Switzerland is excluded by the US from the allied countries for unlimited access to chips required for artificial intelligence.
Switzerland is excluded by the US from the allied countries for unlimited access to chips required for artificial intelligence.
I mean, Switzerland is explicitly neutral. They might be aligned with the US on quite a few matters, but they are not allied with the US.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutral_country
I’ll grant that “allied” is sometimes used in a looser sense, but I don’t think it’s very controversial to say that the US and Switzerland are not allied.
The US is allied with a lot of countries, but Switzerland isn’t in them:
https://old.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/119l1w6/map_of_united_states_military_allies/
And I think that this came up pretty recently in the dispute over Switzerland refusing to provide ammunition for German Gepard SPAAGs that Germany had provided to Ukraine and where Rheinmetall’s production facility was in Switzerland. Switzerland said that they would not do so, that they considered themselves bound by their assertion of neutrality not to do so.
I could understand someone saying “requiring that a country be allied is an unnecessarily-strong requirement to do export of chips required for AI work” or something like that, debating that point, but “why is Switzerland not an allied country” doesn’t seem like a terribly difficult question to answer.
I think that it’s pretty clear at this point that both the US and China see the development of and possession of AI capabilities to have significant implications for military power moving forward.
Yes, they’re dual use – they also have non-military applications. But one cannot create forms of those chips that can only be used for non-military purposes. If one has those chips, the military applications come with them.
Well the US forced Switzerland to lift their bank secret because of tax avoidance, while being the biggest tax oasis themselves (Delaware)
And being afraid of Swiss Military Might is complete Bullshit, just as most things in the US they explain with “National Security”. (Just as they put up an Import Duty on Swiss Watches for “National Security” Reasons under Eisenhower)