back to article China orders its telcos to rip and replace US chips with homegrown silicon by 2027

Years after Uncle Sam ordered US telecommunications providers to rip and replace Huawei kit from their networks, Beijing is telling telcos in China to strip out American-made chips. On Friday, Chinese officials reportedly ordered its top telecoms players to eliminate foreign semiconductors — primarily those from Intel and AMD …

  1. Will Godfrey Silver badge
    Facepalm

    Predictable

    ... and actually quite reasonable. America is just as likely to insert/require backdoors in various chips.

    1. Zibob Silver badge

      Re: Predictable

      And it has been proven they do, dual elliptical curve?

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Predictable propaganda

      False equivalence.

      Huawei network gear phones home by using their own lawful interception software. Your Intel processor might have some undocumented instructions but it doesn't phone home. It's not technically possible.

      1. Roland6 Silver badge

        Re: Predictable propaganda

        Whilst the cpu might not call home, the Intel Management Engine running on the Platform Controller Hub is another matter…

      2. CountCadaver Silver badge

        Re: Predictable propaganda

        Well Cisco at the very least were aware their routers were being intercepted and compromised by the nsa(depending on whose version of events you buy into)

      3. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Predictable propaganda

        It's not technically possible for a processor to do a certain action if sent a particular instruction? Even though it has been proven that ICs have been modified?

        Ok got it - thanks for the info

        Also your comment "Huawei network gear phones home by using their own lawful interception software" - source for this? Trust me bro?

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      It is more than that

      Other possible reasons: preparing for a war, and thus trying to prevent harm from future sanctions; development of science and technology internally; facilitating related economic activities, such as software development etc.

      Due to importance of the semiconductor industry and China's market size, it all makes sense. Meanwhile Intel has been losing the battle to Taiwan. China could catastrophically "sanction" the West by invading the country.

      Related question: Is China experiencing similar number of security incidents as the West recently?

      1. CountCadaver Silver badge

        Re: It is more than that

        All the us would have to do is exfiltrate relevant personnel related to semiconductors (and a military build up large enough for that to happen is going to appear on satellite imagery)

        Plus taiwan is far more heavily armed than Ukraine was and look how well that's been going for Russia......the very least is that Winnie the pooh is going to get one hell of a bloody nose

  2. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

    Perhaps the two sides could just swap their stuff and avoid all the land-fill.

    1. b0llchit Silver badge
      Alert

      That would, ahem, be a sensible solution. I'm sure no one will consider it because we can produce more, more and even more! Long live producing more!

      /s

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Ah a fellow believer in the existence of the secret Sino-Septic Co-Prosperity Council, that meets quarterly to coordinate how to increase waste and profit while keeping the moorlocks in perpetual fear

      2. CountCadaver Silver badge

        Foundation of capitalist economics - the market must always see growth growth growth, forgetting even with planned obsolescence that there is a limit to what people can buy use or want with the time and money they have available

        Funny also when workers start seeing wage rises finally above inflation that "suddenly" there is a sharp economic downturn and mass layoffs......yeah....

        1. jmch Silver badge

          "Foundation of capitalist economics - the market must always see growth growth growth"

          That's the foundation of Wall Street capitalism and the flawed idea that "greed is good". Capitalism worked pretty fine between the post-war and 1980s, when most companies actually cared about their workers and investment in a company was seen as a way to grow a company and share in it's profits long-term. It's the new-age capitalism whose idea is to strip-mine value off companies for short-term gain

    2. williamyf

      Yes... and no. Normaly, the Decomissioned equipment is sold to well known intermediary companies, that, in turn, sell it to other telcos.

      But, unless the equipment is Super-Duper-New, the rich telcos buy newer stuff, and the poorer telcos (rural telcos and/or big telcos in less affluent countries) buy the second hand stuff. So the Huawei Kit removed from the USoA and Europe will end up in LatAm, SE Asia and Africa, While the decomissioned western equipment decomissioned in china will end up in the same places + Rural and smallish telcos in europe and the USoA.

      JM2¢ YMMV

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        2nd hand gear is out of support. Or at least dropped of the compatibility matrix. That's why tier one telcos decommissioned it in the first place. So, 2nd hand telco buyers won't be able to get support for their software stack. Eg take some gen-8 HW and try to get support for SW that's only supported on gen-10 or 9.

        1. williamyf

          You are right and wrong at the same time. MUCH/MOST of the second hand telco equipment is dropped of the compatibility matrix, so is logical that you think that all of it is, but that is not the case.

          If the equipment is inside the compatibility matrix, support can (and is) bought from the original manufacturers.

          This particular case is a perfect example of when this type of thing happens. Also, another example is, when, for one reason or the other, the operator is feed up with a provider and does a full swap of equipment in favour of another vendor. Sometimes the incoming vendor buys back the equipment and destroys it, but some times, the telco has to "fend for itself" and sells the supported equipment to the intermediary.

          I've see a few of those cases first hand.

      2. werdsmith Silver badge

        . and the poorer telcos (rural telcos and/or big telcos in less affluent countries) buy the second hand stuff.

        That will be the UK that deployed telephone exchanges using Strowger switching gear discarded by US telcos, and kept if for decades after US stopped using it.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          The basic Strowger design may have been USian, but the clockwork was manufactured by the likes of STC and Plessey in the UK.

          (US preferred the panel switching system)

    3. deevee

      The USA only demands "free and open trade" when they benefit from it.

      Using Chinese tech also means the FBI/NSA and CIA can't spy on everyone with all the backdoors built into American tech.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        This is wrong in many ways.

        1/ NSA mostly listens "on the edges", hence the emphasis on "end-to-end encryption" by many communication apps.

        2/ Chinese spyware is much less subtle. Look at what they're doing at home.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          At home, they're blocking rather than spying. They don't bother much with details. Such as, plenty of people use VPNs, which are rather unsubtle too, and get away with it.

  3. Snowy Silver badge
    Coat

    Expensive

    Given how much they have rolled out that is going to get quite expensive. I hope the next chip are more energy efficient or this is just going to add to the power the networks use.

    Edit: Not going to hurt Intel and AMD they have already sold the kit and I do not think they are going to give a refund :o

    1. martinusher Silver badge

      Re: Expensive

      From reading the article I don't think its quite "rip and replace" so much as "don't consider American sourced parts when choosing kit for a normal replacement cycle". Its a pure economic retaliation rather than the fig leaf of 'national security' that we're sold here.

      It will have an effect on future revenues since China is a large and important market. While replacing Intel/AMD parts won't happen overnight the writing's already on the wall -- you can see that there's going to be a national shift from Windows and Windows based software running on Intel/AMD towards OS's like Harmony and Chinese versions of Linux running on locally designed platforms. The danger for us is that these technologies will be available for export and a lot of the 'rest of the world' is going to jump at the opportunity to get off the Wintel treadmill.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Expensive

        1/ Windows is virtually absent from Telco infra datacenters

        2/ The rest of the world does already have a lot of Huawei and ZTE gear and hardware is usually very cheap or even given away. The only difference now is that it will have very poor performance and eill only usable with Chinese vendor software.

        1. Paul Crawford Silver badge

          Re: Expensive

          I think martinusher's point is the wider picture - not just the Telco Wars we are seeing here, but China's push for technological independence from the West.

          That will mean getting rid of Windows as well from all gov use, since it is far more likely to be backdoor-able than the chips. Of course the next issue is going to be if the USA, etc, start a forced withdrawal of tech manufacture in China for similar economic & strategic reasons (AKA realising what dumb asses they have been moving to an authoritarian regime for cheapness in the first place).

          China will face the same issues as the West already has in extracting itself from vendor lock-in, but if Xi is willing to put politics above economics here, as in other areas of his recent policy, then they will do it. Long term that might help the West as well if companies are forced to support a Linux OS version for China as well as the de-facto Windows OS in the West. It could lead to software designed from the outset for OS-independence, and built & test systems for both OS, thus catching a lot more bugs and have much less OS upgrade-version-dependency as well.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Expensive

            First sentence of the article: Years after Uncle Sam ordered US telecommunications providers to rip and replace Huawei kit from their networks, Beijing is telling telcos in China to strip out American-made chips.

          2. CountCadaver Silver badge

            Re: Expensive

            Offshoring manufacturing to the PRC, an idea that came to the fore originally during the administration of that ever so honest and reputable fellow Richard Millhouse Nixon.....

    2. CowHorseFrog Silver badge

      Re: Expensive

      Yes especially because we all know the chinese government will never lie.

      Just look at their certified and inspected bridges that collapse on a daily basis. You can never really trust what they claim on the label and know whats inside.

      1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge
        Coat

        Re: Expensive

        "bridges that collapse on a daily basis"

        They must rebuild them PDQ.

        1. Neil Barnes Silver badge
          Coat

          Re: Expensive

          That's probably why they fall down so quickly!

          Checks to see if there's a bridge in the pocket --->

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        @CowHorseFrog - Re: Expensive

        Small correction for you here:

        ...we all know a government will never lie.

    3. Aitor 1

      Re: Expensive

      It is going to hit hard companies like Cisco. AMD and Intel will be affected, losing sales, but won't be hard hit.

      The government is also going out of us controlled processors.

      The biggest consumers of processors are data centers, business and tertiary personal devices.

      I guess that will come next.

      More worrying is the timeframe. Looks like China is considering going to war with the us after 3/4 years, and they obviously can't do that with us made processors and sw everywhere.

      1. Jellied Eel Silver badge

        Re: Expensive

        It is going to hit hard companies like Cisco. AMD and Intel will be affected, losing sales, but won't be hard hit.

        I think they will. But the telco space is interesting. Cisco is the 800lb gorilla, but doesn't play in every space. So it's got very little market share in optical/transmission and companies like Infinera or Huawei have/had more dominance in that space. Especially as Cisco started shifting towards serialising 'commodities' like SFPs, and making device management a lot more complicated and expensive. Quite a few telcos also realised they didn't really need to be locked into Cisco or Juniper's ecosytem, and a lot of their BFRs were expensive bloatware. Especially as the world steadily shifted towards Ethernet as the one true transport.. Or GMPLS. Why waste money on a 'router' that only has 2 interfaces and often only 1 route? NIDS are a lot simpler and cheaper when they're just forwarding traffic based on a lable.

        Then routing often only needs to happen in a few locations, and can be virtualised. Sure, for some tasks that might not be as fast as a BFR, but it's a whole lot cheaper, especially when you're just running a bunch of VRFs. First big telco I noticed doing this was Deutsche Telecom who'd sarted doing this in the early 2000s, and good'ol Demon Internet had been using *nix boxes and gated for routing long before that. Box shifters aren't happy about this migration, neither are some customers. I was once called to an irate customer who wanted to reject an Ethernet connection. We'd provisioned it to their ODF and patch panel. Customer pointed to a 3U box COLT supplied as part of their Ethernet delivery, and wanted a box like that! So I had to point out that we didn't really need to spend $20k on a bunch of tin we didn't need to provide the service and SLA they'd ordered.. And that also made the service cheaper, and more reliable given there's no box to fail.

        But there are other players who might be affected by geopolitics, like ECI or Adva. One's Israeli, the other is German. China already makes and supplies competing products and they're often the kind of devices sold by the thousand and often at a fraction of the price Western vendors want to charge.

        Looks like China is considering going to war with the us after 3/4 years, and they obviously can't do that with us made processors and sw everywhere.

        I think you have that the wrong way round. Most of the agressive posturing is coming from us, not China. Much of that is geopolitical combined with blatant protectionism. China's been developing very quickly from supplying cheap soft toys to high-tech kit that's often better, faster and especially cheaper than the stuff we make and sell. Sanctions have so far been spectacularly backfiring. Or perhaps not. The latest stroke of genius from our dear leaders is trying to ban Russian copper and aluminium. US said 'Ban it', Sunak went 'OK Boss!'. US imported very little from Russia, the EU and UK a whole lot more. We're currently following an insane energy policy that's going to need a lot of upgrades, needing a lot of copper and aluminium, and we've just made that stuff even more expensive. I'm sure that will help inflation, and ensuring the EU & UK remain competitive.. somehow.

        Meanwhile, China's just doing what happens every time sanctions and protectionism kick in. So steadily increasing it's self-sufficiency and finding more amenable trading partners. Especially as we've now forced a manufacturing powerhouse into closer ties with a resource one. And most of the world is mostly ignoring the sanctions anyway.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Expensive

          > I think you have that the wrong way round. Most of the agressive[sic] posturing is coming from us, not China.

          Yes, Taiwan is threatening to invade China. Just as evil Ukraine invaded Russia.

          > combined with blatant protectionism.

          Like China is an open market for Western companies!! If you want to do business in China, you have to agree to "share" your technology. But technology sharing is one way only. No big change here: back in the days, anyone caught smuggling silk moths or eggs was executed.

          > China's been developing very quickly from supplying cheap soft toys to high-tech kit that's often better, faster and especially cheaper than the stuff we make and sell

          Easy: exploiting millions of rural workers coming to town and skipping R&D budgets.

          > We're currently following an insane energy policy that's going to need a lot of upgrades, needing a lot of copper and aluminium, and we've just made that stuff even more expensive. I'm sure that will help inflation, and ensuring the EU & UK remain competitive.. somehow.

          Quantitative analysis is not your forte. Exercise for you: evaluate the impact of a doubling of the price of copper and aluminum on the cost of a MWh produced by a 15MW wind turbine with 50% annual load factor running for 25 years. All other things equal. Furthermore: evaluate the impact of that [spoiler-alert: infinitesimal] cost increase on overall inflation. By my account, these are two [Bachmann–Landau] small-o functions chained.

          > Meanwhile, China's just doing what happens every time sanctions and protectionism kick in. So steadily increasing it's[sic] self-sufficiency and finding more amenable trading partners.

          Good luck cloning silicon valley, or Biotech from Basel valley without a truly democratic meritocracy oriented politico-economic environment. Chinese AI companies, once touted by pro-Chinese pundits to overtake the US "in the next decade" are now complaining that they're being left behind in Gen AI (yes, you need clean sources of data for LLM training).

          >Especially as we've now forced a manufacturing powerhouse into closer ties with a resource one. And most of the world is mostly ignoring the sanctions anyway.

          True, Russian speaking trolls will need to work on their putonghua as Russia falls into China's orbit.

          1. Jellied Eel Silver badge

            Re: Expensive

            Yes, Taiwan is threatening to invade China. Just as evil Ukraine invaded Russia.

            Urkraine had been killing ethnic Russians since 2014, and was poised to attack the DPR and LPR, and do a bit of a Gaza. The Friendship agreement between Urkraine and Russia had been abandoned by Poroshenko and so the SMO began to prevent ethnic cleansing. The same justification we used to break up Yugoslavia. And of course we've repeatedly stated our desire to break up the Russia Federation so we can loot it.

            Like China is an open market for Western companies!! If you want to do business in China, you have to agree to "share" your technology. But technology sharing is one way only.

            Yep. Ukraine wants to join the EU, if it does, it'll have to agree to a long list of rules. China has a long history of trading with the US and Europe, often at gunpointed, or helped along with a bit of opium.

            Easy: exploiting millions of rural workers coming to town and skipping R&D budgets.

            That's especially dumb, even by your standards. China's been investing a LOT in it's education system and R&D. We've been convincing our kids that leaving college with a $200-300k debt and a degree in gender or environment studies was a good investment. Plus a lot of Asian countries value education far more than we do where our education system churns out kids who are illiterate or innumerate. I suspect you're a good example of this problem.

            Quantitative analysis is not your forte. Exercise for you: evaluate the impact of a doubling of the price of copper and aluminum on the cost of a MWh produced by a 15MW wind turbine with 50% annual load factor running for 25 years

            This is why some comp.sci guys shouldn't be allowed out into the real world unsupervised. So per wiki-

            In computer science, big O notation is used to classify algorithms according to how their run time or space requirements grow as the input size grows.

            See also assumptions made wrt to CO2 and temperature where there are no limits to growth. Or just the way you create an unrealistic strawman by your assumptions. Show me a 15MW wind turbine that achieves a 50% annual load factor? As usual, your reality and actual reality diverge. So last year the UK had around 30GW of windmills and an average production of only 7GW. From a quick quantitative analysis, that's less than half your assumed load factor. But again normal for climate 'science', and it's peddlers of bullshit.

            But your modelling overlooks a few rather important issues. One is we've been here before in the '70s when there was a copper crisis. So for telecoms, that meant switching to aluminium cables due to cost. Now, we're sanctioning both. Then it's understanding how much copper and alumininium there is in a windmill, gas turbine, EV, cable or grid-scale battery. We've already had large windmill farmers telling us that their costs are rising, not falling as they'd promised us they would. And we've seen those big wind farmers pulling out of projects because they're uneconomic at <£120+ per MWh.

            But again that's a problem with your extremely crude model, along with a general lack of understanding about pretty much anything to do with economics. So interest rates have risen, mostly on the back of inflation in the energy sector. You're a prospective wind farmer seeking to generate new subsidies. You go to your investors and say 'giff money!' and show them your model with your 50% capacity factor. At which point, your investor's quants will point and laugh at you because your assumptions are wildly inaccurate, and your capex has just increased. And of course there's substantial political uncertainty that the situation won't get worse with more sanctions, variations to subsidies, customer resistance, fraud trials. Or just 'Climate Change'. After all, one of the predictions for that is a warmer world will lead to lower average wind speeds. The IPCC has written all about that. Plus 'extreme weather', which might just damage or destroy their investment.

            Good luck cloning silicon valley, or Biotech from Basel valley without a truly democratic meritocracy oriented politico-economic environment.

            Huh? You mean a 'democratic meritocracy' that gave us DEI and ESG? Plus a crapton of other red tape that simply imposes costs and inefficiencies on Western businesses? There are a number of advantages to a benevolent-ish dictatorship, namely you can JFDI. At gun point, if necessary. China's building on stuff we've already developed. It's investing in it's future, ie education system and research. We're wasting billions on ways to go back to a pre-Industrial era. But that was one of the key points behind the 'Global Warming' scam, so how do we slow down countries like China and India? Luckily for them, they've mostly been ignoring that nonsense and are steadily eating our lunch while we deindustrialise.

            ...are now complaining that they're being left behind in Gen AI (yes, you need clean sources of data for LLM training).

            Hmm.. Let me think for a second. Who's likely to have a harder time finding 'clean sources' of say, Chinese data? That rapidly developing market? Or why LLM would really be of interest to China given it's got a very large market of natural language speakers, along with a strong service mentality? And if it wants English language training data, there's rather a lot of that already floating around on the Internet. Oh, and given China's 'liberal' approach to copyright, what happens to the cost base of Western AI developers, if they have to start paying for their training data?

            1. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              Re: Expensive

              Let's summarize...Loads of incredibly dumb rants as usual:

              - Made up sick pro-Russia propaganda repeated ad nauseam with the goal of justifying the illegal invasion of Ukraine.

              - Little-o notation was invented way before computers were a thing. So bad google look up. And bad quote sprinkled with Daily-mail-economics with zero data.

              - FYI, wind turbine motors use copper. Power lines use aluminum alloys. No need to draw on your 70s memories. You learn something everyday. Even going your way, Aluminum is more abundant than Iron. That's why we refer to the continental crust as “sial.” Sial stands for silicate and aluminum. So bad luck here. No ore scarcity driven "inflation" in sight from that side.

              - 15MW is obviously not onshore. It's the kind of >200m high wind turbine that you would deploy today in offshore farms (there's no point today making plans to deploy 7MW offshore). And yes, maybe that's news for you but offshore farms, especially UK, like Hywind Scotland, often have load factors around or above 50%. Learn. So, it would seem that the "crude mode" consisted in mixing together onshore and offshore capacity, divide by average output (power!!!) and apply the result to new, more powerful, better yield wind turbines. The clue was the power, precisely. You failed, accusing others of your own misinterpretation. No surprise. Reptilian brain took over and rant mode went in over drive.

              - More Brexiter leaky skull brain juice. More climate change denier poppycock.

              - Undecipherable Gen AI speculations about nevertheless quite well documented ongoing Chinese efforts (and lack of clean data) in Gen AI domain.

              1. Jellied Eel Silver badge

                Re: Expensive

                Let's summarize...Loads of incredibly dumb rants as usual:

                See? You're projecting again!

                - Made up sick pro-Russia propaganda repeated ad nauseam with the goal of justifying the illegal invasion of Ukraine.

                Not at all. But again, demonstrates the way you prefer propaganda to evidence. Urkraine used Minsk to train and build up it's military after the mauling it got during it's civil war. It passed a law to recapture DPR, LPR and Crimea. It started massing it's newely NATO-standard forces in those regions in preparation for that offensive. Russia warned them not to start their ethnic cleansing operations, we ignored Russia's warnings so when the SMO started, it threatened Kiev to draw forces away. And that worked, and there was almost a peace deal until we decide Ukrainians must die. And recent events demonstrate Ukraine's place in the world. US, UK and others use actively engage to defend Israel. Meanwhile, Ukraine carries on begging for more air defences. Now the Middle East is heating up, what are the chances anyone with SAMs is going to donate those to Urkaine? It's an 'illegal invasion' in the same way our invasions of Yugoslavia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria etc etc were.

                - Little-o notation was invented way before computers were a thing. So bad google look up.

                Nope. It sounded familiar so I looked it up on Wiki. Then shivered because formal methods. Which I was forced to learn as part of designing safety critical systems. But as that was part of an engineering degree, it also included the importance of using the right tools for the job. Not being lead astray by using the wrong tools. See Rahmstorf Smoothing for more info.

                - FYI, wind turbine motors use copper. Power lines use aluminum alloys. No need to draw on your 70s memories. You learn something everyday. Even going your way, Aluminum is more abundant than Iron. </blockquote?

                Uhuh. So what you're saying is that although we use and need an awful lot of copper, sanctions that impose additional costs and maybe reduce supply will have absolutely no impact on your business case? And yes, I know aluminium is common, but it's also known as congealed electricty because production and refining is extremely energy intensive. If energy costs increase due to insane energy policy, costs increase, prices increase, inflation increases and sanctions just accelerate those effects.

                <blockqoute>And yes, maybe that's news for you but offshore farms, especially UK, like Hywind Scotland, often have load factors around or above 50%

                And here we have the classic cherry pick. One wind farm for one season is not representative. I used last years average figures from here-

                https://gridwatch.co.uk/Wind

                and a claim for total installed wind capacity in the UK from wiki. But this is how the climate 'science' world rolls. The Met Office recenly claimed a record wind interval over 18 months! Like that's not unexpected when you cherrypick a period that includes two Winters.

                15MW is obviously not onshore. It's the kind of >200m high wind turbine that you would deploy today in offshore farms

                Except they're not, because they use even more copper and are too expensive. Plus there's novel approaches to physics, like suggesting slapping 200m high windmills on floating platforms. What would physics tell you about a moving mass on the end of a long lever, attached to an unstable platform that offers very little resistance to the forces that will be generated? But if you can lock in >£200/MWh CfD strike prices, you might, just might be able to make some money flogging REGOs to other businesses that might want to greenwash theirs.

                1. Anonymous Coward
                  Anonymous Coward

                  Playing chess with a pigeon

                  Congrats for switching your brain to high impedance?

                  You can't seem to be able to acknowledge that...

                  1/ the need for energy in bauxite reduction is part of the capex from equipment vendor's perspective (and therefore a little-o function down the supply chain of energy production).

                  2/ This energy is becoming greener and cheaper as the global Energiewende progresses.

                  Regarding load factors, your figures are still not for offshore. You can't seem to be able to acknowledge that...

                  1/ a 15MW wind turbine is necessarily offshore

                  2/ that offshore wind turbines load factors are much higher

                  Here. Fact sheet for you: Vesta V236-15.0 MW

                  - capacity factor of over 60%

                  - lifetime of 30 years

                  You've just be proved wrong again. Prediction: you will keep on digging in.

                  Yet, Benchmark UK offshore wind load factors seen rising to 57% in 2030: BEIS

                  "Larger turbines are expected to produce higher load factors for several reasons, most importantly that larger turbines can access higher winds due to their increased height, and that a wind farm with fewer, larger turbines has increased efficiency," BEIS said in an Aug. 24 report on electricity generation costs.

                  I'm not getting into the Russian propaganda cesspool with you.

                  1. Jellied Eel Silver badge

                    Re: Playing chess with a troll

                    1/ the need for energy in bauxite reduction is part of the capex from equipment vendor's perspective (and therefore a little-o function down the supply chain of energy production)

                    Your function would be more like the cost of energy, bauxite, wages, regulatory costs, all of which are inflating in non-Russian aluminium production far faster than they are in Russia. That's one multi-variate set of functions to try and calculate requiring a lot of assumptions and a lot of uncertainty if you're trying to produce a cost model forward 25yrs.

                    Here's a clue for you though-

                    https://markets.businessinsider.com/commodities/aluminum-price

                    or

                    https://www.lme.com/Metals/Non-ferrous/LME-Aluminium#Summary

                    and copper's declined on LME, probably because a lot of contracts can't be traded there any more. That would require another set of functions. Then, you'd need to know how much copper and aluminium goes into your 15MW windmill, along with every other variable that affects your business's capex and opex. And then you'd want to forecast, and include all the possible variables that affect your market. Like because your costs are going up, you can't sell your product. Especially if the regulatory environment changes and subsidies are removed because you've spent the last few decades telling everyone your costs are falling. Then telling people you're abandoning projects because, well, costs have been increasing. Oops, but again this is why if you use the wrong tool for the job, you'll just get the wrong answer. Then for energy output, that could be zero, if nobody buys your windmills and you go broke.

                    Just to be absolutely clear though, are you saying that when costs increase, prices don't?

                    2/ This energy is becoming greener and cheaper as the global Energiewende progresses.

                    Citation needed. My electricty bill is still around 3x what it was a decade ago. Again this is where your fantasy collides with reality.

                    You've just be proved wrong again. Prediction: you will keep on digging in.

                    You cited a marketing flyer from a vendor desperately trying to flog windmills. The reality is in the data from sites like Gridwatch where 30GW installed capacity resulted in a 23% capacity factor last year. This is well known that very few installs get anywhere close to 50%.

                    "Larger turbines are expected to produce higher load factors for several reasons, most importantly that larger turbines can access higher winds due to their increased height, and that a wind farm with fewer, larger turbines has increased efficiency,"

                    More forward looking statements from an industry lobbying group. Emphasis obviously on 'expected'. They might, they might not. There is very little data. There's also the problem of the increased cost, and the cost of replacing smaller windmills. Especially as most of the good sites are already taken. And they could be installed on land, except for a few expensive details like getting all the tower sections and blades to the install location. Naturally the 'renewables' lobby is pushing for this because after all, they won't be in their back yards.

                    But other than demonstrating your detachment from reality, what does this have to do with Chinese telcos? Other than maybe your windmill's SCADA costs will also increase because you're not allowed to use cheap Chinese kit anymore.

                    1. Anonymous Coward
                      Anonymous Coward

                      Prediction successfully confirmed!

                      As expected you tripled down. Insisting on mixing onshore and offshore load factors for a 15MW wind turbine that can only be offshore. There's no more stubborn than ppl with a huge ego who know they are wrong and are hellbent on denying it, adding more nonsense ("most of the good sites are already taken" LMAO: yes so little seascape around the British Isles) and more denial ("vendor flyer", "industry lobbying" ) as they go along. Adding ridicule to mockery.

                      Your obsession with "inflation" suggests you're living on a shoe string budget, This might act as a warped lens. Yet, facts are facts; willfully distorting them only harms the distorter.

                      1. Jellied Eel Silver badge

                        Re: Prediction successfully confirmed!

                        Insisting on mixing onshore and offshore load factors for a 15MW wind turbine that can only be offshore

                        Why can it 'only be offshore'? I don't know if there are planning regs that mean structures >200m can't be built on land. But if a windmill is capable of supporting itself on the sea bed, why would you think it incapable of doing the same on land? And I'm not mixing capacity factors of theoretical installs. I keep pointing you to actual data showing the average last year for all wind (trackable by Gridwatch) is only 23%. But for years the 'renewables' scumbags have told us that windmills will get bigger, faster and cheaper, and yet our electricity costs continue to climb.

                        ...adding more nonsense

                        Projecting again. You're almost as good as Samantha Powers who said with a straight face that Urkraine's economy had grown by 5%..

                        yes so little seascape around the British Isles) and more denial ("vendor flyer", "industry lobbying" ) as they go along. Adding ridicule to mockery.

                        Well, given your posts, you open yourself up to both ridicule and mockery. But I presume you think both the sea bed and Earth are flat? Consistent in geology so you can drill pilings and build stable foundatons? I haven't read Vestas's marketing buff, but have you? Given actual capacity factor is dependent on location, I'd be pretty sure their '50%' claim is heavily caveated. But again pretty much irrelevant given the observable 23% actual performance.

                        Your obsession with "inflation" suggests you're living on a shoe string budget, This might act as a warped lens. Yet, facts are facts; willfully distorting them only harms the distorter.

                        Again, assumptions without evidence. Or I might be concerned for others, like the millions living in energy poverty so the distorters can buy themselves a castle and football club. It might eventually harm the distorter, but sadly many of the merchants of doom are making a lot of money faking weather data to claim global warming.

                        1. Anonymous Coward
                          Anonymous Coward

                          Re: Prediction successfully confirmed!

                          Keep digging. Most powerful commercial onshore wind turbines are half of 15MW. Because of height/security issues and because wind is less powerful on land. You seem to allow yourself to dissert authoritatively about the merits of wind power but haven't gotten around mastering the basics yet. No issue: all JE has to do to preserve JE's self esteem is claim that JE is right. Cool. Keep it up.

                          1. Jellied Eel Silver badge

                            Re: Troll successfully confirmed!

                            No issue: all JE has to do to preserve JE's self esteem is claim that JE is right. Cool. Keep it up.

                            Hopefully you'll have no issue. But you stil can't seem to reconcile your claim of a 50% capacity factor taken from a marketing doc with the observed reality of real-world windmills achieving a capacity factor of 23%, or sometimes even less. Evidence, and critical thinking has never been your strong point. But as you're the 'expert', where have these 15MW windmills been installed?

                            1. Anonymous Coward
                              Anonymous Coward

                              Re: Troll successfully confirmed!

                              So, 4 posts later, you still claim that offshore and onshore load factors are similar. Now call me a troll to come full circle.

                              >

                              Vestas Flagship 15 MW Offshore Wind Turbine to Be Installed Near Danish Port

                              Vestas has received a firm order from Thyborøn-Harboøre Vindmøllelaug I/S af 2002 for a V236-15.0 MW wind turbine to be installed directly on the waterfront in the Port of Thyborøn in the northwestern part of Denmark.

                              “We are very pleased to install the new V236-15.0 MW turbine at a site in Thyborøn that offers great wind conditions for optimal energy production. Nearly 2,800 local shareholders have financed the turbine, and we look forward to showcase it to locals and tourists as we expect it to become an attraction,” said Jens Jørgen Birch, spokesperson at Thyborøn-Harboøre Vindmøllelaug I/S af 2002.

                              Vestas installed the prototype at the Østerild National test centre for large wind turbines in Western Jutland, Denmark in December 2022. Three months later, the wind turbine reached its nominal power rating of 15 MW.

                              In August 2023, the unit set a world record for the most power output by a single wind turbine in 24 hours, producing 363 megawatt-hours in that period. At the end of last year, Vestas received a type certificate for its 15 MW wind turbine.

                              NB: that's a 100% load factor on that period, Genius.

                              1. Jellied Eel Silver badge

                                Re: Troll successfully confirmed!

                                So, 4 posts later, you still claim that offshore and onshore load factors are similar. Now call me a troll to come full circle.

                                I call you a troll because you act like one. I've never made that claim, I simply questioned your 'quantitative analysis', and it's initial assumption that you could achieve 50% capacity factor over 1yr, let alone 25.

                                NB: that's a 100% load factor on that period, Genius.

                                in 24 hours, genius. But if these windmills are so great, why aren't they flying off the shelves instead of AFAIK there only being a single prototype in operation. Could it be.. I dunno, cost related?

                                1. Anonymous Coward
                                  Anonymous Coward

                                  2 + 2 = 4

                                  > I've never made that claim,

                                  As soon as you claim that your 23% load factor back-of-an-envelope calculation applies to all wind turbines, you bundle all national wind farms together: onshore (the vast majority) and offshore. And that's ridiculous. If you wish to contest Vesta's figure of 60%, you need to compare to similar (i.e. recent enough) offshore farms. Why do I always have to put you in front of the evidence, like a 4y old?

                                  > it's[sic] initial assumption that you could achieve 50% capacity factor over 1yr, let alone 25.

                                  Yeah load factors are usually calculated annually - because of seasonal variations. In the northern hemisphere, winds are stronger in winter. I'm sorry that's the way it is and that's what the data shows: around 50%. Butt-hurting as it might be for people whose blood pressure goes through the roof when they come across the figure. Moreover, Not sure why, in your brain, load factors decrease when wind turbines age. Maintenance is a thing. Repowering is mainly driven by technical advances.

                                  > Could it be.. I dunno, cost related?

                                  Do you mean price related? Whether they sell or not depends on their price, not their cost (costs, how much is costs to produce them, are only relevant to producers). Not sure whether I had the opportunity to explain that to you, already. But surely, Assange can't learn.

                                  1. Jellied Eel Silver badge

                                    Re: 1 + 0 = 50

                                    As soon as you claim that your 23% load factor back-of-an-envelope calculation applies to all wind turbines, you bundle all national wind farms together: onshore (the vast majority) and offshore. And that's ridiculous. If you wish to contest Vesta's figure of 60%, you need to compare to similar (i.e. recent enough) offshore farms. Why do I always have to put you in front of the evidence, like a 4y old?

                                    Because you tink like a 4yr old? But my 'back of the envelope' is the current reality. 30GW installed wind capacity, last years average 7GW. It's a very simple average capacity factor calculation. And you do know that capacity and load factors are different thiings, don't you? Then you take a marketing claim from Vestas from a single prototype 15MW windmill that seems to have been installed for just over a year. But I can't seem to find data for that winmill to find the average capacity factor.

                                    But current 30GW would mean replacing the entire existing UK wind fleet with 2,000 of these 'new' windmills. That would cost rather a lot and produce an average 15GW, or the euqivalent of 5 or 6 NPPs. Those have a capacity factor of 95%+ and you don't have to worry about last year's wind minimum being : 0.071 GW, or a capacity factor of 0.23%.

                                    Yeah load factors are usually calculated annually - because of seasonal variations.

                                    Again you mean capacity factors, and I know this, and I keep telling you this. Yet you managed to cherry pick 1 days data where 1 single windmill may have managed a CF of 100%. Where is the graph showing min/max/average and output over the year? And previously you demanded your 'quantitative analysis' over 25yrs, demonstrating that you just don't get o either..

                                    However, one of the funniest things is your insistance that off-shore only is the future. And 200m tall windmills are better cos they can reach those 'high altitude' winds. So riddle me this. Hub height of a windmill sitting offshore, say 200m. Obviously that's 200m above MSL. Then say, a 150m tall windmill sitting on top of a 200m high hill. Have you never noticed that windmills tend to be installed on high ground?

                                    Do you mean price related? Whether they sell or not depends on their price, not their cost

                                    Again, back to ubertroll mode. You can't really be this stupid, can you? Vestas cost increases due to higher copper and aluminium prices. That feeds into Vestas sell price, which becomes wind operators cost. If the Vestas price and operators cost are too high, Vestas doesn't sell anything and goes bust.

                                    1. Anonymous Coward
                                      Anonymous Coward

                                      Re: 1 + 0 = 50

                                      Dear never-wrong-JE

                                      Nobody's talking about replacement. Initially, you were throwing an insanely ludicrous claim in the ring whereby sanctions on Russian copper and aluminum were going to fuel "inflation". Maybe you missed that point but any price increase only applies to new investments. Unless genius JE proposes to apply price increase retrospectively to already procured equipment. But that would be a big change to the way trade has worked for the last millions of years. Then you got lost in more ludicrous claims and misinterpretations that took an unreasonable number of clarifications for you to eventually half-grok - adding one ignoramus claim on top of another.

                                      1. Jellied Eel Silver badge

                                        Re: 1 + 0 = 50

                                        Maybe you missed that point but any price increase only applies to new investments. Unless genius JE proposes to apply price increase retrospectively to already procured equipment.

                                        And just like that, the goal posts were moved again to highlight the ubertroll's idiocy.

                                        If copper & aluminium price rises lead to higher inflation, then obviously I'm a 'genius' because I know that wind farmer's CfDs are indexed. So they automatically get increased by the inflation rate, even though the cost elements in the inflation rate applied aren't relevant, eg tobacco duty increasing inflation and thus energy costs.

                                        Figured out why windmills get built on top of hills yet, and why that means their hubheight is often >200m? Figured out why nobody is buying Vestas's 15MW bird slicer?

                                        1. Anonymous Coward
                                          Anonymous Coward

                                          Wind power and economics for dummies (special edition)

                                          More info for your education:

                                          - In the troposphere, as a rule of thumb wind speed increase with altitude... but relative to ground level. Not relative to sea level. There's no wind underground.

                                          - The difference between onshore and offshore wind speeds is mainly due to negligible friction offshore. Said otherwise, even on a 200m hill top inland your average wind speed will be less than in the middle of the ocean on top of a 200m tower.

                                          - So for you, if you build a 10m high wind turbine on top of a 190m hilltop, you get the same wind speed as a 200m high wind turbine in the middle of the North Sea? If you're right, you're a rich man.

                                          - 15MW wind turbines are only deployed offshore (where hill tops are quasi inexistent, believe it or not).

                                          - They're also more efficient because the power varies like the SQUARE of the blade length and if you don't want the blades to hit the ground, you need a taller tower.

                                          - The impact of copper and aluminum on CPI is negligible... we don't eat or burn these. Their impact is buried deep into the depth of the supply chain. And probably minimal on national PPI.

                                          - CfDs are prices (not costs). They're also maximum prices. The imaginary mechanism you describe, a positive feedback loop, would lead to ever increasing inflation. Market competition puts some downward pressure on inflation. And market competition means CfDs are only limits, not effective prices.

                                          1. Jellied Eel Silver badge

                                            Re: Wind power and economics for dummies (special edition)

                                            I think this is the last time I'll bother pandering to such a moronic and abusive troll. El Reg's mods don't seem interested in dealing with the abusive and disruptive trolling and idiocy, I'll do the decent thing and not feed it.

                                            - CfDs are prices (not costs). They're also maximum prices. The imaginary mechanism you describe, a positive feedback loop, would lead to ever increasing inflation.

                                            If you but electricity, CfDs are your cost. They are not maximum prices, ie energy can sell for more than the strike price. Also-

                                            https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contract_for_difference#CFDs_difference_from_FTR

                                            This requires generators to pay money back when wholesale electricity prices are higher than the strike price, and provides financial support when the wholesale electricity prices are lower.

                                            The costs of the CfD scheme are funded by a statutory levy on all UK-based licensed electricity suppliers (known as the ‘Supplier Obligation’), which is passed on to consumers.

                                            So if the market price is £30/MWh, and the CfD price is £150/MWh, the 'Supplier Obligation' means we pay the difference, so an additional £120/MWh regardless of generation cost. And of course there is a positive feedback loop because again, those CfD contracts are indexed.

                                            Now kindly FOAD, troll..

                                            1. Anonymous Coward
                                              Anonymous Coward

                                              Re: Wind power and economics for dummies (special edition)

                                              > So if the market price is £30/MWh, and the CfD price is £150/MWh, the 'Supplier Obligation' means we pay the difference, so an additional £120/MWh regardless of generation cost. And of course there is a positive feedback loop because again, those CfD contracts are indexed.

                                              True but that's not the CfD you're citing, CfDs work by reverse auction. The CfDs you cite are maximums. i.e. the government refuses to support higher values. But auctions usually yield much lower agreed strike prices (CfD effective values) than the initial base CfD. Market prices can absolutely exceed strike prices (in which case producers make a hefty margin, and it's only too fair that they compensate the community that supports them whem market prices are lower than their costs) but CfD values published by governments are maximum strike prices.

                                              So, you can't cite CfDs to draw conclusions on market prices It's like claiming that you car's speed is always 160mph because the top mark of your speedometer is 160mph.

                                              I'm glad we finally agree on the rest.

                                              1. Jellied Eel Silver badge

                                                Re:Black is white, up is down, trolling is trolling

                                                Again, why are you so incredibly dishonest, as well as a giant troll?

                                                The wiki link is pretty clear. If you think it's wrong, you can always go edit it. You may find editing the LCC or Ofgems version harderthough-

                                                https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contract_for_difference#CFDs_difference_from_FTR

                                                This requires generators to pay money back when wholesale electricity prices are higher than the strike price, and provides financial support when the wholesale electricity prices are lower.

                                                The costs of the CfD scheme are funded by a statutory levy on all UK-based licensed electricity suppliers (known as the ‘Supplier Obligation’), which is passed on to consumers.

                                                Market prices can absolutely exceed strike prices (in which case producers make a hefty margin, and it's only too fair that they compensate the community that supports them whem market prices are lower than their costs) but CfD values published by governments are maximum strike prices.

                                                WTF are you blithering on about? If the market price exceeds the strike price, the renewables scumbags just get paid even more of a windfall. There is nothing 'compensating the community' because the community will be paying the inflated marke or strike price. If however this does happen, the producer and government split the money over the strike price.

                                                So, you can't cite CfDs to draw conclusions on market prices It's like claiming that you car's speed is always 160mph because the top mark of your speedometer is 160mph.

                                                Again, wtf? I can cite CfD in relation to market prices because that's just how the rigged system works. Again market price is £30/MWh, CfD is £160/MWh, through the supplier obligation, we're forced to pay the extra £130. I guess it's like you driving at 30, but being fined for driving at 160 because that's what it says on your speedo.

                                                1. Anonymous Coward
                                                  Anonymous Coward

                                                  Re: Re:Black is white, up is down, trolling is trolling

                                                  Please note that, on my side, I'm refraining to make any accusation of dishonesty or obtuseness, although I would be hard put to find any alternate explanation for your insistence on spreading wrong information (irrespective of the domain you profusely lecture this forum about). Now, regarding the topic at hand...

                                                  1/ You don't seem to understand that one of the goals of CfDs is to give financial visibility to prospective low-carbon energy developers. This means guaranteeing the revenue side of their business model by evening out fluctuations in a very volatile wholesale market. In some situations, when market is low (determined by applicable reference price aka IMRP), the community (government owned LCCC) compensates the developer, in the opposite situation, the investor returns the favor by sharing windfalls when there are - which is only too fair. Another goal being to protect end users from this volatility too, but let's leave this aside for now.

                                                  2/ CfDs and strike prices are two different things. CfDs are contracts, strike prices are per-contract value entities. The CfD figures you base all your argumentation on are auction price CEILINGS (i.e. bidders cannot make bids higher than these values). When a new allocation round of contracts is auctioned, the contract strike prices are by design below that ceiling. The auction mechanism ensures that all parties optimize their efficiency - which, incidentally, also debunks your claim that developers are nothing more than subsidies hunters (CfDs requirements are stringent). Through the auctions mechanism, every bidder submits a bid and the auctioneer (National Grid ESO) determines the final equilibrium value (determined when total target capacity is reached) that is then applied to all selected bidders in the same category having submitted compliant bids.

                                                  3/ The LCCC is funded by a levy on distributors, so ultimately this derisking mechanism is funded by the community. It's a win-win situation that benefits everybody.

                                                  If you are in the dark about this topic, as your misinterpretations suggest, my recommendation is to start from the official explanations published by the relevant gov.uk site. In addition, you can take a look at the auction results of round 5 that took place last year as well as the strike price rules for that specific round. You can clearly see that contract prices are dependent on location and technology (which makes auctions relevant). I don't know what to add. It's not that difficult to understand in my opinion (if you're not paranoid).

                                                  1. Jellied Eel Silver badge

                                                    Re: Re:Black is white, up is down, trolling is trolling

                                                    1/ You don't seem to understand that one of the goals of CfDs is to give financial visibility to prospective low-carbon energy developers.

                                                    CfDs were designed to subsidise otherwise non-viable forms of generation, ie ones that could not and would not be competitive otherwise. I keep telling you this. There is no 'community' good, or 'sharing' of windfalls with consumers.

                                                    It's probably also the reason your 15MW prototype isn't in service. 8760 hours in a year multiplied by strike price gives you it's potential revenue. If it's CF is only 50%, that makes it worse. If material costs go up, that makes it worse. You should know this, even if you've been unclear what what CF is.

                                                    2/ CfDs and strike prices are two different things. CfDs are contracts, strike prices are per-contract value entities. The CfD figures you base all your argumentation on are auction price CEILINGS

                                                    Again, you combine elements of truth to create a falsehood. CfD is the contract, strike price is the contract rate. The CfDs I base my argumentation on are not auction price ceilings, those only exist during the auction. So previous auction rounds wind farmers bid below cost, and made lots of publicity about that, ie £50/MWh. They can't deliver on those contracts and want to rebid at £120+. The last auction round had a ceiling for offshore wind and no bidders, because of rising costs. Yet the 'renewables' sc.. industry keeps telling us about falling costs.

                                                    Then there's novel new tech like floating windmillls, yours for only £200+ MWh. As that's way over market price for electricity, why do it? Come back when costs are down to £30-40.

                                                    3/ The LCCC is funded by a levy on distributors, so ultimately this derisking mechanism is funded by the community. It's a win-win situation that benefits everybody.

                                                    No, it's a cost forced on consumers to subsidise and enrich the wind industry. They are the only people to benefit. This should be obvious by the way energy costs are forcing other businesses into bankruptcy and people into energy poverty. And coming soon, 'surge' pricing, enabled by another multi-billion boondoggle, 'smart meters'. And all because we've wasted billions on unreliable and intermittent power sources.

                                                      1. Jellied Eel Silver badge

                                                        Re: Re:Black is white, up is down, trolling is trolling

                                                        Yet LCOE figures show that wind and solar have became the cheapest forms of electricity generation (cheaper even than legacy coal, oil and gas generation). src IRENA 2022.. Please note that I'm adding supporting evidence to my claims.

                                                        Please note you are citing International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA). Please note you are citing Levelised Costs. Please note you are spinning harder than a windmill in a hurricane.

                                                        Furthermore, please note the extremeley obvious. If your IRENA garbage was accurate, our energy costs would be falling, not rising. This is because you're lying, again. LCOE excludes a whole bunch of very important and expensive costs. Like interconnection, reliabilit, and of course batteries. So your 15MW windmill needs at least 7MW of back-up capacity for when the blocking high pressure system due in the next few days arrives.

                                                        So ultimately the community benefits from these windfalls. That's pure logic. And the exact opposite of what you're claiming.

                                                        No. Once again you cannot tell the difference between evidence and opinion. This is the kind of community benefit people get from windmills-

                                                        https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2024/04/12/council-secures-court-order-prohibiting-further-development-at-wind-farm-where-bog-slide-occurred/

                                                        Donegal County Council has secured a High Court order prohibiting further development of a wind farm at a site that was the subject of a large bog slide that had “significant environmental consequences”.

                                                        or

                                                        https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2024/04/15/wed-never-have-moved-here-if-we-knew-more-turbines-were-coming/

                                                        In summer last year they moved into their perfect home, a converted former church, and began settling into their new community.

                                                        Just four months later they learned of the large wind farm developments that could dominate their rural horizon.

                                                        The area is already home to 77 turbines with potentially another 54 coming to almost encircle their home.

                                                        or

                                                        https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2024/04/16/offshore-wind-farms-are-detrimental-to-whales/

                                                        Interestingly, the drastic spike in whale deaths along the U.S. East Coast began exactly when offshore wind farm companies began using geotechnical and site characterization surveys in this region of the Atlantic Ocean.

                                                        This is because floating offshore will be free to fetch the wind where it is (and therefore achieve much higher capacity factors than already good 60% - Chile developers (with virtually no continental shelf and very strong winds) envision >70% capacity factors)

                                                        Uhuh. So I'll believe that when I see it. But not wrong, just not proven. There have been various forecasts for just how incredibly expensive floating windmills of any significant power will be because of, y'know, physics. Plus plenty of experience trying to keep floating offshore oil platforms floating.

                                                        However, new and more promising technologies need to be promoted in order to successfully displace established, but obsolete, inefficient, risky and polluting technologies, such as nuclear energy or coal. This is how solar and now wind power gradually gained market share and recognition, evolving from outsiders to mainstream industries.

                                                        You certainly have a very.. interesting outlook on life. Well, you're paid to I guess. Windmills are a thousand year old technology that were obsoleted by steam. They've had a resurgence thanks to liars like you and regulatory capture. Windmills and solar have been far more polluting than nuclear, are far riskier and are far less efficient. Not to mention have a far smaller environmental impact.

                                                        Yet neo-luddites like you still lie, and spin for wind.

                                                                  1. Jellied Eel Silver badge

                                                                    Re: Re:Black is white, up is down, trolling is trolling

                                                                    CfD round 5 onshore auctions result was 52.5 GBP (seems you haven't opened the link I shared with you 2 days ago - probably because you are "an expert on CfDs" already)

                                                                    No real need. Was close enough and the salient points were the way contracts were underbid to get publicity, and suppliers were unable to deliver at those rates. I quoted Vatenfall explaining their justifcation of cost increases, yet the 'renewables' industry keeps telling us costs have been falling.

                                                                    Again it's an example of your dishonesty. Industry says 'cheap', evidence shows expensive. Evidence also indicates price sensitivity given relatively minor input cost changes render projects economically unviable. Industry solution is, of course to demand even higher strike prices and subsidies. But this is just the way you troll. Your condescending post explaining electricity bills overlooked a rather crucial feature, namely the way subsidies are hidden from consumers. There have been proposals to provide more breakdowns of bill costs to show those subsidies, but of course industry strongly objects because they want to keep the 'community' ignorant of the way they're screwing consumers.

                                                                    What matters is the amount of avoided CO2 emissions as early and as affordably as possible. Not islands of expensive low carbon capacity installed long after we reach 500ppm and +3˚C!!! Just saying, Mr "obviously". Sorry to have to correct you on something so basic

                                                                    I have to correct you on many basic things. Costs, prices, inflation, the difference between capacity and load factors or even the way the 2012 LCOE scam rigged the market to prop up windmills. Obviously nuclear was much cheaper than wind, yet was excluded from low carbon subsidies, preferential market access etc. So if we'd accepted the obvious and started building NPPs in 2012, those reactors would be complete, or nearing completion. Then we wouldn't have wasted billions on windmills, grid upgrades that are only needed to support inefficient and intermittent generators. 5 new NPPs would have delivered the entirety of the UK's current wind fleet.

                                                                    Demonstrably avoiding CO2 emissions hasn't been affordable given electricity costs, and the number of businesses going bust as a result of those costs. From a UK perspective, what we do has a negligable effect on global CO2 levels, or temperatures. But along with Germany, it does demonstrate the futility and expense of trying to power an advanced economy on pre-industrial technology. There is also very little evidence that 500ppmv = +3C given there's no evidence for the mythical feedbacks and forcings climate 'scientists' predicted.

                                                                    But your ignorance and dishonesty knows no bounds. Previously floating windmills were mentioned. You seem to think, without any evidence, that these will be cheap. So we know basic offshore wind isn't cheap, and costs have been rising, not falling. So an offshore windmill simply bolted to the sea bed needs say, £120/MWh to be viable. Simple engineering and common sense would suggest bolting a spinning mass to a long lever, then to a floating platform and keeping that anchored and stable in heavy seas is going to be a lot more expensive than a simple foundation. There's even a ton of evidence from offshore oil & gas exploration and production that you ignore.

                                                                    All the technology required is pretty mature, ie bolting a tall structure to a floating platform, so subsidies should not be required to build demonstration platforms. Yet your favored industry demands we pay their risks to try and develop something that will probably sink, and marine engineers can go "we told you so".

                                                                    I cannot guess in advance your next outlandish claim

                                                                    Well, you don't seem very bothered about the pollution caused by windmills or solar panels, yet for some reason are terrified of nuclear. But here's a bonus example for you-

                                                                    https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2024/04/18/kay-county-family-frustrated-by-wind-turbine-leak/

                                                                    The turbine in question is owned and operated by Deriva Energy. Stephanie Mayer said she hadn’t noticed any problems with it until last month.

                                                                    “We had little specks of brown stuff showing up on our windows of our vehicles, out of nowhere,” said Mayer. “When we went to wash it off, like it just smears, it doesn’t like to wash off. It just smear, and then we started noticing it on the house, the concrete.”

                                                                    Mayer said her husband then noticed the turbine on the other side of her property line had a similar brown trail that appeared to be leaking along the blades and the base.

                                                                    Windmills as oil sprayers. How Green!

                                                            1. Anonymous Coward
                                                              Anonymous Coward

                                                              Re: Re:Black is white, up is down, trolling is trolling

                                                              Yeah, keep calling me dishonest with your LCOE figures from 2012.

                                                              The UK has closed 3 reactors in the last 3 years (only 5 left in ops, soon to be closed) whereas every year see more wind power capacity coming online. Wind power generation in the UK is now double nuclear power generation. Why would that be?

                                                              Yeah, keep calling me ignorant with your cadmium bogus argument when cadmiun is < 1g/kg of solar panels (when it is present) when this kind of concentration already found naturally in certain soils (and average soil concentration is already 0.36 mg/kg).

                                                              That was the most JE post of all the JE posts of this thread. Culminating with jail threats. A bit rich for someone who constantly posts climate change denial comments. Pure JE. LMAO.

                                                                      1. Jellied Eel Silver badge

                                                                        Re:Trolling is still trolling.

                                                                        Again you expose yourself. One of the most obvious is the way you insist on using an anonymong account instead of registering. It's not difficult, I'm sure you could figure out how to do it if you were interested in any serious debate instead of hurling insults and misinformation from the shadows.

                                                                        No terror here. You're making up things again. Nuclear is just too slow to deploy, too expensive to deploy and maintain, too complex, not scalable, vulnerable to global warming (IPCC) - in addition to being dirty and risky.

                                                                        Yet more misinformed opinions masqerading as facts. Sure, nuclear can be slow to deploy. But if we'd started in 2012, we'd have reliable power now. As DECC's 2012 LCOE pointed out, nuclear was cheaper than offshore wind, even after the special treatment it got for being officially considered low/zero carbon. Sure, it might be more complex than a simple,ancient windmill, but as it's reliable, predictable base load capacity, it's a whole lot cheaper and easier to manage than adding intermittent and unreliable 'renewables' to the grid. It's also scalable. Need a nuke? Add a nuke, and this becomes even easier with SMRs. Plus of course DECC's LCOE assumed FOAK costs, not serial production where costs should decrease over time.

                                                                        And of course you again demonstrate your dishonesty with your IPCC nonsense. Which is more vulnerable to weather 'extremes'? Windmills or solar PV which are vulnerable to storm damage, whereas nuclear sits inside a cosy containment building and just keeps going. About the only possible vulnerability the IPCC mentioned was cooling NPPs, but in case you hadn't noticed, we're an island surrounded by an enormous volume of cooling water.

                                                                        "What matters is the amount of avoided CO2 emissions as early and as affordably as possible.

                                                                        I noticed, and treated such a pseudo-scientific statement with the contempt it deserved. Renewables haven't avoided any CO2 emissions compared to nuclear, and certainly haven't been affordable. They've certainly been extremely lucrative to the scumbags who've performed regulatory capture though. But it may have escaped your notice that the RoW seems to be cooling off the idea of pre-industrial technology, and nuclear is experiencing quite the resurgence.

                                                    1. Anonymous Coward
                                                      Anonymous Coward

                                                      Re: Re:Black is white, up is down, trolling is trolling

                                                      > CfDs were designed to subsidise otherwise non-viable forms of generation, ie ones that could not and would not be competitive otherwise.

                                                      100% wrong.

                                                      - In a lot of countries, these power generation technologies are not even subsidized.

                                                      - LCOEs published by independent analysts are global and don't include subsidies (because subsidies are country dependents). Yet LCOE figures show that wind and solar have became the cheapest forms of electricity generation (cheaper even than legacy coal, oil and gas generation). src IRENA 2022.. Please note that I'm adding supporting evidence to my claims.

                                                      > I keep telling you this. There is no 'community' good, or 'sharing' of windfalls with consumers [<= this "with consumers" is your addition by the way].

                                                      Oh, for sure, I noted, you stick to your claims but you're forced to ignore all the supporting evidence I cite or even those you cite yourself. Even the Wikipedia article you cite states "This requires generators to pay money back when wholesale electricity prices are higher than the strike price". These windfalls are simply taken into account by the LCCCs (which is a publicly funded structure) in their settlements. So ultimately the community benefits from these windfalls. That's pure logic. And the exact opposite of what you're claiming.

                                                      > It's probably also the reason your 15MW prototype isn't in service.

                                                      15MW models (it's not a prototype anymore, it has just received certification) are fairly new. That's the only reason why you don't have whole wind farms equipped with it. I picked this example, because we were discussing upcoming material price hikes and these increase are only relevant for new investments. But 18MW and even 22MW wind turbines are on the way "Offshore Wind Turbines in 2023: 16 MW Model Installed Offshore, 18 MW WTGs Selected for New Project, 22 MW Turbine Announced" (and no, sorry, you won't find them "on hill-tops").

                                                      > 8760 hours in a year multiplied by strike price gives you it's[sic] potential revenue. If it's[sic] CF is only 50%, that makes it worse. If material costs go up, that makes it worse. You should know this, even if you've been unclear what what CF is.

                                                      Thanks. I'm very clear about CfDs in the UK. I keep explaining to you (that Wikipedia article you use all the time, although not wrong, is very succinct and not limited to the UK energy market; please prefer the official/professional literature).

                                                      You can also multiply this by 20 years to prove your honesty. Again the final strike prices applicable to this new model are unknown yet, since round 6 and 7 auctions are still pending. But I think you now accept that this is a capital intensive business and that, therefore, the CfD mechanism is a good initiative to unlock the market.

                                                      > The CfDs I base my argumentation on are not auction price ceilings, those only exist during the auction.

                                                      You're constantly referring to 176 GBP.

                                                      > So previous auction rounds wind farmers bid below cost, and made lots of publicity about that, ie £50/MWh. They can't deliver on those contracts and want to rebid at £120+

                                                      That's the strike price CEILING. It has to be high enough to attract bidders as you point out (implicitly you ADMITTED that it is therefore a price ceiling). That was £116.

                                                      > Then there's novel new tech like floating windmillls, yours for only £200+ MWh. As that's way over market price for electricity, why do it? Come back when costs are down to £30-40.

                                                      Wrong again I'm afraid. Here it is, from the horses mouth (cfdallocationround.uk/faqs), last month.

                                                      Q: "Why haven’t you set a minimum for Floating Offshore Wind in Allocation Round 6? Isn’t this inconsistent with your ambition for of up to 5GW by 2030? A"Our analysis suggests Floating Offshore Wind may be one of the cheaper, more competitive technologies in Pot 2 and so may not require ringfencing to be successful.

                                                      This is because floating offshore will be free to fetch the wind where it is (and therefore achieve much higher capacity factors than already good 60% - Chile developers (with virtually no continental shelf and very strong winds) envision >70% capacity factors)

                                                      > No, it's a cost forced on consumers to subsidise and enrich the wind industry.

                                                      That would be a global worldwide plot then, because most countries are rushing to develope renewables (wind AND solar, mainly). In the end everything is paid by consumers. However, new and more promising technologies need to be promoted in order to successfully displace established, but obsolete, inefficient, risky and polluting technologies, such as nuclear energy or coal. This is how solar and now wind power gradually gained market share and recognition, evolving from outsiders to mainstream industries.

                                                      > They are the only people to benefit. This should be obvious by the way energy costs are forcing other businesses into bankruptcy and people into energy poverty.

                                                      Incorrect again. Remember the recent price increase was started by post-covid natural gas prices hikes. If we had been more advanced, especially in storage and grid management, we would have had much less impact on consumer bills. This was made clear by the Iberian Peninsula decoupling of electricity prices on gas prices. In the decade before covid, wholesale electricity were stable in Europe (corrected from inflation).

                                                                1. Anonymous Coward
                                                                  Anonymous Coward

                                                                  Re: Re:Black is white, up is down, trolling is trolling

                                                                  > Wind <£50! Praise the Lord! Can't deliver for that price?

                                                                  CfD round 5 onshore auctions result was 52.5 GBP (seems you haven't opened the link I shared with you 2 days ago - probably because you are "an expert on CfDs" already)

                                                                  > So if the objective is low carbon energy, then nuclear is obviously the answer.

                                                                  What matters is the amount of avoided CO2 emissions as early and as affordably as possible. Not islands of expensive low carbon capacity installed long after we reach 500ppm and +3˚C!!! Just saying, Mr "obviously". Sorry to have to correct you on something so basic. Looks like everybody understands that, except for a few characters, impermeable to rational reasoning.

                                                                  > And oddly enough, government has proposed more NPPs

                                                                  Some people in some government have pushed for Sizewell C but there is no budget and it will never happen. Many academics are pointing out that we can do much more today with much less.

                                                                  > .. is not the only toxic material present in solar panels?

                                                                  I cannot guess in advance your next outlandish claim. It's always a surprise.

                                                          1. Jellied Eel Silver badge

                                                            Re: Re:Black is white, up is down, trolling is trolling

                                                            You seem to confuse prices and costs. What electricity producers haves are costs. That's the 'C' in "LCOEs.

                                                            No, again this is your job. It kicked into high gear when DECC produced their LCOE here-

                                                            https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/65713/6883-electricity-generation-costs.pdf

                                                            Which showed gas (CCGT) at £80/MWh, Nuclear (FOAK) at £81 and offshore wind at £118 (R2) and £134 (R3), and those being from 2012. So clearly wind was (and still is) far more expensive than nuclear. Of course the LCOE makes a whole bunch of assumptions, and excludes a bunch of very important costs. So nuclear has a capacity factor of around 95%, Wind only 23%. Wind output tends to zero on a calm day, but nuclear keeps on going.

                                                            So a more accurate cost would be £120/MWh for wind, plus £80/MWh for when there's no wind. Which is pretty much what happened and as we wasted billions on windmills, we increased our dependency on gas. Then came some very odd, very low bids for offshore capacity in the UK and US. This allowed industry lobby groups like IRENA and the Bbc to claim wind is now the cheapest ever, and revise their LCOE tables to around £50MWh. And then we decided to sanction gas & oil, blow up a pipeline, and relatively speaking, wind appeared even cheaper! Except of course windmill operators got paid the gas price.

                                                            But then stuff like this happened-

                                                            https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/vattenfall-halts-project-warns-uk-offshore-wind-targets-doubt-2023-07-20/

                                                            The project won a contract-for-difference (CfD) in a British auction last year, guaranteeing a minimum price of 37.35 pounds per megawatt hour (MWh) in 2012 prices for the electricity produced, which equates to around 45 pounds/MWh today. Helene Bistrom, Vattenfall's wind business head, said the incentives offered no longer reflected the current market conditions.

                                                            Perhaps you can explain how this could possibly be, when your industry keeps telling us how cheap wind is, and how it's costs are continually falling? Far cheaper than that nasty nuclear, coal, gas etc that China, India and even Germany is building.

                                                            What you see on your bill is a consumption multiplied by a price.

                                                            No, you don't say? So given IRENA's cheap and mature, why are there so many green subsidies and taxes added to my bill? Wind turbines have been around for over 150yrs in the UK, the industry is making billions, so it can afford it's own R&D etc without dipping it's hand in our pockets.

                                                            That back-up does not produce anything when it's not needed. So, its impact on the production costs is reduced. No gas is burnt when it's in standby. Sorry to have to state the obvious.

                                                            Sorry to have to state the obvious but the back-up is still a cost. But you don't understand costs, do you? Nor would you understand the role reversal, ie if CCGT is £80/MWh, and Offshore is £134/MWh, why is the cheapest generation source the backup and not the primary..

                                                            The community benefits from the fight against climat4e change.

                                                            And how exactly do they do this? I realised downwind of windmills tends to be colder and drier due to vertical mixing of the boundary layer. This is, of course another of the ways they harm the environment. But perhaps you can give an example of one of your 'o' functions. How many GW of windmills will it take to prevent 0.1C globabl warming? Oh, and have you noticed that right after our supposedly record warm March, it's been a rather un-warm April?

                                                            Not sure whether solar panel wastes will need to be monitored for thousands of years.

                                                            Not suprising you're thoroughly ignorant about this as well. So chuck thousands of solar panels that have been damaged by hailstones in a hole in the ground. Would you want, or need to monitor that hole for stuff like cadmium leaking into the groundwater?

                                                            At least I'm now back to being entertained. Usually climate 'debates' have ecofreaks like you ranting at oil industry shills. Now I've found a real, live and incredibly dumb renewables shill, and astroturfer given the anonymong status. Luckily in a few months when 'misinformation' laws are fully enacted, spreading your kind of misinformation will be illegal and punishable with jail. If Scotland thought they're having fun with their new law, the UK ain't seen nothing yet.

                                                                    1. Anonymous Coward
                                                                      Anonymous Coward

                                                                      311/112

                                                                      > yet for some reason are terrified of nuclear.

                                                                      No terror here. You're making up things again. Nuclear is just too slow to deploy, too expensive to deploy and maintain, too complex, not scalable, vulnerable to global warming (IPCC) - in addition to being dirty and risky. It has no chance of making a difference at the global level because it's an elitist technology. We need cheap, scalable, impactful solutions now. I thought that was clear in my sentence (which you cite but haven't understood). "What matters is the amount of avoided CO2 emissions as early and as affordably as possible. Not islands of expensive low carbon capacity installed long after we reach 500ppm and +3˚C!!! Just saying, Mr "obviously". Sorry to have to correct you on something so basic"

                                                                      AC: white

                                                                      JE: why do you say black? You dishonest and ignorant AC!

                                                              1. Jellied Eel Silver badge

                                                                Re: Re:Black is white, up is down, trolling is trolling

                                                                Yeah, keep calling me dishonest with your LCOE figures from 2012.

                                                                Yep. You are dishonest. Again you're just cherry picking. Wind <£50! Praise the Lord! Can't deliver for that price? Demand more money!

                                                                Wind power generation in the UK is now double nuclear power generation. Why would that be?

                                                                I already told you this. Regulatory capture and decades of propaganda from neo-Luddites like yourself who think nuclear is dangerous. But I think you pretty much established that the only possible justification for wind is 'saving the planet', even though you can't quantify the impact. It's also obvious that windmills are extremeiy expensive, and environmentaly harmful. So if the objective is low carbon energy, then nuclear is obviously the answer. And oddly enough, government has proposed more NPPs. Naturally you and the rest of your shills oppose this idea because you want to keep the subsidies flowing amd cover our green & pleasent land with giant windmills.

                                                                Yeah, keep calling me ignorant with your cadmium bogus argument when cadmiun

                                                                .. is not the only toxic material present in solar panels?

                                                        1. Anonymous Coward
                                                          Anonymous Coward

                                                          Re: Re:Black is white, up is down, trolling is trolling

                                                          > Furthermore, please note the extremeley obvious. If your IRENA garbage was accurate, our energy costs would be falling, not rising.

                                                          Ahem... no.

                                                          You seem to confuse prices and costs. What electricity producers haves are costs. That's the 'C' in "LCOEs.

                                                          What you see on your bill is a consumption multiplied by a price. There could be a lot of reasons for your bill to increase (and combinations thereof). The price per kWh could increase faster than inflation. That, in turn could be the result of taxes, levies or production costs. You could also consume more electricity. So, it's more complex than what you think.

                                                          > So your 15MW windmill needs at least 7MW of back-up capacity for when the blocking high pressure system due in the next few days arrives.

                                                          That back-up does not produce anything when it's not needed. So, its impact on the production costs is reduced. No gas is burnt when it's in standby. Sorry to have to state the obvious.

                                                          The community benefits from the fight against climat4e change. But, of course, if you're also a climate change denier, that's probably a bit harder to admit.

                                                          > Windmills are a thousand year old technology

                                                          Yeah and we still use wheels on our vehicles although their origin is lost in time too. Today's A380 wheels are a bit different than the wheels depicted in Ventris' Linear B tablets though. I guess, for you wheels are also... "a thousand year old technology".

                                                          > Windmills and solar have been far more polluting than nuclear, are far riskier and are far less efficient.

                                                          Not sure whether solar panel wastes will need to be monitored for thousands of years. Apparently they're already being recycled. I might be wrong <smirk/>

                                                          Call me when the explosion of a wind turbine cost TEPCO and the Japanese authorities one trillion dollars.

                                                          So much for "evidence" vs "opinion", I guess.

          2. martinusher Silver badge

            Re: Expensive

            The practice of 'sharing technology' isn't confined to China. Forty years ago it was the same with Japan.

            >Easy: exploiting millions of rural workers coming to town and skipping R&D budgets.

            China is educating 35,000 engineers a year. I've worked with Chinese engineers and when they're good they're very, very, good indeed. (Just imagine how well you'd get on in the workplace if come next Monday morning all your communication had to be in Mandarin.)

            >True, Russian speaking trolls will need to work on their putonghua as Russia falls into China's orbit.

            I've also worked with Russians. Some of them look quite Chinese. Its because there's really no hard and fast boundary between "European" Slavs and "Chinese" easterners. In the border are you get Chinese Russians and Russian Chinese. Its how the world works -- assuming you don't spend your life on an island. (Russia's also got a border with Korea, BTW.)

            1. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              Re: Expensive

              > I've worked with Chinese engineers

              Same... you explain something. They nod, say "huh-huh". Then you say "Now your turn". And you wait. Nothing happens. And you have to explain again. They seldom dare to ask questions if they don't understand. True after some time, they will be faster than you in the things they master. But they won't be able to jump from one discipline to another. They won't see patterns between two disciplines. They think playing piano well is playing piano fast. But they won't improvise. Chopin yes, Einaudi no. Too afraid to fail. For different and inventive Chinese go abroad: in vibrant Hong Kong where British-inspired freedom unleashed the Chinese genius (but Hong Kong is over now, thanks to article 23 and a massive exodus), in gentle Taiwan where team effort and performance are encouraged and rewarded, in harmonious Singapore where tolerance, audacity, positivity, confidence, composite society, lack of resources and Confucian freedom have made miracles.

              > (Just imagine how well you'd get on in the workplace if come next Monday morning all your communication had to be in Mandarin.)

              I don't have to imagine. I lived it. Mandarin is like English: easy to start, never finished learning, and always on the move (thanks to censorship in the case of Mandarin) but more philosophical and poetic.

              > I've also worked with Russians.

              Same. No sense of quality. They have a tropism for easy kludges and they think they're smart if they game the system or flog some crap. Very individualistic people.

              There's a reason why Silicon Valley lies in the US, not on the shores of the Pearl River, and not on the banks of the Moskva. Migrant Chinese and Russian who work there know why they moved in. Ask them.

              > Some of them look quite Chinese. Its[sic] because there's really no hard and fast boundary between "European" Slavs and "Chinese" easteners. In the border are[sic] you get Chinese Russians and Russian Chinese. Its[sic] how the world works -- assuming you don't spend your life on an island.

              Like you're the only expat here. There are plenty of idiosyncrasies, even among "Europeans", among "Slavs" and especially among "Chinese". The next stage after noting similarities is to pay attention to specificities. It's a small world but it's like Cantor sets: infinitely complex.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Aitor 1 - Re: Expensive

        Or the other way around. They know they're next on US list after they finish with Russia. When was the last time you we saw a Chinese fleet or a Chinese spy plane close to US borders ?

        1. werdsmith Silver badge

          Re: Aitor 1 - Expensive

          Depends on how you classify a high altitude balloon.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Cool. You can almost guarantee there's a backdoor or two in them thar chips. All the yanks need to do is shuffle a few samples and go exploring.

    1. DoctorNine

      Most certainly will make defining the security parameters of indigenous Chinese networks easier. They've just simplified the pieces on the chess board.

      I wonder if they understand the mathematics here?

  5. IceC0ld

    [quote] Huawei was building a research and development facility outside Shanghai aimed at accelerating development of homegrown chipmaking equipment [/quote]

    to ME, that reads as Huawei are building their latest hackathon campus, to help them steal the next gen, wherever it may be :o)

    1. Casca Silver badge

      Interresting how many china simps there are on TheRegister now .

  6. jwatkins

    Opening skirmishes

    The real trade war will only happen when the US government bans US companies from manufacturing in China ("because the manufacturers are inserting spyware in the hardware...")

  7. CowHorseFrog Silver badge

    Given China has basically zero software and 99% is pirated from the west, what will happen when they stop using western software ?

    1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

      Please explain how you pirate FOSS

      1. Roland6 Silver badge

        Not exactly piracy but suspect taking a fork and not contributing changes back. Ie. Not honouring the licences.

        1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

          "Not honouring the licences."

          The licences don't actually require you to contribute back. What the GPL does is require you to provide the source to anyone to whom you've provided a binary* and to allow sharing of that source under the same terms on which you receive that.

          Who do we find avoiding that to the maximum extent they can manage? That distinctly non-Chinese business Red Hat/IBM.

          * Permissive licences don't even require that.

      2. simonb_london

        Ask IBM/Redhat!

      3. CowHorseFrog Silver badge

        A lot of useful or required software isnt FOSS.

      4. CowHorseFrog Silver badge

        You can pirate FOSS, for example the GPL, making changes and not contributing those back etc.

    2. TCook1943

      Don't be daft, two of the very best Linux distro's are coded in China and happily used in the West. I use 1 of them myself on a second drive.

      1. CowHorseFrog Silver badge

        Bollocks. Linux distros are more of a compilation of other peoples efforts with minimal changes to actual code.The Linus Kernal in those distros is still 99% all the stuff Linus manages. Changing a few icons and colours for a distro is hardly a major accomplishment compared to the actual complexity of the rest.

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Chips Ahoy

    Remember drones.

    Whatever happens.

    Consume, consume, consume!

  9. Ashto5

    Napoleon

    Napoleon was quoted as saying

    “Let China sleep for when it awakes the whole world will shake”

    USA vs China

    Gotta buy in a lot of popcorn for this match

    1. CountCadaver Silver badge

      Re: Napoleon

      Well if Russia collapses (which isn't an unlikely event given the house of cards comrade Putin is astride and all its going to take is something like kadyrov dying and Chechen war 3 erupting, the russian military is already spread thin, that may well be the moment that separatists in other regions of Russia seize their moment knowing full well that Moscow doesn't have the men, materiel or resources to fight any more fronts. Then the whole lot cracks

      That happens then China doesn't stand a chance tbh, their military is still far smaller, far lower in capability, still has much lower funding and even the most optimistic analysts are looking at 2050 before China *might* be a viable rival to the USA

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Napoleon

        You do realise that a hot war with Russia or China will end with nukes. Unless you are one of the 0.1% who has actually built a bunker somewhere remote, most of us are f***ed! Even those with a bunker all that money they had means nothing in a post nuke world.

        1. CowHorseFrog Silver badge

          Re: Napoleon

          You do realise that the capabilities of USSR / Russia were greatly exaggeratd by the west for over 50 years.

          We dont really know how many of their nukes actually work, just look how they have lost half their Black sea fleet against a country with no Navy and almost no Air Force. If the Ukraine can hold back Russia, how much more damage could NATO without USA do ?

          THe real q is how do you know the russian nukes actually work ? Do they work as well as all the other Russian military machinary that is getting destroyed in Ukraine ?

          1. Jellied Eel Silver badge

            Re: Napoleon

            THe real q is how do you know the russian nukes actually work ?

            The real question is do we want to keep poking the bear until we find out? Russia's already flown it's RS-28 Sarmat, and Ukraine is showing us our Patriots and other theatre defence missiles aren't very good at intercepting the latest Russian missiles, or even older models they were designed to intercept.

      2. CowHorseFrog Silver badge

        Re: Napoleon

        Forget the funding question, lets talk about the question of basic fraud that is China. Half the country is trying to scam the next guy with fakes and pretend stuff that looks genuine but isnt, when your country is like that, its hard to really guarantee anything complex like a military plane actually does half the things it pretends to claim.

        1. Jellied Eel Silver badge

          Re: Napoleon

          its hard to really guarantee anything complex like a military plane actually does half the things it pretends to claim.

          Or it does, and it becomes a nasty suprise. We're already discovering this with Russia's hypersonic shovels, recycled washing machines and the speed with which it's enhancing and utilising drones. And of course we've pushed Russia and China even closer for technology transfer and joint developments. Neocons fantasise about invading places like China, but they're a long way from the US and it would be rather challenging to do this if your carriers and transports are sunk.

  10. Will Godfrey Silver badge
    Unhappy

    Lots of armchair experts around her today

    ... on both sides of the fence.

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