TSMC’s assertion “We’re the best, don’t even try competing” strikes me as “fear masked by false bravado” - a bit pointless, really.
The US is not capable of having a national policy on anything, because power is too fractured and fragile. Which is not a bad thing overall necessarily, but it is a bad thing in this case.
Taiwan is a small unitary state, as is South Korea. The governments of both know that the national interest and their chipbuilders’ interests are aligned. In Taiwan’s case especially so.
There is always a huge gulf between what modern nations COULD do and what they actually WILL do. In the west, we're allergic to making any sort of painful decision or any sort of delayed gratification. That's why the war on terror has blown back so hard. Could the Nato liberate Afghanistan? Of course! Did it? No, we spent 20 years mismanaging it then gave up.
Personally, I'd put this in the same category as Universal healthcare or green energy or fixing education. Of course we can do it. But we won't.
>Backed by the might of its own economy, surely the US can rebuild dominance in any technological area it happens to choose given its strategic position and aims?
Saudi Arabia’s king can give their people all the money they want, but they will not be able to buy the technical and management expertise and culture that takes decades to develop without waiting decades for it to develop, with the risk that it does not.
I cannot even get my mom’s baking/frying recipes to produce the same taste and textures that she can, yet I was the one watching and documenting them multiple times.
If US has destroyed its human capital in chipmaking, it will take decades to rebuild.
And while doing so, it must navigate the same political system that makes it impossible for California to build a train
Money and fear, as we have seen, is a powerful motivator.
They were so appauled at the political disfunction, they quit the project. They started one in morocoo instead - its already operating while the californian one is nor even 50% complete.
Your political disfunction is part of the package. Incompetent management is too. You cant just hire 1 expert software engineer into dysfunctional conoany and expect great results
Sufficient is an important word, and sufficient expertise is not abundant in the business this thread is referring to. That is why Apple can lock up the most advanced chip supplies, that is why only one business in Taiwan makes it, why only one business in Netherlands can help the one in Taiwan make it, and why only one business in Germany can help the one in Netherlands make it.
Not that Apple and USG are not more or less indispensable than TSMC/ASML/Zeiss, that is neither here nor there. The point is some things simply have no fungibility, and hence you cannot buy your way out of it.
If 2 billionaires got trapped on an island with all their wealth in cash, and neither knew how to build a boat or sail, all that cash is not going to help them avoid having to figure out how to build a boat and navigate the seas in sufficient time to survive.
My argument is it is possible the US cannot throw money at it until it is resolved, perhaps due to the R&D not resulting in success, due something external that causes US to lose ability to throw money at it, due to something internal that causes US to not politically support it, enough people not sufficiently interested in the sciences, etc.
The Russians also assumed that "throwing money" at problems, like maintaining a huge army, would somehow resolve them without having to actually do the nasty job of, you know, solving problems at their roots.
When push came to shove, it turned out that all the money went to some place nobody knows, but the problem stayed and got even bigger.
They are always trying to poach engineers from TSMC,Samsung and others by offering N-times the salaries and it resulted in no significant gains.
You can't just throw money at people and get them to come work for you wherever you are. Only some people will take the opportunity, others will decide other things are more important than money.
Culture matters more than money and Western culture is on a downward spiral.
Culture does matter, but its pretty clear the west is the entrepreneurial engine of the global economy and that doesn’t seem likely to change.
At the same time Portugal was a bunch of poor fishermen trying to get past a sandbank on the African coast.