Pepe Escobar is following various discussions at Spief: https://twitter.com/spief?lang=en and here are some of his updates from his telegram channel:
THE ST. PETERSBURG FORUM IS ON A ROLL
I spent the morning back and forth following some fab discussions at the forum – especially on Russia-China, SCO business, BRICS, the Russian financial sector, the Northern Sea Route and this one linked below, with Glazyev, on the Eurasia Economic Union and ASEAN.
This afternoon there are some extra killers, including a Triple Treat EAEU-SCO-ASEAN.
I’ll have a detailed column out – ideally to be published for the weekend. Putin’s address is tomorrow, and should be a howler.
https://forumspb.com/en/programme/business-programme/..
The contrast with The Three Stooges in their train to nowhere – country 404 – could not be more graphic.
ST. PETERSBURG UPDATE
Key facts rollin’ out of the forum – officially and after discussions:
– Dollars and euros will continue to circulate in Russia.
– There will be NO return to a Soviet economy.
– Import substitution will be only partial.
– The ruble under 60 per dollar is not a good thing for the Russian economy. The government will intervene.
– Changes on the global economy are irreversible. There’s no going back.
– A significant part of the Russian economy will be reoriented to the internal market.
– Because NATOstan will continue to weaponize Kiev, the Donetsk People’s Republic’s troops will NOT stop at the border.
It came out last night, before the St. Petersburg forum: it’s all interconnected.
Here you will see how…
the new G8…
interconnects with China’s Three Rings…
and with BRICS +…
and all that interconnects with what they are discussing in St. Petersburg: EAEU, SCO, ASEAN.
Well that blows my theory that the LDNR heavy lifting would end at their administrative borders….sounds like the SMO is going on a cross country tour, with a full production….it was inevitable I guess.
Cheers h
If LDNR forces prove to effective at capturing territory beyond the oblast (regional) boundary then RF forces will use them for this, because it is better to use local forces in 404 where ever humanly possible – the reasons should be fairly obvious. If RF can raise local forces in other parts of ex-Ukraina, then it will do so. At the moment it is not clear how much scope there may be for that, but we will find out once the entire Donbass has been completely secured & when operations move to focus on the central region around Dnipro, Cherkassy & up to Kiev.
Putin reiterated the perennial policy of the Russian ‘Gosudarstvo’: ”Regathering of the Russian Lands”.
Pepe reads the tea leaves better than anyone else, his insights are invaluable.
Taiwan’s TSMC is said to deny Russian companies Baikal their already producee and already paid for microprocessors.
https://www.gizchina.com/2022/06/16/russian-company-cancels-production-of-baikal-s-processors-because-of-tsmcs-refusal/
It is unlikely Baikal’s low-level schematics can be transferred from TSMC to UMC or some mainland China factory.
Domestic Russian factory (ex-AMD pipeline from Dresden) can only produce 120nm chips.
Baikal could hypothetically go back to MIPS arch or try to join RISC-V movement, but this would take a real lot of both time and money.
If the news is correct then Baikal’s strategic bet seems to be lost.
Discussion in Russian forum: https://habr.com/ru/news/t/671630/
Also in May: https://habr.com/ru/news/t/664580/
The subject of advanced IC’s could fill a book. want to highlight a few points.
1. 120nm is extremely old technology, from maybe1985. In the year 2000, I know for a fact that any 35nm wafer fabs were obsolescent. Wikipedia has an article on 14 nm that gives a timeline and it’s completely wrong. So no need for a link.
2. Russia should forget about any small advance to 90 or 60 nm, and instead work with China to get a fab for the best that can be delivered in the next two years or less. Reasons of national sovereignty are compelling enough for Russia and Iran to build their own fabs, bought from China.
3. China is at an interesting fork. Silicon is nearly at the end of possible improvement, with a very hard stop at 3nm, and even 3nm will be super expensive. Fortunately there are a variety of new technologies that promise revolutionary leaps in performance: nanotube transistors, graphene, quantum dot and quantum wire, photonic computing, and even GaN and other III-V metals which are more incremental but where China has production experience. The West has many patents, but for the post-silicon world, it has not built all the barriers. Silicon wafers represent a full ecosystem with both “legal” barriers such as ITARS, but also with commercial barriers. It’s probably uneconomic to re-engineer sub-systems of existing technologies. But in the post-silicon space, there is plenty of room for innovation, for patent fights, etc.
4. Operating Systems present an unusual set of challenges and opportunities. Britain’s ARM is a version of RISC OS with two advantages. ARM is very efficient and powerful for a range of small to mid-level tasks. It’s also ubiquitous because it has been a very good solution for 20 years or more, in part because of its ubiquity. Like most celebrities, it’s famous for being famous, unlike the not well-known. ARM has or had competitors, but the truth is it won the popularity contests. ARM is good stuff and no one worried about the possibility that Her Majesty’s Government would ever ring-fence ARM off from the rest of the world. But now, there’s the fence. Fortunately, there are many other viable RISC OS’s out there, and China alone has several. There are only low barriers for replacing ARM, if you ignore the issue of market volume. There is no secret sauce in RISC OS’s and the newer ones are probably better than ARM. All of the software written for ARM platforms can be cross-compiled; that work is done by mature software known as the Hardware Abstraction Layer. It’s quick to run and debug after it’s set up for a target OS. For China, Russia, Iran, it’s simply a matter of deciding which OS to promote, and then to smooth out the roads to market.
Products can be produced within two years, if it’s deemed urgent enough.
Fascinating insight. Thank you for this information on the key industry that still separates East from West..
Very interesting analysis. I like your #3 point very much. I would like to see new hardware architectures, more multiprocessors and newer materials used. I would believe the Chinese engineers have the enthusiasm to achieve the task in cooperation with Russia. I wonder if Russia-China can make the large lenses needed for the production of the chips; those lenses currently come from Germany and Germany is under the control of the US when it comes to export restrictions.
Mirrors, not lenses. The 13nm deep UV requires reflective optics.
ARM cores, are, without a doubt, the most efficient out there. 3-clock cycles per instruction, with a fast-recovery pipeline only 3 clock cycles deep, producing one instruction-result per clock cycle, with conditional execution bits which removes many conditional jumps and the accompanying pipeline disruption.
Beautiful instruction set — almost as beautiful as the VAX-11 instruction set, which, unfortunately, produces a real dog when actually implemented as a CPU and began the move away from CISC cpus, whereas the ARM CPU, being a RISC design, has no such troubles.
The sooner china and russian federation set up their own chip fabs the better. Given how important this tech segment is it should be a strategic priority.
The sooner there’s a need for actual global competitiveness, the sooner the American education system will stop all of the sexual perversion nonsense, and start teaching real subjects, and start pushing for academic excellence again.
That will take generations.
The knowledge-base and “instinct” for quantum mechanics is very different from those for wokefoke and cancelculture. I used the word “instinct” in an unusual way. With years of experience, even in a study carrel, talented, even plodding, people develop a sharp, or vague, sense of inwhich “direction” a solution to any problem might lie.
If you don’t start learning in primary school the basic physical and intellectual underpinnings of your trade, you will always be a clumbsy oaf. If your teachers, formal and informal and cultural, don’t know the subject matter, then they cannot teach you. At best, some inspired amateurs can encourage inspired students to search themselves.
You need a generation of teachers, then a generation of students, and among them a generation of prophets. Fortunately, there are often presbyopic among us; and we don’t always kill them.
Ukraine will capitulate in autumn, the probabilities are high.
Right now, the Ukrainian authorities refuse to negotiate. But by Autumn, Zelensky will no longer be able to resolve the conflict through diplomacy, due to the catastrophic situation of the Ukie army. This will happen soon, as the Ukie army groups in the Donbass will be finally destroyed, physically or taken prisoner.
Most of the “real” leaders of the EU countries would have to finally start thinking of their own citizens, and the coming winter, after a quite heaty, rainless, fertiliser-less summer. Ze, if he is still alive, or not thrown out by his own army chiefs, will be forced to take into account the critical state of the Ukie economy and industry, so sue for practical negotiations, but most likely Ukraine will simply capitulate.
German press reported yesterday yet another planned coup against ‘elensky with the ‚ sabotuers‘ arrested.
Link?
Begins to look like von Stauffenberg again.
His fatal mistake was to signal the Brits – Churchill betrayed him.
Today the Brits et al., are all over Kiev, been there, done that.
@ Exile on June 16, 2022 · at 10:25 am EST/EDT
German press reported yesterday yet another planned coup against ‘elensky with the ‚ sabotuers‘ arrested.
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I don’t know which publication specifically you mean by the “German press,” but after the “German press” reported that Russia shelled the maternity hospital in Donetsk, I would take the entire “German press” with a ton of salt.
CIA/MI6/NATO intel/Mossad is working through them, a PSYOPS center is HQ in Germany, no doubt.
Just double-check the info coming from that direction.
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Lone Wolf
“The ruble under 60 per dollar is not a good thing for the Russian economy. The government will intervene.”
you mean they will intervene less….gov intervention is what sent it to where it is.
China has always made sure Yuan is underpriced. That is best.
What defines an ‘underpriced’ currency, if not the exchange rate?
The “exchange rate” is _a_ symptom, not the value.
Glazyev is quite critical of monetary policy :
Sergey Glazyev: Sullivan praises the management of the Bank of Russia
https://glazev.ru/articles/10-vlast-i-obshhestvo/102513-sergey-glaz-ev-sallivan-khvalit-rukovodstvo-banka-rossii
Sergey Glazyev: Spydell is right, but the interests of currency and financial speculators for the leadership of the Central Bank have so far been more expensive
https://glazev.ru/articles/6-jekonomika/102596-sergey-glaz-ev-spydell-prav-no-interesy-valjutno-finansovykh-spekuljantov-dlja-rukovodstva-tsb-do-sikh-por-byli-dorozhe
Sergey Glazyev: For thinking people
https://glazev.ru/articles/163-zajavlenija/102704-sergey-glaz-ev-dlja-dumajushhikh-ljudey
There will be for sure a very interesting Glazyev intervention, cannot wait!
For some reason, I got an invitation to the SPIEF, along with some instructions for expedited Russian visa process. Unfortunately with insufficient time to even consider going. 8-( Probably pointless with negligible Russian language skills but would have been interesting.
Even if you couldn’t understand anything said at the SPIEF, just BEING in St. Petersburg in June is absolutely wonderful. I would have gone for no other reason than to just be in the city.
What are the mechanisms of intervention when the Ruble is tied to gold?
LOL! The famous pranksters Vaughan and Lexus are at SPIEF!
The spoke as Zelensky to Rowling, of Harry Potter fame!
“”Is it possible to somehow remove the scar in the form of the letter Z in connection with the geopolitical situation. Put a Ukrainian trident and make a hairstyle is a Ukrainian chub,” the pranksters told her on behalf of Zelensky.”
And
“”And we also want to invite you to read Harry Potter to the soldiers of the Azov battalion * (criminal cases have been initiated against members of the organization in Russia). They have a library club. They like to read a lot, especially German literature. Just don’t read the passages about them being nationalists and don’t like other people,” Vaughan and Lexus said.”
https://readovka.news/news/101139
video also there….
At the same time, during the prank, the British writer agreed to buy missiles and send them with a deadly curse against the republics of Donbass.
Look out Russia, Harry Potter is casting spells!
Looks like Britain is at war!
What happen inside such stupid people’s heads?? I just wonder is it a spell, is it brainwashing, hypnosis, fear? Something is completely wrong with these people……….”the British writer agreed to buy missiles”?.
I read something in analyses of WWII on why well educated middleclass people could jump on such a primitive and openly wrong narrative from Nazism. It said it was fear of loosing their well paid positions. Cognitive dissonance. Ignorance.
It was because everyone knew the Monarchy supported fascism from the very top down.
See the CH4 documentary –
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-10659369/Viewers-new-Channel-4-documentary-Edward-VIIIs-treachery-mind-boggling.html
In other words some have an instinct to be IN – in the US it’s call going along, to get along – to hell.
Lets look at the WWI through the eyes of British ruling family. There were three cousins running three empires in 1914 – British (George V), German (WIlhelm II) and Russian (Nicholas II); five years later, one is killed along with everyone of his family, another has fled, and only the British emperor managed to survive. Now, Russia was under Communists, Germany was under Wiemar, no wonder the British ruling family feared for its survival. At that time, only Hitler looked like someone who would restore pre- WWI ecosystem back (he never said that, BTW; he only wanted to overthrow the Weimar Constitution and crush the Communists). So the ruling family supported him. Thats all.
@ sean the leprechaun on June 16, 2022 · at 8:38 am EST/EDT
Well that blows my theory that the LDNR heavy lifting would end at their administrative borders….sounds like the SMO is going on a cross country tour, with a full production….it was inevitable I guess.
Cheers h
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Even though that was not the original intention of the SMO, we can be sure it was contemplated as a Plan B, C, D…ad infinitum…
It didn’t make any sense to return to the status quo ante, after so much sacrifice and the realization 404 is corrupt to the core, no hope for redemption. 404 had its chance, they ditched it out of greed, looking at the billions they would make by throwing the Ukrainian people to the war as cannon fodder. Now they are selling casualties to the west, the higher the number, the more money/weapons/support they expect to get.
Figures lie, and liars figure.
The task would be easier, given AFU NATO-trained elite regiments were (the leftovers still are) concentrated in Eastern Ukraine, their dreams with a S&D operation all the way to the Russian border turned to ashes, all shock troops in the process of decimation. Odessa/Dnipro/Slavyansk/Kramatorsk are fast becoming the last reduct of hard-core nazi trash, and NATO-trained VSUshniky. The west would be “defended” by teroborona and newly trained recruits, plus useful idiots from all over the world, hardly an army to reckon with the Russian killing machine.
Russia already said Zaporizhzhia and Kherson are not to be part of any new “negotiations” with 404.
That pattern should follow all the way to the western borders.
Lone Wolf
@Lone Wolf: “given [that] AFU NATO-trained regiments were concentrated in Eastern Ukraine, their dreams with a S&D operation all the way to the Russian border turned to ashes [it follows that] Odessa/Dnipro/Slavyansk/Kramatorsk are the last reduct of hard-core nazi trash, and NATO-trained VSUshniky.”
What are VSUshniky?
@ A.Deplorable on June 16, 2022 · at 3:13 pm EST/EDT
@Lone Wolf: What are VSUshniky?
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AKA VSUshniki, are Ukraine’s regular servicemen, different from the nazi military groups incorporated (and in control) of Ukraine’s army.
Lone Wolf
@ A.Deplorable on June 16, 2022 · at 3:13 pm EST/EDT
@Lone Wolf: What are VSUshniky?
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Here you have two examples of the difference between nazis and VSUshniki, and of the constant tension between them.
Need Yandex browser for translation.
https://rusdnepr.ru/v-harkovskoj-oblasti-vsushniki-vosstali-protiv-zagradotrjada/
In the Kharkiv region Vsushniki rebelled against the barrier detachment
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https://rusvesna.su/news/1655197101
A detachment of Ukrainian Nazis shot dozens of “vsushniki” – details from the Ministry of Defense
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Lone Wolf
No soviet union back. Sad. Sure i’m silly. What’s behind the words. No soviet union, expression to say more private property.
And private property of production means is the shame of all mankind.
agree. privatization is one of the major pillars of all that is wrong with the West and what they want to export. china is even more bullish on “globalization.”
still better than this insane killing machine with all the surveillance and jailing of supposed “dictatorships,” and none of the good things, like health care.
i was also sad to read this.
To show the anti-science blunderers in Kiev, London, D.C., they renamed the Yuri Gagarin Street in Kiev to Niel Armstrong Street. This is an insult to both Gagarin and Armstrong, both real pioneers!
So Russia Duma speaker Vyacheslav Volodin said Kiev should be re-named Nuland City.
At least they did not name a Kiev Harry Potter Street yet, or did they?
BBC, NHK, and ABC don’t call Kiev Kiev anymore. The same idiots who can’t pronounce Burma.
“There will be NO return to a Soviet economy.”
I wonder who wanted to return to that.
“Because NATOstan will continue to weaponize Kiev, the Donetsk People’s Republic’s troops will NOT stop at the border.”
What was said beyond this? One gets the sense that those Donetsk troops don’t want to stop at the border. In 2014 they wanted to continue all the way to Kiev. In the heat of war again, it’s not surprising if they again want to do that. “Who let the Bears out?”
“Changes on the global economy are irreversible. There’s no going back.”
It’s not like the sanctioners were not warned beforehand. Before the SMO sanctions, Putin himself said the sanctioners were cutting off the branch they were sitting on. They continued cutting it. Tucker Carlson mocked Biden for the sanctions effect on his TV show yesterday. He said weapons were for the Ukrainians but not for Americans. He pointed to the high value of the ruble and reminded his audience that Biden said it would turn into “rubble” after the sanctions.
“Import substitution will be only partial.” “A significant part of the Russian economy will be reoriented to the internal market.”
Good equilibrium. David Ricardo was the economist who first demonstrated the advantages of trade. I don’t think he got into the ‘size of the world’ issue, where the world is larger if everybody is a friend and smaller if not, yet still reaping the advantages of his theory when it is small. Being a classical liberal, I think Ricardo saw in nations too much mercantilism (a one-sided approach to trade, with the nationalism that went with that), and his theory was like “above all that.” Nations have their own natural interests, though, and this equilibrium looks good.
“Changes on the global economy are irreversible. There’s no going back.”
I wonder which countries are outspoken on this…
You are the greatest! And so pithy!
“pithy!”
I criticize his Intros. He needs to strengthen them – lengthen them – and he will be a much better writer. “Short” passes here, but not in wider scopes. The English teachers I had would tell him the same too.
https://glazev.ru/articles/163-zajavlenija/103259-ministr-glaz-ev-zajavil-o-neobkhodimosti-vystraivanija-otnosheniy-rossii-i-afriki
Russia needs to build direct relations with partners from Africa. Sergey Glazyev, Minister for Integration and Macroeconomics of the Eurasian Economic Commission (EEC), stated this on June 16 on the sidelines of the 25th St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF).
“Africa is one of the important promising areas. We should develop cooperation not only with the African Union, but also with individual countries. It is necessary to strengthen partnership in order to bring our economies closer together,” he said, recalling the experience of cooperation with Africa since the Soviet era.
Also:
https://www.eastasiaforum.org/2022/05/30/as-the-world-sanctions-russia-china-takes-note/
https://www.eastasiaforum.org/2022/06/16/ukraines-losses-are-chinas-gains/