It’s easiest to negotiate and most useful if both sides have a reasonably good estimate of how many chips the other side has. I think it will probably be easy for intelligence agencies on either side to get an estimate within +/- 5% which is sufficent for a minimal version of this. This is made better by active efforts and by government trying to verifiably demonstrate how many chips they have as part of negotiation.
(This is in part because I don’t expect active obfuscation until pretty late, so normal records etc will exist.)
I think it will probably be easy for intelligence agencies on either side to get an estimate within +/- 5% which is sufficent for a minimal version of this.
That seems plausible or even likely but I think it’s hard to be confident. Public estimates of chip production are high variance. For example, SemiAnalysis and Bloomberg’s estimates of Huawei’s 2025 chip production differ by 50% [1]. I doubt either US or Chinese intelligence will be better at estimating these numbers than independent researchers within the next few years. Maybe the true numbers would become clear if governments want them to be, but I could also imagine China rationally not trusting documentation of US chip production created and shared by US chip manufacturers, and vice versa. This is especially hard under time pressure.
The more chips you want to destroy, the more confidence you need. If you want to destroy 90% of your adversary’s chip stock, but you fail to count 5% of their stock, you’ll leave them with 10% + 5% of their original stock, or 50% more than intended.
The main upshot imo is that it’s important for both independent researchers and intelligence agencies to precisely track the chip supply.
It’s easiest to negotiate and most useful if both sides have a reasonably good estimate of how many chips the other side has. I think it will probably be easy for intelligence agencies on either side to get an estimate within +/- 5% which is sufficent for a minimal version of this. This is made better by active efforts and by government trying to verifiably demonstrate how many chips they have as part of negotiation.
(This is in part because I don’t expect active obfuscation until pretty late, so normal records etc will exist.)
That seems plausible or even likely but I think it’s hard to be confident. Public estimates of chip production are high variance. For example, SemiAnalysis and Bloomberg’s estimates of Huawei’s 2025 chip production differ by 50% [1]. I doubt either US or Chinese intelligence will be better at estimating these numbers than independent researchers within the next few years. Maybe the true numbers would become clear if governments want them to be, but I could also imagine China rationally not trusting documentation of US chip production created and shared by US chip manufacturers, and vice versa. This is especially hard under time pressure.
The more chips you want to destroy, the more confidence you need. If you want to destroy 90% of your adversary’s chip stock, but you fail to count 5% of their stock, you’ll leave them with 10% + 5% of their original stock, or 50% more than intended.
The main upshot imo is that it’s important for both independent researchers and intelligence agencies to precisely track the chip supply.
[1] Figure 5: https://ifp.org/should-the-us-sell-hopper-chips-to-china/