Nowhere near the value of having access to chips, at any cost. They have extremely deep pockets. They already pay 6x the cost per FLOP.
> Instead, the US banned China from chips and lithography machines, giving China the legal excuse to start producing them domestically without violating WTO rules. Now China produces cheap chips and uses them with cheap electricity.
You think without export restrictions China wouldn't be doing the exact same thing? China needs absolutely zero legal excuse. I mean sure they have compute available on grey market / domestically but at 6x the cost per FLOP. Access to NVIDIA chips would make it dramatically cheaper for them. Yes you get chip income but that is not even close to what you lose. The strategy is doing what it was always supposed to do: slow them down, bleed their resources to force them to spin their wheels catching up. China is doing a great job with this but they are fundamentally constrained by these export controls.
You are right that this greases the wheels, they are further along than they would have been without export restrictions, but they are still delayed even with the reduced friction. The alternative is that they move slightly slower _while having the same compute infrastructure available_ and at dramatically lower energy costs. That is a far worse position for the US to be in.
> This was a dumb move by the US. Brought upon it by dumbf-ck aristocratic elites who grew up in isolated mansions and then received law degrees, with absolutely no understanding of technology and technology ecosystems. They thought they'd just make the rules and everybody would have to obey. It turns out in technology, they don't have to...
I think this is too cynical. Neither one of us is in the room to actually observe the real decision making, but export restrictions as a strategy are not some "dumbf-ck aristocratic elite" thing. They are perfectly rational from a strategic standpoint and arguably doing what they're supposed to do.