accomplish? How much merit should we credit these "best-effort" attempts, when when's all said and then, there's still (probably) concentration camp labor in the end product?
>"The Australian Strategic Policy Institute said in a report last year that Ofilm used at least 700 Uyghur laborers from Xinjiang at a factory in the southern province of Jiangxi. The workers were sent there in late April 2017 as part of a state-sponsored labor transfer program, the think tank said."
>"The Uyghurs were expected to “gradually alter their ideology” and express gratitude to China’s ruling Communist Party for their work assignments, the think tank said, citing Chinese-language news articles."
It's really absurd to call any labor performed by Uygur inside China forced labor. Are Uygurs so lazy to deny any labor? Or can they not prefer working in factories than, say, farming or herding cattles?
As to the ideology and gratitude part, I think people may alter their ideology if they so choose. After all, the Romans switched to Christianity, and slavery was once legal in the States. And people should be able to express gratitude to people giving them a chance to work for a better life. Even now, people from abroad are moving into the States to work, are they all forced labor?
It's interesting to see that people on both sides are angry -- for different reasons. People on western Internet are angry at Intel for having issued an apology. People on Chinese Internet are angry because they view it as a non-apology, i.e. Intel still goes ahead with the ban. I see people -- including Chinese diaspora -- calling for banning Intel.
Personally, I'm angry at Intel for not having actual convictions.
It looks like they're doing the ban, not because they actually believe that there's slave labor in Xinjiang, but because their stockholders will be mad if they don't. And they issued the apology, not because they realized that there is no slave labor in Xinjiang, but because they don't want China angry at them. They're trying to just get on with being a business. (And to some degree that's fair. Intel is a business, not a moral crusader. Still, I'd like them to either take a stand, or not take a stand. Don't try to "take a stand" just to make people happy.)
("Angry" is too strong a word. "Disappointed" might be better. But I said "angry" to match the wording of the parent.)
As long as corporations are legal persons, I'm going to hold them to a moral standard, and I think the American public as a whole has a duty to do the same. If they can contribute to politicians, then we all have a personal stake in their ethics.
I doubt it. China is not there yet w.r.t. semiconductor independence. There are people who say, buy AMD, but AMD is also subject to US laws...
So what will happen instead? From what I've seen so far, China is careful with counterattacking US because they know the US is stronger. I think the govt will just issue an angry statement but do nothing concrete internationally, while continuing their domestic efforts of semiconductor development as they already have, and also continuing with restructuring Xinjiang's economy (i.e. replacing foreign customers with domestic customers, as happened with cotton)
I think AMD has less (possibly much less) in China than Intel.
I spent about €200,000 on AMD servers last year. They are performing better than Intel ones would have done at the same price, so it was a very easy decision.
Personally, I'm most angry that Intel refuses to properly audit their suppliers. They're not actually banned from importing goods from Xinjiang if they can prove that they weren't made with forced labor.
If they could prove that, the US government should be happy (because their stated goal of combating forced labor is respected) and Chinese people should be happy, too (better working conditions).
Merely restricting suppliers based on geography is a non-solution, since it's not like forced labor magically stops if you cross a provincial border.
I don't think it's that simple. For example BCI performed multiple audits since 2012 and hasn't found a single case of forced labor.[1][2] Despite that, they've pulled back from Xinjiang. Companies don't want to deal with Xinjiang just so they can avoid controversies, regardless of actual facts.
Also, the Xinjiang Forced Labor Prevention Act is based on the maxim of guilty-until-proven-innocent. There is no way to conclusively prove a negative. Even if you perform 100 unannounced audits you can still say "oh there's 0.001% chance that they fooled you 100 times"
Skechers is a good example. They conducted multiple inspections and found no forced labor, so they maintained business dealings with Chinese suppliers.
Why would I ever import from a supplier whose only positive is price, if I have to go to extra effort and expense - making them no longer competitive in any respect?
Posting like this is a bannable offense on HN. You can't attack another user like this, no matter how strongly you disagree with them. Please see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29739415 for a longer explanation.
Seeing this reminds me of a link I posted recently. This youtube video features investigation into supposed concentration camps in Xinjiang: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cI8bJO-to8I
I'm posting it again because it seems like the kind of video that needs to be seen.
The point of that video seems to be to dox the person who filmed the other video, probably with the intention of making his life a lot harder and less safe. That's really creepy.
To me this sounds like a normal corporate non-apology. If I read the article correctly, Intel's policy to not allow suppliers to source from Xinjiang still stands, forced by Western regulation. They are just apologizing that the policy caused offence. I would prefer if Intel would outright condemn Chinese behavior in Xinjiang, but this particular event doesn't outrage me much.
A corporate non-apology posted exclusively in the affected country, no less. I don’t know whether it’s even right to say that Intel the global company made the statement; the people running their Weibo account are presumably in China and might not have had an option.
Spineless corporations Reminds me of title of TV series about Mafia : La piovra
"An epic crime saga of power, money, violence and corruption. the mafia controls everything through local and international networks like an octopus, anyone who tries to bring them down pays the ultimate price."
Readit News
"Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive."
Many users can't seem to resist hurling flamebait and feeding flamewars. Please don't be one of those. This is not a site for smiting enemies or being an internet warrior, regardless of how right your views are or you feel they are, and regardless of how much badness there is to denounce. None of that is what we want here, because it's repetitive, predictable, and self-reinforcing. HN threads thrive on diffs, not repetition. Diffs are what's interesting.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Angry internet noun phrases like "peak Silicon Valley technocrat mindset" are a distraction from this, not to mention (god help us) porn/voyeur. All we're trying to do is have an internet forum that doesn't suck. IMO that's a goal that benefits everybody here, and everybody here should do their part.
Users hurling nationalistic insults and ideological talking points at each other goes in exactly the wrong direction for that. This shouldn't be hard to see. It also, by the way, does nothing to help vulnerable human beings, and invoking something noble like that to excuse garden-variety internet mudslinging is a smidge distasteful.
We all know there are human rights abuses in China, but no amount of emotional comments on an HN thread is gonna fix that. It would be more productive to have some sort of more thought provoking conversations.
And on the theme of discussion, isn't reddit very moderated? I think 6% of all posts where removed last year (https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-56099232)
I get your point, but disregard for decorum here isn't going to solve any of those problems. At best it's shouting into a void, at worst your fooling yourself into thinking you're part of the solution while fixing nothing.
Deleted Comment
Note that BOE is being propped up by the CCP to the tune of $100M a year in losses over the past decade as economic warfare against SK.
Manufacturing is where today’s wars are being fought because these people know it gives them the power over those that would complain otherwise.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Intel’s supply chain now has components that couldn’t be built without a lot of delays if the CCP snapped their fingers (since they have also funded the conglomeration of specialty materials companies: these new companies are cheap when all you have to do is devalue your currency (is. steal a few dollars from all your citizens)).
Hopefully these conflicts stay entirely in the economic and manufacturing realm, because real war is hell.
People talk about potential war with China without realizing China has been waging war on the West for decades, China's military doctrine counts economic warfare as equal to kinetic(traditional) warfare. These state backed companies are arms of the military being used to crush foreign nations and Western governments do nothing. Trillions of dollars in damage but they don't care because bombs didn't do the damage and many of the politicians got rich by allowing it to happen
Forget about the trillions of dollars--the real casualties are social stability, self-sufficiency, and the overall individual strength of the "west". The grandchildren of the people who invented the modern supply chain are wholly incapable of rebuilding it or in most cases even understanding it. How many people involved in the "national discourse" know what a kilowatt is, or have any idea what the country imports and why?
Some of you are just as confident of what is going on in Xinjiang, with 0 evidence, as you were of Iraq's WMDs it seems. Ask yourself how much you really know.
(and no I do not support / happy with the CCP - this is just what I've seen/experienced)
Intel of all the companies is in a position to do the same or more. However they choose to whitewash their brand by blaming the chinese government of their lack of care. Their hypocrisy backfired, and they let China win on all counts.
Ironically they ended up helping whitewash the chinese government.
In any case, apparently their apologies to China will not stop them from moving away from Xinjiang working, even if just for show.
Intel could also refuse to sell chips to companies that facilitate this genocide - and they are soon going to be forced to more broadly than the current sanctions list.
I don't know if any companies like DJI, surveillance camera companies, etc use intel chips but with the new law just passed companies like Intel will have to do a better job making sure their product does not come from or is used to facilitate uyghur human rights abuses.
How much actual impact do these kinds of corporate efforts accomplish? How much merit should we credit these "best-effort" attempts, when when's all said and then, there's still (probably) concentration camp labor in the end product?
[0] https://www.fairphone.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/FP3_Lis... (page 12, "cameras")
[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-03-17/shares-of...
>"The Australian Strategic Policy Institute said in a report last year that Ofilm used at least 700 Uyghur laborers from Xinjiang at a factory in the southern province of Jiangxi. The workers were sent there in late April 2017 as part of a state-sponsored labor transfer program, the think tank said."
>"The Uyghurs were expected to “gradually alter their ideology” and express gratitude to China’s ruling Communist Party for their work assignments, the think tank said, citing Chinese-language news articles."
As to the ideology and gratitude part, I think people may alter their ideology if they so choose. After all, the Romans switched to Christianity, and slavery was once legal in the States. And people should be able to express gratitude to people giving them a chance to work for a better life. Even now, people from abroad are moving into the States to work, are they all forced labor?
It looks like they're doing the ban, not because they actually believe that there's slave labor in Xinjiang, but because their stockholders will be mad if they don't. And they issued the apology, not because they realized that there is no slave labor in Xinjiang, but because they don't want China angry at them. They're trying to just get on with being a business. (And to some degree that's fair. Intel is a business, not a moral crusader. Still, I'd like them to either take a stand, or not take a stand. Don't try to "take a stand" just to make people happy.)
("Angry" is too strong a word. "Disappointed" might be better. But I said "angry" to match the wording of the parent.)
Is this feasible? There's not all that many other options for x86
So what will happen instead? From what I've seen so far, China is careful with counterattacking US because they know the US is stronger. I think the govt will just issue an angry statement but do nothing concrete internationally, while continuing their domestic efforts of semiconductor development as they already have, and also continuing with restructuring Xinjiang's economy (i.e. replacing foreign customers with domestic customers, as happened with cotton)
I spent about €200,000 on AMD servers last year. They are performing better than Intel ones would have done at the same price, so it was a very easy decision.
If they could prove that, the US government should be happy (because their stated goal of combating forced labor is respected) and Chinese people should be happy, too (better working conditions).
Merely restricting suppliers based on geography is a non-solution, since it's not like forced labor magically stops if you cross a provincial border.
Also, the Xinjiang Forced Labor Prevention Act is based on the maxim of guilty-until-proven-innocent. There is no way to conclusively prove a negative. Even if you perform 100 unannounced audits you can still say "oh there's 0.001% chance that they fooled you 100 times"
1 https://twitter.com/CarlZha/status/1375456747477815296 2 https://news.cgtn.com/news/2021-03-26/BCI-s-China-office-No-...
https://about.skechers.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/SKECHE...
Deleted Comment
https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/fashion-beauty/article/303950...
The next best thing is to rank them by order of who knelt the fastest to China.
https://www.reddit.com/r/HongKong/comments/dfg1ce/list_of_co... "List of companies under China's censorship orders (so far). Credit to u/lebe"
Read the comment as "sad to see the Intel executives and others be so spineless".
"An epic crime saga of power, money, violence and corruption. the mafia controls everything through local and international networks like an octopus, anyone who tries to bring them down pays the ultimate price."
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086779