> good foresight
I'd call it luck.
I doubt that in the planning stages they could anticipate the auto industry order-then-Pandemic-cancel-then-order-again wave that messed up the logistics of the semiconductor industry.
I'd call it luck.
I doubt that in the planning stages they could anticipate the auto industry order-then-Pandemic-cancel-then-order-again wave that messed up the logistics of the semiconductor industry.
And chip being important to cars has been known for a long time with stories going back to 2013 within the industry. So you can at least infer that Bosch knew this for a long time. This is their second Fab and it was planned in 2017 and confirmed in 2018.
It is like TSMC, all of a sudden everyone talks about it. But in pre-2015 hardly anyone knew them or heard of it. Those that heard of it only thought they Fab chips for Nidia. It was Apple that bring them to the forefront.
Sometimes I just think mainstream media is such an unreliable source of information I am wondering if there are any point reading them at all other than to gather the flow of current society sentiment.
Bingo. I forget the name for this law/effect, but at some point everyone runs across a story in the mainstream news about which you happen to be more knowledgeable than the author/reporter/"expert guest" and the veil is lifted for a moment and you think "wow they really don't have any idea what they're talking about!" But then they go on to trust the opinion of these same outlets on economics or foreign policy, etc.
> other than to gather the flow of current society sentiment.
Even this I wouldn't trust. Perhaps if you treat it loosely as "the zeitgeist of manufactured consent" or "what They want you to think is the current society sentiment"
I don't know if the media I consume is "mainstream media" but I haven't seen anyone blame TSMC.
AMD also had a fab until around 2008 in Dresden.
Zhou Enlai: "I believe it is too early to tell."
(This quote, while authentic, is too good to be true - the quote harks from 1972, and in context it is evident they are discussing the 1968 student unrest, not the 1789 revolution. Still...)
It isn't always impossible to make good general predictions. For example, some papal encyclicals have predicted with spot on accuracy the general character of how things will develop long before they did if certain things aren't sorted out. These sorts of predictions, in part, benefit from concerning the unfolding of philosophical (and theological) beliefs, beliefs which contains within themselves their own logical entailments. So these encyclicals weren't predicting particularities like "what will be the stock price of Amazon in 2030" or "who will win the presidency in 2030 and will this president like ham", but rather the general prevailing conditions, attitudes, etc. characterizing future generations and the resulting social order, for example.
2) Other countries build chip foundries to capitalize on the uncertainty
3) The risk of China provoking world war by reclaiming control over Taiwan reduces to an acceptable level, and they take over
4) No one cares because the supply of iPhones and Alexas is not disrupted
My guess is that they see this sort of diversification from reliance on China as inevitable. They resist it of course (see 5G equipment in Europe) but their investments throughout the rest of the world paint a picture of supporting developing nations economically to the point that as they grow & prosper, they grow into client states of China.
This actually presents a bit of peril though. China is not going to be thrilled that its industrial influence is on the decline, and the question is "How will they respond?"
We already know part of the response: We can see it play out in the contentious situation regarding adoption of 5G equipment in Europe. There is also the fact that China is investing enormous sums of money in foreign ventures and areas of the developing world, e.g., parts of Africa. These areas may effectively become client states to China.
It is, in some ways, a very interesting response to the failed methods employed by the Soviet Union. There, client states were obtained & held largely through military means. That was done either with the threat of force to client states to keep in line, or military support for regimes or regime change, for example North Vietnam.
Especially having some experience with those endeavors, China has moved on to non-military methods-- economic development. That is probably preferable to the threat massive global conflict, or even just lots of smaller ones, but if you worry about China expanding their values throughout the world, in being more effective it is also more worrying.
Probably about the best thing we can do is the path we have started on: diversification from reliance on China, and our own support in equal or greater measures of the developing world.
I should be clear though: when I talk of expanding China's values as a negative, I always mean that in the political sense of the repressive Chinese government, not the people themselves.
In contrast to smaller nations, the EU as a whole is too large to ignore even if we aren't following the line of the cold war superpowers. We can do our own thing and cooperate where it suits us.
On another note, your example of Vietnam is pretty ridiculous, as the situation was the other way around - the US invaded and committed genocide in what was originally a one-sided civil war, in the name of "holding the red wave".
Vietnam wasn't a shining example of human rights, but US policy in this case was abysmal and led to the death of millions of people. And the fact that the US stil does not not accept that they committed a genocide speaks volumes about the moral integrity defenders of the Trans-Atlantic alliance like to bring up.
Well just for your information, they are not. The so called chip shortage is because a Renesas factory which produces microcontrollers burned down. To put this into perspective is like Intel using one of his fabs: you have the motherboard but no processor. Usually changing a component is no big deal but in this case is like a complete redesign.
So i do not see any link here between Bosch and TSMC.( except that they both make "chips").
Also, at that time it was obvious that power electronics was going to be in high demand, especially of SiC type.
And in terms of the fragility of the world's industrial and economic engines, perhaps this is a realization that globalization has gone too far and the pendulum needs to swing more towards slightly higher self-sufficiency. Not even for some philosophy of anti-globalism, but merely because things are too brittle as they are now.