I wonder at what point it makes business sense to hire their own army and get rid of governments so they can profit in peace

Jensen Huang has pretty small ears for a ferengi, but he certainly won't let petty politics prevent him from making profit.

EspHack:

I wonder at what point it makes business sense to hire their own army and get rid of governments so they can profit in peace

Something similar has happened before. It wasn't to get rid of the government, however, but to quell workers rebellion and the threat of unionisation. Battle of Blair Mountain in America, really interesting to read up in to and The Coal Wars in general are fascinating.

Money above everything. Even if it means working with the enemy. It reminds me of when IBM was selling it's machines to Nazi Germany for a nice profit.

Well, if one allows that a very large number of 3080 to 3090Ti-class graphic cards could be the backbone of a very formidable computational array, all China would need to do is cruise the local shops and grab all the ex-mining cards we've been told are now available. They needn't wait on any TSMC/Nvidia drama. If that proves insufficient, China could have some of it's North American "representatives" swing by Best Buy and MicroCenter, and send some pristine stock back to the Old Country. If Ampere cards are as cheap and plentiful as has been alleged, even nations like Haiti and Burkina Faso could finally have their own supercomputer.

If there is one thing the US is good at, it's reigning in corporations that fail to toe the line. I'm not sure Nvidia shareholders want to be on the seditious side. Especially considering these sanctions appear to be bipartisan, a very rare commodity these days.

Its always amazing to me how multi-million haggling goes on between multi-billion companies as if they were just two backstreet traders - "i don't have time to wait in line" ... "nothin i can do guv".... "what if there was a few quid in it for you"... "step inside guv"

So, I get what they're trying to do here, but what is Nvidia going to do for their next contract? Surely the sanctions will be in full force by then.

schmidtbag:

So, I get what they're trying to do here, but what is Nvidia going to do for their next contract? Surely the sanctions will be in full force by then.

I mean there's nothing they can do - they basically just have to push to make all the money they can now before the time runs out and then market will correct (honestly already has corrected to some degree) the new reality that china is out. AMD is under the same restrictions.. just seems like Nvidia has a lot of huge contracts there so they are going to be primarily affected.

Horus-Anhur:

Money above everything. Even if it means working with the enemy. It reminds me of when IBM was selling it's machines to Nazi Germany for a nice profit.

Pretty big stretch here lol

schmidtbag:

So, I get what they're trying to do here, but what is Nvidia going to do for their next contract? Surely the sanctions will be in full force by then.

They will sell them to different third parties and those same parties will sell the stuff to China. Of course the US will not be happy with this and is going to investigate those deals, but in the end there`s little they can do. There`s always an way to make things happen...

H83:

They will sell them to different third parties and those same parties will sell the stuff to China. Of course the US will not be happy with this and is going to investigate those deals, but in the end there`s little they can do. There`s always an way to make things happen...

one truth and one error here there is a lot the US gov't. can do. i've been in electronics manufacturing for a long time - since the Cold War. there had been an export control law on the books for 50+ years limiting sales to Communist countries that worked like a charm. no US or Allied countries allowed their companies to sell electronics to them even down to stereo equipment. as a result, the Soviets had almost no solid state technology and their nascent cpu efforts weren't nearly close to an 8086. China is a bit different in that technology was a price to pay to enter their market (for the fools who willingly did so...another topic). China starts at a very high level but is still dependent on western technology (and those licensees). AI is a very bad place for Nvidia to plant a flag for sales to China as it obviously goes against both national policy and good business sense. but Jensen is playing with fire as Taiwan (or "Chinese Taipei") has exactly the same perspective on Chinese AI efforts as the US gov't. so he can be blocked easily. TSMC is far more beholden to it's government than any client at any price (unless they have hundreds of billions of dollars to invest directly with them).

TSMC has all of the cover in the world to "slow walk" Nvidia's request as they're far from the only OR the largest client. and as Apple has three dedicated fabs and AMD has two dedicated fabs (one for Genoa et al, one for 3d cache) unlike Nvidia (0 dedicated fabs) those companies can keep on trucking without being political. Nvidia production wise is in the same category as Qualcomm and not as good as Intel as far as TSMC goes. i hate to bring parents into this but i know for a fact that Jensen's parents would be horrified at his profiting off of Chinese communist plans for domination to begin with and with this foolish move. as Lenin said "when it comes time to hang the capitalists, they will vie with each other for the rope contract".