Ukraine continues to liberate territory from its Russian occupiers, not only in the Kharkiv/northeast front, but also on the Kherson/southwest front, where the last few days have seen a rapid collapse in Russian lines.
Ukrainian forces continued to make significant gains in Kherson Oblast while simultaneously continuing advances in Kharkiv and Luhansk oblasts on October 4. Ukrainian forces liberated several settlements on the eastern bank of the Inhulets River along the T2207 highway, forcing Russian forces to retreat to the south toward Kherson City. Ukrainian forces also continued to push south along the Dnipro River and the T0403 highway, severing two Russian ground lines of communication (GLOCs) in northern Kherson Oblast and forcing Russians south of the Kherson-Dnipropetrovsk Oblast border toward the Beryslav area. Ukrainian military officials noted that the Ukrainian interdiction campaign is crippling Russian attempts to transfer additional ammunition, reserves, mobilized men, and means of defense to frontline positions. Ukrainian forces also continued to advance east of the Oskil River in Kharkiv Oblast, and Russian sources claimed that battles are ongoing near the R66 Svatove-Kreminna highway.
Kreminna seems to be the next big target for Ukrainian forces to take in Luhansk, allowing them to cut a major supply line and directly threaten Severodonetsk and Lysychansk.
Here’s a detailed description of the collapse of the northern portion of the Kherson front.
For another idea how rapid that advance have been, here are snapshots of the Deep State war map on 10/1 and 10/4.
Since most of the bridges over both the Inhulets and Dnipro rivers have been blown up, Russian forces are at significant risk of being cutoff and unable to retreat.
And just as I was working on this, a Peter Zeihan video on the topic dropped:
Takeaways:
Kherson: “The entire Russian line has crumbled.”
“Kherson is the only major city Russia has captured in seven months.”
“This is the greatest concentration of Russian forces, and it is the best troops Russia has.”
They also have the best equipment. If the Ukrainians capture it, it would be even better than Kharkiv.
“I still believe this is Russia’s war to lose. The first year of all Russia’s wars look a lot like this. Bad training, bad coordination, poorly maintained equipment.” Modern warfare seldom gives you an entire year to sort your problems out.
“Watch Kherson closely. This could be where the war is decided.”
Russia seems to be retreating everywhere save the central front in Donetsk, where they seem to be eking out tiny, meaningless gains of a square kilometer or two a day. That’s not a recipe for success.
More Democrats convicted for committing voting fraud, Russian forces are driven out of Lyman, and the Eurocrats freak out of Italy’s voters daring to disobey their wishes. Plus advice on what not to invest in.
In February, 2021, the Biden administration-run Centers for Disease Control (CDC) awarded a Soros-backed pro-migrant nonprofit $7.5 million under the guise of pandemic-related support for “LATINX ESSENTIAL WORKERS AS HEALTH PROMOTERS,” and aimed “to reduce the spread of COVID-19 and mitigate impacts among Latinx and Latin American immigrants,” according to an analysis by the Daily Caller.
The group, Alianza Americas, is currently suing Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) and other Florida officials over migrant flights to Martha’s Vineyard earlier this month.
The group has also received nearly $1.4 million from George Soros’ Open Society Network.
Alianza Americas is “focused on improving the quality of life of all people in the U.S.-Mexico-Central America migration corridor.” The membership-based group, which Soros’ Open Society Foundations network (OSF) sent almost $1.4 million to between 2016 and 2020, was awarded a $7.5 million CDC grant in February 2021, according to a grant listing reviewed by the Daily Caller News Foundation. -Daily Caller
The CDC funds were distributed under a program called “Protecting and Improving Health Globally: Building and Strengthening Public Health Impact, Systems, Capacity and Security.”
Add this to the many, many things Republicans should investigate if they gain a congressional majority.
Former U.S. Rep. Michael “Ozzie” Myers, a Pennsylvania Democrat, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to deprive voters of civil rights, bribery, obstruction of justice, falsification of voting records, conspiring to illegally vote in a federal election, and orchestrating schemes to fraudulently stuff ballot boxes for specific Democrat candidates in Pennsylvania elections held from 2014 to 2018. Myers was sentenced Tuesday by U.S. District Judge Paul S. Diamond to 30 months in prison, three years supervised release, and ordered to pay $100,000 in fines, with $10,000 of that due immediately, according to a statement from U.S. Attorney Jacqueline C. Romero.
“A right-wing alliance led by Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party” won Italy’s election and will form a new majority government.
Naturally, the Eurocratic elite are far from thrilled that Italians exercised unapproved voting preferences. “EU Commission President Threatens Italy On Eve Of Election, Says Brussels Has ‘Tools’ If Wrong Parties Win.”
Funny how they mention that some fascists were involved in founding Meloni’s party, but never mention how the Partito Democratico, the leftist and second largest party in Italy, were formerly commies.
“This Ohio School District Is Promoting an ‘LGBTQ+ Resource Guide’ With Instructions on Sex Work, Abortions. Hilliard City School District guide also encourages students to transition gender without parental consent.” All this encouraged by the National Education Association, which evidently thinks it is perfectly fine to literally instruct your children on how to be whores. (Hat tip: Sarah Hoyt at Instapundit.)
A double-dose of Glenn Greenwald:
I can't stress this enough: at its core, Democratic politics is about criminalizing opposition to their party and ideology.
Dissenting ideas are "disinformation" and must be censored by Big Tech. Trump voters are inherently criminal ("insurrectionists") and should be imprisoned.
This is the face of authoritarianism – even though it looks different than you were taught to expect. And it's the mindset of tyrants everywhere:
This is someone so inebriated by her sense of righteousness and superiority that she views dissent as an evil too dangerous to allow: https://t.co/kmG4zTgPwh
Important investing tip: A single deli in rural New Jersey is not, in fact, worth $100 million. Which explains the fraud charges.
Speaking of bad investments, remember how growing hemp was going to make farmers rich? Yeah, not so much.
Since I post a lot of Peter Zeihan videos, I thought it only fair that I post this critique of Zeihan by Yaron Brook. He opines that, while Zeihan has important things to say about geography and demographics, he ignores the central role of ideas in shaping the world.
At some point during yesterday’s diagnosis of my ongoing technical difficulties, the BlueHost technician asked if 185.122.204.37 was my IP, because there were something like 30,000+ hits from it that day. I verified it wasn’t mine, and that it wasn’t Instapundit (which had linked me that day), and did a reverse DNS lookup, which brought up the following:
IP Location: 185.122.204.37
185.122.204.37 appears to be located in Moscow, Russia and allocated to Chang Way Technologies Co. Limited. Autonomous System Number (ASN) code for 185.122.204.37 is AS57523. IP Address local time zone is Europe/Moscow (+0300). PTR record is set to 185.122.204.37.
That’s a very curious site to be sending me traffic, since I’m seeing none of it in my stats counter. Could I be receiving a low-grade DoS attack due to my criticisms of Putin’s war in Ukraine, or even my coverage of China’s slow-motion economic collapse, given the Chinese-sounding company? Possibly, though given BlueHost’s history, there are certainly far more prosaic explanations for my ongoing difficulties.
Also, speaking of Internet bogusity, if you search for “Battleswarm” and some topic I’ve covered (say, “Beto”), the top links are not from my blog, but from some BS “https://jawabansmk.my.id” domain that’s scraping my content and then doing all sorts of clickjacking redirect bullshit. This may be entirely unrelated to the slowness issues and the Russian/Chinese IP above, but if you would, do a Google search “BattleSwarm” and something I’ve covered, and if that site comes up, click on those three dots next to the results that send feedback to Google to remove that result. Something like: “This is not battleswarmblog.com, this is a clickjacking malware site scraping the content of battleswarmblog.com. Please delete this domain from your listings.”
Also, normally I like everything to go to my posts, but given the recent difficulties, please feel free to reprint this entire message when linking, so regular readers will know what’s up.
As for a tech update on the ongoing problems, my dashboard actions are still dog slow, but the issue has been escalated.
California is (still) broke, Stacey Abrams is (still) not very bright, Joe Biden tried to deal gas to the commies, and the FBI can’t be bothered to investigate such trivia as “sex crimes involving children.” It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
Remember how the State of Texas came in with record revenues and a $27 billion surplus? Well, the flip side is California, which just saw 11% personal income tax revenue drop. Funny how chasing away productive taxpayers through punitive taxation and insane over-regulation isn’t a recipe for success…
Republicans on the House Oversight and Reform Committee have obtained bombshell documents proving that Joe Biden was deeply involved in the family business of selling American natural gas to the Chinese–while he was planning to run for President. According to multiple whistleblowers, the Biden family made promises to those who worked with them in 2017 and onward that they would “reap the rewards in a future Biden administration.” These explosive revelations “pose national security concerns,” Oversight Republicans proclaimed Tuesday night.
The Biden clan enriched itself by selling the natural resources to a Chinese firm closely affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)—just a few years before the cost of gas in the United States hit record highs, the Oversight Republicans stated.
In a letter to United States Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), the ranking Republican on the Oversight Committee, alleged that according to whistleblowers, Joe Biden was heavily involved in this treachery.
“This comes to light at a time when the cost of natural gas is at a 14-year high and Americans struggle to pay their energy bills,” Comer wrote in the letter to Yellen. “The President has not only misled the American public about his past foreign business transactions, but he also failed to disclose that he played a critical role in arranging a business deal to sell American natural resources to the Chinese while planning to run for President.”
Comer sent a letter to Yellen in July complaining that the Treasury Department was restricting access to over 150 Suspicious Activity reports (SARs) on Hunter Biden, amid explosive revelations that came out from Biden’s “laptop from Hell,” and iPhone.
On Sept. 2, 2022, the Treasury Department stated in a letter to Committee Republicans, that the SARs may be provided “upon a written request stating the particular information desired, the criminal, tax or regulatory purpose for which the information is sought, and the official need for the information.”
In response, Comer said that “based on the documents provided in this letter, we request all SARs from Biden family transactions, including those involving President Biden, related to transactions with Chinese entities. We are concerned that the President may have compromised national security in his dealings with the country most adverse to U.S. interests—China. These SARs will inform our analysis of this matter.”
Comer said Oversight Republicans have obtained a “presentation” emailed to Hunter Biden’s firm Hudson West III LLC (Hudson West) on December 13, 2017. The document, translated from Mandarin Chinese, is titled, “Overview of the U.S. Natural Gas Industry Chain, and is concerned with selling American natural resources to China.”
“Jiaqi Bao, who created the presentation, was previously an employee of the CCP, and worked for Hunter Biden’s corporate entity Hudson West,” the letter states.
Comer provided Yellen with two maps that were part of a presentation emailed to Hunter Biden. The maps include sophisticated analysis written in Chinese, and show the United States carved up based on natural gas reserves “with particular emphasis on Pennsylvania, Louisiana, Texas, Oklahoma, and Wyoming.”
“The emails that accompany the transmitted maps reveal a plan to sell natural gas reserves to China via the same corporate entity branded on the presentation-Hudson West III LLC (Hudson West)–set up by Hunter Biden with officials from the Chinese company CEFC, at the time, one of the largest oil companies in China,” the letter stated.
I have only skimmed this dog's breakfast of a complaint, but what popped out at me for the parts I looked are were the lack of damages allegations, much less ones against NY, the plaintiff. You cannot sue if you did not suffer a loss. None are pleaded in the parts I looked at. 3/
So, the initial motion to dismiss will not be heard before the midterm – the real mission was accomplished by filing suit in time to influence the election, but not so early that this garbage case could be tossed out before the election.
FBI investigations of child sex abuse claims are no longer a priority with all these conservatives and Trump supporters they need to prosecute for WrongThink…
Faced with the continued erosion of Russia’s military position in Ukraine, Vladimir Putin has chosen to double-down on failure.
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday announced the partial mobilization of military reservists, a significant escalation of his war in Ukraine after battlefield setbacks have the Kremlin facing growing pressure to act.
In a rare national address, he also backed plans for Russia to annex occupied areas of southern and eastern Ukraine, and appeared to threaten nuclear retaliation if Kyiv continues its efforts to reclaim that land.
It came just a day after four Russian-controlled areas announced they would stage votes this week on breaking away from Ukraine and joining Russia, in a plan Kyiv and its Western allies dismissed as a desperate “sham” aimed at deterring a successful counteroffensive by Ukrainian troops.
Before this announcement it was apparent that Russia basically had no reserves, so a mobilization isn’t a surprise. Why admit failure when you can simply get more of your countrymen slaughtered for doubling-down on your own mistake?
It won’t be easy or fast to call up that many reservists, according to military experts, because Russia basically doesn’t have a reserve.
A 2019 RAND study noted that “Russia has paid little attention to developing an effective and sizable active reserve system that might be immediately required in the event of a major war.” RAND estimates that Russia has an effective reserve of only 4,000-5,000 men.
The country’s former army reserve units had been disbanded from 2008-2010 as part of the military’s modernization program, with their equipment — all of it older — going into storage or scrapped.
That doesn’t mean that Russia can’t conscript, train, organize, and arm 300,000 new soldiers, but it won’t be quick or easy.
One problem, as Foreign Affairs analyst Oliver Alexander put it, is “effectively readying and equipping these reservists. Russia already has problems equipping its professional armed forces.”
Then there’s the speed problem. Dara Massicot wrote back in August — weeks before Kyiv’s stunning counteroffensive in Kharkiv — that “Even if the Kremlin pulls all levers available, declaring a general mobilization to call up sufficient armored equipment and trained personnel, that process would still take time.”
That’s because with something like 80% of Russia’s combat power already fighting in Ukraine, plus wartime losses to their NCO and officer corps, the Russian army will need to train more trainers before anything like 300,000 men can be mobilized.
Just last month, Putin ordered an increase in the size of the Russian military of 137,000 troops. But as I reported to you then, Putin’s order only meant that “Starting next year, the Russian military will be authorized to find another 137,000 troops.” The country has long had a problem with draft dodgers, one that Putin’s “special military operation” won’t help.
He also notes the problem of obtaining new equipment. Even the first wave of Russian invasion included troops who were armed with ancient rifles. With the sanctions in place, none of that is going to get any better. Plus the fact that Russia essentially used up all their smart ordinance during the first stage of the war and that sanctions ensure they can’t easily make more.
Is there a Peter Zeihan video on the topic? Of course there is.
Some takeaways:
Reiterates why everything in the Russia army travels by rail. “The Ukrainians were able to take a couple of re-up depots in eastern Ukraine and Kharkiv a couple weeks ago and the front just collapsed.”
“We might be seeing a repeat of that in the Donbas.”
“The Russians are now discovering that they’re actually outnumbered locally, and that with all the captured equipment, the Ukrainians actually now have more artillery and more ammo.”
“This is the sort of war the the Russians know how to fight: Just throw bodies after it.”
The influx of new troops “doesn’t mean that the nature of the war is
fundamentally changed,” but now they’ll be able to rotate fresher troops in, “and continue fighting the war more or less the way that they have been now, which is to say poorly.”
Russia is already crashing demographically, and the main cohort of this war is coming from the men who should be fathering children. “This is a potentially a country killer. Before I thought that this was Russia’s last war. Now I’m certain of it.”
Says Ukraine can still win, but they need to do the Kharkiv counteroffensive twenty times over.
Says they need to continue hitting Russian logistics nodes. “The one I am most interested in, of course, is Miriapol. Because if the Ukrainians can reach Mariupol, they basically isolate Russian forces throughout southern Ukraine, and then you’re talking about a hundred thousand Russian troops that are just stranded with no hope of resupply at all.” (Assuming his later mention of taking out the Kerch Strait Bridge.)
Nor are the sham referendums likely to make any difference either.
Russian-appointed occupation officials in Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson, and Zaporizhia oblasts announced on September 20 that they will hold a “referendum” on acceding to Russia, with a vote taking place from September 23-27. The Kremlin will use the falsified results of these sham referenda to illegally annex all Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine and is likely to declare unoccupied parts of Donetsk, Kherson, and Zaporizhia oblasts to be part of Russia as well.
The Kremlin’s annexation plans are primarily targeting a domestic audience; Putin likely hopes to improve Russian force generation capabilities by calling on the Russian people to volunteer for a war to “defend” newly claimed Russian territory. Putin and his advisors have apparently realized that current Russian forces are insufficient to conquer Ukraine and that efforts to build large forces quickly through voluntary mobilization are culminating short of the Russian military’s force requirements. Putin is therefore likely setting legal and informational conditions to improve Russian force generation without resorting to expanded conscription by changing the balance of carrots and sticks the Kremlin has been using to spur voluntary recruitment.
Putin may believe that he can appeal to Russian ethnonationalism and the defense of purportedly “Russian peoples” and claimed Russian land to generate additional volunteer forces. He may seek to rely on enhanced rhetoric in part because the Kremlin cannot afford the service incentives, like bonuses and employment benefits, that it has already promised Russian recruits. But Putin is also adding new and harsher punishments in an effort to contain the risk of the collapse of Russian military units fighting in Ukraine and draft-dodging within Russia. The Kremlin rushed the passage of a new law through the State Duma on September 20, circumventing normal parliamentary procedures. This law codifies dramatically increased penalties for desertion, refusing conscription orders, and insubordination. It also criminalizes voluntary surrender and makes surrender a crime punishable by ten years in prison. The law notably does not order full-scale mobilization or broader conscription or make any preparations for such activities.
ISW has observed no evidence that the Kremlin is imminently intending to change its conscription practices. The Kremlin’s new law is about strengthening the Kremlin’s coercive volunteerism, or what Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov called “self-mobilization.”
The Kremlin is taking steps to directly increase force generation through continued voluntary self-mobilization and an expansion of its legal authority to deploy Russian conscripts already with the force to fight in Ukraine.
Putin’s illegal annexation of occupied Ukrainian territory will broaden the domestic legal definition of “Russian” territory under Russian law, enabling the Russian military to legally and openly deploy conscripts already in the Russian military to fight in eastern and southern Ukraine. Russian leadership has already deployed undertrained conscripts to Ukraine in direct violation of Russian law and faced domestic backlash. Russia’s semi-annual conscription cycle usually generates around 130,000 conscripts twice per year. The next cycle runs from October 1 to December 31. Russian law generally requires that conscripts receive at least four months of training prior to deployment overseas, and Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly denied that conscripts will be deployed to Ukraine. Annexation could provide him a legal loophole allowing for the overt deployment of conscripts to fight.
Russian-appointed occupation officials in Kherson and Zaporizhia oblasts announced the formation of “volunteer” units to fight with the Russian military against Ukraine. Russian forces will likely coerce or physically force at least some Ukrainian men in occupied areas to fight in these units, as they have done in the territories of the Russian proxy Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics (DNR and LNR).
The Russian State Duma separately passed new incentives for foreign nationals to fight in Russia’s military to obtain Russian citizenship and will likely increase overseas recruitment accordingly. That new law, which deputies also rushed through normal procedures on September 20, allows foreign nationals to gain Russian citizenship by signing a contract and serving in the Russian military for one year. Russian law previously required three years of service to apply for citizenship.
Putin’s appeals to nationalism may generate small increases in volunteer recruitment from within Russia and parts of occupied Donetsk and Luhansk. However, forces generated from such volunteers, if they manifest, will be small and poorly trained. Most eager and able-bodied Russian men and Ukrainian collaborators have likely already volunteered in one of the earlier recruitment phases.
Local Russian administrators will continue to attempt to form volunteer units, with decreasing effect, as ISW has previously reported and mapped.
Russian forces and the Wagner Private Military Company are also directly recruiting from Russian prisons, as ISW has previously reported. These troops will be undisciplined and unlikely to meaningfully increase Russian combat power.
Putin likely hopes that increasing self-mobilization, and cracking down on unwilling Russian forces, will enable him to take the rest of Donetsk and defend Russian-occupied parts of Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhia oblasts. He is mistaken. Putin has neither the time nor the resources needed to generate effective combat power. But Putin will likely wait to see if these efforts are successful before either escalating further or blaming his loss on a scapegoat. His most likely scapegoat is Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and the Russian Ministry of Defense. Reports that Shoigu would accompany Putin while Putin gave a speech announced and then postponed on September 20 suggest that Putin intended to make Shoigu the face of the current effort.
That decree is every bit as popular as you would expect.
Takeaways:
“Today, people went to the streets from Moscow to the Far East to protest. Even though it only concerned those in reserve, everyone sees where this is going.”
“Former Security Minister of the Donetsk People’s Republic called on Russia’s military command to better supply existing units on the ground. He also added that lack of equipment is the main reason why the Ukrainians keep advancing in Kherson.”
He thinks the conscripts will work logistics jobs, free up contractors to do the fighting. I remain doubtful that the effective military contractor pool for this war is terribly deep.
Neither the mobilization nor the sham referendums change any immediate facts on the ground in Ukraine. It will take many months to take new “recruits” up to even the most basic soldiering standards. Or maybe they’ll just give them three days training and send them into battle with old rifles and old ammunition like they did before, with the same results.
Either way, it doesn’t solve any of Putin’s immediate problems…
The administration of US President Joe Biden next month is to broaden curbs on US exports to China of semiconductors used for artificial intelligence and chipmaking tools, several people familiar with the matter said.
The US Department of Commerce intends to publish new regulations based on restrictions communicated in letters earlier this year to three US companies — KLA Corp, Lam Research Corp and Applied Materials Inc, the people said, speaking on the condition of anonymity.
Every wafer fabrication plant in the world uses equipment from one of those three companies. Applied Materials and LAM Research (along with Tokyo Electron) have their fingers in almost all areas of chipmaking equipment (PVD, CVD, Etch, etc.), while KLA (formerly KLA-Tencor) dominates the wafer inspection equipment segment. Add ASML in the Netherlands, and those five absolutely dominate the semiconductor equipment market.
The letters, which the companies publicly acknowledged, forbade them from exporting chipmaking equipment to Chinese factories that produce advanced semiconductors with sub-14 nanometer processes unless the sellers obtain commerce department licenses.
This is where things get tricky. SMIC claims they can do 7nm, but everyone outside China doubts they can do it reliably, repeatably and profitably. SMIC announced they’re about to start manufacturing 14nm, and that they can probably do. Practically, they’re the only semiconductor manufacturer in China that can do sub-14nm, as just about everyone at the top of the next biggest semiconductor manufacturer, Tsinghua Unigroup, just got arrested in July.
Without a continued stream of machines, spare parts and technical know-how from those five semiconductor giants, China’s semiconductor industry is doomed. China’s domestic semiconductor equipment industry is essentially garbage, and they’re so far behind in so many areas that they can’t even steal their way to parity. The knowledge gulf is just too vast.
According to World Trade Organization statistics, China’s trade deficit in integrated circuits and electronic components (including Hong Kong’s trade deficit) has almost doubled from the equivalent of $135 billion in 2010 to $240 billion in 2020.
The growing trade deficit in integrated circuits reveals one crucial fact: Achieving technological self-reliance is still a faraway Chinese dream. To keep its exports growing, China has no other way but to keep importing advanced chips to assemble into consumer goods with high-tech intensity (e.g., smartphones, tablets, and the like).
Although China (including Hong Kong) is also the largest exporter of semiconductor chips in the world, less than 7% of chips produced in China were made by Chinese semiconductor companies in 2021.
More than 90% of chips produced in China are made by foreign firms. In other words, China’s exports of semiconductor chips are overwhelmingly dominated by foreign companies.
Its inferior level of technology is the main reason for China’s chip reliance on foreign firms. While Chinese firms are stuck with advancing toward 7nm chips, the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. and Samsung are progressing towards mass production of 3nm chips this year. Intel plans to take over TSMC’s leading role in semiconductor technology by 2025.
The competition among a few tech giants in the U.S., Taiwan, and South Korea is clear, and the Chinese firms are not likely to jump into the global technology competition in the semiconductor industry anytime soon.
The U.S. restrictions on exporting chipmaking equipment to China’s largest semiconductor firm, Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp., have not only deterred China’s technological advancement, but also exposed the fundamental mismanagement problems inside China’s semiconductor industry.
Xi might not have noticed his industry’s poor performance had China been able to continue to produce chips with foreign equipment.
Some parts about the Tsinghua scandal snipped.
Several Taiwanese executives leaving China’s semiconductor industry last year is another major setback in the development of China’s semiconductor industry.
China not only spent tremendously on building chip plants and purchasing expansive equipment, but also on recruiting talent from overseas. Over the past few years, China recruited more than 3,000 skilled workers from Taiwan to work in China’s semiconductor industry.
China amassed enormous capital, talent, and foreign equipment, but the problem is with governance. Xi’s absolute authority encouraged a rush into China’s semiconductor industry. Moreover, the extraordinary integration of the public and private sectors in China has twisted industrial development toward short-term profit-making, instead of long-term accumulation of manufacturing strength and technological improvement.
Xi’s “wolf warrior” diplomacy has further overshadowed the outlook of its semiconductor industry. China’s success relies on close partnerships with various suppliers and customers in different countries across the globe. Alienating them on the geopolitical front only undermines those relationships.
The U.S. ban on exporting chipmaking machines to China was the straw that broke the Chinese semiconductor industry’s back.
On top of that, the CHIPS and Science Act just signed into law bans semiconductor companies receiving U.S. government subsidies from investing in China for the next 10 years. There are major loopholes in that prohibition, but if Congress can manage to keep the administration’s feet to the fire—including by tightening the legal restrictions—it could have a major impact on China’s tech development.
In addition, the U.S. has extended the export restriction to 14 nm chipmaking machines to the Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. and other foreign chipmakers in China. A specific electronics design automation software for making advanced chips is also banned from exportation to China.
Without foreign investment and inputs, China is only likely to deepen its reliance on importing advanced chips from overseas.
Peter Zeihan notes (correctly) that China’s semiconductor industry has been singularly unable to fab advanced chips on their own.
Not to mention that fraud still abounds. Chinese CPU semiconductor startup Quillion Technology closed up shop three months after raising $89 million.
$89 million is probably enough to get you to tape-out for a fabless semiconductor house designing a smaller chip (or maybe even a low-power ARM-based CPUs for embedded markets), but it’s a woefully small sum for a real cutting-edge CPU company, and laughable if they intended to be an integrated design manufacturer fabbing their own chips, where building even a trailing edge fab starts in the billions.
More on that topic:
Takeaways:
“Money seems to have a strong corruptive power over CCP officials that they can’t resist. Like China’s real estate industry, China’s semiconductor industry is also plagued with corruption, over-construction, and highly leveraged capital maneuvers.”
She goes over the history of the Chinese “Big Fund” for semiconductors I covered here, and later talks about the indictments.
“The state-run Semiconductor Investment Fund was used more as an instrument to speculate in stocks than an institution for conducting basic R&D. The government-backed fund, aka the “Big Fund,” has investments in 2,793 entities within three layers of ownership.” Very few of them have the word “semiconductor” in their names. (Like I said before, shell games all the way down.)
From 1984 to 1990, the Ministry of Electronics Industry delegated the management of the vast majority of state-owned electronics enterprises to local provincial and municipal governments. While these state-owned enterprises (SOEs) obtained more autonomy, something strange happened. These companies imported outdated integrated circuit production lines that had no commercial value. The wasteful projects cost money, but people used the opportunities to take foreign trips, receive kickbacks, and send their children abroad. And this happened on a large scale.
Pretty much classic ChiCom behavior.
China’s high-tech industry, like its financial industry, is dominated by powerful CCP families, and the Jiang Zemin family is one of them. In 1999, Jiang Zemin gave his oldest son, Jiang Mianheng, the reins of China’s “autonomous chip development.” As vice president of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and president of the Shanghai branch for many years, the junior Jiang has long held the turf of China’s science and technology sector. He is also personally involved in the semiconductor business. His Shanghai Lianhe investment has holdings of Shanghai Zhaoxin Semiconductor Company.
Classic story:
Chen Jin, a former junior test engineer at Motorola, joined Shanghai Jiaotong University in 2001 after returning to China.
He was given the responsibility to develop the “Hanxin” chip, an important part of the state-run high-tech development program known as the “863 Program.” In just three years, Chen obtained 100 million in R&D funding and applied for 12 national patents. On Feb. 26, 2003, Chen’s team officially released the “Hanxin 1” chip. The Shanghai Municipal Government, the Ministry of Information Industry, and the Chinese Academy of Sciences all backed his work. The expert panel declared the “Hanxin 1” and its related design and application development platform as being the first of its kind in China and achieving an important milestone in the history of China’s chip development. Subsequently, Hanxin 2, 3, 4 and 5 chips were launched, all of which were claimed to have reached an advanced level globally. The Hanxin series of chips even entered the General Equipment Procurement Department of the Chinese military. However, 3 years later, on Jan. 17, 2006, “Hanxin 1” was revealed to be completely fake. Chen downloaded a Motorola chip source code through a former Motorola colleague. Then he secretly bought a batch of Motorola dsp56800 series chips, paid a peasant to scrape the original Motorola logo with sandpaper, and asked a local Shanghai print shop to print the “Hanxin” logo on it.
China correctly identified semiconductors and semiconductor equipment as key technologies for truly becoming the world’s preeminent technological manufacturing giant. Unfortunately for them (and fortunately for us), the CCP’s endemic culture of corruption and their top-down command economy are antithetical to the onrush of capitalist technological innovation that powers Moore’s Law.
I talked about buildings made of Chinesium and rotten tail buildings, upon which construction stops but upon which mortgage owners are still expected to make payments.
Shoddy Chinese construction practices don’t stop there. This week an entire Chinese residential skyscraper went up in flames:
Fires are hardly unknown among American skyscrapers, but usually they occur in older buildings, not ones built this century, as modern construction practices like firewalls and sprinkler systems generally prevent fires from spreading from floor to floor. The Lotus Garden China Telecom building in Changsha was finished in 2000.
Buildings made from subpar constriction materials in China are know as “Tofu Dregs” buildings, as though they were built out of tofu:
Shoddy construction practices extend to buildings, roads, bridges, flood walls and other infrastructure. It’s hard to do quality work when cutting corners seems to be your national ethos…
Peter Zeihan says the abysmal performance of the Russian Army is going to have a whole lot of ramifications around the world, many in Russia’s own near abroad. “It means that the image of the Russians as a regional power, much less a global one, is gone, and it’s not coming back.”
Some takeaways:
“The countries that had signed on to kind of a Russian Alliance, if you will, [they’re] on their own completely, and that provides opportunities for their rivals to take matters into their own hands.”
Belarus: “Here’s a country of 10 million people that has basically hitched itself to Putin’s star. And the Poles, the Latvians, the Lithuanians, the Estonians, the Finns, and the Swedes they have been chomping at the bit for years to try to take Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus down to size and basically peel Belarus out of the Russian orbit. They will now have the opportunity, and it’s unlikely that anyone in Europe or the United States is going to try to stand in the way.”
“Unless Lukashenko sues for peace with the Balts and the Nordics, very quickly we should count on seeing him being brought up on war crimes before very long. Because after all he did provide the access that was necessary for the assault on Kiev early in the war.”
Georgia: “Here I do expect things to be a little bit more circumspect. The Georgians tried to call Russia’s bluff and invade their former secessionist Republics of North Ossetia and Abkhazia several years ago in 2004, and it was a trap and the Russians were able to destroy the Georgian Army. So the Georgians are not going to do this until a couple of other countries in the region have already pulled this off successfully.”
Moldova:
There’s a small secessionist republic there called Transnistra. It’s only 10 percent of the population of a country of like three and a half million people. There’s not much going on there, but the Russians intervened decisively right at the end of the Soviet collapse to basically make sure that Transnistra could be functionally independent under Russian sponsorship, but unlike the Georgian secessionist territories, which share a land border with Russia proper, Transnistra is on its own. The only way to supply it is through Ukraine, and that has obviously stopped. So the Moldovans and their sponsors in Romania have now a vested interest in ending this historical aberration, and I would expect to see that being wrapped up within a year or two.
Israel: Without big brother Russia providing help, Syria may be screwed.
The Russians have very publicly, unfortunately for them, relocated a lot of hardware from Syria to Ukraine, specifically air defense equipment to help them with their assaults. Which means that if you are Israel, the only thing that is standing in your way of going after the Syrian regime is someone from the Biden Administration saying “You know what? We really don’t want a nuclear event to erupt because there are Russian troops involved.” Well, the tone of the Biden Administration in the last 72 hours has kind of changed. Now it’s more of “You kids go have fun” sort of vibe, so I expect us to see some very interesting pyrotechnics between the Israelis and the Syrians in a very short period of time, followed by the Syrians suing for peace. Which means that we get to revisit the entire Syrian Civil War now without the Russians being players.
Two caveats from my viewpoint: 1. Given the history of Israeli striking Syria with impunity several times over the past decade, with possibly one Israeli plane hit during that period, I don’t think Russian anti-aircraft equipment have provided any significant deterrent to Israel doing whatever it wanted in Syria. I view it more likely that Israel views a weakened Assad continually beset by a grinding civil war against numerous enemies a preferable option to taking him out entirely. 2. Not sure where Zeihan is getting his information on a change in the Biden Administration’s messaging to Israeli, but I readily concede that he likely does have better sources than I do. It may also be that the most recent failure of the asinine Iran deal has changed the collective mind of whatever passes for a Biden brain trust.
Speaking of Iran: “Tehran has lost its primary weapons sponsor, and its primary Security Council sponsor, and that is going to force the Iranians to think differently and act differently in every theater.”
Plus possible policy changes in (or toward) Cuba and Venezuela.
Russia acknowledges defeat in Kharkiv, ultranationalists start to turn on Putin, Lyman is the new battleground, and unconfirmed reports of Russian troops abandoning Melitopol.
The Kremlin has recognized its defeat in Kharkiv Oblast, the first defeat Russia has acknowledged in this war. The Kremlin is deflecting blame from Russian President Vladimir Putin and attributing it instead to his military advisors.
The Kremlin is likely seeking to use the defeat in Kharkiv to facilitate crypto mobilization efforts by intensifying patriotic rhetoric and discussions about fuller mobilization while revisiting a Russian State Duma bill allowing the military to send call-ups for the regular semiannual conscription by mail. Nothing in the Duma bill suggests that Putin is preparing to order general mobilization, and it is far from clear that he could do so quickly in any case.
The successful Ukrainian counter-offensive around Kharkiv Oblast is prompting Russian servicemen, occupation authorities, and milbloggers to panic.
Russia’s military failures in Ukraine are likely continuing to weaken Russia’s leverage in the former Soviet Union as Russia appears unwilling to enforce a violated ceasefire it brokered between Armenia and Azerbaijan or to allow Armenia to invoke provisions of the Russia-dominated Collective Security Treaty Organization in its defense.
Ukrainian troops likely continued ground attacks along the Lyman-Yampil-Bilohorivka line in northern Donetsk Oblast and may be conducting limited ground attacks across the Oskil River in Kharkiv Oblast.
Russian and Ukrainian sources indicated that Ukrainian forces are continuing ground maneuvers in three areas of Kherson Oblast as part of the ongoing southern counter-offensive.
Russian troops made incremental gains south of Bakhmut and continued ground attacks throughout Donetsk Oblast.
Ukrainian forces provided the first visual evidence of Russian forces using an Iranian-made drone in Ukraine on September 13.
Oleksiy Arestovych, an adviser to Zelenskiy, said Ukrainian troops were now trying to retake the Russian-held town of Lyman in Ukraine’s Donetsk region and were eyeing territorial gains in the neighbouring Luhansk region which is under Russian control.
“There is now an assault on Lyman,” Arestovych said in a video posted on YouTube.
“And that is what they fear most – that we take Lyman and then advance on Lysychansk and Sievierodonetsk,” he said, referring to twin cities in the Luhansk region taken by Russia after fierce fighting in June and July.
The Ukrainian mayor of Melitopol said that Russians are evacuating Melitopol, the Zaporizhia Oblast city between Mariupol and Kherson, and heading to Crimea. I treat this report with a fair amount of skepticism, because if true it would essentially mean Game Over for Russia’s southern front.
I'm hearing more & more reports that Russians are evacing Melitopol. This remains UNCONFIRMED. If true, Ukr can reach the Black Sea, blow the Kerch bridge, & utterly destroy every Russia military unit in southern Ukraine and Crimea. And THAT would be a nation-ending event. pic.twitter.com/8cCDnDEbVl
DEEP STRIKE: Major explosions rocked the RU air station at Taganrog, followed by a number of secondaries & fires. Russian AWACs, including the including the newest A-100 platforms, are forward deployed at Taganrog. This strike will negatively affect RU air defense in the region. pic.twitter.com/iKPeaIW5w8
In the newly-liberated areas, relief and sorrow are intertwined – as accounts emerge of torture and killings during the long months of Russian occupation.
Artem, who lives in the city of Balakliya in the Kharkiv region, told the BBC he was held by Russians for more than 40 days, and was tortured with electrocution.
Balakliya was liberated on 8 September after being occupied for more than six months. The epicentre of the brutality was the city’s police station, which Russian forces used as their headquarters.
Artem said he could hear screams of pain and terror coming from other cells.
The occupiers made sure the cries could be heard, he said, by turning off the building’s noisy ventilation system.
“They turned it off so everyone could hear how people scream when they are shocked with electricity,” he told us. “They did this to some of the prisoners every other day… They even did this to the women”.
And they did it to Artem, though in his case only once.
“They made me hold two wires,” he said.
“There was an electric generator. The faster it went, the higher the voltage. They said, ‘if you let it go, you are finished’. Then they started asking questions. They said I was lying, and they started spinning it even more and the voltage increased.”
Artem told us he was detained because the Russians found a picture of his brother, a soldier, in uniform. Another man from Balakliya was held for 25 days because he had the Ukrainian flag, Artem said.
A school principal called Tatiana told us she was held in the police station for three days and also heard screams from other cells.
The disaster in Kharkiv is so massive and apparent that even some of the pro-war Russian pundits are realizing it.
Life comes at you fast: pundits on Russian TV realize that their military is failing and their country is in trouble. They are starting to play the blame game. Some of them finally understand that their genocidal denial of the Ukrainian identity isn't working in Russia's favor. pic.twitter.com/jNNn5xifI5
For Putin, losing ultranationalists is much more dangerous than criticism from more liberal segments of Russian society.
Their criticism is that Putin is not doing enough. That the special military operation is insufficient, and that Putin should declare full mobilization. These ultranationalists are largely represented by those Russian military bloggers that have become quite famous during the war. The most famous one is probably Igor Girkin. These bloggers make sometimes very good military analyses, and they clearly have a network of sources that provide information about the situation on the frontlines. And we also know that their views are shared by many of the soldiers. For example, there have been studies that show that these ultranationalist views are pretty common in spetsnaz units. And these ultranationalist voices are a real challenge for the Putin regime. Because obviously he can’t dismiss them as being unpatriotic or foreign agents or something like that. And what is happening now is that these ultranationalists are turning against Putin. And that is dangerous for him.
The shift has been from “If you support the troops, you have to support Putin” to “If you support the troops, you have to blame Putin for fucking things up so badly.”
Ben Hedges: Ukraine will retake all pre-February 23rd territory this year, and recapture Crimea next year. “It could be quicker.”
More scenes of captured equipment in Izyum.
Ukrainians issued Russian passports find out they’re worthless to get into Crimea or obtain government services.
Ukrainian troops using the Polish-built Krab self-propelled howitzer say it’s like night and day compared to their old Soviet equipment. “It’s like a Porsche vs. a Lada.”
Russian politician Dmitry Medvedev reacts well to suggestion the West give Ukraine security guarantees. “The land will be on fire and the concrete will melt.”
Azerbaijani forces shelled Armenia’s territory on Tuesday in a large-scale attack that killed at least 49 Armenian soldiers and fueled fears of even broader hostilities.
Azerbaijan and Armenia have been locked in a decades-old conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh, which is part of Azerbaijan but has been under the control of ethnic Armenian forces backed by Armenia since a separatist war there ended in 1994. Azerbaijan reclaimed broad swaths of Nagorno-Karabakh in a six-week war in 2020 that killed more than 6,600 people and ended with a Russia-brokered peace deal.
Moscow, which deployed about 2,000 troops to the region to serve as peacekeepers under the deal, moved quickly to broker a cease-fire on Tuesday morning, but it wasn’t immediately clear whether it was holding.
The hostilities erupted minutes after midnight, with Azerbaijani forces unleashing an artillery barrage and drone attacks in many sections of Armenian territory, according to the Armenian Defense Ministry.
Azerbaijan charged that its forces returned fire in response to “large-scale provocations” by the Armenian military, claiming that the Armenian troops planted mines and repeatedly fired on Azerbaijani military positions, resulting in unspecified casualties and damage to military infrastructure.
Azerbaijan’s ally Turkey also placed the blame for the violence on Armenia. Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu called for Yerevan to halt its “provocations” and Defense Minister Hulusi Akar condemned “Armenia’s aggressive attitude and provocative actions” following talks with their counterparts in Baku.
Speaking in parliament early Tuesday, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said that Azerbaijani shelling has killed at least 49 Armenian soldiers.
He said the Azerbaijani action followed his recent European Union-brokered talks in Brussels with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev that revealed what he described as Azerbaijan’s uncompromising stand.
Christian Armenia has a long, unhappy history with Turkey, including genocide at the hands of Muslim Turks in the waning days of the Ottoman Empire. Like the Balkans, the Caucuses are an unstable cauldron of mixed ethno-religious-nationalism, with a side-order of Jihadism thrown in for good measure (the Islamic State – Caucasus Province, the successor to the Caucasus Emirate, has been relatively quit recently, but such groups seldom wither away entirely). Russia still occupies the parts of Georgia it conquered in 2008, but the blooding it’s taken in Ukraine has probably weakened its hand regionally. And coming food and energy security issues (Azerbaijan in energy rich, but Armenia is energy-poor) are likely to exacerbate tensions in the coming months.
Putin’s Russia may be receiving a well-deserved comeuppance in Ukraine, but its resulting weakness could very well result in interesting times for many ex-Soviet states.
