this post was submitted on 06 May 2025
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Basically they've committed to sourcing all iPhones for the US market from India which requires doubling production capacity.

On Tuesday, Indian Telecommunications Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia said Apple “has decided to source and produce all its mobile phones in India in the years to come.”

[...]

Trump says his tariff campaign is part of a broader effort to revive US manufacturing and bring jobs back home. The measures have been paused until July while the administration seeks bilateral agreements.

Indian Trade Minister Piyush Goyal said on Tuesday the two sides were making “very good” progress and expected to finalize a deal soon.

Industry experts say shifting production from China may not be easy, as high-value components like semiconductors are still made there, and chip manufacturing in India is “five to ten years away.”

This doesn't free them from Chinese semiconductor components but I will note many top US decoupling planners never actually expected or wanted to fully remove all Chinese inputs from the global production system so it's important not to crow unduly about that.

These planners merely intended to have measures to prevent China from moving up the value chain, to keep them a low value unfinished products maker 10 years behind the US and west technologically and to keep finished products including the brands themselves firmly in the hands of the west. This is why Huawei was banned. They seek to keep the high-ground, the lions-share of the profits which is selling the assembled device (and pressuring component manufacturers for maximum discounts with threats), as well as the ability to use that commanding position to discipline other countries by controlling flows of those finished products via companies in the west that obey US sanctions. As well as of course products compromised by NSA backdoors in design, by 14 eyes intelligence sharing and national security letters forcing cooperation inside the western development branches of these companies, etc which are leveraged to maintain western dominance via their vast intercept, hacking, spying, blackmail operation.

In my opinion this is just further proof that decoupling is proceeding albeit slowly. Not perhaps to plans of being ready for a war next year or 2028 but eventually and next decade likely.

I think 10 years for semiconductors in India may be optimistic but I expect they'll make SOME progress by then and western firms will also have some plants in the west they can use so there will be a shortage over Taiwan but not an implosion.

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[–] 201dberg@lemmygrad.ml 5 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

Not perhaps to plans of being ready for a war next year or 2028 but eventually and next decade likely.

Simply put, I doubt this is possible. Pentagon reports a decade ago admitted that by 2025 China's military production will reach a point where the US will never be able to catch up and compete. China's ship building alone is what, something like 200+ times that of the US now? If it takes them a decade to "decouple" to "be ready for war" it will just end up being nuclear because a conventional war will be impossible for the west to win.

[–] darkcalling@lemmygrad.ml 2 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

There are different definitions of win. I certainly fear nuclear war. But I think the west believes their island chains will strangle China, prevent a break-out beyond the SCS or retaliation against US interests and notch them a win. China will repel them from the SCS, reclaim Taiwan and unless subjected to continued attacks I think it's possible they won't pursue the US much further though who knows. The US will use the fall of Taiwan and the inevitable missile attacks on island chains around China such as Philippines which were used in attacking China/PLA, etc to further justify their presence and cast China as an aggressor and "threat to democracy" and as justification for Russia level sanctions and attempts to economically strangle or at least isolate China and push it into its own bloc which can gradually be attacked and undermined.

China itself doesn't want to put the US in a spot where there is zero relations and incentive for the US to just go sicko-mode so they're likely to go along with the decoupling and ship products for finishing to third countries while counting on US decline. This would allow the US to prevent China from claiming the commanding heights, the name brands, the finished products, and totally removing the US ability to sanction countries by denying them product (China could still sanction but so could US, both would have a veto) and allow the US a very ugly kind of managed decline in an attempt to reclaim greatness.

West still thinks it has tricks up its sleeve. Their special forces people talk vaguely of swarms of AI sea-faring drone-mines they'd plan to deploy in the SCS to totally deny China its use for their navy but I also believe for the purposes of stopping Chinese shipping and forcibly decoupling them from the world.

[–] Eiren@lemmygrad.ml 2 points 3 weeks ago

What you're failing to even touch upon is that China would still be the seat of civilisation even if it were just them and Russia on one team and everyone else on the other.

The only way possibly around that would be if India became a reliable western ally but the west and India are both so aggressive and rabidly nationalistic at present that they'd probably start killing each other as soon as they felt their other enemies were out of the way.