Its likely the Chinese were using spies to get secrets, blackmail, etc. but it seems less like one grand conspiracy than an opportunistic power grab once the sharks smelled blood in the water, or a confluence of many smaller conspiracies.

[delayed]

Impede US progress by smuggling GPUs into China? Isn't the more likely answer that they are business people trying to make money?

> smuggling GPUs into China

the Chinese stopped the leaking faucet in favor of local hardware, these kind of embargo never works anywany, we've seen this with nuclear weapons, how naive would we be to think any different

smartest way would be going for the addiction route and nip the local hardware production, which is harder than it sounds

[delayed]

China is ousting their own spy? the opposite.

Its an actor that wants to stop the US sending chips to China -- it seems that all this was going on with the knowlegde of high ranking US officials. Now that the story is out, they cant pretend anymore that they dont see it