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Comment by 0xy | Hacker News Reader

If they're propping Intel up as their last bastion of chip superiority they've already lost. The US knows they need to defend Taiwan with the full weight of their military resources. This means war in the event of an invasion or takeover.

If the US loses influence over Taiwan and subsequently TSMC, they've lost. In this phase of global geopolitics, whoever controls the chips has the influence. You can't do anything without compute resources.

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How important is it, strategically, to have the most advanced process tech? As far as I know, military tech tends to lag commercial significantly.

Only so much as it leads to faster AI.

I think this is a good answer.

I'm not sure that I've personally bought in to the AI revolution, but it sounds like it's generally agreed to be the future.

At the same time, there is so much room for basic improvement in the defense space. I have a hard time believing 5nm vs 10nm is a serious problem when half the vetronics system is analog.

But yes, in a big picture strategic sense, AI capabilities seems like the area most likely to pose a serious risk by not leading the world in chip technology.

Old military tech also has a longer shelf life. There are lots of military installations that were built before the internet.

Interestingly, there was a time when Intel's Fabs were the industry's absolute best. They were far ahead.

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