Thing is they’ll probably try and create a situation where Chinese/Russian gamers can’t as easily play western games but more importantly one where western game companies have no reason (or costs are too high) to support Chinese/Russian hardware. And other software makers like Adobe, Microsoft, etc could follow the same thinking so you’d have your smuggled non-US-approved CPU/GPU but you wouldn’t be able to use it for much but exotic scientific applications and mining crypto so for the most part the ban would be effective.
The point I think is control of the entire stack. They don’t want just control of the hardware, they ideally want a world where you have to fully invest in the western ecosystem, hardware, software, support. And these mutually lock you in and leave them able to slit your throat by cutting you off if you act out via tech sanctions. You want western software? Gotta run on western hardware. You want western hardware? Sorry got to use western software. Which like Windows market-share lock-in ensures it’s very difficult for anyone, even those who want to leave to do so because they’re constrained by one of those factors. Sure some hobbyists will run the blockade but they’re not relevant to the big picture, to markets, to earnings, to social control. It’s about creating a situation where it’s easy for the world to slip into (they already use western tech, western software) but becomes very, very painful to climb out of and the path of least resistance is going with the west.
Thing is they’ll probably try and create a situation where Chinese/Russian gamers can’t as easily play western games but more importantly one where western game companies have no reason (or costs are too high) to support Chinese/Russian hardware. And other software makers like Adobe, Microsoft, etc could follow the same thinking so you’d have your smuggled non-US-approved CPU/GPU but you wouldn’t be able to use it for much but exotic scientific applications and mining crypto so for the most part the ban would be effective.
The point I think is control of the entire stack. They don’t want just control of the hardware, they ideally want a world where you have to fully invest in the western ecosystem, hardware, software, support. And these mutually lock you in and leave them able to slit your throat by cutting you off if you act out via tech sanctions. You want western software? Gotta run on western hardware. You want western hardware? Sorry got to use western software. Which like Windows market-share lock-in ensures it’s very difficult for anyone, even those who want to leave to do so because they’re constrained by one of those factors. Sure some hobbyists will run the blockade but they’re not relevant to the big picture, to markets, to earnings, to social control. It’s about creating a situation where it’s easy for the world to slip into (they already use western tech, western software) but becomes very, very painful to climb out of and the path of least resistance is going with the west.