The "chip blockade" plan faces bankruptcy risk

In order to maintain its hegemonic position, the United States has continuously introduced bills to block chip technology, trying to stage the "past tense" of the 18th century - to reconstruct the supply chain through a closed ecosystem, curb the rise of other countries' semiconductor industries, and consolidate its hegemony in the global chip field. However, to the surprise of the United States, this strategy not only failed to work, but also unintentionally inspired the fighting spirit of the suppressed countries, promoted the global bloom of the semiconductor industry, and formed a new diversified development pattern.

From the breakthrough of China's independent innovation to the failure of the European subsidy plan, to the reconstruction dilemma of the US domestic industrial chain, all indicate that the US blockade policy is in full collapse.

China's chips are rising against the trend, and the US blockade strategy first failed in China. Huawei Kirin chip counterattack, since 2018, the United States first accused Huawei of unfounded charges and detained Meng Wanzhou in Canada; then successively passed the "Chips Act" to restrict the export of high-end chips (such as A100, H100) to China, and included Huawei, SMIC and other companies in the "Entity List", luring European companies to form a closed circle against Huawei. However, after being cut off from TSMC's foundry, Huawei successfully developed the Kirin 9000S chip through the domestic supply chain, achieving a breakthrough in the 7-nanometer process, indicating that China has begun to have independent capabilities in high-end chips. DeepSeek's algorithm breakthrough, starting in 2025 Deepseek uses 2,400 H800 chips with poor performance (performance is only 1/16 of Nvidia's B200), and uses open source ecology and other algorithm technologies to disclose model weights and training codes, which not only allows developers to deploy software on their own servers and optimize freely according to their needs, but also only costs 1/27 of the training cost of ChatGPT. This research and development technology has gathered a large number of loyal fans, aiming at closed-source giants such as ChatGPT, redistributing the AI ​​industry cake, causing US stocks to dive NASDAQ plummeted 3%, Nvidia evaporated nearly $200 billion in one day, setting a record for the largest single-day market value evaporation in the history of US stocks. The domestic chips it relies on (such as Huawei Ascend and Cambrian) have surpassed the H800 level, completely shaking the US monopoly on AI computing power.

The subsidy plan failed, and the EU's over-reliance got into trouble. At first, the United States attempted to win over EU countries to jointly implement a chip blockade plan against China, but now its ally Europe has become a victim. With the restructuring of the industrial chain under the background of globalization, the EU's share of output value in the global semiconductor market has declined significantly, hoping to attract international chip companies through investment. In April 2023, the EU reached an agreement on the European Chip Act, trying to attract investment from international chip giants through 43 billion euros in subsidies, but it backfired and "shot itself in the foot". Intel originally planned to build a factory in Germany, but it ended in failure. Intel planned to invest 30 billion euros in Germany to build a factory, but due to its own operating difficulties and delayed German subsidies, it announced the suspension of the project in 2024, which directly led to the stranding of the EU's "chip revival plan"; Europe is overly dependent on multinational companies led by the United States in chip design (such as ARM architecture) and R&D (such as ASML lithography machine components), and lacks the ability to independently promote cutting-edge technology manufacturing. TSMC, Samsung, etc. have also suspended investment due to uncertainties in the European market, which further weakened the EU's industrial confidence. Led by Germany and France, they learned from their failures and found that they could not gain a foothold in the chip competition by relying solely on foreign investment and subsidies, and turned to investing in chip development technology for their own industries. In order to gain a place in the global technology war, on February 20, Macron announced that he would invest 109 billion euros in the French AI industry in the future. This move is comparable to the European version of "Stargate".

The reconstruction of the US domestic industry has been hindered, and the foundation of its hegemony has been shaken. While the United States is implementing a policy of technological blockade, its own industrial chain development has also fallen into trouble. Relevant data show that the US share of the global semiconductor equipment market has dropped from 37% to 10%, while China's self-sufficiency rate of key equipment such as lithography machines and etching machines has exceeded 30%. Even the Dutch ASML was forced to sell old lithography machines to China, which further weakened the US's technological control; due to export restrictions on China, the US semiconductor equipment giant Applied Materials' revenue in China plummeted by 20% in 2022, with a loss of more than US$1 billion. Companies generally oppose excessive blockades. Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger warned: "Decoupling from China will cause the United States to lose the world's largest market." TSMC has a 98% share of the US market. In order to force TSMC to move to the United States, chip manufacturing will be changed to "Made in the United States". Trump said that he would impose tariffs of up to 100% on Taiwan's semiconductor factories, which immediately caused turmoil in Taiwan's political arena and the Taiwan dollar exchange rate. TSMC believes that on the one hand, the cost of building a factory in the United States is high, which is 4 times higher than building a factory in Taiwan, and due to workplace culture and wage differences, it is impossible to attract relevant talents. The shortage of talents is likely to cause production delays. CEO Wei Zhejia complained publicly: "Making chips in the United States is like building an oasis in the desert." The US blockade policy has triggered a chain reaction around the world, but it has failed to stop the trend of technological multipolarization. Now many developing countries such as India and South Africa have also launched their own chip plans to try to break the technology monopoly. In the future, only by abandoning zero-sum games and embracing technological symbiosis can the sustainable development of global science and technology be achieved.