The Chinese government being much more fans of a directed market than of a totally unregulated one (neither of which is a Free Market by the way - that thing only exists when barriers to market entry are incredibly low, and it’s not as if any Jack or Joe can set up their very own memory production cottage factory in their backyard, so it’s not possible for there to be a Free Market in RAM under current technology), they’re probably make sure that RAM only ever leaves China as part of more complex products (i.e. computers, smartphones, tablets and so on) made in China, thus making also Made In China for those product lines be more competitive.
(In other words, want a gaming PC or smartphone with more memory - buy the whole thing from China or pay 10x more)
If properly managed this could boost quite a lot more digital electronics industries in China than merelly RAM.
they’ll probably make sure that RAM only ever leaves China as part of more complex products
Which other components are subject to this limitation in China?
It’s about complex products which contain RAM rather than other component.
Anything made in China which has RAM in it will have its price affected by the price of RAM so if Chinese brands of such products have access to cheaper RAM than non-Chinese brands, they can outcompete the latter on price whilst delivering similar quality products.
Personally I tend to assemble my own desktop PCs, but for example in the past when buying a Mini-PC I would pick a Chinese brand one if cheaper since the quality is the same. Now imagine if the Chinese brand is now 1/2 the price of the non-Chinese one because the former uses RAM from China whose price is nowhere as high as the hyper-inflated South Korean RAM - in this kind of device were the quality is the same, the Chinese product will always be the better option if it’s half the price because of using way cheaper RAM.
Honestly it’ll probably be more like 3 or 4 times cheaper. I’m excited for the effects of this to start to balloon outwards. Now China just needs a graphics card/GPU manufacturer that can be competitive.
They are working on cracking EUV lithography. From the sweatshop of the west to leading in 58 of 65 advanced technologies already. Neoliberalism has been the ruin of the west.
Do you have a link to a list of the 65 advanced technologies? I’d be quite interested in checking it out.
It was mentioned in the later part of this video: Eurasia Breaks USA: Three Front Defeat Forming | Prof. Radhika Desai.
But the source is this ASPI “Australian Strategy Policy Institute”. Ah found it: https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/aspis-critical-technology-tracker-2025-updates-and-10-new-technologies/
In total, China now leads in 66 of the 74 technologies tracked, with the United States leading in the remaining eight—an imbalance that underscores why trusted partners need to act together to leverage comparative advantages, reduce concentration risk and shape the trajectory of critical technologies together.
Here is the list of technologies: https://techtracker.aspi.org.au/list-of-technologies The website seems a bit of a mess.
The video frames this as a function of neoliberalism slowly bleeding education and fundamental research dry (and also destroying demand because nobody can afford anything any more).
And also China has 1.4 billion people, invested into them and has slowly crept up the technology ladder, and now turn out an order of magnitude more engineers every year than the west.
I thought almost all memory was Chinese-made? So it’s catching up with itself? What does this mean, what does any of this meeeeean?
Manufactured in China does not mean Chinese made.
The fabrication equipment is designed by American or Korean companies, which may have factories in China. Although most things like CPUs and Memory are actually manufactured in Taiwan which is functionally an independent state, hence why China wants it back so bad. This is saying that Chinese domestic designs are now on par with non Chinese designs in terms of performance. Which is actually huge because it means we might now have more than 3 memory manufacturers in the world.
Is it normal to refer to Taiwanese RAM manufacturers as “Western”?
I’m glad they distinguish it from China obviously, but calling G.Skill and MSI Western feels kinda weird.
Sort of the joke in the modern US attitude towards Taiwan. They see a break-away province and have no actual respect for their sovereignty. Independent small nations are just colonies-up-for-grabs in the eyes of the US State Department.
Found the Tankie.
tankie is when anti-imperialist i guess
that “tankie” would be right, it’s irredentism in ukraine’s case, which is also bad
So your argument is Russia trying to take over a democratic nation created in the 20th century is imperialism. But China trying to take over a democratic nation created in the 20th century is not…
😂
taiwan is just a breakaway province with its own government. even they think they’re china, just look at their name.
the republic of china (taiwan) is recognized by almost nobody, while ukraine is a universally recognized sovereign state.
and i never said russia attacking ukraine is imperialism, i said it’s irredentism.
I’m glad you seem proud of it, the picture you chose of Dukakis is chefs kiss.
don’t look what the government in taiwan calls themselves
Eastern China or westernmost state of the USA? You decide!
They do so because while the manufacturing is taking place in Taiwan, the blueprints are not.
It’s why we call iPhone american phones. Despite them being manufactured in China
Well, they are to the west of the west…so…😁
Yes, they chose to put themselves, economically and politically, within the western sphere of influence. It is not geographic. Weirdness is from your ignorance of geopolitics.
I wonder how long it will take the US to view RAM like they view oil and invade China?
That would officially be WW3, and it wouldn’t go well for the US.
Pretty much the entire world either dislikes or outright hates the US right now, and that’s not going to change anytime soon. There’s far more positive sentiment towards China around the world than towards the US.
I thought they had their eyes on South Korea.
¿Porque no los dos?
Noice! Now gimme gimme
Hehe… Go go China !! Crush those scamming mofo’s from the US controlled sphere of influence…
Competition is good. Two spheres of influence.
Chinese sphere of influence is not good. Theirs includes the worst countries in the world, like North Korea, and Russia.
Production of basic necessities and planning an economy is good. China build so many apartments they now have 90% home ownership instead of treating housing as a speculative asset. Now they caught up in high tech and in will be producing highest tech computer chips. And they are building nuclear power plants so you can actually buy AI tokens that do not contribute to the destruction of our world.
Also North Korea is far less dire than depicted these days. I wouldn’t want to live there but life expectancy is something like 74 years so overall it’s probably far from the worst country on earth.
You shouldn’t trust the mainsteam western media or institutions about any of this.
US Sphere of influence includes Israel, not exactly great TBH.
Yep. At the current rate neither the Chinese nor American states will save us. Neither want democracy or liberty for the average person and value control over any other moral principle.
Different performative elements and mechanisms for determing the subset of people who are priviledged elites, same operating principles.
Yeah, pulling the “America are good guys, China are bad guys” card at a time when America are unwavering allies and supporters of the nation who is openly doing in the XXI century the same kind of thing as the Nazis did, with equal levels of inhumanity and ultra-racist violence, doesn’t have quite the same power as it did even a decade ago (though even then the whole Iraq invasion thing had already showed the American “moral high ground” as being mainly a tall pile of mainly middle eastern corpses).
spheres of influence
Let’s aim for a world without spheres of influence, shall we?
So you mean a power vacuum?
How well did that go for Iraq?
There is zero guarantee China will sell it to consumers given that companies and governments all over the world are willing to pay premium value for current ram prices anyway
Or they just direct them to their own AI projects before any are exported.
Why not create good will and establish a consumer brand? Undercut everyone.
If this is government backed they can do just about anything they want.
We should still benefit from China making good memory chips. Assuming the chips are fungible, China might buy fewer Samsung or Taiwanese chips and that’s more chips for us.
Assuming the chips are fungible, China might buy fewer Samsung or Taiwanese chips and that’s more chips for
usAltman & Amodei
Nothing a import ban can’t fix.
Nothing a import ban can’t fix.
Just because the US bans something, that doesn’t stop the rest of the world from buying.
No shit. What I want though is memory prices to go back down here.
What I want though is memory prices to go back down here.
A price war might lead in that direction.
Just like that price war between american cars and all those Chinese ones they let be imported. The whole point of import bans in the US is to prevent a true free market.
While making sure to write the ban in ways that doesn’t stop machines being assembled there just not in ways that lowers prices
This is totally going to happen. And there is nothing you can do as far as spying with memory but I guarantee they will come up with some bullshit excuse related to that. I mean the only thing I can think of is some sort of kill switch but that would just kill the machine. Do that enough and nobody buys your RAM so what would be the point. Maybe just plain market manipulation but that’s pretty much happening now.
let’s be honest, these are already banned by the Chinese device ban that banned routers.
but, truthfully, if I can’t even trust Chinese IP cams to not snoop on me, why would I trust RAM?
What’s your alternative?
it’s orders of magnitude harder to do with ram than with a complete, network-connected device. not saying it’s not possible, but I personally wouldn’t be very worried about it.
Yeah that’s probably a sad truth for those in the good ol’ USA.
And I‘m sure Chinese data centers are very happy about it.
Unfortunately because of the wonderful policies by sequential US governments, US citizens will not be able to buy Chinese chips because obviously the chips will spy on you just like Chinese EV’s, routers, phones, toasters, drones, etc. But all the good things by American tech companies whom totally respect your privacy, like Google scrapping all spirit airlines communication, or Flock camera drones, is just fine.
But all the good things by American tech companies whom totally respect your privacy, like Google scrapping all spirit airlines communication, or Flock camera drones, is just fine.
A nationstate, whether a autocracy or even a real democracy, does have a genuine national security interest in preventing foreign spying. No matter how much that nationstate itself spies on its own citizens.
So the argument about domestic spying existing, to argue that Chinese spying does not matter, is quite a non sequitur.
Whom do you consider to be more evil? Trump or JinPing? National states don’t exist anymore. There are two kings, they only lack the title.
The US is ruled by a junta of oligarchs like the Nerd Reich techofeudalists backing Trump. They believe in nothing, only wealth and power. Trump is no King, but a puppet and the US empire has competing interests.
Xi Jinping is similarly not ruling like a king or dictator. He is accountable to 1.4 billion people and part of what drives his party is ideology. THEY BELIEVE IN SOMETHING. That alone makes them far less evil. They are not benign but they do have a track record of improving the material conditions of billions of people, less predatory economic imperialism and no foreign wars or interventions or coups destroying other nations.
There is no doubt which one is more evil. China now leads in like 58 of 65 advanced technologies. Lets just hope the remaining socialist idealism holds and they stay less evil.
Do you know where all the iphones in the US were made?
The chips that goes into the iphones are not made in China.
iPhones are not made in china as much as they are assembled in China. The crucial components comes from the same place as everyone elses. Taiwan.
That is not what I’m saying. I’m saying that the US as well as certain other western countries are so obsessed and overreacting to anything made by the Chinese. Like the EV’s for example. Most of the world is now letting go of prejudice and import multiple brands of of Chinese EV’s. They actually pass European safety standards unlike the cyber truck. The only country now that keeps limiting its choice for its citizens, is the US. And using spying as an excuse to enrich the establishment.
Of course all countries spy. But the thought of putting spyware in memory chips is a stretch. Just costwise it’s not feasible.
Sure, but if you’re not a citizen of either i couldnt care less about which of the two evils, one will give me ram though
To make a stick of RAM spyware, would cost $100k/stick or more, and the engineering to do so, could make HBM6 instead. By all means investigate the chips to see if magic chips are inside, but that is the approach we should take. Why aren’t Chinese sneakers spying on you? Far easier to hide and do more cheaply.
The hysteria of foreign spyware is shaped by established monopolies who want to keep their monopolies. There is never a proposed solution of actually verifying/inspecting for spyware.
To make a stick of RAM spyware, would cost $100k/stick or more,
how the fuck did you pull that number out of your ass?
the smallest, simplest embedded CPUs built onto the stick and wired in could do a lot. even if they can’t handle the operating memory frequency, they could access contents through another channel, and also the memory bus.
Make it look like a dram module, make the other 7 dram modules look like ones that are 7/8ths the standard size, and make the set of 8 pins work with 7 actual dram modules while still performing like a cheap standard module. so people buy it. There are no microsopic CPUs or with no pin traces leading to them.
Well, you absolutelly can make digital products that run at least some built-in software and have network connectivity spy on people, but RAM is no such product in either sense - in neither runs software (and given it’s performance constrainst it would be stupidly hard to add it as a feature) nor does it have any network connectivity.
Routers and motherboards, for example, yeah - both have network connectivity and both include and run software so shipping them with spyware is just a question of the factory or distributer putting the right software in them (for motherboards, in the BIOS and running inside as secure code, inside the CPU itself or even in certain peripherals).
(It would be possible to put it in places with more indirect access to networking - such as SSDs - but it’s more complex at they would need to hack OS binaries on the fly)
Of course, even for the stuff were it’s possible, it’s seriously deluded to think only one of the nations with insane civil society surveillance levels that sells those things - China - would be adding spyware to it but not the other one - the US: devices with the capabilities to support spyware made in or designed in any nation which does a lot of surveillance are always suspect.
Motherboards/routers (these are motherboards too) require very careful inspection, specifically if bios chip is unusual, or extra chip connected to bios. There is concern trolling over routers because Huawei is best in world. There is no concern about Motherboards, because only Taiwan is the competitor to China. The point is that inspections instead of baseless hysteria over origin is the right policy.
It’s not a question of concern, it’s a question of what’s technically possible.
It’s technically possible to ship a motherboard with spyware capabilities in the BIOS.
There are experts, even stupid fat american ones, who could confirm the existence of such spyware capabilities.
Yeah, well, when was the last time common people and business paid attention to IT Security experts BEFORE their systems were broken into?!
Also, who would pay the people with the necessary expertise to decompile all BIOS of all motherboard shipments (if at all possible, in this day and age when a lot of shit is encrypted with the keys inside a TPM module)?
I mean, just go at it another way - notice how thousands of pager sent to Lebanon were altered by the Israelis and nobody were aware of it until the Israelis made them explode.
In this day and age it’s pretty straightforward to just alter the software for some shipments and not others or add a weakness (like both Intel and AMD CPUs have) that can be used as a backdoor by software that’s installed remotely (for example, pushed as a Windows update, something which certain American 3 letter agencies can most certainly do since the have the power to demand the signing keys from MS).
There are huge numbers of vectors for spyware to end up in certain computers that start with subtly backdooring the hardware itself.
Good, more for the rest of the world.
Pads tears with €
EU taxes the shit out of Chinese electric cars to protect the automotive industry that failed to innovate here. In fact they’ve only been adding more and more taxes and fees on anything that’s imported, usually putting the costs on regular people.
Hopefully since the EU high density desktop/server RAM industry is pretty much nonexistent (as far as I know), they won’t tax it to hell.
China RAM vs US RAM, they are both not EU “allies” now so there should be little reason.
China is in fact competing via something usually considered illegal in international trade: Production subsidies meant to enable their companies to sell products for under manufacturing cost so they can kill off all competition. Yes, all auto manufacturers have had help from their national govenrments, but Mercedes doesn’t get paid by Germany to build more cars to sell in China. We do EV subsidies on the purchase side in Europe, so it’s manufacturer-agnostic.
We regularly tariff things that other countries subsidize the production of. China does it as well. And China’s had tariffs for foreign cars for decades.
Chinese companies like BYD have also been trying to kick off manufacturing in Europe, but unfortunately even in Hungary it’s a bit harder to get away with slavery than in China. Hopefully they’ll find a way around watchful eyes so we can get cheaper Chinese EVs in Europe too.
Indeed. Its a complex topic, but import taxes aren’t a (likely) complete corrupt cheeto emabrgo lockdown.
Fortune Cookies banned for being part of elaborate mind control operation.
They’re actually an American invention
Pretty interesting history, actually. They were more or less brought over from Japan by Japanese immigrants, but adapted to American tastes and ingredients (sweeter, and wheat rather than rice – the Japanese ones are more like rice crackers). During Japanese Internment, production was taken over by Chinese immigrants and they’ve been associated with Chinese-American food ever since.
Yes, nations are generally more lenient when it comes to domestic spying compared to foreign spying.
Kind of like how I’m allowed to say my sister is an annoying asshole but if anyone else talkes shit about her, we’re gonna have a problem.
Of course, but what would she prefer?
She prefers to be an annoying asshole. You’re just not allowed to call her that.
I was angry with my sister when she “spied” on me. I took her to “court” for a “trial” and the “judge” gave her time out and a 4 hour supervised probation period.
But it would be a whole different ballgame of actions and consequences if some random person were to do it Neither is ok. But one of them is more severe than the other.
That’s your preference for punishment.
What I was wondering was if your sister could prefer to be called an asshole by a friend over being called one by you. Perhaps she hopes that your disagreements don’t escalate and that you perceive her needs not as annoying but as valid.
Or speaking about China, being able to feel safe in one’s own country could be more valuable than the losses from leaked information to China.
Look, I’m not entierly sure what point you’re trying to make. But I can assure you, you’re not going to get there by putting words in my mouth, nor by trying to tell me what my own sister was thinking or hoping for when we were kids. Because you know absolutely nothing about us. So just stop.
I thought I’d follow through with the analogy since you engadged in it. But now you’re clearly reaching too far.
Nothing I’m saying here is a justification or an excuse. It’s an explanation of how it works.
People, and governments often have a very different set of worries.
As an individual, you might not care if it’s the US or China that has access to your information. For the vast majority of people, it’s not going to affect them personally.
But if you are American. The US government will care if China has access. And if you are chineese, then China will care if the US has access.
And if you’re a russian politician, well, then you’re probably more concerned about what Russia knows than US or China. Seeing as neither of those two will help you “fall out” of a window.
There is so much over investment in memory its going to be dirt cheap again in 2028
I eagerly await the 64GB mouse driver and the 5000PB home NAS for the discerning hoarder of the output of /dev/rnd
This is simply not true. All the major players are not investing in production. They are simply letting the demand stack and prices to rise.
China entering the market will help some, but expect these chips to be banned quite quickly in the western world for fear of communists. They are already blacklisted by many companies.
Yes they are. Samsung and SK hynix are building 4 new fabs I’m Korea 1 in the US. Sandisk and kioxia are building extra capacity in Japan. Micron is building new fan in the US. Its nearly a trillion in investment for additional capacity. These are expected to hit the market in 2027 and 2028 with lag to backfill demand.
Chinese ram will be good but not good enough to block it. Business will keep buying the high preformance stuff and consumers can have the cheap modules but they buy so little it won’t affect anything.
Exactly. Expected to hit the market in 2027 and 2028. This investment in fabs happened years ago. For example, Samsung invested in the Taylor fab (which should start production, a little early, late this year) back in 2021. Samsung KRW6 was announced this year, but thats a new technology, not new capacity. You cant build and turn on a fab in the short term.
Can we just appreciate how you first told him he’s wrong for suggesting memory will be cheap again in 2028.
Only to immediately try to frame it as “memory won’t be cheap until 2028 so that proves my point!”
Which is exactly what he said to begin with. Top notch. 👌
I fully disagree that memory will be cheap in 2028. Please feel free to come and ping this thread in 2028 to tell me Im wrong.
My firm belief is that memory will continue to increase in price through the end of 2027 and likely level out in 2028. The price will not go ‘down’ in the next few years.
New technologies will be introduced, but all consumers and corporations want the latest and greatest. Demand will far outstrip supply for the foreseeable future.
Edit: just to add, if you keep up with the news and financial disclosurers, all the output from those new fabs has already been presold to the usual suspects.
Sounds like it’d be a good idea to get an xl motherboard
the memory of china spans 3k years. think about that. we dwell hard and long about the history of america and that only goes back a few hundred. and that was a time full of witch hunts, slavery and other controversial topics that’d make a great movie but come off as embarrassing in reality.
we came up with the television and the atom bomb–i say big deal. the chinese were there through thousands of years of advancements and follies, enduring and enduring and keeping their national strength through the unbearable weight of millennia. this is when americans can’t go without their smartphone for 60 seconds and believe in nothing other than legal tender.
industrial capitalism is 200 years old, the chinese are as old as mars in comparison. put that in your pipe and smoke it.
I LOL’d. Have a hug.
If I recall correctly is also on road to match western prices.
I’m not sure what would stop them from charging whatever they can, which will be a lot.
More competitors should create more downward pressure on what memory manufacturers can charge, but even with new entrants there still aren’t that many.
I’m not sure what would stop them from charging whatever they can
Undercutting the competition to gain market share is a time tested business strategy.
