Ask HN: Why does the west, especially USA, not clone TSMC?

10 points by hidden-spyder ↗ HN

8 comments

[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 28.1 ms ] thread
Cost and lack of skilled workers. Fabs cost billions to build, then you need to have lots of guys working there who have lots of knowledge and experience.

The difficult part about bringing manufacturing back to the US is not the cost of rebuilding the factories but the loss of all those skilled workers over the last 30 years who have retired, died, or been retrained, or just plain old forgotten what they once knew.

How many people are even needed? Is it not possible to teach enough people in a decade? It's not like the knowledge is lost.
It's not knowledge per se, it's the personal experience and skills of the workers.

Like the old joke about the blacksmith's invoice and the hammer.

We doing it here in Phoenix
Which is a horrible place to have a fab because of the massive amounts of water needed.
Why doesn't anyone clone anyone?

Why don't I clone Apple? Or AMD?

Let me think about it...

The major concern is what if government-funded industry such as this succeeds, thereby encouraging more of it, the slippery slope to state capitalism and then Marx. The term escapes me, but it's some sort of neoliberal woo woo I can't quite remember. It does look rather iffy when you're whaa whaa'ing China for its state-funded industry when you're state funding industry, in other words. Socialism bad. Cooties! Everybody run! All that jazz.