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> How does it actually compare to other industries, namely defense, aerospace and oil.

The $12 billion given as the cost for TSMC's new Phoenix fab would buy you approximately 1 new Ford-class American aircraft carrier or a ~10% share in Canada's oil extraction industry.

Chip manufacturing really is the industrial big leagues.

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> 1 new Ford-class American aircraft

And that's the bullshit, $30,000-toilet seat, parts-manufactured-in-every-congressional-district, Defense Contractor Special™ price. It should really buy you three or four aircraft carriers.

Yeah the Ford-class is obnoxiously overpriced. There is no way the key metrics of an aircraft carrier (sustained sortie generation rate, survivability, long-term maintenance) improved by the leaps-and-bounds necessary to justify tripling the price compared to a late-model Nimitz-class.

> tripling the price

The last Nimitz-class carrier, CVN-77, cost $6.2 billion and was ordered in 2001, while the Ford cost $13 billion and was ordered in 2008. After adjustment for inflation in that period, it's only about 1.5x as expensive.

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