So everyone is on the "Let's build a Fab in the USA" train, will that eventually bring down the chip production costs? (not an expert in the field, so asking naively)
With any luck, COVID (and tariffs) has transformed business for the future.
Until we're far enough removed from the situation, everything is comfortable again, and the MBAs start saying "you know, if we just offshored fabrication..."
However, in this case, South Korea is also a close US ally. There is little risk to the US that the headquarters of Samsung is in South Korea.
So is Taiwan.
As insinuated in the pessimitic tone of in the interview, TSMC also appears to be very reluctant to expand beyond Taiwan and China, and is certainly less worried about geopolitical threat from China. I think it's important to note that not everyone in Taiwan is dead set against the CCP. In a pre-pandemic Pew Research Center poll[1], at least 1/3 of Taiwanese still longed for closer economic and political ties with the mainland China. I don't have any recent data, but I doubt it changed much since.
[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2020/05/12/in-taiwan-view...
Rough order of magnitude, but for a lower cost wafer (think like 90nm or above, not 7nm), electricity and energy could be about 10% of the overall cost. As a lot of the capital cost of the automation and industrial equipment is the same wherever in the world you are, that might be an important factor.
Taiwan is an island that imports almost all of its energy. Texas is an energy rich state with lots of wind, solar, and especially natural gas that is exported to the world.
We talk about higher natural gas prices in the US with Texas seeing slightly above $4/MMBTU, but LNG prices in Asia are above $35/MMBTU at the moment, nearly an order of magnitude higher. The government of Taiwan is basically eating half the entire cost of LNG right now to keep costs low for businesses and consumers, but that’s not a sustainable strategy. (At the moment, industrial electricity is about 13¢/kWh in Taiwan even with the government subsidizing most of the LNG cost and 7-8¢/kWh in Texas.)
This is 100% politically motivated.
Purifying and growing high quality wafers is very, very energy intensive. This becomes more important as Moore’s Law slows and more of chip costs become just the wafer costs.
But the main reason Texas comes up is it has a very long history in semiconductors with a big workforce and lots of semiconductor companies.
It is economically efficient to not winterize your generation capacity or build longhaul electrical transport infrastructure to move electricity regionally, but without these rarely used elements you could end up with severe load shedding or a black start event.
But of course, you can be both economically inefficient AND unreliable. California is one such example.
In general I wouldn't expect US manufacturing to do a lot to lower production costs. More capacity in general obviously helps, and I could definitely see the US doing a lot to subsidize domestic production, if that counts as bringing down the costs.
Maybe higher wages will lead to more automation.
Samsung Austin Semiconductor has been fully automated since 2008-ish. One number I was quoted was that you only need 19 technicians on the floor to run the fab, compared to 500+ pre-automation.
You might be suprised how automated it already is [1]. Notice the OHTs (Overhead Hoist Transport)[2] running on a system of highways and superhighways on the ceiling. Each of these OHTs carry a box inside it called a FOUPs (Front Opening Unified Pods)[3] carrying upto 25 wafers. That can easily be worth $1M+ per box. They have standardized JEDEC interfaces so any process tool can accept a FOUP and get wafers out of it. The environment inside these FOUPs is ridiculously clean and each one costs $15k for what most people would think is a plastic box with a door in the front. FOUPs are used internally. If wafers are shipped, they're shipped in a similar box called FOSB or Front Opening Shipping Boxes [4]. These boxes are the reason automation happens with standardized "APIs". We don't need to know who made the process tool to hand them a box of wafers.
Another automation feature are the AGVs or Automated Guided Vehicles [5] that carry the same FOUPs and FOSBs [5]. They also can be equipped with a robot arm that takes a wafer out of the box and hands it over to the tool. The AGVs run on specialized roads inside the Fab and remains docked on the tool during processing.
Usually, there are hardly any humans around the tool. Material (wafer) is fed by AMHS systems, picked up by the same. Fab is probably one of the most automated manufacturing places out there. Way more than Automotive manfacturing.
If you're looking to do software engineering, I would highly encourage people to go work in semiconductor industry. It is just a fucking cool place and lot of room for improvement still.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MRlcZqqyBM8
[2] https://www.muratec.net/cfa/products/
[3] https://www.entegris.com/shop/en/USD/Products/Wafer-Handling...
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FOUP#/media/File:Front_opening...
[5] https://www.muratec-usa.com/machinery/clean-room/transport/A...
Also, Austin (and other parts of Texas) already have a fair number of chip fabs, and have for decades. I used to work in some of them. Samsung even has existing fab capacity in Texas. So it's not such a new thing.
The related chip shortage finally woke up the US gov on supply chains.
My question is why did it take this long? I have been worried about this for nearly a decade.
My next question is how many mask factories have we built in the US since we realized that was important?
There's a guy with a small company that makes N95 masks in the US. He got pissed when they came looking for a production increase. He would be happy to increase production, but nobody was willing to buy from him long-term. They'll just go back to importing cheaper product (probably from China) after the crisis is over. He basically told them to go pound sand.
I just Googled this and it seems a bunch of companies tried to increase production: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/10/health/covid-masks-china-...
The original guy basically said nobody wants to pay for anything, and I think he's right.
Not only China, they most likely come from Wuhan where the pandemic started.
America needs to make steel again. Plastics. Chemicals.
We need to make electronics, fertilizers, tools.
Everything we need should be onshored. Especially if we expect a cold war with our biggest producer.
We can keep production in poorer countries with poor worker and environmental protections so long as those countries will clearly side with us and aren't all concentrated in China's sphere of influence. No one's doing a naval blockade of the entire US coastline. And even if they did, we also have some long land borders with allies.
BTW when I say responsible governments I don't mean democratic, but mean they care about people's education, can keep long term policies and build good infrastructures.
In general, I'd say we've been able to deal with issues by outbidding other countries and exerting international political influence.
> My next question is how many mask factories have we built in the US since we realized that was important?
We're so bad at building.
I'd add to your question with: how custom-built do factories need to be to be efficient?
I expect chip fab is very tailored, but can a t-shirt factory quickly pivot to surgical masks? How about N-95? Can a vacuum cleaner factory start building ventilators? How about HEPA filters? mRNA vaccines?
What are critical things we may need to ramp up rapidly, not just for pandemics, but for the next disaster, and can they be done without building dedicated factories just for those items?
Humans are fabulously general-purpose, so I'd imagine that the more automated the process, the more expensive it is to switch. This would put high-wage countries like the US at a disadvantage with regard to flexible domestic manufacturing. But I've no expertise in this area at all.
These are questions and guesses, not questions and answers. :-)
They are expensive, and take a long time to build.
https://www.oerlikon.com/polymer-processing/en/solutions-tec...
Look at the billions the US spends on military, all of it domestic. In US, the masks are simply less important than all that, as is healthcare in general.
It's not important. Masks don't effectively stop the transmission of SARS2 and N95 masks are only highly effective against something as infectious as SARS2 Delta if you wear them precisely as intended (and to go with that you need to take many other precautions that the mass population is never going to take with great precision on a day to day basis). Even the vaccines don't stop Delta effectively, which you can plainly see from the large outbreaks in highly vaccinated nations.
> My question is why did it take this long?
Because the US Government spends nearly all of its effort on dumb shit, like shuffling papers, playing at admin, processing lobbyist appointments, screeching out empty promises every 2-4 years, going on talk shows and managing PR, managing a globalist superpower clown show, projecting power to every corner of the globe for no great reason other than to fulfill the powerlust of those in control.
They're supposed to be running our government for our people. They're simultaneously running the equivalent of one of the world's largest governments outside of our borders. Think about that for a moment. Do I think the people in power can run the US Government, domestically, effectively? Hell no. Do I think they can then simultaneously run a gigantic other foreign system - military bases, personnel, war, huge embassies, global trade, sticking their noses in every foreign political issue and at all times - on top of that? Triple hell no.
If that happened, I'm curious what other manufacturing/product issues would impact other countries, and how long it would take them to adapt.
E.g., what tool manufacturing, raw materials mining, etc. are currently happening only in China and/or Taiwan?
And that's assuming that China didn't also sabotage industrial capabilities in other countries that depend on Chinese/Taiwanese manufacturing.
But that's what the whole point of free trade is supposed to be: increased interdependence, so that everyone has a gun to everyone else's head, and no one is incentivized to pull the trigger.
Global companies didn't just outsource all the work to China. Even in the 90s, they were aware of the risk/reward, and specifically retained high-value, low-headcount/capital work outside of China.
As a result, China makes most of a device, but many core components are imported.
https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/huawei-revenue-slides-in-q3-...
Imports, Total Estimated Value by Country, 2017 (most recent) [0]: Canada: 26,200.3, Mexico: 23,541.0, [...] China: 6,159.7
Or energy?
"In 2020, the United States exported about 8.51 MMb/d and imported about 7.86 MMb/d of petroleum1, making the United States a net annual petroleum exporter for the first time since at least 1949." [1]
Or arms?
Based and manufacturing in the US: Honeywell, Huntington Ingalls (ex: Northrup Grumman Shipbuilding), L-3, UTC, General Dynamics, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, Boeing, and Lockheed Martin [2]
If you're talking a full manpower, total war scenario that requires mobilization of the entire country's non-military industrial base...?
I think there's a reason there haven't been any wars like that between nuclear armed powers. Ever.
Because by the time it gets to that stage now, someone has fired nuclear weapons if they have them.
[0] https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/us-food-imports/us-fo...
[1] https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/oil-and-petroleum-produc...
[2] https://www.therichest.com/the-biggest/top-20-largest-arms-m...
China: Hey cool, we can destroy the US without engaging with them at all, we can just complete our takeover of Taiwan which we wanted to do anyway. We just need to make it disruptive enough to stop exports for a year or so - maybe a bit longer.
You're like a middle school kid who justifies violence with "talk shit, get hit."
How much does China pay you to shill on here day after day?
My Hong Kong friend who is pro China lives in an appartment complex where lots of yellow vests also live, and prior to the NSL every day he feared for his life, fearing that his neighbors would find out that he's pro-China and then do something to him. So much for the western coverage of the yellow vests being "pro-democracy, pro-rule of law, pro-free speech".
Are you sure that’s the article you wanted to link to?
Two Hong Kong youths have a Youtube channel on which they present views that don't align with mainstream western media. This interview is very telling: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zYK-cC9mw6c The guest on the show interviewed 100 protesters. What's interesting is that none of the protesters were able to explain what concrete change they want. The protesters merely blindly reigurated media talking points without being able to explain what's behind those talking points. None of them have actually read the NSL text.
Sound familiar? Yes: the "anti-voting fraud" Capitol rioters, who were hiding unnoble intentions behind a noble label. Many Hong Kong "protesters" were merely anti-China, not pro-democratic. They literally attacked people merely for speaking Mandarin. Ironically, one guy that was attacked was Taiwanese, not mainland Chinese.
Seeing how they literally burned innocent people[3], vandalized public infrastructure, vandalized mainland Chinese busineses merely for being mainland Chinese, made petrol bombs[4], etc. is it really reasonable to expect China to do absolutely nothing? Bringing back safety to the streets is what any government would do. After it was clear that they'd never send in tanks, people moved the goalpost and started demonizing the NSL but few people know what's actually in the NSL.
Demise of Hong Kong's rule of law are exaggerated. Even after the NSL, Hong Kong's judiciary remains fiercely independent — with evidence.[5]
[1] The NED is the regime change arm of the CIA. Despite the name, they are anti-democratic, having overthrown democratic regimes that refuse to align with the US. They publicly admit having sponsored the Hong Kong protests: https://www.ned.org/region/asia/hong-kong-china-2020/
[2] Videos: https://twitter.com/DanielDumbrill/status/116629626167206297...
[3] https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/law-and-crime/article/30...
[4] https://twitter.com/SCMPHongKong/status/1195968903748317184
[5] https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/hong-kong/article/31480...
Your comment is vastly disproportionate, and does not explain what happened.
Your comment suggests the following:
- Hong Kong’s protest was mainly due to sponsorship by the US, that is, it would not happen to this scale without US’s sponsorship (via NED).
- Hong Kong’s protest was mainly undemocratic (using your examples).
When discussing a social movement of this scale (millions went to the street, protests went on for half a year, with aftermath still affecting current events), we must judge whether your examples represent the majority or the extremely rare minority of what happened.
Just like the social movement led by Mahatma Gandhi, the movement led by Martin Luther King, or the recent BLM movement would not change much even if hundreds of protestors did things that go against the main thrust of the movements (which did happen).
To make this concrete: imagine blaming the BLM on CCP because they supported it [1], which is absurd [2].
We know that:
- The pro-democracy group had a landslide victory in the 2019 election (during the protests) [3].
- Many Hong Kongers left Hong Kong after the National Security Law [4][5]: a higher percentage of Hong Kongers left Hong Kong after the NSL than German left East Berlin after the split of Berlin.
Blaming the Hong Kong protests on CIA, NED, and the US does not explain the above events. Just like blaming the BLM on CCP does not explain the trend.
A much simpler explanation is that Hong Kongers do not like CCP rule, and they show it in the protests, in the election (when conducted fairly, without screening of candidates), and in their acts of leaving (when faced with the NSL and screening of candidates in future elections).
I suspect that the popularity rating of CCP, or of Kim’s regime in North Korea, would plummet if people know what is going on (that is, when the state censorship and propaganda are gone) and they are allowed to express themselves (for example, with a fair election). We just see this happened in Hong Kong.
[1]: https://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2020/07/01/commentary/w...
[2]: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/18/technology/no-a-black-liv...
[3]: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/nov/24/hong-kong-resi...
[4]: https://news.yahoo.com/almost-90-000-people-left-040718900.h...
[5]: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/11/world/asia/hong-kong-popu...
I do not believe that the HK protests were mainly due to US sponsorship (even if they were a contributing factor). My point was rather that it's unreasonable to expect a country to not respond to foreign sponsorship with security measures.
I do not believe that the HK protests were mainly undemocratic. However, the undemocratic and violent faction had effectively taken over, while the actually democratic faction failed in reigning this former faction in, so in my opinion trying to rhetorically separate them is a waste of time.
I do not agree with you that the CCP's popularity in the mainland is fake. There are multiple studies that show that their popularity is real.[1][2] The difference is between mainlanders and Hong Kongers is that many Hong Kongers don't have first-hand experience with how the mainland is governed and how the mainland has improved, and that the media regularly injects disinformation. Mainlanders know about Hong Kong, but they disagree. You can blame it on propaganda, but even mainlanders who have moved outside the mainland and who have been exposed to western media, don't tend to change their stance on Hong Kong.
[1] https://ash.harvard.edu/files/ash/files/final_policy_brief_7...
[2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/05/05/did-pande...
What bugs me most is that the criminals are getting away with a good reputation in the west, who wholly paints them as "pro-democracy freedom fighters".
It also bugs me that a lot (not sure how many, but a lot) of protesters don't know what sort of freedom they want. Check the Keybros interview I linked: why could none of the 100 protesters articulate what concrete freedoms they are missing? Why are the protesters mostly younger people who have never lived under British colonial times? There is something deeply disingenuous among a part of the protester movement. I hope they can recognize that economic trouble (e.g. cage houses) is one of the reasons, and I hope that Hong Kong will do something about that. If these protesters think that life in Britain is really better, then they should experience it firsthand and come to their own conclusion on whether their protest was right or not.
What I hope for is more reconciliation between mainland and Hong Kong. I even hope that Hong Kong will get more democracy, namely universal suffrage and a strong Common Law-based rule of law environment. However I want Hong Kongers to be honest about things, and I want more democracy/rule of law at the same time as a Hong Kong that is proud of being part of China, and at the same time where criminals aren't swept under a rug for political reasons. One Country Two Systems, not Two Country Two Systems.
I am not questioning CCP’s current popularity in Mainland (or Kim’s current popularity in North Korea), given their current control (including in education and media, both propaganda and censorship). When the population were brought up that way, even when presented with opposing view points their thinking is skewed (compared with many other democratic countries), and considers things as conflicts of super powers or humiliation by foreigners. Such thinking frequently persists and affects their actions even after they move outside of China (censor Hong Kong and Xinjiang in FANNG [1]), even in face of opposing evidence (linking Xinjiang to CCP [2]). Many of the Chinese population are effectively exporting their values to the world [3].
For a concrete example, even when foreign sponsorship does not pose material threats, some Chinese would suggest disproportionate responses (such as to consider draconian security measures and the National Security Law, resulting in arrests of the majority of democratic candidates [4]). This is disproportionate because UK and other European nations would not take comparable measures against comparable foreign sponsorship (by CCP). Just like in the US, Texas Secession could be discussed and supported without similar consequences to the NSL in Hong Kong [5]. This shows the resilience of their political systems, and by contrast CCP is overreacting.
Gaining popularity this way may be fine for CCP (or for Kim) for now, but when the system becomes unstable (due to declining economy and shrinking population), things may start to crack. The problem is not that it is fake, the problem is that the system (by censoring dissent and pointing fingers at others inconsistently) is unsustainable. And at least, this is why CCP and Kim do not currently have as high popularity in Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, Sweden, Czech, Germany, France, or elsewhere.
[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27649830
[2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29384161
[3]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21194083
[4]: https://apnews.com/article/legislature-primary-elections-dem...
[5]: https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/obama-administrat...
> It also bugs me that a lot (not sure how many, but a lot) of protesters _don't know what sort of freedom they want_.
Many Hong Kongers want CCP to leave them alone, which was the implicit contract behind the 1997 hand over of Hong Kong. To be more specific, Hong Kongers want to run the city their way (including have their elected representatives not being arrested [4]), and not having laws inserted into their mini-constitution (Basic Law) against their will, to respect their differences—more or less the way Hong Kong was run before 2019. Incidentally, I think that’s what most Tibetans originally wanted, and what most Taiwanese currently want (against unification), too.
Wanting CCP to leave them alone was the main theme behind the 5 demands in the 2019 protest. What they don’t know is how to achieve it, when faced with CCP, the PLA and the massive Chinese population.
I am less worried about them not knowing exactly what or how to achieve the freedom they want, just like the population of Singapore, Taiwan, Japan, or South Korea might not know exactly what they wanted during their democratization (I would not be surprised by a Keybros interview when they democratized. BTW, if you want to know what the protestors think outside of cameras or Keybros, check out https://www.thestandnews.com/). Ignoring the selection bias, not everyone is as articulate, but this does not stop the trend of democratization. They democratized by trial and error 摸著石頭過河, and things work out fine for them. Same for Hong Kong.
> why could none of the 100 protesters articulate what concrete freedoms they are missing?
How did the Keybros interview avoid the selection bias?
> Why are the protesters mostly younger people who have never lived under British colonial times?
The younger ones have less burden and could go to the streets, the older ones with more burden supported them. See the election result for the proof [6].
> There is something deeply disingenuous among a part of the protester movement.
Hong Kongers want to say No to CCP, but this could not be said out loud with the PLA standing by. This is the disingenuous part. (Just like many protests in China would be prefaced with a support of the CCP, however contradictory and disingenuous sometimes it could get. Also, many Taiwanese wanted to say so, but again need to consider the threat of the PLA.) This is why many Hong Kongers left when they still could [6], they vote with their feet, if they could not vote with their hands.
[6]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29346205
> One Country Two Systems, not Two Country Two Systems.
CCP said that first to Tibet in 1951, then to Hong Kong in 1984. Seeing what happened, now in 2021 even the Nationalist party KMT in Taiwan is rejecting One Country Two Systems. Sometimes we need to learn from history.
Worth noting that there is a huge difference between “Rule of Law” and “Rule by Law”: China only has “Rule by Law”, not “Rule of Law” [1][2], because Rule of Law requires Judiciary Independence (hence “having Rule of Law” is incompatible with “being part of China”, as CCP stated explicitly [3]).
To make this concrete, let’s use the recent event of Peng Shuai’s allegation as an example. The accused ex-Premier Zhang Gaoli could be guilty or not, but under Rule of Law—where no one is above law, not even the party or prominent party members—he must go through the same process as other accused. This is the only way to show that criminals aren't swept under a rug for political reasons (such as because Zhang Gaoli was close to Xi Jinping during their time in Shenzhen). Putting the party or prominent party member above law (or behind some opaque process) is NOT Rule of Law.
And a huge disagreement causing the Hong Kong protest is due to deteriorating Rule of Law [4], due to worsening democracy in Hong Kong (the legislative council does not represent the majority opinion). This had been voiced out by a judge of Court of Final Appeal [5] and some prominent lawyer [6].
[2]: https://www.swp-berlin.org/10.18449/2021C28/
[3]: https://www.thestandnews.com/china/習近平-法治要從國情出發-決不能走西方-司法獨立-...
[4]: https://www.thestandnews.com/politics/8-4-將軍澳遊行-參加者高太-香港已由法治...
[5]: https://www.thestandnews.com/politics/包致金-香港只享有-類法治-應改變沒有民主也...
[6]: https://www.thestandnews.com/politics/石永泰-亂談法治-會為政權錯誤鍍金
Indeed, the 2021 Report to Congress by U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission points out (p. 458 of [7]):
Judiciary Independent in Name Only
Hong Kong’s historically independent judiciary is no longer reliably impartial on cases related to matters the Chinese government deems sensitive, since the National Security Law has cemented Beijing’s right to determine which judges hear national security cases in which jurisdiction, almost guaranteeing outcomes the CCP prefers.
Hence, if you wish for Judiciary Independence and Rule of Law of Hong Kong, you would object the NSL, like the protestors did correctly.
This is the reason that comparing the protestors to Capitol rioters, as China did [8], is disingenuous [9].
[8]: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-01-07/communist...
[9]: https://qz.com/1953776/dont-compare-trumps-insurrection-with...
Given the difficulty of maintaining Rule of Law under One Country Two Systems (as Tibet and Hong Kong showed), your hope of Rule of Law would object One Country Two Systems.
Also, before demonizing Two Country Two Systems, have you experienced it firsthand and come to your own conclusion? Do you know what you are disagreeing with?
Given the disinformation campaign of CCP [10], that is, CCP regularly injects disinformation into media (or in this case, deliberately confusing “Rule of Law” with “Rule by Law” in a newspeak way [1][2]), it is hard for Mainlanders to know about Hong Kong and have an informed opinion, even when they moved outside China.
[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelpeck/2020/08/11/north-ko...
Here's a massive artillery drill they held just a few days ago.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-11-07/north-kor...
We have fabs in the USA right now. To speak of Austin alone, Samsung's own S2 has been here since the late 90s, and there are a handful of others here, too.
If we buy local, it creates domestic jobs. Wages go up too.
We need to onshore more.
The effective erosion itself is a policy choice, there is this thing called 'minimum wage' which you can use to make sure that there is more than just 'warm bodies' as the lowest common denominator in job requirements, and as a result everything above that has to be 'upgraded' to a higher standard as well, otherwise people aren't willing to do the work (just like is happening now). The examples are all around you.
There is no onshoring of talent or natural resources since they are not 'constructed' the same way and importing those are against the current ideas/fears of immigration and relying on third parties for goods.
In other words: globalisation isn't a choice, it's a side-effect from the needs of humanity. Reverting to a more primitive state that decreases those needs could be a path, but I doubt anyone would choose that willingly.
Besides those things, there is this concept of ideals or principles which are almost as important and it doesn't require any extreme form of meddling either. If people really care about something (say, the well-being of other humans and therefore not really being happy with an authoritarian regime somewhere) then that can be incentive enough. And if it isn't then some protectionism won't be enough either.
> We need to onshore more.
Simple solutions to overly complex problems is not the answer.
First, manufacturing output has steadily increased since the 90s. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/INDPRO
Second, the number of manufacturing jobs have steadily declined since the 90s. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MANEMP
How is this possible? Automation. These plants aren't creating US jobs and increasing wages, they're simply creating more wealth for corporations which they would have done anyway overseas. And since Samsung is a Korean company, the wealth is being created in Korea, not the US.
They're also resolving some pretty serious national security concerns, so...
Yeah I mean look at how China has grown the last 25 years with their fully open markets. </sarcasm>
Every approach has pluses and minuses. Putting your own first is common and healthy. The US has been failing to do this for some time now, and the economy is pinned in a corner with no easy way out.
Just like the US in the late 1800 century, they also had some protectionism. But it crazy to suggest that is the main reason why they were successful.
Nobody says government should make important technology investment, have some strategic supply chain and so on. However just blanked Trump style protectionism across random industries is not really the solution to anything.
> Putting your own first is common and healthy.
This is a myth of what protectionism achieves. You protect some sector but potentially damaging other sectors considerably. The US protects Flordia suger farmers and as a result everybody else pays more for sugar.
Most of the time its groups that can lobby effectively that get tariffs and those groups then profit against the benefit of everybody else.
Whatever happened to taking pride in what we make and buy? Quality over quantity? Paying more for something better? Looking out for your neighbors and community by supporting their gainful employment? Independence from countries that literally hate us?
It wasn’t long ago at all that we were making most of the stuff we bought. It’s time to go back to that. Call out every company you see that doesn’t make their products in the USA and ask when they’re going to stop selling out their own neighbors just for a buck.
At seems like you have some delusional fantasy that the world could run on locally made artisanal goods and that those goods then magically have more 'soul' (whatever that is) and would be better for the environment. And even if that was the case, these products would still depend on international supply chain.
Its equally false to suggest that everything outside of the US is made in sweatshops. China doesn't dominate because of sweatshops, but because going down stream, mining, refining. These are complex operations, requiring lots of educated engineering, capital and vision. Look at a company like CATL that is powering much of the worlds EVs. This is a company that exploded in growth in a highly complex industry.
> Paying more for something better?
So like car from Japan, Europe and soon China?
Where are you getting those high quality electronics, batteries, refined rare earths and so on? Please tell me the US companies who produce all these amazing things that are so much better then those from the international competition
> It wasn’t long ago at all that we were making most of the stuff we bought.
Who is 'we'? The US? Your family? Are you advocating to go back to per modernism where every woman was doing 40h of weaving for the family to have cloth?
The US never produced everything it needed. In modern history international supply chains are a thing.
And this was most true after the US literally bombed the shit out of Europe and Japan. And China was destroyed by Japan. Soviets and China turned communist. Maybe do that again and you can again do that? Even then it was the US and the British empire.
> Call out every company you see that doesn’t make their products in the USA and ask when they’re going to stop selling out their own neighbors just for a buck.
You can't fix problem by calling people out. If you force companies to make 'everything local' then they will simply no longer be internationally competitive.
If you seriously think to just cut of the US from the rest of the world would lead to a higher standard of living you are sorely mistaken.
Your level of understanding of the connection between international trade and living standards seems to be totally lacking. Your suggestion to just 'guilt' (or assuming with fines or whatever) every company into buying all local is a surefire way to completely destroy the economy and the competitiveness of the US.
And its simply anti-democratic. People might be willing to pay 1% more if something is marketed as locally produced. But most of the time people don't actually care. And they never cared. People care about themselves and their families and their standard of live. If Japan makes better cars, they will not simply buy American because its made in Detroit. The same goes for everything else.
If you want to improve standards of living, just cutting yourself of from international trade is literally the worst thing to do.
I stopped reading right there, in the future please hesitate to use self-defeating arguments like this in your counter arguments.
And you can make trade better for everyone period if you redistribute some of the gains of trade to those that it makes worse off. But… we don’t always do that…
It's not protectionism. It's anti-fragility. It's having strong domestic capabilities to meet our every need and not suffer when the world is uncertain.
It's having jobs and prospects for our future generations. The hope Millennials and Gen Z have is dim, and I can point my finger at a huge contributing cause.
If people don't want to buy a product because it is inferior in some way, the solution isn't to ban superior products but to upgrade those inferior products to be superior again. And inferiority/superiority doesn't just mean quality, it can also mean features and the price-quality balance in itself. At the same time, the rest of the world doesn't "go away" if you construct an island within your borders that nobody is allowed to join, so at best it's going to end up in some sort of useless industrial-cold-war.
This is the refrain of those who do not understand reflexivity, and third-order analysis.
This analysis is correct to the first and even second-order effects, but completely misses the importance of slipstreaming floor expertise / experience into design and engineering iterating, or even holistic support. This kind of economic caste system thinking just as surely shackles the US as the Indian social caste system shackles that nation with enormous untapped potential.
I routinely make LinkedIn friends and actively solicit input from the operations people in all of my client organizations, and this has repaid me many times over. Where others within their very own organizations, much less outside consultants, snub these "lower tiered hierarchies", shedding light upon their experiences and expertise has taught me many valuable lessons about software design, debugging, implementation, and product management, among many other areas.
I learned to do this from reading about the nuts and bolts of how Japanese automakers applied Deming's quality principles. IMHO the buried lede in those stories wasn't all the charts and reports artifacts (similar to the Agile artifacts we use in our industry), but to my mind it was the attitudinal changes that flew in the face of common human hierarchical predispositions. Because it is a massive organizational cultural shift often enmeshed in wider prevailing ethnographic contexts, it is one of the most difficult leadership-led transformations to conduct.
One can get away with the hollowing out effect in the beginning, and if there is sufficient "mass" of value to strip in the industry to mask the effect, it can even be carried out through a couple more product and technology cycles to second-order ramifications as various affiliated supply chains are also stripped out. But once it reaches third-order ramifications often loftily projected as, "while we lead the toiling-for-peanuts offshore masses with our brilliant sales/marketing/product/accounting insights, the supercharged stock bonuses will just roll on in!", it is when reality slaps them in the face and they find out that those same "junior", "lower tiered hierarchies" toss aside the "onshore leadership" to cut out the middlemen to the customers.
After one is never too proud nor too lofty to lead from the front, be happily willing to (if even for a moment) do anything one would ask their direct reports or even their recursive direct reports to do, so to speak "sleep on the factory floor" if need be, a torrent of insights that would normally do not occur during design and engineering stages become available.
Europe: https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/tech-is-make-or-break-i...
Germany: https://www.infineon.com/cms/en/about-infineon/press/press-r...
Korea: https://fortune.com/2021/05/13/south-korea-chip-semiconducto...
Japan: https://www.aroged.com/2021/11/23/japan-has-allocated-5-2-bi...
Non-OP USA: https://9to5mac.com/2021/06/09/us-chip-production-52b/
Key players are expecting an all out war with China:
France: https://www.economist.com/europe/2021/03/31/the-french-armed...
Taiwan: https://thediplomat.com/2021/10/taiwan-says-it-is-preparing-...
Australia: https://au.news.yahoo.com/chilling-warning-of-australias-rol...
AUKUS: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/sep/16/what-is-the...
Japan: https://hamlinemidwayhistory.org/japanese-aircraft-carriers-...
China is fully aware of the cold war: https://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory/chinas-leader-xi-w...
Let me blow your mind far more:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentagon_UFO_videos
These aren't hillbillies. This is US government technology recording and confirming UFOs.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/pentagon-ufo-report-released-ma...
And nobody is talking about it? This is completely related to the war with china.
It's all an attempt to prevent war with China. Though that does mean a peasant revolt in china is coming.
> It's all an attempt to prevent war with China.
So the Chinese have UFOs and we have a war with China but we are moving chip production to all these countries you mentioned to prevent the ongoing war with China?
I’d like to give you the benefit of the doubt here though. I think if you were able to be a little more clear I’d at least understand what you intend to say, but I find your comments here a bit confusing.
> And nobody is talking about it? This is completely related to the war with china.
Who isn’t talking about it? Assuming you’re talking about poor relations (“Cold War”) and/or loving chip production. It seems to me to be pretty common knowledge and is widely reported in global media sources and the Internet. Don’t the links you provide demonstrate that?
The UFO releases are either about telling China that we are aware of and can track their surveillance assets, showing China our new highly advanced classified assets, or else demonstrating the superiority of our current Air Force assets.
Both activities serve to dissuade the Chinese military from taking aggressive actions.
The White House recently identified semiconductors as an essential product critical to US national security [1]. These actions by the US and allies to onshore fabs is part of the adjustment to defuse a supply chain risk caused by potential future actions by China.
During the Cold War, both sides used strategic release of classified information on capabilities to notify the war planners on the other side in order to prevent miscalculations that could lead to a nuclear exchange. This is common knowledge and a good tactic to tamper escalation. It would be extremely irresponsible to surprise a nuclear peer with new capabilities.
[1] https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases...
I’m not sure I buy your reasoning though. I don’t understand how effective blocking the use of US technology by SMIC will be given the propensity for IP theft, so I don’t see how it furthers the goal of preventing China from becoming self-sufficient. Nor would I really agree with the assumption that they are not already self-sufficient.
The semiconductor industry is extremely R&D heavy. You can't just steal your way into success. It is also heavily dependend on a global network of specialized suppliers and is one of the most complex supply chains on earth.
Even Chinese media says that they are not yet self sufficient. They predict that SMIC will become able to produce 28nm and above using only domestic inputs by the end of 2022, but that's just ability and doesn't factor in manufacturing scale to handle the corresponding demand.
Making 14nm fully domestic takes a bit longer -- maybe 2 years more. Chinese media and experts say that if they scale up 14nm and above, then that satisfies 70% of the demand.
To go further than about 7nm you need EUV lithography, which only has 1 supplier in the world, and the US is blocking that. How long it takes for China to independently develop EUV is unknown. Universities have made small breakthroughs in subfields here and there but they're still far away from the full solution.
For most military applications, 28nm process is comfortably sufficient - USAF 5th generation aircraft were designed and flying before 28nm.
I’m not convinced that there is any real need right now for <14nm process besides striving for market share. Market share which is itself reorganizing around new ISAs. EUV is a (amazingly clever) Rube-Goldberg machine.
Except they increasingly fly their fighter jets in Taiwan's airspace. And regularly engage in deadly border disputes with India. And continue to conduct cyberwarfare.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-58794094
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020%E2%80%932021_China%E2%80%...
https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/l...
Except that the border dispute with India was caused by the British, who randomly drew some borders somewhere that parties then later disagree with. India also has border disputes with non-China neighbors. China already tried to solve this diplomatically, for example by trading areas that India claims but are defacto China-controlled and vice versa, but India refused all deals so far because they want to claim in all.
Do note that China (PRC) has already given up land in the past as part of diplomatic deals. Check Vladivostok. Check the whole of Mongolia.
Western coverage of China’s border conflicts are extremely distorted. In the ASEAN summit, southeast asian nations are upgrading strategic ties with China.
https://www.france24.com/en/video/20211028-asean-summit-sout...
Many countries are worried about AUKUS. Malaysia planed China consultations as anxiety simmers over defence pact.
https://amp.scmp.com/week-asia/economics/article/3149713/mal...
Is it China's UFOs? I don't think so.
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/28/elon-musk-says-the-fighter-j...
Elon is 100% correct the fighter jet era is over. Did you know Elon was on Trump's tech council? https://www.engadget.com/2017-06-01-elon-musk-leaves-trump-c...
>I’d like to give you the benefit of the doubt here though. I think if you were able to be a little more clear I’d at least understand what you intend to say, but I find your comments here a bit confusing.
The blow your mind factor is hard to address because of the roswell factor. I 100% don't believe those UFOs are extraterrestrials.
>Who isn’t talking about it? Assuming you’re talking about poor relations (“Cold War”) and/or loving chip production. It seems to me to be pretty common knowledge and is widely reported in global media sources and the Internet. Don’t the links you provide demonstrate that?
I guess I didn't make that clear. Obviously it's being talked about.
I guess step back for a second. The war with china is obvious. I never even talked about cyber aspect of the war, its not relevant exactly. A nuclear bomb is going to do more in the war than some BGP route stealing tech. The irony of it all, it's China's capitalist zones that are going to be robbed for 'common prosperity' at the same time that the cold war kills those zones like Evergrande situation.
If there's danger of a peasant revolt, war with the US would be a pretty effective way to prevent it.
French Economist article archive: https://archive.md/fcTkA ("brigades, or a division" sure doesn't sound like WWII)
Grauniad AUKUS article archive: https://archive.md/LFsoo
Lots of militaries prepared for conflict. OK.
What do the pentagon UFO releases have to do with war with China? You say it's completely related, would you elaborate?
And a peasant revolt in China? That's a big statement and I'd like to know more about your reasoning.
Yes, if there's one thing we should have learned from WWII, it's that capitulating to land-grabs results in the bad-actor stopping. If we just let them take over the entirety of the South China Sea, Taiwan, and maybe just half of the African nations they've been lending money to who will never be able to repay their debts, they'll definitely be satisfied and stop. Korea, Japan, and India have nothing to worry about. Nothing at all...
Your arguments were about eg Africa, which is obviously similar to the Marshall Plan.
They’ve been annexing parts of Nepal for the last decade. They are attempting to claim parts of the South China Sea that belong to multiple neighbors.
Violating the agreement they made with the UK is essentially annexing Hong Kong.
The Marshall Plan was absolutely nothing like what China is doing and to claim so is utter ignorance of what is happening whether intentional or not. Given your responses so far I’ll assume it’s intentional.
You still have not provided a single example of what you’re accusing the US of.
Noam Chomsky recently wrote similar to this. The military threat is really against china.
The point of a cold war is to prevent a real war. So when you hear about dick waving of the US military and allies. IT's about warning China from doing anything.