In the grand scheme of things, TSMC was extremely unlucky to have peaked during the pandemic. Assuming all the microchip companies generally operate on the same average level over the long long run, they may have enjoyed an abortive peak compared to what Intel will (eventually, not soon) get.
I think he means technical achievements (5nm,7+?) occurred increasing the demand by the companies for new nm, and at the same time the pandemic increased the demand
I took ıt to mean that theır completive advantaged was mıtıgated because of the pandemıc. Normally wıth thıs lead TSMC would make much more than Intel, SMIC, ect., but because of the demand by the pandemıc all companıes are makıng more and very busy.
Lıke ın a normal year TSMC would make lots and competıtors fabs would be more empty
Lol what? Why do you think they peaked given that demand for semiconductors at minimum grows with the population, and in reality more semiconductors facilitate more semiconductors.
It is all very stupid. I betcha that in ten years time. Global supply chains are going to be even more integrated than they are today. For "obvious" economic reasons.
Wrt. "obvious": The reason why TSMC is the global leader in chip manufactoring is not because of cheap labour. It is because of specialisation and that they are the best at what they do. The combination of global trade and massive specialisation, creates this situation where no country can make everything on their own. And insisting in doing so will only result in poorer products at higher prices with lots of wasted capital.
Global integration of highly specialized industries not particularly dependent upon labor cost is not at all obvious--especially in the face of increasing political instability.
Part of the theory of engaging with China is that pulling it into the world would make them better worldwide citizens.
This has not worked. It has simply made China a bigger bully. So be it.
A gigantic amount of semiconductor manufacturing lives within 400 miles of China. That can't possibly be defended effectively against military action short of moving it a lot further away from China. That's what we're seeing the start of here.
Btw that gigantic ... Other than the Netherlands part, japan, South Korea and Taiwan are all keys here and close to a mad man and a sharp power.
Also noteworthy to mention all these are partially due to the failure of intel more than anything else. If intel keep arm and maintain the same level of chip production.
Ultimately we need at least two sources of critical components for any process rely upon them to be safe whatever the process is.
I think both parties were just paying lipservice to the CCP/China issue as long as big businesses were raking in the cash and consumers were getting good deals on cheap plastic sht from them.
Huge failure. They should've squeezed them in 1990-1992 as the USSR was dissolving and there was no pressing power to contend with. And North Korea they should've attacked then as well. No other way to solve this when the opponent will use your goodwill against you to play you for decades straight like the Kim dynasty.
Which is actually what Egypt is doing, parts of the Canal are already redundant. The Ever Given had the bad luck of getting stuck in a non-redundant section.
The problem with integration is that it is more efficient until there's a problem, at which point it can be catastrophic. The one boat held up 300 other ones, and while 6 days probably isn't a huge problem, suppose the country you outsource all your manufacturing to decides to go to war with you? Now you don't have any manufacturing because it was cheaper to outsource it. Or maybe your supplier of soybeans gets a nationalistic ruler who decides to not ship you any soybeans.
Also, I'm not convinced that maximum efficiency is good for everyone. The US had a lot more manufacturing jobs before outsourcing to China. Sure, stuff is cheaper now, but a bunch of people no longer have decent paying jobs, and the labor market is now minimum wage or requires a college degree. I those people formerly doing manufacturing are a good deal poorer thanks to global integration. And we all are going to be poorer if all the economic-losers elect populists, since I can't think of any populists who didn't ruin their country if in power long enough.
Integration reduces risk of conflict. You don't want to attack the country that buys your grain, and they don't want to attack the country that buys their steel. It's a mutually beneficial relationship, and it's one reason why global conflict is near all time lows today.
Furthermore, I don't understand the fetishization of factory work (that both the left and right seem to have). It's menial, tough, body-breaking work, with long hours in sweaty, dangerous conditions. It's main appeal is to very poor nations where it is less awful than the alternative they had anyway (substance agriculture or starving). It's a good thing that we can become more productive and have higher paying safer jobs in the west and that in 'third world nations', they can find productive work that is safer and higher paying than their previous situation. The US had a lot of factory work when it was a poor nation, but there is no good reason to return. It's the concept of comparative advantage, and it makes us all better off on net.
At that point it won't matter anymore. China and the surrounding region is so big that even cutting off Europe and North America would be very painful,it won't be as bad if the same would have happened 10-20 years ago.
Probably not just the US and EU that will seek out domestic vaccine and medicine production. Who knows how much worse off the UK would be if the EU could actually seize the UK supply of AstraZeneca's vaccine once our vaccination program pulling ahead of theirs became a political headache?
> TSMC previously announced plans for a new factory in Arizona, a project that it valued at $12 billion and that is expected to receive federal subsidies. Samsung is seeking government incentives for a $17 billion expansion of its facilities in Austin, Texas.
I found that point really interesting - and also perplexing.
I can understand why US companies would choose to outsource manufacturing concerns to East Asian countries, but I'm wondering why the opposite is true in this case here.
Could someone with insight into these matters please help me understand - why would TSMC or Samsung choose to build factories in the US?
Government subsidies on the upfront CapEx aside - I'm curious what the long term benefits to them would be.
> Could someone with insight into these matters please help me understand - why would TSMC or Samsung choose to build factories in the US?
It's partially to mitigate supply risk. Recently, drought has worsened the supply of chip production, many of which are concentrated in Taiwan[1]. If you go on any PC parts forum, you will see that parts like new GPUs are nearly impossible to get. Some years back, flooding in Thailand[2] also threatened the supply of hard drives.
Even though mining doesn't directly drive up the price of that GPU, it does do so indirectly. Miners push gamers out of the new GPU market so the gamers go elsewhere. And old GPUs can be pretty valuable for making it through the year (while waiting to obtain something better).
> Industry statistics indicate that creating an integrated circuit on a 300 mm wafer requires approximately 2200 gallons of water in total, of which 1500 gallons is ultra-pure water.
A semiconductor factory is very expensive to build and run in terms of the actual building (vibration resistant, advanced ventilation with purified air etc) and the equipment inside (some of the most expensive machines you can buy). It's all extremely expensive. It is also fairly automated and requires few people to run compared to the value it outputs. So the cost of labor is low in comparison and thus it's not a big deal to put it in a high cost country.
Vibration resistance is interesting, considering most chip factories are in Taiwan, a country where I experienced an earthquake each and every time I was there.
It's geopolitical. Taiwan is ultimately reliant on the US for defense from China. The DoD wants to maintain close to leading edge chip production on US soil where they feel like they can control the physical chain of security of the chips they use. TSMC builds a fab on US soil, and Taiwan and it's sovereignty wrt to China is better embedded in the power structure of the US defense strategy. The DoD footing most of the bill makes it an easy win.
Now that Intel has opened up their Fab, I have been wondering if TSMC will still be going ahead with their Plan. It never made any sense in the first place. It is not leading edge and Intel seems to be a better position from DoD's perspective.
And I wil not be suspired if future POWER and Z are all Intel Fabbed.
How can they not? 60% of their customers are American and fab capacity has become a hot bipartisan topic as well as a NatSec issue. The only way they can guarantee that they don't lose access to their customers is by building American fabs.
1. Fab Capacity has nothing to do with it. No one has committed to Fab Orders apart from Apple. It is politics and MSM Media decide to make an issue out of nothing.
2. Those Fabs are not leading edge and not target for the general consumer brands. The current target of 5nm in ~2024, a time when TSMC should be on 2nm GAAFET in their main Fab in Taiwan.
3. The only real reason is National Security, which is now being handled by Intel. These chip were used used and Fabbed by IBM and GF before GF's exit on leading edge.
4. 60% of TSMC's customers are US companies, but these US companies 's customer aren't 60% Americans. And not all Americans chips needs to be Fabbed locally.
I don't think the DoD is willing to put all of it's eggs in that one basket that hasn't been performing lately. Particularly when the DoD sees massive amounts of edge inference being a key weapons component going forward and they need newer nodes than 14nm+++++++.
AFAIK DoD has always had contract with Intel, IBM, GF for certain things Fab within US. And they rarely ( If ever ) use anything that is leading edge anyway. Their requirement are critically different to mainstream consumer usage where reliability of node is paramount. Samsung is also building a Fab in Austin which has an upgrade path from IBM ( now GF ) node. I dont see what TSMC has to offer in both National Security and Fab Production Business prospective.
That is of course, as you said unless both Intel and Samsung seriously messed up their plan.
There's talk that China might invade Taiwan in the near future (well, invasion or regaining control, depending on which side you're on, of course). How the US and the rest of the world would respond is unclear, but obviously there would be a lot of disruption.
Anyone outside the top echelons of the PLA/CCP who claims to predict when the invasion of Taiwan will happen is a soothsayer. That it will happen is a certainty, which means there's always a ready market of people willing to say it'll happen in the near future.
But one thing is certain - it's a question of when, not if. Taking control of Taiwan is too important to the founding myth of the CCP. Every reminder that Taiwan exists is a challenge to their power. Their desire for Taiwan has never wavered in the last 72 years, nor do I think it will ever. Meanwhile Taiwan's main defender (America) has no permanent allies, only permanent interests. Once the semiconductor supply chain is replicated successfully in the US, they might find that they're no longer willing to sacrifice American lives to protect the sovereignty of Taiwan. At some point in the next 10-40 years, Taiwan will be a bargaining chip America will trade away for something else they value more.
Not saying that you're wrong, because you seem much more informed and involved on/in this subject than I am, but from half the world away I can say that around 10 years or so ago that "certainty" wasn't that "certain", so to speak, at least not from what I could gather by reading the "local" press (mostly the Financial Times and The Economist).
Do you happen to have any resources available that further comment on that certainty? Again, not because I'm thinking that you're wrong, but because I'm really curious about this subject (there was a similar Taiwan-related post on the front-page of this website a few days ago but it dropped off pretty quickly).
> You are looking for sources that will predict the future with accuracy?
No, I was looking for sources that would talk about the "certainty" of invasion by China (in a large enough interval, from let's say tomorrow to 10-20 years into the future), like I said, about 10 years ago that was not the official discourse.
"Predicting the future" would be to ask for a specific date/time interval for that supposed invasion, which I did not ask for because that would have been a reasonably difficult task to predict, I concur.
I agree it's guaranteed to happen. There is no scenario where China doesn't begin to squeeze Taiwan, and likely sooner rather than later. I expect them to initially pursue a very aggressive Hong Kong style scheme against Taiwan, more so than a full-scale military invasion (which is not the ideal way to take it; that's their last choice among the options). Which year? Who knows, that isn't even important, as nobody can stop what China is inevitably going to do. The West will have no choice but to stand by and watch - maybe with a few gripes, a few trivial sanctions - just as they have with every single thing China has done (Tibet, Xinjiang, Hong Kong, South China Sea, Covid, Myanmar, and the comprehensive human rights erasure that has occurred in all of China under Xi).
I'd bet on it happening during Xi's reign, as it's critical to his pursuit of legacy. He's obsessed with writing his own name into China's history, taking Taiwan (and simultaneously defeating the West as he does it) would be a very big stamp on that. It would formally signal China's new empire-like dominion over Asia.
I don't think the US will trade Taiwan as a bargaining chip. By the time the US is willing to trade it, China will fully understand it's not really worth bargaining over any longer. The time to bargain would be now, or in the recent past. If the US Government wanted to get something big for trading Taiwan, during the Trump Administration was the last time to do it (during max tensions), and the trade should have been North Korea being dismantled (as is; meaning the Kim family goes, the nukes go; only China could make that happen) and reunited with South Korea. The US Govt no doubt thinks their bargaining position is stronger than it actually is, and so doesn't think they needed to make such a trade, instead the US will get nothing and Taiwan will end up in China's hands regardless and North Korea will remain a key China pawn.
I don't see a military takeover of Taiwan anytime soon. As you yourself said, it's a last resort for China, because they know full well that the island will not go down without a fight, much less stay pliant if conquered. It's also much more strategically important for the US and Japan than Xinjiang etc, and an attack still has a non-zero chance of triggering WW3.
I think China is happy to play the long game, since every passing year strengthens their position and weakens Taiwan's. But who knows what will happen with the next CCP succession.
The reason for that is because both Taiwan and China insist that you either recognize Taiwan xor you recognize China, but you cannot recognize both. (This is basically what the One China Policy means).
Additionally, world wars are never triggered intentionally. World War I broke out essentially because the decision makers ignored the wider consequences of +1'ing their opponent's military preparations (one author characterizes it as Europe sleepwalking into war). World War II broke out unexpectedly because Hitler underestimated the spine the Allies had when he requested they add Danzig to his list of silver platters. World War III will likely break out when someone crosses a red line to one party that isn't clearly communicated to another party--and a Chinese attempt to invade Taiwan is one of the likelier options on that list.
> The reason for that is because both Taiwan and China insist that you either recognize Taiwan xor you recognize China, but you cannot recognize both.
The only reason Taiwan "insists" on that is because of the threat of invasion if they declare independence. Just because a bully tells you to stop hitting yourself while they smack your hand into your face does not mean the bully is not doing the hitting.
Not quite so. Taiwan was ruled by the losers of China's civil war until about the 1990s (the modern party counterpart is the KMT). From their perspective, "One China" is about "we deserve to own all of China" and concomitant refusal to accept their loss in the war. Their opposing party (the DPP) instead advocates Taiwanese independence and refused to support the "One China" policy, but have declined to make any strident moves towards changing policy in power essentially for the reasons you mention.
Don't fool yourself. We don't like to thing about great power war because it's so terrible. We think it can't happen to us because it hasn't happened in a generation or two. People have thought this before. They have always been wrong.
I assure you we have not seen the last of war. Ignoring or minimizing the possibility is self-destructive. You must acknowledge the possibility of disaster before you can engage in the active work of averting it.
Taiwan is currently our 10th largest goods trading partner with $85.5 billion in total (two-way) goods trade during 2019. Goods exports totaled $31.3 billion; goods imports totaled $54.3 billion. The U.S. goods trade deficit with Taiwan was $23.0 billion in 2019.
Taiwan was the United States' 13th largest goods export market in 2019.
If you think the US doesn’t care about a Top 10 trade partner, and in particular the trade partner that houses TSMC, well have I got news for you. Do we care enough to go into a full-on firefight immediately? I don’t know. But we care enough that it would be a massive diplomatic row, and we’d almost certainly have a naval peacocking as a show of force. And nobody wants that right by South Korea, India, and Japan.
> and in particular the trade partner that houses TSMC,
Why do you think the US is working with TSMC to build plants in the US and intel is building more facilities as well? It's fairly obvious nobody has any confidence in the long run that Taiwan will remain independent.
> I think China is happy to play the long game, since every passing year strengthens their position and weakens Taiwan's.
Every passing year brings China one step closer to demographic collapse, the inevitable consequence of the One Child policy, and China is well aware of this.
Imploded, no, but the Japanese economy basically peaked in 1991 and has yet to really recover (the so-called Lost Decade, although it's been well more than a decade now). As I understand it (this is before my time), in the 1980s, there was a widespread consensus that Japan was on the precipice of upstaging the US, much as there is a similar consensus nowadays that China is on the precipice of upstaging the US. That Japan failed to do so should augur difficulty for China to do the same.
Yeah, and among the problems it will cause is a stagnation of Chinese economic growth and a decrease in young people. Both of which make large-scale military adventures extremely difficult.
CCP requires economic growth for popular support, this is one reason for the Belt and Road Initiative and other dumping policies, gotta keep those factories running at all costs. If growth stagnates or declines and unemployment spikes, things will get bloody.
Also China's demographic dividend will end while it's at a much lower stage of development than Japan in the 80s/90s. And unlike Japan, China's managed to piss off pretty much every major power who might have been inclined to help them.
i don’t think it’s going to happen in any case. it depends on what the USA does. if the position is like in the cold war: "this way and no further" china will probably not risk a nuclear war.
>At some point in the next 10-40 years, Taiwan will be a bargaining chip America will trade away for something else they value more.
The US has a permanent interest in the continued existence of an independent, non CCP aligned Taiwan. The only thing that time and time again frustrated the ambitions of Great Powers has been geography. Taiwan is the cork in the bottle containing the PLAN within the first island chain, without which China can operate freely throughout the Pacific. Just about every projection has China become the world's largest economy. America's only play to maintain dominance is to make sure that the tyranny of geography restrains the Chinese from operating militarily as freely as they would want. Much American blood had been shed in winning the Pacific in the first place. America is willing to shed more blood to keep it that way.
The same way the US has a permanent interest in the continued existence of an independent, non Russian Federation aligned Crimea. If Taiwan looses it's economic value (say, chip production becomes a commodity when Moore's law truly ends, and the CCP subsidizes local chip production to kill off TSMC), it may not be worth the nuclear war to the CCP 'no'.
'Face' gets overblown. If all they cared about was face, they wouldn't be stacking the Hong Kong Parliament and taking the geopolitical capital hit for it.
You could very well be correct. I certainly am not an expert in this area nor am I comfortable making any personal predictions about it. I've just heard more chatter about it than I have in the past.
The CCP never controlled Taiwan (aka the island of Formosa). Thus let's call a spade a spade. They want to finish the civil war and defeat the opposing side (while gaining control of a physical barrier to their mainland) and probably kill millions of Taiwanese, US/Japanese troops, and their own in the process.
So we can rule out an attack in the immediate future, and in fact we'll see the buildup for an attack with lots of advance warning. There's just no way to move around 100k plus troops and their equipment without it being observed.
China currently lacks sufficient amphibious assault ships to actually move enough troops to take control of the island. They certainly can bomb the crap out of it, but they won't have the resources necessary for boots on the ground for some time still.
They're building ships fast, but it's still something like a 15 year horizon before they'll have sufficient material, perhaps longer. At the least we can expect them to wait until the 2 carriers they're constructing are done.
Most credible analysts I've read believe a serious attempt at invading the island won't come until Xi's successor. Rick Joe is good to read on this topic. He writes for the major media outlets, as well as posting as PLARealtalk on reddit.
If Taiwan is less important strategically, they are more at risk. But it isn’t TSMCs job to play geopolitics, they just sell chips. One factory doesn’t make a global semiconductor market, though.
> TSMC builds a fab on US soil, and Taiwan and it's sovereignty wrt to China is
fucked, because we already have a foundry on US soil suckers. The whole point of TSMC being an ace card towards guaranteeing US defense coverage goes away the second you give it up. Ukraine is a perfect real life example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum_on_Securit...
Wait, I'm not sure if I follow. TSMC builds a fab in US soil, guaranteeing American autonomy on chip production. Supposedly the DoD would also require training for American technicians and more critical parts of the supply chain there. This makes Taiwan LESS strategic, not more, for US security, because now the US can build its own chips and isn't vulnerable to a Chinese invasion on Taiwan.
It makes Taiwan less strategic in time. It makes Taiwan more strategic now, because the US is still dependent on TSMC.
If China has hostile intent it also increases the risk of Chinese action, because - dependent on stockpiles and security - Taiwan is a resource choke point which could potentially decapitate the entire US military machine.
This is a terrible situation for the US to be in.
As the US replaces that capability on its home turf Taiwan's strategic value wanes, which paradoxically makes an attack less likely because China can get what it wants from Taiwan by conventional economic and political means.
The question is... how lucky/aggressive does China feel? And how just-in-time is the US military supply chain?
Sort of. At the gate counts we're talking, it doesn't take long until you can't even fit the chip on a whole wafer of an older node. IIRC, an Nvidia GA100 doesn't fit on a 300mm 65nm wafer (to say nothing of being able to clock it at a viable speed even if you were to cut it down). Going off chip destroys perf for a lot of designs too.
It's not just a price component, but a performance and viability of new designs one, at a time where the DoD internally is pushing ML hard as a major pillar of investment in weapons technology.
The stateside TSMC fab, even with trained technicians, cannot be instantly/effortlessly/losslessly decoupled from the Taiwan fab. That would be a monumental undertaking. Manufacturing is much more complex than that, the site is far more than some technicians, a building, and some machines inside it.
Instead, this move ties the success of the American facility and the Taiwanese facility together, building a bond and interdependence.
But it also makes the threat of economic sanctions in response to an invasion more credible, because the US and its allies in such an effort would have alternative sources of critical components.
The US consumes 50% of chip supply while only making 10% of the chips. American leadership on both isles have decided that access to chips is a national security issue.
If you're TSMC or Samsung you probably had a conversation with US officials along the lines of: Build fabs in the US, or we will tariff and tax our way back to a mostly domestic, American owned industry. 60% of TSMC's sales are to the US customers. There's not much of a choice there.
>This makes Taiwan LESS strategic, not more, for US security, because now the US can build its own chips and isn't vulnerable to a Chinese invasion on Taiwan.
I think you're failing to take into account a number of things. First and foremost the very foundation of the US is based on respecting IP law given we're almost entirely an "information" society. If we suddenly steal TSMC's business secrets because it's convenient, what's preventing Europe and our allies from taking ours? Why would they respect IP law if we don't?
Second, regardless of the technical reliance we have on Taiwan, there's no planet on which the US wants China expanding and taking over other countries in Asia for political reasons.
The factories in the US ensure that the US keeps sending business to TSMC.
> This makes Taiwan LESS strategic, not more, for US security, because now the US can build its own chips and isn't vulnerable to a Chinese invasion on Taiwan
Sort of.
TSMC's interests do not perfectly align with Taiwan's. TSMC putting fabs in the well-defended territory of its customers makes sense.
That said, China being able to credibly threaten a critical supply line is a security issue for America. It constrains U.S. response options to an invasion, threatened or acted upon. Removing that constraint does make Taiwan a bit less critical to America. But U.S.-Taiwanese relations predate TSMC. On the net, these plants free America to be more aggressive with China, which is broadly in Taiwan's interest.
Why now? In a word: automation. Semiconductor manufacturing has become far less labor intensive since TSMC was founded in 1987. That makes the American labor premium less material.
Taiwan is less safe when the US depends upon Taiwanese production and lacks alternatives, because China uses it as a pressure point and a vulnerable US is a reactive US.
Taiwan being caught between US and People's Republic of China is less of a worry than Taiwan's existing concern of being caught between People's Republic of China and Republic of China (aka "Taiwan")
A working, competitive fab isn't just a turnkey operation. There's engineers needed to address the yield issue of the day. Those engineers are based in Taiwan.
Pretty sure China isn't just worrying manufacturers in Taiwan but other parts of the region. Hong Kong is getting worse by the day with China basically replacing any idea of a democratic government there.
India is making strides but has internal issues and both China and Pakistan as border issues. South Korea has been under threat from the North for far too long.
It just makes financial sense to spread out to more stable regions of the world and to take the money offered when it shows up.
I figure we are still a decade or two out before Africa comes online and South and Central America will need to calm down to get good investment to spread about.
I am surprised Canada is not trying to get more of the action.
How about also the legacy of a large number of fabs and of electronics design, manufacturing, and education in Arizona? Intel, Honeywell, Motorola, ASU ..., the list is large. Arizona has a wealth of semiconductor know-how.
Korean corps hate china almost as much as us corps. CCP has been running anti korea product news for years which have eviscerated their businesses. Lately they have been going after cultural theft saying that they invented their language, their traditional clothing and even kimchi. Korea is fed up, and when forced to choose china or the west, they are choosing the west as a long term business investment.
If it was the main reason, wouldn’t it have made more sense in more politically stable regions, like Germany or France, which are in good term with the US as well, and first level EU access as a bonus.
Am I the only one who is worried every time such a news drops? Achieving high-tech autarky is a first step towards a war with china becoming viable. Not that the alternative would be much better: a war being nonviable and the west bending to their wishes. But still, I think it shows there are real concerns on the highest levels and it is considered an actual possibility. Scary.
Thx for the pointer, nice to know the name of the theory. Although it only covers a part of my argument. My concern was also in regards to how much military tech could be built on short notice inside the US if it came to a prolonged war and most of the existing toys were destroyed after some months. That was what I meant with a war being nonviable (would end in a nuclear MAD scenario imo without the capacity to rebuild conventional weapons).
> Achieving high-tech autarky is a first step towards a war with china becoming viable.
Definitely, but it's also a sensible precaution against natural disaster (earthquakes, tsunamis), madman-going-mad (especially Kim Jong Un, whose missiles have more than enough capability to reach Taiwan) and other (like the Suez Canal fuck-up) risk.
It simply is too much risk when too many companies depend on one single other company's (TSMC) products... Apple, AMD/ATI, almost all automobile supply chains...
ASML builds the machines that Intel, TSMC and every other fab relies on. You never hear much about them. They are based in the Netherlands- a country that prefers to operate below the radar.
US's foreign policy of 50 years ago is not the same as it is today. Since the USSR's fall, the US has been highly reactionary. There's no overarching "containment" policy that required to be proactive. Meanwhile, the CCP has a searing hatred for an island 100 miles off its coast because of events no one alive remembers.
It's speculation, but China appears to be building up normalcy bias in Taiwanese defenses, get them used to seeing Chinese aircraft and making them more complacent.
Add the fact that China's national victim mentality is driving it to restore itself to it's perceived state before the "west" messed it up (includes regaining Taiwan), and that objective being one of the socio-political foundations of the CCP's power, and the CCP being well aware that China will start running out of young people in next decade due to one child policy (makes military adventures harder for both manpower and economic reasons), and Xi consolidating more power under himself and his cult of personality than any Chinese ruler since Mao...
Yeah if I was Taiwan I'd be subtly building some extra "tourism infrastructure" on the beaches and quietly stepping up training requirements for reserves; and give the US whatever it wants in exchange for a couple of carrier battle groups if needed.
CCP is highly pragmatic, they're just using everything as a nationalistic smoke screen to get what they want - control of Asia and probably the world.
It's funny because anybody with a brain could look at China in 1970 and look at it now, while asking themselves: "Hmmm, how did China do with that opening up to the US/West?"
It's laughable, but anti-US will say "buh buh buh... IRAQ!" as some sort of blanket example that the US has to stand aside now and let anybody do anything they want.
> US has to stand aside now and let anybody do anything they want.
Reducing three countries to rubble (Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya) in just the past 20 years means exactly that the US has no place in international politics and should be treated as an extremely dangerous country, sanctioned by the United Nations for warcrimes, made to pay trillions in damages and slowly be re-introduced into the global village once they are demilitarized.
Iraq - I didn't agree with it. But look at the country now versus 20 years ago... it's a democracy in much better shape.
Afghanistan - we needed to take out al-Qaeda after the attacks. The country is broken, and outside actors help the Taliban continue their terrorism. You support the Taliban? Popular opinion supports the democratic government.
Libya - Russia and Turkey are the big players there now, continuing the civil war. I guess it's not as simple as you make it out to be, huh?
And yet you gloss over the countries like Japan, South Korea, Phillipines, Colombia, Eastern Europe and Western, that have all entered our sphere after war and have done amazingly economically while retaining high quality democracies.
Without the US, the world would quickly devolve back to fighting warlord/autocratic ethnostates. Or an autocratic CCP-controlled world.
Ah yes, so the conclusion is that the US will start all wars and poor China will start 0 wars and do 0 aggressive things. So glad we have such a critical geopolitical mind here to show us the way.
Or... it's much more complicated and China has been slowly angling to usurp control (unjustly) for decades.
> Achieving high-tech autarky is a first step towards a war with china becoming viable.
That's a false dillema. The choice is not between self-sufficiency and war with China, and dependency and ever-lasting peace with China.
The choice is actually between war with China when China controls all the industry, and war with China when it fails to control and restrict access to that resource.
Given the choice, achieving self-sufficiency is more likely to ensure peace/dissuade war than dependency.
The US's current dependency on China is one-way. China is not co-dependent on the US. The existing dependency structure does not incentivize China to avoid war.
Besides, most of the US wars in the last half century have been started because the US was dependent on another nation. It seems a self-sufficient US may actually be less likely to go to war.
I'm confused as to your assertion that war somehow wouldn't be viable. WW1 was previously thought to be impossible because of the economic interdependence and trade and yet all the same it had happened.
We're talking about a a revisionist, expansionist state that is rising, believes the existing power to be fragile, weak, and on the decline. It isn't a question of "Viability". The CCP sees serious geopolitical benefits to an armed conflict.
it's 20b for intel, for everyone else it's 20b+cost of major stake in intel
this kind of buisness is hard and can only be done by a corporation of smart, knowledgeable and experienced individuals, it took a few decades for tsmc to get into a position of advantage in silicon manufacturing
Chip fabs ultra-purify water for rinsing wafers. They can reduce water use by doing more dry processes instead of rinsing with water. They can also recycle rinse water, which can have fewer contaminants than the municipal water feed. The water has to be almost perfectly pure. New plants will probably be state of the art in minimizing water use.
Is anything with future value being build by European companies?
AI, Crypto, VR, Robots ... not a single market leader is located in the EU.
I find it amazing that after missing the internet there is no discussion in Europe on how to avoid the same fate with artificial intelligence. There is only one European website in top 100 websites. And that is an Hungarian porn site.
AI will be 10x bigger than the internet. Yet it seems Europe does not even have it on the radar.
Deepmind is owned by a US company (Alphabet) and located in the UK.
Universal Robots is owned by Teradyne, also in the US.
ABB I don't know. How are they market leaders?
Also, looking at ABB it seems this are those old industrial robots with few degrees of freedom. The future will be less specialized robots with more degrees of freedom. Powered by AI, not by explicitly coded motions.
Captured? Enabled. DeepMind runs at big losses, only a company with enough firepower and vision such as the GAFAMs could (and luckily did) save DeepMind.
DeepMind was never a business (and never will be), it's an AI R&D toy for a trillion dollar tech company. It was always going to end up in the belly of a larger tech company, and the US has all the dominant tech companies outside of China.
Besides, it's fair game. The US had one of the two global leaders in AgTech in Monsanto, which was captured by the Germans. That repeatedly happens in biotech as a prominent example, most of the European biotech industry was built up on the back of acquiring US biotech companies.
Even ARM Holdings was originated heavily by US companies. There is hardly a piece of the global tech market that wasn't directly financed or made possible by the US tech industry and its mountain of profits and VC money, from SoftBank to China's tech companies to Shopify or Atlassian.
Europe also has little capital and massive amounts of regulation. France is starting to unwind some of it but it will be a long time before capital is wiling to risk European regulation again.
Most of the things you mention are associated with the hype cycle peak and have not found their big use-case yet.
VR has only a few niche applications in entertainment. Crypto is a solution in search of a problem, and a gambling platform in the meantime.
AI isn't driving our cars, handling our customer service, or analyzing our business data. Good old fashioned algorithms written by humans are now being branded by marketing as "AI" which demonstrates we don't know what AI really is and we can't fend off its redefinition.
Robots is a tricky one because it's such a broad topic. Is an arm on an assembly line a robot? What about complex farming machinery? Does it have to look anthropomorphic?
From my bearish perspective on the first three industries, Europe and the EU (these are not interchangeable terms) have a pretty good track record this last decade compared to SV
> Intel builds, TSMC builds and nobody builds in the EU market.
A few months ago there was a newspiece posted here in HN about a strategic billion-euro EU program that was aimed at subsidizing chip production capacity.
While being very pro-market, I don't mind strong government action and strong government action is needed here an can work (see Airbus). But I am skeptical the EU has the will and is willing to spend the amount of money needed to pull this off.
There is still the brain power, knowledge and money to compete with the US and China, the will and foresight is lacking. It is totally unclear that the EU could still pull this off in 30 years.
They have 23B in cash and short term investments. But with rates so low its probably wiser to finance it out over 50 years and pay a couple percent in interest.
even if they didn't, I'm almost certain US would loan it to them at -% interest. Chips today are like grain supplies and heavy industry. You need them in your country
If China takes control of Taiwan it would be a strategic disaster for the rest of the world. Building a factory as far away as possible is a great idea for both Intel and TSMC. There is still expertise in the US. Wikipedia has a good list of fans that are still open and those that have been closed. The number in Taiwan is shocking, but you’ll also see many older fabs still running in the US
Uh... no, not likely. Nuclear weapons have some utility as a deterrent to invasion, but they're useless in most kinds of war.
The US would fight to prevent China taking over Taiwan by force, and Japan and others would assist them, but if China succeeded, the US wouldn't choose to start the third world war by using weapons carelessly... it would accomplish nothing at all.
I love that tech is continuing to build out in Arizona, but I seriously question the decision considering temperatures have risen significantly over the years.
All of these companies are building in an area where it isn't clear if things will stay livable for the next 30 years.
Everybody talks about TSMC/Intel. Nobody talks about ASML/AMAT. I would like to see a VC brave enough to invest in a photolithography stepper startup. I think it’s doable at 10% of the cost. I say this because I built a particle tracking Q-switch ablation laser many years ago, and this is what they said was the hardest part of EUV. I hadn’t thought about that application until I recently saw a video about It.
177 comments
[ 4.5 ms ] story [ 182 ms ] threadAnd who says TSMC has peaked? Surely it’s best for everyone if Intel are kept under pressure.
Lıke ın a normal year TSMC would make lots and competıtors fabs would be more empty
TSMC is doing great.
Global integration of highly specialized industries not particularly dependent upon labor cost is not at all obvious--especially in the face of increasing political instability.
Part of the theory of engaging with China is that pulling it into the world would make them better worldwide citizens.
This has not worked. It has simply made China a bigger bully. So be it.
A gigantic amount of semiconductor manufacturing lives within 400 miles of China. That can't possibly be defended effectively against military action short of moving it a lot further away from China. That's what we're seeing the start of here.
Btw that gigantic ... Other than the Netherlands part, japan, South Korea and Taiwan are all keys here and close to a mad man and a sharp power.
Also noteworthy to mention all these are partially due to the failure of intel more than anything else. If intel keep arm and maintain the same level of chip production.
Ultimately we need at least two sources of critical components for any process rely upon them to be safe whatever the process is.
Huge failure. They should've squeezed them in 1990-1992 as the USSR was dissolving and there was no pressing power to contend with. And North Korea they should've attacked then as well. No other way to solve this when the opponent will use your goodwill against you to play you for decades straight like the Kim dynasty.
Props to economists on having zero foresight ability
A ship gets stuck in the Suez channel.
Let's drill a new channel ...
Which is actually what Egypt is doing, parts of the Canal are already redundant. The Ever Given had the bad luck of getting stuck in a non-redundant section.
Also, I'm not convinced that maximum efficiency is good for everyone. The US had a lot more manufacturing jobs before outsourcing to China. Sure, stuff is cheaper now, but a bunch of people no longer have decent paying jobs, and the labor market is now minimum wage or requires a college degree. I those people formerly doing manufacturing are a good deal poorer thanks to global integration. And we all are going to be poorer if all the economic-losers elect populists, since I can't think of any populists who didn't ruin their country if in power long enough.
Furthermore, I don't understand the fetishization of factory work (that both the left and right seem to have). It's menial, tough, body-breaking work, with long hours in sweaty, dangerous conditions. It's main appeal is to very poor nations where it is less awful than the alternative they had anyway (substance agriculture or starving). It's a good thing that we can become more productive and have higher paying safer jobs in the west and that in 'third world nations', they can find productive work that is safer and higher paying than their previous situation. The US had a lot of factory work when it was a poor nation, but there is no good reason to return. It's the concept of comparative advantage, and it makes us all better off on net.
I found that point really interesting - and also perplexing.
I can understand why US companies would choose to outsource manufacturing concerns to East Asian countries, but I'm wondering why the opposite is true in this case here.
Could someone with insight into these matters please help me understand - why would TSMC or Samsung choose to build factories in the US?
Government subsidies on the upfront CapEx aside - I'm curious what the long term benefits to them would be.
Thanks :)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxconn_in_Wisconsin
It's partially to mitigate supply risk. Recently, drought has worsened the supply of chip production, many of which are concentrated in Taiwan[1]. If you go on any PC parts forum, you will see that parts like new GPUs are nearly impossible to get. Some years back, flooding in Thailand[2] also threatened the supply of hard drives.
[1] https://thediplomat.com/2021/03/taiwan-prays-for-rain-as-dro...
[2] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/oct/25/thailand-...
Tell these to people who keep mining at loss for god knows what reason
(Yes, if you are really betting on that, you may as well skip the mining and buy the coins outright, but maybe they have cheap power or other reasons)
> Industry statistics indicate that creating an integrated circuit on a 300 mm wafer requires approximately 2200 gallons of water in total, of which 1500 gallons is ultra-pure water.
And I wil not be suspired if future POWER and Z are all Intel Fabbed.
2. Those Fabs are not leading edge and not target for the general consumer brands. The current target of 5nm in ~2024, a time when TSMC should be on 2nm GAAFET in their main Fab in Taiwan.
3. The only real reason is National Security, which is now being handled by Intel. These chip were used used and Fabbed by IBM and GF before GF's exit on leading edge.
4. 60% of TSMC's customers are US companies, but these US companies 's customer aren't 60% Americans. And not all Americans chips needs to be Fabbed locally.
I don't think the DoD is willing to put all of it's eggs in that one basket that hasn't been performing lately. Particularly when the DoD sees massive amounts of edge inference being a key weapons component going forward and they need newer nodes than 14nm+++++++.
Hard to blame them.
That is of course, as you said unless both Intel and Samsung seriously messed up their plan.
But one thing is certain - it's a question of when, not if. Taking control of Taiwan is too important to the founding myth of the CCP. Every reminder that Taiwan exists is a challenge to their power. Their desire for Taiwan has never wavered in the last 72 years, nor do I think it will ever. Meanwhile Taiwan's main defender (America) has no permanent allies, only permanent interests. Once the semiconductor supply chain is replicated successfully in the US, they might find that they're no longer willing to sacrifice American lives to protect the sovereignty of Taiwan. At some point in the next 10-40 years, Taiwan will be a bargaining chip America will trade away for something else they value more.
Not saying that you're wrong, because you seem much more informed and involved on/in this subject than I am, but from half the world away I can say that around 10 years or so ago that "certainty" wasn't that "certain", so to speak, at least not from what I could gather by reading the "local" press (mostly the Financial Times and The Economist).
Do you happen to have any resources available that further comment on that certainty? Again, not because I'm thinking that you're wrong, but because I'm really curious about this subject (there was a similar Taiwan-related post on the front-page of this website a few days ago but it dropped off pretty quickly).
Taiwan is definitively on the next because it is way too close in distance to China for its own good.
No, I was looking for sources that would talk about the "certainty" of invasion by China (in a large enough interval, from let's say tomorrow to 10-20 years into the future), like I said, about 10 years ago that was not the official discourse.
"Predicting the future" would be to ask for a specific date/time interval for that supposed invasion, which I did not ask for because that would have been a reasonably difficult task to predict, I concur.
> To many Chinese, the island’s conquest is a sacred national mission
I'd bet on it happening during Xi's reign, as it's critical to his pursuit of legacy. He's obsessed with writing his own name into China's history, taking Taiwan (and simultaneously defeating the West as he does it) would be a very big stamp on that. It would formally signal China's new empire-like dominion over Asia.
I don't think the US will trade Taiwan as a bargaining chip. By the time the US is willing to trade it, China will fully understand it's not really worth bargaining over any longer. The time to bargain would be now, or in the recent past. If the US Government wanted to get something big for trading Taiwan, during the Trump Administration was the last time to do it (during max tensions), and the trade should have been North Korea being dismantled (as is; meaning the Kim family goes, the nukes go; only China could make that happen) and reunited with South Korea. The US Govt no doubt thinks their bargaining position is stronger than it actually is, and so doesn't think they needed to make such a trade, instead the US will get nothing and Taiwan will end up in China's hands regardless and North Korea will remain a key China pawn.
I think China is happy to play the long game, since every passing year strengthens their position and weakens Taiwan's. But who knows what will happen with the next CCP succession.
Very improbable. Nobody cares enough about Taiwan to even officially recognize its existence.
Additionally, world wars are never triggered intentionally. World War I broke out essentially because the decision makers ignored the wider consequences of +1'ing their opponent's military preparations (one author characterizes it as Europe sleepwalking into war). World War II broke out unexpectedly because Hitler underestimated the spine the Allies had when he requested they add Danzig to his list of silver platters. World War III will likely break out when someone crosses a red line to one party that isn't clearly communicated to another party--and a Chinese attempt to invade Taiwan is one of the likelier options on that list.
The only reason Taiwan "insists" on that is because of the threat of invasion if they declare independence. Just because a bully tells you to stop hitting yourself while they smack your hand into your face does not mean the bully is not doing the hitting.
Before this, the bully was the Taiwan government. Then they lost the mainland, and fled to Taiwan, where they got sheltered by the Americans.
And now, you’re saying that the government on the mainland is now the bully over little Taiwan.
But the fact remains, that the last stage of the Chinese Civil War is not over.
History is useless since none of the previous world wars had nuclear powers at play. You can't compare before and after. Like, not at all.
I assure you we have not seen the last of war. Ignoring or minimizing the possibility is self-destructive. You must acknowledge the possibility of disaster before you can engage in the active work of averting it.
Never even said that. Just saying the Taiwan situation is not going to start a massive conflict.
Taiwan was the United States' 13th largest goods export market in 2019.
https://ustr.gov/countries-regions/china/taiwan
If you think the US doesn’t care about a Top 10 trade partner, and in particular the trade partner that houses TSMC, well have I got news for you. Do we care enough to go into a full-on firefight immediately? I don’t know. But we care enough that it would be a massive diplomatic row, and we’d almost certainly have a naval peacocking as a show of force. And nobody wants that right by South Korea, India, and Japan.
Why do you think the US is working with TSMC to build plants in the US and intel is building more facilities as well? It's fairly obvious nobody has any confidence in the long run that Taiwan will remain independent.
Every passing year brings China one step closer to demographic collapse, the inevitable consequence of the One Child policy, and China is well aware of this.
Japan is several decades ahead of China on the same path, its population has been declining since 2011, and they have not imploded yet.
CCP requires economic growth for popular support, this is one reason for the Belt and Road Initiative and other dumping policies, gotta keep those factories running at all costs. If growth stagnates or declines and unemployment spikes, things will get bloody.
Also China's demographic dividend will end while it's at a much lower stage of development than Japan in the 80s/90s. And unlike Japan, China's managed to piss off pretty much every major power who might have been inclined to help them.
The US has a permanent interest in the continued existence of an independent, non CCP aligned Taiwan. The only thing that time and time again frustrated the ambitions of Great Powers has been geography. Taiwan is the cork in the bottle containing the PLAN within the first island chain, without which China can operate freely throughout the Pacific. Just about every projection has China become the world's largest economy. America's only play to maintain dominance is to make sure that the tyranny of geography restrains the Chinese from operating militarily as freely as they would want. Much American blood had been shed in winning the Pacific in the first place. America is willing to shed more blood to keep it that way.
imposing control on Hong Kong happened because it did not require high-stakes combat with a nuclear peer competitor
China currently lacks sufficient amphibious assault ships to actually move enough troops to take control of the island. They certainly can bomb the crap out of it, but they won't have the resources necessary for boots on the ground for some time still.
They're building ships fast, but it's still something like a 15 year horizon before they'll have sufficient material, perhaps longer. At the least we can expect them to wait until the 2 carriers they're constructing are done.
Most credible analysts I've read believe a serious attempt at invading the island won't come until Xi's successor. Rick Joe is good to read on this topic. He writes for the major media outlets, as well as posting as PLARealtalk on reddit.
It's certainly less risky for Taiwan for TSMC to be the one building and running the most high profile element of it than if it was someone else.
fucked, because we already have a foundry on US soil suckers. The whole point of TSMC being an ace card towards guaranteeing US defense coverage goes away the second you give it up. Ukraine is a perfect real life example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum_on_Securit...
If China has hostile intent it also increases the risk of Chinese action, because - dependent on stockpiles and security - Taiwan is a resource choke point which could potentially decapitate the entire US military machine.
This is a terrible situation for the US to be in.
As the US replaces that capability on its home turf Taiwan's strategic value wanes, which paradoxically makes an attack less likely because China can get what it wants from Taiwan by conventional economic and political means.
The question is... how lucky/aggressive does China feel? And how just-in-time is the US military supply chain?
The military doesn't really worry much about price.
It's not just a price component, but a performance and viability of new designs one, at a time where the DoD internally is pushing ML hard as a major pillar of investment in weapons technology.
Instead, this move ties the success of the American facility and the Taiwanese facility together, building a bond and interdependence.
If you're TSMC or Samsung you probably had a conversation with US officials along the lines of: Build fabs in the US, or we will tariff and tax our way back to a mostly domestic, American owned industry. 60% of TSMC's sales are to the US customers. There's not much of a choice there.
I think you're failing to take into account a number of things. First and foremost the very foundation of the US is based on respecting IP law given we're almost entirely an "information" society. If we suddenly steal TSMC's business secrets because it's convenient, what's preventing Europe and our allies from taking ours? Why would they respect IP law if we don't?
Second, regardless of the technical reliance we have on Taiwan, there's no planet on which the US wants China expanding and taking over other countries in Asia for political reasons.
The factories in the US ensure that the US keeps sending business to TSMC.
Sort of.
TSMC's interests do not perfectly align with Taiwan's. TSMC putting fabs in the well-defended territory of its customers makes sense.
That said, China being able to credibly threaten a critical supply line is a security issue for America. It constrains U.S. response options to an invasion, threatened or acted upon. Removing that constraint does make Taiwan a bit less critical to America. But U.S.-Taiwanese relations predate TSMC. On the net, these plants free America to be more aggressive with China, which is broadly in Taiwan's interest.
Why now? In a word: automation. Semiconductor manufacturing has become far less labor intensive since TSMC was founded in 1987. That makes the American labor premium less material.
It probably comes with some benefits, but I doubt volunteering to be a potential hotspot for WW3 is really worth those benefits.
India is making strides but has internal issues and both China and Pakistan as border issues. South Korea has been under threat from the North for far too long.
It just makes financial sense to spread out to more stable regions of the world and to take the money offered when it shows up.
I figure we are still a decade or two out before Africa comes online and South and Central America will need to calm down to get good investment to spread about.
I am surprised Canada is not trying to get more of the action.
Its honestly just overdue and this is as good as time as any to build this factory.
Taiwan was good enough. Now things are getting hairy and these companies have gotten massive and the demand for chips has gotten greater.
Time to build.
EDIT: not the best article but deals briefly with Arizona semiconductor history toward end of story article: https://www.allaboutcircuits.com/news/semiconductor-fabs-dot...
Even ignoring the political reasons, just consider what happened to WD and Seagate during the floods in Thailand in 2011.
https://youtu.be/mX4owHcVjFo
Source? Because he's not by his actions even close to a communist.
And having been in China lately, I can ensure you CCP is only communist in name.
https://www.quora.com/What-you-think-about-Golden-Arches-the...
Definitely, but it's also a sensible precaution against natural disaster (earthquakes, tsunamis), madman-going-mad (especially Kim Jong Un, whose missiles have more than enough capability to reach Taiwan) and other (like the Suez Canal fuck-up) risk.
It simply is too much risk when too many companies depend on one single other company's (TSMC) products... Apple, AMD/ATI, almost all automobile supply chains...
It's speculation, but China appears to be building up normalcy bias in Taiwanese defenses, get them used to seeing Chinese aircraft and making them more complacent.
Add the fact that China's national victim mentality is driving it to restore itself to it's perceived state before the "west" messed it up (includes regaining Taiwan), and that objective being one of the socio-political foundations of the CCP's power, and the CCP being well aware that China will start running out of young people in next decade due to one child policy (makes military adventures harder for both manpower and economic reasons), and Xi consolidating more power under himself and his cult of personality than any Chinese ruler since Mao...
Yeah if I was Taiwan I'd be subtly building some extra "tourism infrastructure" on the beaches and quietly stepping up training requirements for reserves; and give the US whatever it wants in exchange for a couple of carrier battle groups if needed.
It's funny because anybody with a brain could look at China in 1970 and look at it now, while asking themselves: "Hmmm, how did China do with that opening up to the US/West?"
It's laughable, but anti-US will say "buh buh buh... IRAQ!" as some sort of blanket example that the US has to stand aside now and let anybody do anything they want.
Reducing three countries to rubble (Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya) in just the past 20 years means exactly that the US has no place in international politics and should be treated as an extremely dangerous country, sanctioned by the United Nations for warcrimes, made to pay trillions in damages and slowly be re-introduced into the global village once they are demilitarized.
Iraq - I didn't agree with it. But look at the country now versus 20 years ago... it's a democracy in much better shape.
Afghanistan - we needed to take out al-Qaeda after the attacks. The country is broken, and outside actors help the Taliban continue their terrorism. You support the Taliban? Popular opinion supports the democratic government.
Libya - Russia and Turkey are the big players there now, continuing the civil war. I guess it's not as simple as you make it out to be, huh?
And yet you gloss over the countries like Japan, South Korea, Phillipines, Colombia, Eastern Europe and Western, that have all entered our sphere after war and have done amazingly economically while retaining high quality democracies.
Without the US, the world would quickly devolve back to fighting warlord/autocratic ethnostates. Or an autocratic CCP-controlled world.
Or... it's much more complicated and China has been slowly angling to usurp control (unjustly) for decades.
China has been at war with the US since the 1950s.
That's a false dillema. The choice is not between self-sufficiency and war with China, and dependency and ever-lasting peace with China.
The choice is actually between war with China when China controls all the industry, and war with China when it fails to control and restrict access to that resource.
Given the choice, achieving self-sufficiency is more likely to ensure peace/dissuade war than dependency.
Why would a war with China be inevitable?
Besides, most of the US wars in the last half century have been started because the US was dependent on another nation. It seems a self-sufficient US may actually be less likely to go to war.
We're talking about a a revisionist, expansionist state that is rising, believes the existing power to be fragile, weak, and on the decline. It isn't a question of "Viability". The CCP sees serious geopolitical benefits to an armed conflict.
Der letzte macht das Licht aus....
AI, Crypto, VR, Robots ... not a single market leader is located in the EU.
I find it amazing that after missing the internet there is no discussion in Europe on how to avoid the same fate with artificial intelligence. There is only one European website in top 100 websites. And that is an Hungarian porn site.
AI will be 10x bigger than the internet. Yet it seems Europe does not even have it on the radar.
Cypto = Switzerland basically the home of crypto if it has one
VR = Improbable. Multi $B from softbank
Robots = Europe is far ahead of the US in robotics, ABB / Universal robotics etc.
Universal Robots is owned by Teradyne, also in the US.
ABB I don't know. How are they market leaders?
Also, looking at ABB it seems this are those old industrial robots with few degrees of freedom. The future will be less specialized robots with more degrees of freedom. Powered by AI, not by explicitly coded motions.
Besides, it's fair game. The US had one of the two global leaders in AgTech in Monsanto, which was captured by the Germans. That repeatedly happens in biotech as a prominent example, most of the European biotech industry was built up on the back of acquiring US biotech companies.
Even ARM Holdings was originated heavily by US companies. There is hardly a piece of the global tech market that wasn't directly financed or made possible by the US tech industry and its mountain of profits and VC money, from SoftBank to China's tech companies to Shopify or Atlassian.
/s
If something is lacking in Europe it is:
* Scale
* The idea to dream big
VR has only a few niche applications in entertainment. Crypto is a solution in search of a problem, and a gambling platform in the meantime.
AI isn't driving our cars, handling our customer service, or analyzing our business data. Good old fashioned algorithms written by humans are now being branded by marketing as "AI" which demonstrates we don't know what AI really is and we can't fend off its redefinition.
Robots is a tricky one because it's such a broad topic. Is an arm on an assembly line a robot? What about complex farming machinery? Does it have to look anthropomorphic?
From my bearish perspective on the first three industries, Europe and the EU (these are not interchangeable terms) have a pretty good track record this last decade compared to SV
Ehhhhh, the machines that are going to be in the chip factories mentioned here for example (ASML).
Aren't the EUV lithography machines that all advanced semiconductor manufacturers are dependent on made by a Dutch company?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASML_Holding
A few months ago there was a newspiece posted here in HN about a strategic billion-euro EU program that was aimed at subsidizing chip production capacity.
https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/news/member-states-...
There is still the brain power, knowledge and money to compete with the US and China, the will and foresight is lacking. It is totally unclear that the EU could still pull this off in 30 years.
For example, ASML is an european company.
Jump-starting a manufacturing hub might be all it takes to be self-sufficient throughout the whole process.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_semiconductor_fabricat...
The US would fight to prevent China taking over Taiwan by force, and Japan and others would assist them, but if China succeeded, the US wouldn't choose to start the third world war by using weapons carelessly... it would accomplish nothing at all.
All of these companies are building in an area where it isn't clear if things will stay livable for the next 30 years.
Lots of talk about this last week:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26573236
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26568598
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26560469