I have no knowledge of the situation, why did they choose Arizona?
replies(7):
Sometimes it seems that EU politicians want to be seen as cutting a hard bargain with industry that they actually harm themselves and the EU. A big example was with the COVID vaccines. The EU felt the need to be seen as striking a good bargain, that for want of a few Euros per dose, they missed out getting the vaccine much earlier. With chips, if you really want the EU to be at the cutting edge of tech, you need these cutting edge fabs in the EU.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_manufacturing_si...
https://www.chipsetc.com/semiconductors-in-arizona.html
"The state of Arizona has been home to many semiconductor & electronics manufacturing Companies since the 1950's, including the SouthWest's Pioneer Semiconductor Company - Motorola. Motorola's research and development lab in Phoenix introduced the world's first commercial high-power germanium-based transistor in 1955. The lab would expand over time to become Motorola's semiconductor division and by 1960 they would have three manufacturing sites in the Phoenix area."
"Intel corp., Arizona's 7th largest employer, started up their Fab 6 & Assembly Test facility in Chandler back in 1980, and their 720-acre Ocotillo Fab 12 site in 1996."
They've done this and know the costs
Many felt WA was in the running because of the talent already there.
This caused concerns that the future of the WaferTech fab facility is dimmer than before, since it probably makes less sense to pump billions more into it in the future.
Arizona like Texas is more business friendly at the expense of not looking out for the well being of people who live in these locations. Ironically, right now by being more business friendly more people want to move to places like Arizona or Texas for jobs.
It's a strange balancing act that has a lot of potential for being over corrected for. Industry brings business and economic growth but ruins the environment and has harms the people living in the area. The insidious thing is environmental costs are paid for much much later.
The consequences of being way to business friendly in these places may only be apparent a decade from now just like how the price of being too business unfriendly is now very apparent in California.
If anything, EU would create a generic fund to subsidize any such investment coming from any company interested, but at EU level, it would definitely take time.
Or they can talk to individual countries about subsidies, just like they do with the US. Plenty of them can afford it.
California is extremely entrepreneur-friendly, and have absolutely massive amounts of business compare to Arizona or Texas.
The externalities are not minor either, there are 23 superfund sites in Santa Clara county from Silicon Valley's early years, where they did not bother to properly dispose of waste:
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/09/silic...
The strategic side of things is slightly less of a concern for them if TSMC bring capacity online in the US since they're mostly on good terms, but it's still not great for one of the world's largest economies to not have this sort of capability inside its borders.
I don't know if you've been following the news lately of a bunch of companies moving OUT of California to Texas. One of these people is Elon Musk. And guess what? I have a source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ez90rXhMWjE
I'm not saying California is wrong. Far from it. They're right. These laws are made to protect the people. Like you said, it's not minor at all. I never said it was minor.
However ANY state can decide that economic growth is more important than environmental safety and short term health of its' citizens and make a strategic move to make it's own location much more attractive to business.
So the costs aren't clear. Do we want an economic wasteland or an environmental wasteland? This is my point. California is not dead yet, but the trends have been pointing in this direction for years.
Numerous polls of the Taiwanese show that they would want to join the US if given the choice between independent statehood, joining the mainland, and joining the US.
Plus, the US gets a nice permanent military base and gets to monitor all future Chinese submarine activity.
If China attacks a US state, it would be like Yamamoto's "sleeping giant" moment. The US is trying to force China's hand while there is power asymmetry, and I can't think of a better checkmate move.
Airbus?
(also, the gross receipts tax is... pretty dumb)
If there's a more business-friendly state, absolutely would take it in a heartbeat.
I'm saying the pros and cons are not clear. California laws favor the people at the expense of business. So business leaves and people follow. Texas favors business at the expense of the people.
Businesses chase profit at expense of the people, however profit is paid for from people themselves so usually when businesses harm people it's insidious and subtle and doesn't become apparent until years later. Big Tobacco, Big Pharma and the whole pain killer scandal are primary examples. The harm these companies did to people were not apparent until much much later.
What will happen in Texas is that the harm done to people by unregulated businesses will not be apparent until many years later. At that time regulations will slowly build up as people protest and demand the government to protect the people. This is what happened in California.... history repeating itself.
It might take a decade or your entire lifetime for this change to occur and become fully realized. Meanwhile people will be harmed while California becomes more and more like Michigan.
No, place X has the same people with the same human impulses as place Y. They simply have different circumstances and different experiences at different times.
This isn’t “ironically”, this is literally the primary argument in favor of this policy angle.
I could see Taiwan becoming a US territory, but I doubt as a nation they would really like that.
Either of these options woii I led probably be viewed by China as an act of war...
You mean by China? I would certainly agree. Even with most countries not acknowledging Taiwan nationhood I would expect a strong international reaction to any military action by China due to Taiwan's special place in international technology exports.
People choosing to give up this protection is the irony.
For example. Tobacco kills people. Government looks out for the interests of the people and regulates Big Tobacco. So Big Tobacco moves to a place where it is unregulated and free to distribute tobacco even to minors. People "IRONICALLY" against their own self interest follow the company because of jobs and money.
The above is just an example made really obvious. For semiconductors it's not so obvious. What exactly is the harm? It's not so evident, you need to do research to find out.
And anyway, the vast majority of Americans wouldn't see and attack of a Taiwanese US state as a Pearl Harbor because its non sensical. Taiwan has 100 million people. Theres no way that population transfers to create the bonds necessary to make Taiwan “American” could occur. Hawaii had been a US colony for 50 years and mainland Americans had moved in displacing the natives. What is nationhood for you? How is Taiwan in any way American? They have little in common with us, yet you would make them the largest US state?
Taiwan is Chinese. Their family bonds are deep, and they share a common language and culture. The ancestor shrines for most Taiwanese (being refugees from the mainland) are in China.
Itd be much better to recognize Taipei as China and Beijing as a de-facto, yet criminal, ruler like we did before Nixon.
Either way, Taipei is perfectly capable of defending itself. Allied with Korea and a re-militarized Japan, they’d be the most fearsome military power in the world.
People want to work a job and keep as much of the income as possible. They want to found businesses and make money.
They also don't want poison in their water supply, or any of the numerous externalities which industry is in the habit of creating.
Texas and California strike a very different balance in that landscape. The net result of which is that people are leaving California, and people are moving to Texas.
Characterizing that as "California favors people and Texas favors business" is kinda weird, don't you think? Looks like Texas favors both, right at the moment.
I mean, imagine the scenario where Taiwan becomes a U.S. state and then China invades and takes it anyways. And suppose the U.S. can't take it back without all-out (possibly nuclear) war, so they back down and let China have it.
That's a possible outcome that would have to be contemplated if Taiwan were to join the U.S.
https://www.reuters.com/technology/chipmaker-tsmc-eyeing-exp...
I would sure hope so with Taiwan we allow that, but I personally believe if we get to that point we've already lost and the world will look very very different. Unless we're talking about precautionary evacuations and even still doesn't send a lot of confidence.
Seems like TSMC is a great first target too, unless MAD stands.
When will China have enough internal capacity and knowledge? Before the US? I know the US has large old fabs like one in MN I think that are secure for government needs so minimally we have that + Intel.
I'm a big China hawk though and strongly believe in more direction pressure now, let alone squirming away from our bluster & protection commitments if China becomes even more aggressive.
Really, tell me, what is the argument for DC statehood that isn’t more fairly addresses by returning it to MD?
Second Puerto Rico is an oppressed colony, and statehood is not a gift but the final step of erasing their dream of independence. As a Latin American “¡Yanquis, pendejos, váyase de L. America!”
I disagree, but am of the personal opinion that our advantage shrinks each year we don't seriously confront CCP.
So there is loads of bad blood and pergaps easiest thing to happen is gor generations to change under status quo and for memory of these atrocities to fade into the background.
I agree on PR it's not as liberal at least socially as many would assume. But DC is 100% a very very liberal city.
Polling has moved our direction, right now a plurality outside the margin nationwide support DC statehood at least in the last polls I've seen asking it.
And personally as you can guess my obvious political worldview I also don't think DC statehood alone is even enough power to seriously tip the scales against all the Republican tactics and advantages with the many other small states with aging populations/young wealthy people moving out. DC would just tip the scale slightly more towards equal IMHO
> (also, the gross receipts tax is... pretty dumb)
... for manufacturers who aren't Boeing. It's true though. Taxing revenue instead of profit is a ridiculous policy which punishes manufacturers and favors every other industry at their expense. Giving one company (Boeing) its own special preferential revenue tax rate [1] of $\epsilon$ percent is not a solution.
[1] https://j7dfh9pbumnyhazfmcsfgm9m.apnews.com/article/37d21240... [*]
[*] (apparently AP news is trying real hard to make their links look like malware or something)
Lots of subs on Reddit grew tremendously during the pandemic. I'm guessing HN did too and has a worse case than usual of "eternal September."
0: https://www.forbes.com/sites/mikepatton/2015/10/31/a-brief-h...
Taiwan and Taiwanese people don’t feel this way at all.
In Washington State they are, although existing plants are grandfathered.
I guess they could expand the UGB, which is what the Eastern Washington counties do in order to attract manufacturers.
But China could easily wreck Taiwan's infrastructure and industry without invading.
TSMC will not allow them to be built any other way.
It makes a more sense to let the experts to the north build fabs and for Australia to focus on things we're already good at. Like biotech.
If we're going to invest to break in to new fields, it should be energy technologies (solar, nuclear, etc) and transportation technologies.
Australia is also the world's second largest exporter of rare earth metals. It does, in fact, have a considerable part of the raw materials required for fabrication already being extracted in-nation.
It would not take much for Australia to insert itself into that global supply chain, as a more reliable and stable political environment than alternatives.
Not only is it entirely possible to prevent Chinese capture but it's arguably possible for Taiwan to achieve this on their own with minimal to no US intervention. This will likely change in the future, but for the next decade their sovereignty is relatively assured.
To say amphibious invasions are difficult is itself a massive understatement. Taiwan is armed to the teeth and and has incredibly hostile terrain all along its coasts effectively making any attempt on the area a guaranteed bloodbath.
Arizona doesn't exactly have an abundance of water, they're already depleting aquafers, before the fabs have begun operation (a typical fab uses 2-4 million gallons of water per day).
>the US gets
C'mon, this is not how geopolitics works. China could easily defend this land from US incursion and they aren't even letting Taiwan be independent let alone let US take it for themselves.
Personally, I think we're at the point where the US would consider the costs of Taiwan's defense well beyond any potential benefits. It's too economically integrated with China, and the sheer number of bodies it would take aren't worth the moral victory.
Hong Kong is the writing on the wall. China wishes to restore integrity to what it regards as its territory.
TSMC must open facilities in the west because its Taiwan facilities are too dangerous to leave in enemy hands. It has to invest in capital outside of any potential conflict zone if it plans to exists over the long-term as a profit-making entity.
Before "nanny state" regulations, you would work as much as your employer wanted you to work, you had no sick days, no vacation, no parental leave, no anything. Kids used to work in factories. If a woman got pregnant she would get fired from her job. If you got injured or sick at work then you would get fired as well.
Before "nanny state" regulations, medications were usually snake oil. The market was full of elixirs and magical tonics for well-being that were ultimately a scam.
Before "nanny state" regulations, you were free to dump any chemical you wanted anywhere you wanted. You were free to experiment with any animal you wanted in any way you wanted without any ethical or humane consideration whatsoever. You were free to scam any investor you wanted in any way you wanted... and you get the idea. Restaurant with rats? that was perfectly too.
"Nanny state" is one of the most profoundly idiotic terms ever coined. Some regulations can be annoying, but clearly we are better off now than 100 years ago.
France alone was the #2 supplier from 2015-2019: https://euro-sd.com/2020/03/news/16688/sipri-biggest-arms-ex...
You really can't blame Taiwan for not rushing to put its most cutting edge expertise in the EU.
Well if the Yanks are smart, the second it becomes a US state you strongly encourage two way migration so there are a bunch of square-jawed, grass-fed, All American kids living there that the US press can get exited about. Jack, Diane, and Tyrone getting shot at by the PLA is going to be a Big Fucking Deal.
Heck, if I was Taiwan I’d stop spending money on defence and just start spending money giving free university tuition to Americans.
China's goal has been to maintain a nuclear deterrent (make it not worthwhile to strike China) rather than an offensive capability.
if nukes flew then China would likely fragment into many separate countries: its centralized command structure would be destroyed and local politics would be the rule. Look at China's history to see its future after a nuclear war:
Is it worth a war that can last many years? By the end of the war, what if US doesn’t need TSMC technology and the tides are reversed?
I’m not conjecturing, I’m shedding light on how much we are willing to risk now vs a few years later. It could also be that Intel fabs fall further behind and TSMC becomes 10x more important than now. Who knows!!!
Instead of war, invest in domestic technology. It pays back better.
'"TSMC chairman and founder Morris Chang warned last month of higher operating costs and a thin talent pool for the U.S. plans in a rare public speech attended by Wei and chairman Mark Liu.
"In the United States, the level of professional dedication is no match to that in Taiwan, at least for engineers," Chang said. He warned that "short-term subsidy can't make up for long-term operational disadvantage."'
The body of the article also casts doubt on the total amount of U.S. investment, unlike the headline.
But these problems are because of its extreme prosperity and economic potential, not because there is any risk of that economic powerhouse stopping.
The news reports are anecdotal, Musk is keeping California business but expanding production throughout the country, just as Tesla was before.
Companies that are leaving are those that are less innovative and have fallen from the top of the value chain. They can no longer benefit from the extremely productive environment, but can scrape by with lower costs, such as Oracle.
There's no need to sacrifice California's environment to continue to be an absolutely massive economic powerhouse. But we may need to sacrifice some of our bad ideas about land.
The US is routinely running freedom of navigation exercises in the south china sea between taiwan and china and has said as recently as last month that its commitment to defend taiwan is, “rock solid”.
This is all not to mention that taiwan itself would not be all that easy to overthrow, the large majority of people there have unfavorable views of china (and conversely the majority support closer political ties to the US and other free democracies which they have and continue to build).
This may not be likely today, but China has been forced to develop its chip industry in parallel for a long time, and they admit as much if you watch their state-sponsored english-language semiconductor media commentary on YouTube. Eventually they will not need Taiwan nearly as much as America does.
The only way to sidestep that problem is for the US to do the same as Taiwan: use government power and resources to establish a competitive semiconductor hub in the Americas.
Funnily enough, South Korea has done the same in all practical senses. Samsung makes up more of South Korea's GDP in percentage terms than TSMC's share of Taiwan’s GDP. Samsung's trade policy interests are essentially South Korea's trade policy interests.
So, It’s probably not up to the EU to care about automotive, that must be Germany. France and Spain likely cares about other things and no one cares about cutting edge chips. EU can push from the top by easing state aid rules, I guess, however it must be a particular country to strike a deal.
England has some semiconductor industry and so does Germany, but less of it is top-spec tech from cash rich companies. Obviously “Europe” still cares about national security but is the money and politics comparable to the US military industrial complex?
Those trade restrictions just galvanize the Chinese to develop the capabilities themselves. And their system doesn't create a need for a big splashy foreign conflict to sell to the hogs for votes. They're more capable of making the smart play than we are.
https://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/news/motorola-the-story-so-f...
I don't think this is a popular or maintstream position, nor does the rest of your argument support it.
>The dollars position in the world allows the USA to run its current accounting.
I am not sure what this means. Every nation has a current account. Accounting is just how we track what that account is. Nothing allows accounting to happen, we just do it.
The U.S. is uniquely generous (or from an alternate point of view, uniquely foolish) in allowing the rest of the world to purchase unlimited dollar denominated assets. This makes the U.S. the safe haven for everyone that needs to park export earnings, and thus incentivizes the rest of the world to run huge surplus against the U.S. This is what is meant by "the dollar system". If tomorrow, the European Union would allow unlimited foreign purchases of Euro assets, and provided what is believed to be rule of law and respect for foreign investor rights, then the rest of the world would gladly diversify away from the dollar and the dollar system would end. That was the original vision of the Euro, but the moment there is any crisis, the EMU reveals that it doesn't have the same level of openness for global investment as the U.S., and that dream is proved illusory. So the global dollar system continues, and is in no way dependent on Taiwan or any other exporter. You get to be a reserve currency by importing the most, not by exporting the most.
> Allowing China to take Taiwan destroys the economy and the position of the USA in the world.
It does not affect the economy of the U.S. in either direction, except that the resulting chaos would be bad for markets. Having one foreign export power taken over by another is a null op when determining where can the rest of the world park their money. Of course we may block China from doing it, and that could escalate into a war, which would be disastrous for two nuclear powers, but there are easier ways to punish China -- e.g. seize all their foreign reserve holdings (which are held in custodial accounts in various foreign central banks), block all trade, stop the shipment of any oil. For a nation dependent on exports and dependent on foreign nations allowing China to hold large accounts in their financial system, China is tightly integrated into the global system and uniquely dependent on the good graces of that system. They would have been better off taking physical delivery of silver as in the past.
Not a single bullet needs to be fired to cripple China and destroy its economy. It would also seriously damage the global economy and spread hurt around the world, but this type of economic warfare is better than nuclear war. Whether Taiwan is worth it is a completely different question. But in such a battle, the dollar becomes even more important, not less, as it would be the global safe haven currency (for everyone except China).
Taiwanese rejected reunification with China. Taiwanese rejected CCP.
It's only a matter of cost: training an american to do the job of a chinese for the same cost is impossible today because american would refuse to produce these under the same condition: they prefer to enjoy using the chips rather than making them.
The good news is that the chinese will eventually come around and start changing their expectation.
If you think China cant change, look at their drastic demographic changes: they can become what we became, they just take longer.
It's hard to tell what you intend by your DDG link, but perhaps you are suggesting that, in the case of nuclear war, China will effectively revert to the Warring States Period of 2500 years ago. Is that really your intention? What would the US look like if it were returned to 2500 years ago, before the rise of the Anasazi and the Mound Builders, before the Olmec invented writing? A much more likely outcome than this sort of quasi time travel is that either a post-nuclear US or a post-nuclear China would look like nothing ever seen before in human history, more closely resembling the world in the immediate aftermath of the Chicxulub impact.
The wild housing market is 90% of the inequality. The other 90% can be summed up by this 1994 article in the New York Times [1].
[1]: https://www.nytimes.com/1994/10/16/books/what-is-intelligenc...
[1]: https://www.nytimes3xbfgragh.onion/1994/10/16/books/what-is-...
If Intel is serious this time about letting third parties into their fabs then it could be quite the reversal of fortune. However, as I've said in the past Intel is most likely to do this with "alternate" process streams, in order to not expose their full capabilities to competitors.
High hopes but low expectations. Real estate in AZ could be a good investment though.
the threat is so old now. there are some running jokes in Taiwan like "China threatening to invade Taiwan since my grandpa is alive then my father. I hope I get to see it before I die". a lot of Taiwanese already numb to the threat.
did South Korea stop everything whenever North Korea did a Nuke test?
American can throw ton of money into the semis industry like China big fund. maybe throw money at Intel, free money to companies like TSMC or Samsung to setup more fabs in the US or throw money at a home grown semis foundry?
Which is a strength. China has further to fall than the US. That old history is still history. The US would cobble together into something more reminiscent of something later into history by virtue of a shorter memory span...whether or not that is beneficial in this hypothetical future is a different question.
At one time people would have said the same about the Rust Belt.
Times change.
It's funny how most of the semiconductor topics lead to war discussions but no one talks about outcompeting Taiwan. It's doable if there is will and resources (I am a Fab engineer). IMO the best way to move forward.
> did South Korea stop everything whenever North Korea did a Nuke test?
I believe the two threats are not remotely equivalent. In a world of MAD, nuclear weapons are only a credible defensive deterrent, because offensive use of them is suicide. The US would start a nuclear war, in response to a North Korean first-strike.
Whereas with respect to China and Taiwan, nobody, including the US is going to start a nuclear war over that aggression, and nobody, including the US is going to start a conventional war against a major nuclear power.
If you have any doubts on this - consider that you are alive to read this post... Because the US did not start either a nuclear, or a conventional-with-good-possibility-of-turning-nuclear war over Russian adventures in Crimea.
It's true that people in the US don't know what happened there 2500 years ago, but people in China don't know much of what happened there 2500 years ago either (partly the fault of Qin Shi Huang), and in either place, there's no particular reason to expect it to happen again, other than metaphorical fuzzy thinking about falling and cobbling, and the general tendency of human societies to do things that human societies can do instead of things they can't.
Even if post-apocalyptic China were seized with a historical-reenactment fervor and Sima Qian were the new bestselling author, the material conditions of production today are quite different from those that prevailed in the Bronze Age. People won't suddenly forget how to use their shortwave radios, smelt iron, and make gunpowder just because it's radioactive outside. At least some surveillance satellites will surely remain in orbit. Semiarticulated trucks with tank escorts could still carry materiel to battlefronts orders of magnitude faster than porters with wheelbarrows or even the Grand Canal. The whole scenario is just nonsense.
"Carefully compare the opposing army with your own, so that you may know where strength is superabundant and where it is deficient." Sun Tzu
Strong central government collapses -> country fractures into regions controlled by warlords -> new strong central government arises. China has seen that movie many, many times in its history.
It's not merely a moral victory. And while I myself would pick up a rifle for 24 million people, it's not even that.
You can't simply let your allies be invaded. It's lethal to all of your other alliances. America failing to defend Taiwan is the end of the Pax Americana, and America knows it.
That's a big asterisk. Biological warfare so far is the stuff of doomsday prognosticators. China isn't crazy enough to use biological weapons because they know we might (possibly even should) consider that a nuclear-level escalation.
And if they did use biological weapons, we might lose Taiwan, but we certainly wouldn't stop fighting. That kind of monstrosity cannot and will not go unanswered.
Make no mistake. The purpose of business regulation is to protect the people. This is absolutely true.
Execution of such regulations has unintended consequences though.
Regulating business harms profits which harms jobs and in turn harms people who could have had the jobs. Harmed profits also harms the owners of the businesses who are also people.
So basically there's a feedback loop here. You make the law for the purpose of protecting people but you are also harming people at the same time.
I'm a moderate or undecided because this loop presents a practical and moral dilemma. There's a balance somewhere but no truly one knows where and the complexities of society make it so that civilization will never arrive at this balance. Society tends to oscillate wildly around this equilibrium point migrating between the two extremes of pro business and pro "the people."
Tobacco is just one example. A lot of people think of tobacco as cookies, so if that's too tame for you then replace that example with Big Pharma and the opioid crisis or The dumping of toxic waste into Toms River by Big Chemical.
Caterpillar does it with phones[1], and their main business is heavy industry. Why not auto manufacturers? Could easier access to smaller process nodes incentivize them to branch out into new markets like that?
A similar situation exists WRT to China and US mechanical engineers: in China you can very assemble a team to build physical stuff in ~2 weeks whereas finding the same talent in the US would take months and cost a lot more.
The idea that we or China can't have a commander in chief who commits suicide by war, or otherwise behaves irresponsibly and takes the rest of us with them, strikes me as a tad optimistic.
China only loses its oil shipments if it can't secure shipping through the Indian ocean or build an overland alternative. It won't make a move until those are complete.
Hitler couldn't cross the 50 miles english channel back in 1940.... the operation 'sea lion' was doomed to fail. Even the Allies' normandy invasion, was hard and it took total sea and air dominance. China could surround Taiwan and blockade it, but it can't keep that blockaded is itself it would be blockaded by the US and totally sealed internationally. It will be starved economically.
Also, keep in mind, during the cold war, USSR had to give up the sealing/blocading of Berlin, as the US kept supplying it with food via air. The US could have given it away, as it was far from the West's border, but it didn't.
The US will do the same this time, as the public from both sides of the political spectrum, are very against CCP. The only people that string along with China, are some elite media companies like Disney, NBA and of course Apple.
The average Joe doesn't like that their job went to china, and they would be glad if the US put up a fight.
What evidence do you have that similar checks do not exist in China?
It's also worth mentioning that any nuclear submarine commander in the UK can, at any time, order the launch of their submarine's ICBMs. They do not physically require any authentication from Westminster to launch. I'm assuming the same is the case for US, and Russian submarines.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Hancock
Is an ancestor. He traded in slaves. He renounced it later. The 3/5 compromise was wrong.
620K people, 2% of the population died in the US civil war. Yet today we have George Floyd.
200 years ago you could argue shades of grey, but in 2021 you cannot not.
I stand for Taiwan because today in 2021 I know better, as should everyone.
Everyone took note.
Taiwan may be 'grabbed' with little violence, and China can promise 'certain freedoms' (i.e fake democracy) so that feckless leaders around the world can 'save face' and say 'oh, we don't like it, but it's not that bad, please keep buying our crap, so we can buy your crap'.
China takes the 'long view' - long enough that it supercedes any populist cycle. Over 30 years of 'soft occupation' and incremental erosion of rights, thery'll be nothing left of Taiwan.
Elderly Gen Z-ers will look back at their tweets from childhood and wonder.
California is rich. But California is trending down economically. This has been increasing for a decade and accelerated due to covid. Here's the point of view from an economist without bias: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2IVj_T6y84
1) Students in Taiwan score highly on PISA and other ranking of math and science skills. Ie, 4th for Math (vs the USA at 38th or so). And engineering is extremely popular as a major. So you've got a strong supply of relatively competent folks.
2) A pretty strong tracking system - 9th grade testing for example means a lot more in Taiwan than in the US which has moved away from tracking efforts as discriminatory. Note also that starting at 16 (ie, high school) folks are already specializing a lot more vocationally etc.
3) Note that some of what is taken for granted in a public high school (fights / theft / violence / disruption) would be completely out of bounds in high school in Taiwan. A legacy of military rule was actually the presence of literal military in high schools - I hope that is long over but kind of a crazy situation - people forget how recent democracy is there and plenty of bad things about having military on campus. School uniforms everywhere (not sure if required but very common)
President (or Emperor-for-life?) Xi firmly believes in expansionism - though he rephrases this as redressal of past grievances and righting of past wrongs. He has clearly said multiple times that Taiwan is intrinsically part of China and no one can change this. He has also un-equivocally stated that the use of force will not be ruled out.
The threat of China fully annexing Taiwan is a real and present danger today. It doesn't need to be done by open military invasion though. Just by consistently applying pressure over a period of time until the government and citizenry is completely dominated by the CCP. Individuals who protest are frequently 'disappeared'.
When individuals can be eliminated and families suppressed and the elected government helpless to assist, the whole nation eventually kneels to the conqueror. Death by a Thousand Cuts is a valid strategy. No shots need be fired.
The takeaways: - Fab companies have invested in a lot of water reclamation and recycling regardless of location, as there's a lot of metals and other chemicals that need to be filtered out. (Asianometry goes over this more here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=785Uzi1mGAA ) - Intel claims Arizona's water usage has stayed level in the area as industrial use has replaced agricultural, which uses less.
I'm sure there's a cost-benefit play here, where the tax and other incentives outweigh the increased costs of water reclamation.
China’s stance on Taiwan is clear[1] but given Taiwan doesn’t agree, it has remained independent despite what China says. The same was true for Hong Kong until recently, however, so concerns remain.
The US is waking up to realizing that they have a heavy reliance on China for civilian goods and a slight to moderate risk that it might be disrupted or used against them in future.
The worry I suppose is that it might be easier for supply chain-based attacks to weaken US defences, not that we’ve seen anything like this in practice yet due to how easy it is to exploit existing software bugs, for example.
1. https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/china-taiwan-relations-tens...
I have no idea how true it is, but I’ve heard that from a few folks.
US will possibly do a limited retaliation, but not a full scale war.
Norko is effectively China's 24th province. US generals are not onblivious to that fact.
shortwave radios? With no electrical power, no batteries?
"smelt iron" with coal, maybe! Now you've got wrought iron, which is good for what, horseshoes? Hedge your bets and buy a couple of horses tomorrow. [Bad news: I can imagine your neighbors' queries: "Hey, Bing, what's with the sudden interest in horses, eh? You aren't worried about some crazy sort of apocalypse, are ya? Whaddaya gonna do - ride off into the sunset or sumthin'?" Good news: you can eat a horse!]
"Make gunpowder" - for what, other than to blow up any remaining local CCP leaders. But it would be easier and more satisfying to kill them by hand.
"surveillance satellites"? where do you download data? Why? Where are the encryption codes? Most CCP command structures would be smoked.
"Semi-articulated trucks with tank escorts" is a laugh - with no diesel/gas, no repair facilities and no roads.
"to battlefields"? What battlefields? Oh, of course, so they can fight the Chinese living in the next valley. But before they do that, how about getting something to eat? Maybe you could roll up to the local Kentucky Fried Chicken in your 'semi-articulated truck'!8-))
"The whole scenario is just nonsense." - finally you got one right! What you envision _is_ nonsense.
The point of my post was that for a post-apocalyptic China, geography is destiny. The country would be fragmented socially and politically out of necessity. The most likely political structure to result is one that supports a more primitive infrastructure. China would fall into a number of separate independent regions. The CCP might survive somewhere but more likely would be snuffed out by the people, who would not appreciate the war the CCP had brought upon them.
Similarly, when the strong central government in Mycenaean Greece collapsed in the Bronze Age Collapse, Greece fractured into "regions controlled by warlords." Then one of those warlords, Alexandros, conquered Persia, most of the Mediterranean, Turkey, much what is now Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, and part of India. Then he died, and his empire fractured into regions controlled by warlords. Then the Roman Republic conquered most of the same region (not coincidentally becoming a Greek-speaking empire in the process), plus part of Britain and most of Western Europe, and fractured into regions controlled by warlords. Then the Holy Roman Empire arose and reunified a lot of those regions, at least in name (arguably, much like the later Zhou) and then fractured into regions controlled by warlords. Then Napoleon arose and reunified a lot of those regions, including parts of Russia that Rome and the Holy Roman Empire had never reached, but that didn't last long, and the warlords retook control from Napoleon pretty quickly. Even the Bourbons got restored! Then Hitler arose and reunified a lot of those regions, but his "country" fractured into regions controlled by warlords even more quickly. Then the European Union arose and reunified a lot of those same regions again by winning the loyalty of local warlords like Charles de Gaulle, Paul-Henri Spaak, and Joseph Luns. Or, alternatively, NATO did. Or the UN.
And you can tell a similar story about Russia.
You could reasonably object that NATO, the EU, the UN, and the Holy Roman Empire aren't or weren't "strong central governments" as we know them today. Well, they weren't Westphalian states, it's true. But neither were any of the reigns of Chinese emperors we're talking about here. And, although if you go to overseas Chinese school you might be taught a simple linear succession of dynasties, the truth in China is much more complicated, just as the truth about western Europe is much more complicated than my linear version above.
What does that have to do with what Russia would do if the nukes started flying? Does the collapse of the Kievan Rus' in the face of the Golden Horde mean that Russia's command structure would collapse in the 20 minutes needed to launch a counterattack? The Scythian king Ateas, from what is now Russia, fought in his dotage and fell in battle with Philip of Macedon in 00339 BCE, and his empire collapsed. Should we thus infer that his successor Vladimir Putin will remain in power too long and make Russia weak, easy pickings for a new conqueror?
Such inferences are obviously ridiculous.
Expect last 6 month worth of wafers in production to go down the drain in fabs which relied on battery backups only.
* not counting Sputnik V as study results currently seem not very reliable, although that might only be because Russia isn't particularly interested in the EU market
The astronomical sum on the cheque to the TSMC, means they can finally stomp Samsung — their only competitor in the leading node.
US will be getting their Xilinx FPGAs for F35, but be left with no competition for the leading edge semi manufacturing, which is way worse long term.
People grew forgetful of the time when mainstream CPUs sold at >$1000
Some elements make sense or I think would do little harm. I was high achieving in math - but the push to calc in high school does feel overdone I think - it's often a shallow understanding.
They are very focused particularly on issues like 30%+ of Asian students and only 3-4% of other minorities being in advanced tracks of math education so they are trying to reduce those.
Some neat ideas around doing more open ended tasks (cool!) in make that integration work better.
That said, will likely be some tough corners because there are can be some pretty significant skill differences across a student body in a given grade. They are going to try and do more group work, and also one of the 5 new principles is to teach towards social justice in math as well as other areas which may provide more opportunity for engagement by all students.
The phone numbers on that page is a hotline for general questions. It is absolutely not the same thing as the point mrtksn's Murdoch quote mentioned.
A media magnate like Murdoch has the phone number to the White House central switchboard and can get the President on the phone. Maybe not immediately, but probably within an hour. He might even have the President's personal cell phone number.[1] In turn, the President can either do what Murdoch requests, or transfer him to someone who can.
What is the EU equivalent to this sort of access? Murdoch can probably get Ursula von der Leyen on the phone more easily than he can Biden. But is she the right person for what Murdoch needs? Even if she is, her position certainly does not have the breadth of authority, or depth of command structures, that a US president can call upon. If Murdoch learns from a reliable source that Russia is going to full-on invade western Ukraine tomorrow, would calling von der Leyen to warn her be of any particular help for Ukraine, or for Europe? No; calling Biden, Merkel, Macron, and Johnson would be more effective.[2] That's the sort of thing Murdoch meant.
[1] Trump is well known for giving his cell phone number out and personally responding to calls, both before and after his election
[2] In this scenario, whether the UK is a EU member or not does not matter
Many of TSMC's most lucrative customers, such as Apple, are U.S.-based, while its European customer base is made up of mostly of automakers buying less-advanced chips."
Oh boy... This is exactly why EU will always stay third behind USA, China...
"We don't need e mobility, we have the best combustion engines!" Tesla owns VW now.
"We don't need Apple like chips"
This hurts. Apple and rest does many things differently and way better than EU. We should learn from them.
Or do I miss something?
This is a meme that is meant to heighten emotions in politics. It's small but intentionally destructive and each repetition of one of these little demonizations further prevents cool-headed nuanced discourse.
It's death by a thousand cuts for our society.
The problem is that the racial distribution of those students who are good at math upsets the blank slate world-view of the teachers, and the very notion that some students are smarter than others and that these discrepencies have consistent ethnic patterns fills them with a lot of rage due to their politics/religion. Trying to infuse the same dysfunctional beliefs into the math curriculum will serve to spread what crippled the teachers' analytical abilities to the students. That type of denial isn't going to help train engineers either. Bridges can't fall down, processors need to work, theorems require proofs. These are objective things that students need to master, not comfortable delusions about everyone having the same abilities in every subject.
So you can only deny reality for so long before you start losing your competitive edge and this affects your ability to be a leader in chip production. By suppressing opportunities for groups they don't like, the teachers are preventing students from achieving their potential. Wealthy parents will withdraw their students and either home school if they have the education to do it, or place them in private schools that try to maximize the potential of every student, regardless of whether those outcomes are racially balanced. But that's a minority, the middle class and poor will be denied a good education.
Taiwan and China are under no such illusions. They are happy to identify smart students and give them challenging topics in order to help them achieve their potential, rather than trying to slow down the best students in order to pretend that everyone has the same talent for math.
While other US states encourage their own tech centers' growth, Floridians and New Yorkers and Texans are all aware of, benefit from, and are proud of Silicon Valley being in the US.
Nuclear retaliation might take 20 minutes. The diesel UPS will last that long.
What would the aftermath look like months or years later, though?
Big coal power plants might be targeted, but most solar panels will continue to work; those can run shortwave radios for decades, giving you transcontinental and intercontinental logistical coordination capabilities Duke Huan of Chen would have sold his soul for. Moreover, a Bitcoin transaction is a few hundred bytes; if a backup of your private keys survived on your phone, you can transmit money to anyone anywhere in the world who promises to send you a nice F-14 or two.
> "smelt iron" with what - coal maybe! Now you've got wrought iron, which is good for what,
Essentially all of the iron and steel in the world today is smelted with coal, just as most of it has been since the Song Dynasty switched their blast furnaces over from charcoal to fossil fuel 900 years ago. Modern minimills can of course produce higher-quality steel in electric arc furnaces, but they must start with iron. But there's a huge quantity of iron around; we aren't going back to using knives as money anytime soon.
> "Make gunpowder" - for what, other than to blow up any remaining local PRC leaders.
The tactics and strategy of the Warring States Period are inseparable from the weapons of the time. Even a small Haber-Bosch plant is sufficient to produce enough cordite to annihilate any army of antiquity or even medieval times. Any "warlord" who manages to organize such a thing in the months or years after a putative collapse would hail from the current power structure, which is to say, the Chinese Communist Party.
> "surveillance satellites"? where do you download data? Why?
The tactics and strategy of the Warring States Period are also inseparable from the reconnaissance technology of the time, which didn't even have cameras or telescopes, much less quadcopters, radio-controlled planes, helium balloons, bottle rockets, submarines, SR-71s, and surveillance satellites. No state which didn't have access to such things would be able to resist conquest by those that do. Even NOAA GOES imagery, which is transmitted unencrypted and routinely received by amateurs, would be a decisive strategic advantage over armies that lacked it.
> Most PRC command structures would be smoked.
It seems unlikely that the organization that defeated Japan alongside the Kuomintang, and then defeated the Kuomintang, is as incapable of contingency and succession planning as you seem to think.
> no diesel/gas, no repair facilities and no roads
You can blow holes in highways with atomic bombs; Tsar Bomba's fireball had a radius of 3.5 km, so it could probably interrupt a highway for a few kilometers. But you can't destroy a whole highway, much less all the highways across a whole country; not even the US has enough bombs. Similarly, you can't destroy all the diesel fuel or all the repair facilities in a whole country with just nukes.
What you can do is kill a lot of people. But you probably can't kill everybody in China without killing most of the people in allied countries as well: not just Taiwan, but Japan, Mongolia, Pakistan, India, Indonesia, and plausibly most of Europe as well. Even then, it's likely that hardened facilities would survive.
> The PRC might survive somewhere but more likely would be snuffed out by the people, who would not appreciate the war the PRC had brought upon them
Did this happen in the Battle of Britain, with unappreciative British citizens blaming the Queen and Winston Churchill for the war they had brought upon them? Did it happen in Pearl Harbor, with the Hawaiians booting out the US Navy that had brought such a bombing upon them? Did it happen in the US occupation of Japan, with the Japanese populace angrily ripping Emperor Hirohito and his generals limb from limb as punishment for bringing American nuclear war upon them? Did it happen after 9/11, with the American people snuffing out George W. Bush's government? It's really unusual for a population to side with foreign invaders and bombers against their own elites.
More to the point, "snuffing out" a group requires organization and discipline. An army can do it, and a police force might be able to, but for "the people" to do it, they need some kind of organizational structure, which prioritizes and coordinates the snuffing. Guess what the organizational structure of mainland China is?
All regulation is created for the purpose of protecting people. California has more people protecting laws than Texas therefore California favors people over Texas.
There's literally no other reason why regulation exists. And all businesses that have less regulation have more options to succeed financially that would otherwise be restricted by regulation. Regulation therefore exists to serve people. So by logic less regulation means conditions more favorable for business and less favorable to people.
Unless you can think of some other reason why regulations exist this is the only possible logical deduction. Does California create laws that don't favor business because California just wants to screw with businesses for no reason? Let's be real.
Make no mistake. There is no frame here, this is reality unfiltered.
Additionally keep in mind businesses cannot directly screw people over. Profit comes from people and companies cannot directly screw over the thing they derive profit from. When businesses screw people over it's usually obscured in some way. Think again to the antics of big oil and big tobacco. If deregulated businesses are harming the people of Texas in some way you likely won't know until many years from now.
I think Europe is more likely to remain third due to bureaucracy, multilateralism and a regulatory and investment philosophy that favors European businesses and citizens over international businesses. The cost of being first is high anyway.
Please stop repeating this lie. There is and has never been a US vaccine export ban, and the US has not seized vaccines meant for other countries.
The Trump administration last year signed gigantic contracts for every planned vaccine (Operation Warp Speed), because no one knew which ones would work. Like, enough for every American from one manufacturer, let alone the current four major available ones. More importantly, the contracts guaranteed the US the earliest deliveries.
The UK signed a similar contract for the AstraZeneca vaccine. The EU and Canada did not assure themselves of such quantities; as RcouF1uZ4gsC said, the former wasted time by trying to get a better price. Canada also bet on CanSino, a Chinese vaccine, because it was afraid that the US would ban vaccine exports (which, again, never happened). Of course, the Chinese did not live up to the contract.
Before you say "But what about—", the Trump executive order from December 2020 merely sets up the legal framework to prohibit exports if desired. But that does not mean that the framework is invoked. Let me repeat: The US signed contracts that were a) huge in size/scope and b) from every pharmaceutical company working on a vaccine, which c) got the country the largest and among the first deliveries. The UK did the same thing with the AstraZeneca vaccine, and spent a lot of money to retool domestic plants to produce it.
If the situation were different, might the US have implemented a ban on exports, similar to what the EU did implement recently? Perhaps. But, fortunately, the US never faced this issue, because of the huge amounts of money it invested a year ago and the contracts it signed with said money.
The problem with invading Tawian is that there is a basically a single place where you can land ships on from China. Tawian been preparing for an invasion for years. This means this single point is heavily defended and anyone attacking is on a huge disadvantage. This means there is a huge price to pay to take Tawian and even if you do, there would likely be sanctions from the West.
That aside, I'm in the process of designing an USB gadget and I find process shrinks quite pesky. Of course it'll reduce production costs for the manufacturer of the IC but it also reduces flanking times which causes more electromagnetic interference issues for me.
So insisting on using large ICs built using old process nodes is a very valid decision if you work in an area where reliability trumps a $0.001 per piece cost saving. Like in cars, robots, or industrial machines.
That said, I see it more and more that German companies outsource all of their production until they eventually have so little building skills left inside their building that innovation stops. It's kind of the same issues that drove Boing to recycle old designs, but in Europe it's happening with thousands of small companies, instead of one big one.
A single US aircraft carrier is accompanied by a strike force of (IIRC) dozens of other ships, one or more submarines, anti-ship cruisers, anti-aircraft cruisers, and anti-submarine cruisers, logistics, etc. They carry a large number of aircraft and those aircraft have considerable strike capabilities, including the ability to attack enemy craft and ships from over the horizon; same with the ships. It's also worth remembering the large (permanent) US military presence in Japan, South Korea, Guam, and other nearby locations. Guam has been described as a permanently located US aircraft carrier combined with a military base.
I'm not an expert on Asian relations, tensions, or the military situation. I feel disappointed Obama's attempt to set up a trade block was nuked by the republicans for apparent partisans reasons. Now China is leading the same. That doesn't mean the US will allow China's expansionism to go unchecked. Part of US's activities in the region are to explicitly violate China's new claims of "sovereignty" around the islands they're building to expand their territory by sailing through those areas and flying planes over, and essentially daring China to do something about it. "We don't respect your claims at expanded borders."
Biden is clearly taking the threat seriously. FTA above:
> Biden’s nominee for secretary of state, Antony Blinken, told his Senate confirmation hearing on Tuesday there was “no doubt” China posed the most significant challenge to the United States of any nation.
I haven't studied China's military strength but I doubt it could contest the US in a traditional modern conflict. In a ground war maybe, but when we're talking navy and air power, the US likely has a substantial lead. And the US's goal would not be to invade China (at least not its mainland or traditionally recognized sovereign territories but simply to contain; though I could potentially see bombing or invading the islands that China is building in the ocean if there was some compelling reason for this.)
I personally am not well informed enough on the issue to understand why it's so sensitive that they want to build some islands in the sea near their mainland; perhaps the US simply wants countries to stick to their existing borders and not attempt expansionism like took place in decades and centuries past. Or perhaps it's as simple as the US doesn't want to accept countries expanding their territory and territorial waters by building islands in the ocean -- where would it stop?
China officially has a policy of "no nuclear first-strike" (which is not a policy US has adopted), but I can't imagine the US using nuclear weapons in this day and age, even in a conflict with another nuclear superpower (unless they were invading our mainland), so military action if it occurs is likely to take the form (I hypothesize) of skirmishes between ships and airplanes -- not necessarily fighting but flying really close, or playing chicken, that sort of thing; similar to what's been going on with Russian planes (whether both sides accuse the other of being reckless). Possibly with occasional shots fired by one side or the other before commanders on both sides order the troops to back off, because no one wants open war.
In the meantime it looks like the US is allowing China to build the islands but is refusing to recognize the new territory as sovereign land/waters, by sailing through it, flying over it, etc. Similar to the US's position on Iran and the Straight of Hormuz: it's international waters and Iran has no right to stop ships from sailing through it. The US demonstrates and enforces this by sailing its own ships through regularly and daring anyone to stop them.
The question may come down to whether China is willing to use military force to enforce its claims about sovereignty of the territory. That would be a massive step for them to take. China only has 2 aircraft carriers in service and it's unlikely their warplanes would be a match for the combination of all of the US's latest technology. China does have modern 5th generation stealth aircraft but I'm skeptical they could maintain air superiority against the entirety of US assets.
Like a law that's never been tested in court, we won't know how the militaries actually match up unless they go to battle.
https://www.france24.com/en/20200513-china-warns-france-agai...
I did and mine will soon run an article series in all of northern Germany to educate business leaders about electronics, innovation and how that'll create jobs and lucrative patents.
It was some work for me to collect statistics and experts to cite, but I expect it'll help my business too by increasing demand.
I went with industrial cameras as the example product because they have a market yearning for innovation in factory robotics and optical AI.
The VW group is doing particularly well these days, with the ID4 or the Taycan for example.
I'd love to hear better analysis; I'm not confident of my understanding here.
I fail to see how "shortwave radios" would be particularly useful for the 20 minutes of "nuclear retaliation",
Bitcoin transactions require networked computers which, again, won't be around w/o power/batteries, a working network, etc.
Implementing the Haber-Bosch process requires very sophisticated engineering, machining and careful operation. Lots of trial and error is involved.
simply making "cordite" is only one step in producing an artillery shell. There's the gun, it's transport, the shell casing, the primer, the aiming mechanism, etc. You must train the gunner, etc.
That "organization that defeated Japan" you speak of would most likely not be present (would be destroyed),
No need to kill everyone in China. Just the "A Ship" and they're all in Beijing. Pollution is bad there already and would be even worse after a nuclear war!8-))
One person can "snuff out" a group.
Why do I get the feeling I'm talking to a child who is fairly well-educated but has a patchy understanding of the real world, someone better at history than at science? Maybe someone who games a bit? I think I'll stop this dialogue here.
Irbid question is attributed to former US foreign secretary Henry Kissinger who supposedly asked:
> Who do I call if I want to call Europe?
Like many famous quotes, it seems to be false: https://www.ft.com/content/c4c1e0cd-f34a-3b49-985f-e708b247e...
Even if he had said it, the EUs political framework has changed and there‘s now a “foreign minister”-like Post that is the EUs phone number for other foreign ministers.
Should Australia tax or ban rare earth exports to try to force value add industries here?
That would go against our position as a stable supplier and would seem more likely just to make customers source their rare earth supplies elsewhere (they’re not that rare).
https://brilliantmaps.com/europe-fight-war/
But that's how it is since the end of WWII. Major nations, or at least wealthy ones, don't go to open war with each other anymore. American hegemony and the NATO alliance structure, as well as the nuclear umbrella, has sapped the will to fight from most of the developed world, outside of brushfire conflicts. Taiwan is not a major nation, but it was an economic power, and at least has very comfortable first world living conditions. In such a situation, why would the population want to throw it all away?
Though on the other hand, why would the PRC, with its burgeoning middle classes and its coastal opulence, want to do something as destabilizing as to declare war, unprovoked? At the very least they'd face sanctions and diplomatic disapproval. The military build-up is concerning and should be taken seriously. But those who would assume that China would just cavalierly declare war in the near future should consider how much China would lose in the bargain.
>"In the United States, the level of professional dedication is no match to that in Taiwan, at least for engineers," Chang said. He warned that "short-term subsidy can't make up for long-term operational disadvantage."
> says that the cost of a semiconductor chip fabrication plant doubles every four years
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore%27s_second_law
And I fear that's what's going to be our stone wall in the evolution.
Yes, building the most modern plants make sense. But producing more of the older generation chips also make sense (don't think all the stuff in your phone is the latest generation neither!)
That is a politically naive, idealistic perspective that does not align with reality.
Regulation often exists to serve entrenched monopolies and to raise barriers to entry. Sometimes, regulation is a purely emotional knee-jerk reaction to a particular wave of passing news or events. It's often ill-considered over the long term. Long after a society or economy has changed or evolved to the point of rendering the regulation obsolete, the regulation continues to impose costs and burdens on the subjects of that regulation.
It turns out that laws are easier to enact than to roll back. There's a bias to keep existing laws, no matter the opportunity costs.
And that's without digging into my former point, which is that much regulation is the result of cronyism at the highest levels to serve special interest groups.
> Profit comes from people do anything they screw people over for is usually obscured in some way.
Profit comes from economic value creation or perceived economic value creation in the marketplace (as determined by the market). It is revenue minus expenses. It comes from any economic activity that is conducted between two parties in a mutually agreed upon transaction in which both parties trade one type of value for another.
Admittedly were not as close to those limits as it seems since "nm" quoted on CPUs etc is no longer a literal size of the object. But we're getting there...
When I looked into it, the most cited reasons were "that's not our business" (really? then what is?) and "it costs more than it's worth" (it doesn't, plus you get government subsidies for green initiatives).
No mention of contracts forbidding that, some manufacturers do forbid resale of whole units, but not of spare parts.
Caterpillar sold/licensed their brand for use in industries they're not competing in, btw, just like many other big companies.
The reality is more that untapped markets follow S curves. The electric car market will not be bigger than what the total car market has been but replace it. Electric cars are not there yet, but the market valuation is already far beyond that.
Not true. HK has been Chinese territory after 1997, there are PLA deployed in HK. There is no doubt about China's military capacity there, had the party really wanted to use it.
For Taiwan that is never the case.
And the Allies did destroy Nazi Germany, what the hell are you talking about. Maybe you wanted to say should've moved on to destroy the Soviet Union?
Remember that PRC is transitioning from being committee run to a personalistic dictatorship. If the calculus shifts only so slightly that one Xi would find advantages of an attack overweigh the risks, it will happen.
There is much lower decision threshold now with one person in charge. It's only a combination of objective factors: .tw defence potential, America's reading to defend it and criticality of certain Taiwan assets that keep it from happening.
However there is a pressing shortage of electricity in Taiwan. Just yesterday there had been a major blackout as one of the coal fired power stations suddenly went off the grid. I'm sure TSMC has been given priority supply but they are cutting it extremely close. Taiwan is just not a good place to have more fabs right now.
The shortage is unlikely to get better in the long term, with existing nuclear power stations nearing the end of their service life and the replacement stuck in political limbo. And there are already plans to move all 28nm+ process to China so they could better utilize the resources in Taiwan for the more profitable products.
https://amp.scmp.com/tech/big-tech/article/3131823/why-has-t...
It doesn't matter if exports are restricted because of "America first" or because of an outright ban. The result is exactly the same.
The UK is also arguing that they don't restrict exports but when asked how many doses were exported, they cite national security concerns and refuse to answer. Whatever that means.
Geopolitically it makes no sense.
What exactly do they expect any much changing from thus move other than Samsung getting even more desperate, and Korea possibly moving closer to China if the next Korean president will be a gullible populist (which is now a close probability.)
A lion share of high tech manufacturing happens in Taiwan-SK-Japan triangle, all within walking distance from China, and reachable by their nuclear weapons.
The whole of semiconductor industry is %60-%70 Taiwanese play with leading fab suppliers manufacturers often being single vendor, and in Taiwan.
If something happens to Taiwan, the entire semi supply chain globally stops, as happens every time after a major earthquake there.
I really don’t get why China care so much or the CCP see their hold over China as so weak they don’t want to be a part of the world system. But it’s their loss and America will have a clear competitor to focus minds and have a Cold War with again.
A single, or two, to three, to six fabs will change very little to the fact the industry is permanently anchored in Asia, and Taiwan.
Even a $50B cheque to the leading manufacturer will not amount to "buying the industry," but just handing a monopoly to one company.
Where do we draw the line? Because there is one country in the western world that would be banned from trade if destroying democracies are not allowed. It is also the only country in the world that has toppled governments so many times it has its own Wikipedia article. So unless you define it as only "full-scale invasion" the US would have to be put outside.
Correct, the fact that nuclear retaliation takes a few minutes, not months or years, means that your hypothetical disintegration scenario is irrelevant to my original point: in the event of a full-blown war between the USA and PRC, there will be no semiconductor fabs in the USA, foreign-owned or otherwise.
Nevertheless, I thought it was interesting to explore your postulated post-apocalyptic recapitulation of the Spring and Autumn Period, and shortwave radios are among the things that render it impossible.
I understand that it can be confusing to talk about two different hypothetical situations that happen at different times in the same hypothetical timeline. That's why I separated them into two paragraphs, with a one-sentence paragraph separating them, in order to keep you from confusing them: "The diesel UPS will last that long. What would the aftermath look like months or years later, though? Big coal power plants might be targeted, but most solar panels will continue to work; those can run shortwave radios for decades."
Perhaps repeating the point, as I have above, will have helped you to understand it better. I know it's confusing! But I have faith in you, Bunky!
> Bitcoin transactions require networked computers which, again, won't be around w/o power/batteries, a working network, etc.
This is not correct. Signing a Bitcoin transaction requires a computer, which does not have to be networked or powered on continuously. A small solar panel to charge your USB power bank is plenty of power. Once you have signed the transaction you do need to get it to the Bitcoin network somehow. Because it's a few hundred bytes and contains no secret data, you can base64 encode it and send it by skywave CW Morse code at 10 millibaud if you have to. Not that that would be necessary in practice.
> they're all in Beijing. Pollution is bad there already
It seems that your knowledge of current events in China is nearly as profound as your knowledge of cryptocurrencies, political science, and metallurgy.
> Why do I get the feeling I'm talking to a child who is fairly well-educated but has a patchy understanding of the real world, someone better at history than at science? Maybe someone who games a bit?
Probably because, being the person who said, "The CCP might survive somewhere but more likely would be snuffed out by the people, who would not appreciate the war the CCP had brought upon them," and "'smelt iron' with coal, maybe! Now you've got wrought iron, which is good for what, horseshoes?", you have no basis on which to judge my understanding except ego defense. And, I suppose, you're insecure enough about your maturity to imagine that likening someone a child is some kind of rhetorical power move that might compensate for your total lack of relevant knowledge and epistemic humility.
I did play D&D once, though, 30 years ago. And I played Settlers about once a month in the 02001-02006 period. So you're not entirely wrong.
ASML's Q1 Net Revenue: $2.79 billion TSMC Q1 Net Revenue: $12.9 billion
Don't you think ASML would just pocket the world's semiconductor income if this were the case?
The machines are only a part of the equation. How you use the machines and the processes you develop to create cutting edge semiconductors are arguably the more important part of the equation. As someone else mentioned in the comments, think of it as the difference between being a chisel manufacturer and a master sculptor. The tools are only a part of the equation. The methods and processes developed by TSMC are valuable pieces of technology. This value has an additional moat surrounding it due to the astronomical capital investment required to use it.
Even if you knew of all of TSMC's process information, you wouldn't be able to use it without tens of billions of dollars in investments, many years of construction, an adequately skilled workforce and right customer contacts.
Audi has the e-tron[1] already, and plans to have every model it sells come with a fully electric version before 2030[2].
BMW has been selling the i3 fully electric model since 2013, now has several other electric cars[3] (including the iX, the first one it designed from scratch to be an electric car, and the ix3, an electric version of the popular X3) and most of its models come as plugin hybrid (I ended up buying an X1 plugin-hybrid, the electric models are still really expensive compared to hybrid, which are themselves really expensive compared to the old combustion engine models - but worth it because you save loads of money if the electric range is enough for your daily trips, like for me, and due to government bonuses and much lower taxation!).
Mercedez seems to have started a bit late, but now it's keeping up with BMW and also offers many plugin-hybrid models as well as the new EQ line[4] which is fully electric (I drove the EQC and it's amazing - the luxury of Mercedez with the modernity of a Tesla - but just a little too pricey for me).
Other brands are following the same pattern. For example, Seat has a new sub-brand called Cupra[5] which offers a more affordable fully electrical, but still pretty awesome, model called Formentor which seems to be getting pretty popular in my country. Volvo now offers the XC40 with a pure electric engine[6] or plugin-hybrid... and it has a subsidiary to challenge Tesla called Polestar[7] which makes highly performant electrical vehicles similar to Teslas.
Finally, Renault Zoe[8] is a fully electrical, small vehicle that is pretty popular in Europe (where small cars are more convenient to use in cities).
[1] https://www.audi.com/en/experience-audi/models-and-technolog...
[2] http://www.mobiletechdaily.com/audi-plans-to-electrify-every...
[3] https://www.bmw.com/en-au/discover/electromobility/electric-...
[4] https://www.mercedes-benz.com/en/eq/
[5] https://www.cupraofficial.com/
[6] https://www.volvocars.com/intl/why-volvo/human-innovation/el...
One is a company that make less money selling cars than trading bitcoins and emission certificates. The other is selling more cars than anyone else. It's less than 500.000 cars a year versus 2.8 million cars with just one brand from the VW group (out of 12).
Edit: According to VW's news site "Volkswagen delivered around 5.3 million vehicles in 2020". That does not include vans or trucks.
Tesla likely won't survive as a car company when other car makers stop needing their emissions certificates. Tesla would be deep in the red today if it didn't live off other income than cars. Look at their official numbers if in doubt. In 2025 Tesla will likely be an investment firm selling some cars.
No this is you misinterpreting the context at hand. The context is "Businesses" so when I refer to regulation I refer exclusively to "Business regulation." You are naive to think that a person with that ludicrous level of naivety and idealism even exists. If anything it is your views that are naive. Texas favors both people and businesses? How convenient. That's idealism through and through.
When regulating people the purpose is often to protect people but like you said regulating people can often serve to form cartels, monopolies or other business interests. This is utterly clear and obvious to everyone and it is not part of the context or topic at hand. Again the topic is "regulating business" or enacting laws that restrict what businesses can do..
Specifically to address your example of "Barrier to entry." A Barrier to entry is a regulation enacted on people outside of the business that promotes this regulation. This type of regulation is regulating people, aka the market not businesses. This is not what I'm referring to. Think about it logically. A barrier to entry is not a regulation on a business because the business likely already passed the barrier to entry so the business is effectively not being regulated. Why would a business be so stupid as to regulate itself? These regulations come from the people who serve the self interest of the people.
Make no mistake when regulating "business" there is little other reason why it is done other than for the purpose of benefiting the people. There are very few other reasons why regulation on business itself exists. Think about it.
The only other time this happens is when corporations are in competition with each other and invoking laws to regulate each other but this rarely happens as competitors are in the same industry, regulating a competitor may mean regulating yourself.
The single example I know of where business regulation was done to serve the long term interest of business was the light bulb filament oligopoly where light bulb makers were regulated and fined to deliberately shorten the length of time light bulb filaments would last in order to increase business within the oligopoly. But again this type of regulation is very rare.
> Profit comes from people do anything they screw people over for is usually obscured in some way.
This is a typo. I didn't notice but somehow a huge portion of what I was suppose to say was deleted.
Let me paste the corrected quotation for more clarity:
Additionally keep in mind businesses cannot directly screw people over. Profit comes from people and companies cannot directly screw over the thing they derive profit from. When businesses screw people over it's usually obscured in some way. Think again to the antics of big oil and big tobacco. If deregulated businesses are harming the people of Texas in some way you likely won't know until many years from now.
I wouldn't put it past China to simply flatten the entire island or at least everything surrounding these chokepoints with conventional bombs until submission and genocide whoever remains alive afterwards.
You're right that doing so would appear to be a hamfisted approach to creating a homegrown economy that is attractive to industry, and would likely be doomed to failure.
Rather than trying to browbeat the industry into slowing exports, provide the opportunities for using the materials here, within the nation. That is done by providing a less-costly way of turning a profit. Less transportation, etc.
This is done by projects that would consume those resources. Government-led infrastructure investment projects can be successful, such as the Snowy Hydro project which was delivered under-time, under-budget, and over-performing expectations.
We don't need to tax or ban anything. We can invest in creating existing technologies here in Australia... Rather than investing in pipedream technologies that don't yet exist like the carbon sequestration investments that were just announced.
If seismic stability is a top-of-mind problem, why do they keep building new fabs in Taiwan? Why not move to diversify higher-end production sooner?
Why build in Arizona, a state which - while less seismically active than Taiwan - has multiple active faults and regular earthquakes?
It really seems like "a place that's flat and has a relatively low occurrence of natural disasters" is more of a would-be-nice than a must-have.
Some interesting data can be drilled into here in the Power BI report: https://new.azwater.gov/ama/ama-data
One thing is for sure though on the exact topics mentioned by the post you replied to. I am glad the United States is highly highly protective on these issues. I want these issues to be nanny'd to death and you do to unless you're down to face the consequences.
Characterizing it as "better off" is just word play. There is definitely more nuance here.
[0] https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/The-Big-Story/US-China-tec...
> "Without European technology, the Chinese navy would not be able to move."
You really think China couldn't buy tech from eg. Russia to make their "fleet move"?
What was the tech? Why was it that important?
That's why TSMC still has a significant process advantage to other manufacturers, even though all of them are customers of ASML and able to afford the most advanced EUV lithography scanners.
They replaced him with Mobutu Sese Seko a kleptocratic and murderous dictator, whom they supported for most of his reign.
"The report concluded that Belgium had not ordered Lumumba's assassination"
And
"In 2013, the U.S. State Department admitted that President Eisenhower authorized the murder of Lumumba.
However, documents released in 2017 revealed that an American role in Lumumba's murder was only under consideration by the CIA.
CIA Chief Allan Dulles had allocated $100,000 to accomplish the act, but the plan was not carried out."
It is just that US's strategy of containing China works really well with the pro-independence party in Taiwan. Anyone allowing Taiwan to be fully independent will lose power in China. It is mainly a proxy power fight between US and China. Taiwan is the most important spot in the first pearl chain containing China. China will have to make a decision either to break the chain or be contained forever. It is a interesting year, since we already have three or four wars broke out this year so far.
I'm not hearing any major challenges here that couldn't be overcome in the EU, considering the EU is capable of building some of the machines which are state of the art. yeah, you need capital and workforce and a bunch of other things. those aren't really blockers though. I think maybe there is no point, since it would cost more than TSMC, so better just buy the chips. at least until now, when there is a chip shortage and you regret not having a foundry. by the same logic there is no point to manufacture a lot of things in EU (or US) because it's cheaper to get them from China.
https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Tech/Semiconductors/TSMC-ta...
https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/news/member-states-...
Unfortunately we can no longer have conversation on politics without rage, so I agree that it is a bit provocative. That said, I don't see how we can talk about the TSMCs failure to strike a deal with the EU without pointing out about this fundamental difference between EU and USA.
I do appreciate for many the terms EU and Europe are interpolatable but in reality they are not.
Do also keep in mind that such actions/statements by companies can often be a case of political bargaining and TSMC in effect telling the EU - look we don't want to be messed about, if your serious then now is the time to decide and if not, we will not delay things any further in your endless talking.
Another article upon this matter: https://www.itpro.co.uk/hardware/components/359547/tsmc-eu-c...
Chips are a global industry, so yes, the factories will end up there but we will be able to buy chips subsidised by US tax payers. Many economists would claim that business and citizens would be more likely to efficiently allocate that $50B themselves. The increased tax on businesses in the US is going to hurt their innovation elsewhere in the economy, it just won't be as visible.
Governments picking winning industries has a very spotty track record. Often the industry does not turn out to be as crucial as thought, or subsidies end up in the wrong pockets. Every other generation this lessons needs to be re-learned it seems.
This year’s federal budget has large allocations towards infrastructure projects - e.g. inland rail and port upgrades. That’s on top of the state infrastructure projects already in the pipeline.
Heck even the planned gas plants make sense in terms of keeping energy costs down for industry.
Fundamentally none of that is a path to a specific outcome - such as onshoring of value add industries based on rare earths though. Rather it’s a bet that industry will find a way to utilise the infrastructure.
Again, he's an old guy with a lot of Taiwanese nationalistic pride. It's not much more than that.
> “John Adams said infamously that a way to subjugate a country is through either the sword or debt. China has chosen the latter,” said Brahma Chellaney, an analyst who often advises the Indian government and is affiliated with the Center for Policy Research, a think tank in New Delhi.
Careful not to underestimate the PRC.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/25/world/asia/china-sri-lank...
[We] see you two .
TSMC deny the report and is proceeding with the original plan at this stage.
you just broke all the rules of hackernews yet no mod here to flag/shadowban/warn you, how fair. you also discarded the entire human race based on your distorted ideas on good/bad yet here you are visible to all eyes.
Then Trump passed by and showed "us" that really, American needs to think about itself beforehand. like build its crumbling highways before coming to build Africa highways in order to counter China.
Now I see China has lifted more than 700M peoples out of poverty without firing a single shot and not interfering blatantly in our politics ( Well... lol. They provided arms to all the warring factions in my country... they let us fight, because we were stupid.).
And more importantly China tells me it has a new order where countries [Westerners that have been colonizing us... Seen French colonies?] respect sovereignty of each other and has money to build me highways in exchange of raw materials and stuff [it is recycling the surplus of USD gained trading with USA!!!].
And I might have a say in the new order.
So what do you think I might chose ? As an African citizen ?
That I think is one of the key problems - all the investments seem to make it easier to import/export/transport... But none of them seem to actually be aimed at creating industry inside the actual country. Our manufacturing industry is practically nonexistent. This latest budget hasn't tried to shift the needle on that.
You think Siemens which has none of those will be capable to churn out leading edge fabs just like that?
Lets face it, it's not a simple task.
Unfortunately it is a truism that MBA led companies are incentivized for short term profits, which translates to selling future innovation by outsourcing now.
They aren’t thinking about what the next generation will be doing (I.e. they will be contracting for the companies still innovating.)
The fact that someone is willing to build these machines for you is a good thing.
Very sad at the level of discussion here at hn when it comes to the US-China tech war. It is quite fascinating what is happening in China where the country is forced to rebuild a full semiconductor industry. Every established player here in the west has a Chinese counterpart being forstered.
It is really a Chinese Sputnik moment and a whole of society effort. Must be a great time to be Chinese semiconductor engineer.
As for TSMC, it has with the current Taiwanese goverment, placed itself firmly in the US camp where they will let go of any Chinese customer at the US government's command. However a considerable minority (maybe even a majority in business circles) in Taiwan see themselves as Chinese and are not at all sympathetic to US containment policies on China.
The chip shortage is creating an economic incentive to expand production capacity on its own, there is no need for subsidies but countries should accommodate new fabs by making them viable to build them in the first place.
One big problem with fabs is that they need specialized staff, they are not going to employ the average worker.
If you are using fuzzy rhetoric to refer to various forms of political interference (clandestine or otherwise, legal or otherwise)... I would agree. But then the comparison vs. China and other world powers gets a lot muddier. Even the comparison between world powers and local powers gets muddy in that case. Politics, local or global, is historically ugly business.
The key global questions should be what frameworks of behavior do we want to condone? What justifications do we allow as legitimate nation-state motivations? How is it acceptable for states to treat their own people? (The last is particularly relevant when a state contains approximately 1/5th of humanity itself.)
Does China really offer a better vision to you?
is it though? if you got the biggest gun why not rob someone else? do you believe ethics/empathy/humanity plays any role in any form governance? since we know that if you can sell the idea, you can get away with anything. why not just do the thing you know best? this is not singling out USA or China in any sense, they are just ahead of the curve, flower of the century.
a system optimized for only profit with almost no accountability (externalities) reads like a recipe to transfer of the wealth from many to few. if you add war into equation many becomes many-brown, many-yellow, many-black, many-jewish, many-others basicaly many-we-can-target-and-get-away-with. if you remove borders from the equation you end up seeing yourself on the receiving end as well. yet no-surprisingly few remains always the same.
so, the question is 'it pays back better to whom?'.
https://highscope.ch.ntu.edu.tw/wordpress/?p=42837
In any case, the current drought is likely to ease at some point but the electricity problem is only going to get worse.
If we are comparing the character and proposed world order of China vs. US (or whoever else), we should be focused on the present: that which is actually on the table to choose between.
North of Africa is a mess. A lot of Sub-Saharan is ruled by strongmen. And even the places where there is actually democracy the state apparatus usually tries to rig elections in favor of current rulers.
Both by territory and population I am willing to bet that the people that live in countries with free and fair elections with peaceful transitions between administrations are a minority.
nm process numbers are based on the theoretical feature size that a planar transistor process would need to be equivalent to the used process. Since this number is purely theoretical the lower bound is zero, it can go well below the plank length.
They badly want Taiwan. Not at any cost, but certainly at the cost of hundreds of thousands of lives —- especially those of the ‘ungrateful’ and ‘unruly’ Taiwanese.
The existence of trade between them in no way contradicts those desires.
VW is one of the biggest EV manufacturers. Maybe you should pick a different example.
Putting the cart before the horse, that US could occupy this land before China defends it. Also, this is such a nerd bro theory, as if only you are clever enough to see the game being played...the US government could somehow completely fool their citizens into being bait for a war, moving to a disputed territory that inevitably will be a battleground, or again that anyone on the mainland will suddenly want to die for newly settled territory, conned into war so to speak. These square-jawed, grass-fed people are just very stupid, is your claim?
Others have pointed out that the quote is false, but the real question is: why should EU answer to Murdoch phone calls?
He's just a billionaire with no political relevance.
People who really mattered had phone numbers to call, for example Henry Kissinger was a close friend of Gianni Agnelli, principal shareholder of FIAT.
Their most cutting edge expertise is in good part made in EU.
China broke its word and trashed the deal. Eventual certainty notwithstanding — the CCP demonstrated (as it has oh so many other times) that their word is unusually unreliable, even in the shitty arena of international politics.
If TSMC isn’t doing anything special why doesn’t the EU just build fabs then?
> I'm not hearing any major challenges here that couldn't be overcome in the EU, considering the EU is capable of building some of the machines which are state of the art.
So why don’t they do it?
Democracy is worth defending even at the risk to the human race. We as a race are not worth our own existence if we do not understand that.
we can chose to live in Rome, Berlin, Paris, Prague, Barcelona, Vienna, Stockholm, Amsterdam, Bruxelles, Lisbon etc. etc. and find something meaningful to do, we don't need to move to the only place where all the things happen.
Plus 231600 EVs sold in 2020 across all brands. It's no longer a battle between an EV company vs an ICE company. It's a battle between an EV company vs an ICE+EV company where the EV portion alone is half the size of the first EV company.
https://www.motorauthority.com/news/1130931_vw-group-sold-al...
1. "... USA involvement in toppling some governments here" - if we go by the 20th and 21st Centuries we have at least Egypt (1952), Angola (from 1975 onwards), Congo/Zaire (1960s, 1977, 1978, 1996) and most recently Libya (2011).
2. "A country I know for certain it has invaded unilaterally others (USA)" - so numerous and well known it's pointless to bother listing them.
Teslas are exceedingly rare. I remember being excited about them in 2017 but nowadays I don't care anymore.
Of course because I am living in Germany it feels like half the cars on the road are VWs so VW dominance is not surprising, at least that is how I feel it subjectively.
It only sounds good in the news, in practice it is a money pit, not a competitive advantage. You only do it because of national security.
Appliances aren’t quite as complicated, but I could still see how it would be a big change from the perspective of how they do business.
That's an odd position for anyone living in Taiwan to take, seeing as how their democracy and country exist only because China does not yet have the military strength to change that. I find it highly probable that they cease to exist as a separate entity within the next two decades.
Is there some sort of higher-information content article or video you can post than that YouTube video? It's a slow roll out of rather basic history with some unsubstantiated claims thrown in in the first 6 minutes, and I'm not going to waste any more time on that.
Particularly when it's talking about an "economic downturn" without stating any support for that. I know this video was made 7 months ago, and that sort of unsubstantiated claim gained lots of traction with right-wingers, but it was a completely false rumor. California's economy is killing it, and our largely income-tax-based government is swimming in an unprecedented surplus because of how incredibly resilient California was when other areas were hurting.
That leads to the second egregious unsupported claim in the first few minutes: "California was particularly hard hit by the globally economic downturn"--no it wasn't and that was a preposterous statement to make, even 7 months ago, California was doing great and there was absolutely no reason to think it was doing worse.
California is not a perfect paradise; we are weirdly focused on keeping people out of the state, which means that people without land or without high incomes are continuously forced out. But the economic engine continues on as we do this.
The "Taiwan is part of China" has been in the text book of China since the People's Republic of China founded. If you looked at diplomacy, one thing China did previously was to maintain the status quo to a degree that it has refused to take the few countries which recognize Taiwan in order to maintain the friendly relationship.
I have to say that now things changed. That's why it has become a hotspot for a potential war zone between US and China.
As for TSMC, I believe the decision should be attributed to Biden's government's push for having production capacity in the US rather than a pure business decision.
If you are Taiwanese and you trace family back to before 1949, your family is likely to be somewhere in China.
As for the business community, most of Taiwan’s trade is with the mainland. Probably explains why it is more sympathetic.
― Mark Twain
Interesting. I'm not familiar with this bit of Intel history. When were these exactly? It sounds like multiple occasions? Whose fortune would be reversed, Intel's relative to TSMC?
California is currently trending downward in certain metrics related to economics but this is entirely different from being in an "economic downturn."
California going into an economic downturn in the future is a 100 percent possibility. CA and the entire united States goes through economic downturns about roughly every decade and this has been going on for centuries. The economy is proovably cyclical.
Either way what Im saying is that the current metrics of migration show that California MAY become an economic waste land like Detroit. This is much worse than a economic downturn. Keyword: may, meaning not outside the realm of fantasy and also not a guarantee, but very very possible.
What is absolutely clear though is that if these metrics of negative brain drain continues then absolutely CA will become an economic wasteland.
I recommend you watch that video despite it's length. It's much more digestible then raw statistical data and scientific papers. The YouTuber is an economist and his views are spot on. Specifically the part on hotel California is very very accurate.
The guy even mentions that CA has one of the largest economies in the world if it was classified as a country, so he's not actually attacking your team here.
You keep making the same mistake on thinking that the video and I are making the claim that California is in an economic downturn. Nobody ever said California is in an economic downturn. If anything California could be in an economic bubble. Keyword: could.
California is not a perfect paradise. That would be a delusional view. We can agree that California is definitely a successful economy. To think that successful economies are infallible would be an equally delusional view.
I also suggest you try to get away from this team California mentality. You may live in the state you may love the state you may have been born in the state like I was. But your analysis of what's happening must remain impartial. That means analyzing the possibility of economic apocalypse rather then closing all YouTube videos that even mention anything negative about California.
I'm not sure why California's in-migration of the highly educated with high incomes, and out-migration of less educated folks counts as a brain drain. I'm not sure why you insist on an economic downturn in California in several comments, but now say that's not the case.
Just letting you know why I'm stopping interaction.
The brain drain consists of measurable negative population growth. More people moving out then people coming in, in aggregate. Additionally the real numbers show that California natives are the ones that are mostly leaving.
This. Is. A. Statistical. Number.
If negative population continues by raw logic after the population is small enough, California or any state would indeed become an economic wasteland. There is no opinion here. This is fundamental fact.
You're stopping this interaction as the discussion increases in productivity while I start citing more and more real numbers and real sources and undeniable logic that you are finding harder and harder to twist to fit your world view.
I think the reality of what's going on here is that the discussion is becoming too productive. It is an exposing a world view you are too biased to accept.
In my opinion Europe needs to go about it via policy, and maybe even culture, rather than funding. Get rid of non-competes. Make financing less scary for founders and make bankruptcy less punishing - my understanding is that in the EU, a startup failing can destroy a founder's life financially. Controversially, roll back overly permissive or complex labor laws that make it difficult to fire and hire.
None of this involves throwing money at the problem. It's about incentives. There's little reason for someone who wants to grow a large technology company to do it in the EU. There's little reason for someone who wants to be an employee of a startup to do it in the EU either. Obviously people still do both, but it's at too low of a rate and density for it to sustain a chain reaction leading to something like SV.
Being the first to buy something, and being in a position to buy all of the supply (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-03-24/biden-use... ), is not the same thing as enacting a law to prevent other countries from buying some. Admittedly to the other countries the outcome is the same, but there is a difference.
Further, I specifically said vaccines. The US did invoke the Defense Production Act for certain medical equipment, to make sure its contracts are fulfilled first. But, let me quote from https://www.ft.com/content/82fa8fb4-a867-4005-b6c2-a79969139... , "The DPA does not allow the administration to block exports overseas".
The US's contracts would be fulfilled first regardless (albeit more slowly) without the DPA, because (as I said) the US was the first and paid the most. The US's Pfizer contract explicitly prohibited the company from exporting US-produced vaccine doses until March 31, but the company only began to export US-produced doses at the end of April because it still had to fulfill said US contract first. https://www.barrons.com/articles/pfizer-to-export-u-s-made-v...
Apple designed M1 but outsourced to TSMC for production. if Apple can design, surely they can produce, no? just buy some EUV machines, create the fab process and build a fab. easy, right?
You can't separate the two in the case of the US. Having the semi fabs in the US is an economic factor because it's a national security factor, even if it involved adding zero net new jobs because it was all automated by AI + robotics.
Insurance is a very important segment of economy. Risk limiting, prevention. Security, both cyber and physical. And so on. For a business they're critical to sales even though they're costs and not generative for the businesses in terms of sales, they help to make sales possible by protecting the business (like having shelter for your employees). Building fabs in the US plays that same role to the US economy, it's a form of insurance, and it also helps to maintain/retain tech know-how. It's absolutely critical to the US economy, when you consider the realistic context of the world, re the US & China (as opposed to running a spreadsheet economic scenario that involves no potential politics, conflicts or wars).
Semiconductors are critical now and will be more so in the future. The US has both the world's largest economy, most to lose in the tech sector, most powerful military (which depends on semiconductors and will more so tomorrow) and the most wealth of any nation. A superpower without a military is no superpower; the most wealth without a military to protect it, you won't keep that wealth for long. It's pretty obvious that's a very massive economic factor. Being brought to your knees as a superpower - both militarily and economically - by your primary global rival because you failed to build some fabs, would be particularly stupid. It's similar to the rare earth metals problem, both in terms of economy and national security.
You might be able to separate the fab context of economy from national security to a limited extent in smaller nations, where realistically there's nothing you can do to stand off against far larger nations regardless of what you do about semiconductors (you'll lose whether you build that fab or not). Such is not the case with the US however. The US has epic scale global economic interests that very strongly benefit from having global military projection and security.
Do you have any evidence that teachers are more likely to hold blank slate world-views? I've met very few people who believe this, and teachers don't seem any more likely to me to hold these views.
"notion that some students are smarter than others and that these discrepencies have consistent ethnic patterns fills them with a lot of rage due to their politics/religion."
Well, I do feel somewhat enraged reading these types of statements because it is wrong and harmful. I also say this as someone without a "blank slate world-view" (I've a background in genetics) and as a teacher.
You're statement is wrong because: 1) Race is a nebulous political construct not consistent over time and space 2) Observed racial differences are context dependent and also not consistent over time and space
You cite "Asians" as outperforming other groups (presumably in school in the West?) as one of your "consistent" ethnic patterns. But on closer inspection it is nothing but artifact of cherry-picking results that fit your hypothesis. Another time and place and you may get totally different results - and only one example is sufficient to prove your "consistent" hypothesis wrong. In fact, you pointed out yourself that performance has changed in the US and various European countries, undercutting your whole point on consistent racial differences! Probably if we go back to the period of European colonialism the difference is even more stark, but that is also cherry picking history... If we go back 3000 years, Europe is a poorly educated backwater relative to Egypt or the Middle East.
Group math educational attainment has far more to do with social context and history than "racial distribution of those students who are good at math". It's why relatively recent Asian immigration from say China for scientific and technical jobs is likely to produce kids who are good at math, but the same out-performance in not seen in say, Hmong refugees from Vietnam.
Also, AFAIK Asian kids don't currently outperform all other ethnic groups in the United States in educational attainment - I believe that honor now goes to Nigerian kids. Does that fit your world-view?
"Taiwan and China are under no such illusions. They are happy to identify smart students and give them challenging topics in order to help them achieve their potential, rather than trying to slow down the best students in order to pretend that everyone has the same talent for math. " Right, because teachers don't try to help students reach their potential and try to slow down great students?! Students can't skip grades, take AP classes or graduate college early?! A teacher giving everyone in the course the same math homework or test is pretending everyone has the same talent for math?!
its always there. what do you do when you have a bully for neighbor? you arm up. what's what Taiwanese govrt have been doing.
Taiwan invested in F16-v, build its own submarines and keep developing its own missile.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2020/12/02/taiwan-is-b...
"In the early 21st century, writer Ludo De Witte found written orders from the Belgian government that had requested Lumumba's execution, and documents on various arrangements, such as death squads"
I realise that this may be a bit of confirmation bias on my side, regarding which of these I believe.
It's what happens when you redirect so much money to politicians and bureaucrats. Creating jobs is how they get reelected. That's also how you get labor laws that make it difficult to fire and hire: the slacker's vote is worth just as much as the startup founder's.
http://www.todayifoundout.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/smo... - - -
Related article: http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2014/05/origin-expre...
It's staggering how insulting your comment is. How would you feel if somebody invaded your country, dismantled your government, decided who got to rule you, and told you it was all for the best and you probably didn't even lose out. Would you like it?
Well... The island has been a part of China historically, taken by the Japanese in the first Sino-Japanese war, and after WWII returned to China, which was in the middle of a civil war, in which the losing side ran away to the island. Their flag and official name are the ones of the Kuomintang party and regime, aforementioned losing side.
It'd be like if the CSA run away to Hawaii, assimilated the local population, called itself CSA with flag and all, and the USA still said from times to times it belongs to them.
And not only that, the UN and all members see it like that as well - officially and for diplomatic purposes, Taiwan doesn't exist and is a part of China.
Every type of company other than the very basic person-level companies are of a limited liability type, so i don't see how that'd be the case, but haven't done it so maybe I'm missing something.
> Controversially, roll back overly permissive or complex labor laws that make it difficult to fire and hire
Do you think the majority of the population would accept to be worse off, on the chance that there might be some more innovation and money in tech? Why would they? People like not having to worry if their boss is an asshole and makes them do a dangerous job on the fear of getting fired, having affordable healthcare, paid vacation time. Few people would be willing to sacrifice such comforts and the lack of stress associated for the potential benefit of few.
It was encouraging enough for Putin to try the same thing in the Baltic states, thankfully, NATO reacted ahead of time.
"The problem with invading Tawian "
They're not going to invade with amphibious ships.
They're going to invade by stripping the country of it's economic viability, by fomenting agitators, corrupting politicians, stuffing ballots. And then support the coup at the right time.
That's pretty different to Taiwan which has never been under the sovereignty of China.
You see, if China agreed with your statement diplomacy would be a lot easier. But few things anger the Chinese more than asserting that it does not have sovereignty over Taiwan, the only other one I can think of is that Tibet should be free to be its own country.
https://www.businessinsider.com/tug-sailing-with-russian-shi...
NYT has a pretty good piece of reporting about the situation:
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2021/04/08/tech...
If you think this is a good thing this entire discussion is futile.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/08/technology/taiwan-drought...
Chinas version of this includes forced communism, and a whole slew of lost freedoms as a result. When was the last time the US took away freedoms from an “elected” gov? Also who elected these govs? Free or forced citizens?
Lack of money to maintain their army has been a recurring issue since the fall of the USSR.
My question still remains to have a realistic POV:
> What was the tech? Why was it that important?
Or it might be the guy who wrote http://canonical.org/%7Ekragen/sw/dev3/paperalgo, http://canonical.org/%7Ekragen/sw/urscheme/, http://canonical.org/~kragen/bytebeat/, https://github.com/kragen/dumpulse, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2933619, https://gitlab.com/kragen/bubbleos/blob/master/yeso, https://github.com/kragen/stoneknifeforth, and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=695981 in the past, and within the last three months wrote https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27171597, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26930408, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26884231, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26674832, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26672806, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26671656, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26654767, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26596892, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26587768, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26581742, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26561319, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26547871, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26543937, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26580684, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26528534, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26525837, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26525109, http://canonical.org/~kragen/sw/dev3/qvaders, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26452393, http://canonical.org/~kragen/sw/dev3/skitch, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26449902, http://canonical.org/~kragen/sw/dev3/meta5ixrun.py, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26438596, http://canonical.org/~kragen/sw/dev3/mukanren.ml, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26418271, http://canonical.org/~kragen/sw/dev3/kmregion.h, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26299172, http://canonical.org/~kragen/sw/dev3/readprint.fs, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26289195, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26219950, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26219000, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26198567, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26231940, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26189525, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26195060.
I'm not going to link to particular comments in https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=giardini (it would be too easy to think I was cherry-picking the worst ones) but you can read through it yourself and see that the guy has a long history of almost nothing but incessant worthless trolling.
If you can't tell the difference...
Naturally TSMC knows their tools and processes, works with product companies (nvidia, AMD, Qualcomm) to actually implement their design on the target process node. And at the same time works with the various tool vendors to refine the process, the tools themselves. But as lately we saw it's increasingly impossible to do it "alone", both Intel and Samsung works with many-many vendors. (Intel - among others - funded the push for EUV by buying ASML equity in 2012.)
But as his own internet posting history shows, he seems quick to anger and, while quite well-schooled in some respects, he is unable to recognize that there's something seriously inherently flawed in his thought processes. And before that flaw, whatever it is, can fully reveal itself, he goes off screaming "troll!".
I'm not in bad company, apparently kragen also said some very bad things about Eric Naggum, although kragen raged after Naggum died (wish he'd done the same for me, but...) And the comparison is unfair in that I'm neither so talented nor so demanding as Naggum was. And I love a good laugh.
Good News: this is the first such person I've met on HN so I think such is a rarity.
Ironically, the Taipei-Hsinchu metropolitan area is on very solid ground and would have been perfect for a nuclear power station if it weren't so heavily populated.
California is not losing population, it's just growing slower than the rest of the country. There is no "brain drain," as those moving in have higher education than those leaving. International immigration, in particular, is making up for the domestic net out-migration:
https://lao.ca.gov/LAOEconTax/Article/Detail/265
You haven't cited a single number, or a single fact. You accuse me of bias, but shift your phrasing and points on nearly every comment. Your only support is a YouTube video that is heavy on propaganda techniques but says nothing of substance for the first third.
If the population growth is trending downward that means the growth of intelligent people should also by logic be trending downwards. This is 100 percent brain drain.
Let me explain it to you so you can understand. If this trend continues it will eventually become net population decrease. Which means a net loss of intelligent people.
I haven't shifted points. You think I'm shifting points because you are misinterpreting everything I say and I am re clarifying it for you so your brain can comprehend. But your brain is registering this as me shifting topics.
Literally read the thread. You asked me if I'm debating if California is in an economic downturn... And if you look at the entire damn thread... I never said California was in an economic downturn. You assumed this is what I'm saying because you're the one with bias here. I corrected your mistake.
You want citations for things that have been Frontline news and evident for every normal person living in this state? The initial YouTube video was CNBC, which you disregarded as bad because of "YouTube". So I guess journalism in the form of a video is illegitimate for you... I guess written articles are more factual for some illogical reason? Fine. Here you go.
https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/articles/2021-04-27/...
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2019-12-21/californ...
https://calmatters.org/commentary/2021/05/california-populat...
https://www.ppic.org/blog/californias-stalled-population-gro...
https://abc7.com/california-population-decline-congressional...
https://qz.com/1599150/californias-population-could-start-sh...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/03/31/why-calif...
https://www.kqed.org/news/11872755/california-reports-first-...
https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/California-to-l...
Now I could cite the raw statistics these articles derive their info from. But I felt legitimate news organizations are enough and easier then a raw statistical paper. Let's not get overly pedantic. Do you really want to argue against sfchronicle, quartz, CNBC and the Washington post? I hope to God you're not that type of person.
I also hope this was "productive" for you. My definition of productive means imparting new knowledge onto someone less knowledgeable than me. But for some people "productive" means not admitting when they are wrong, refusing to look at raw evidence, and running away from a discussion where they are incorrect.
Yeah you can leave this conversation if you feel it isn't "productive." Go. Leave.
Since when is the simplest possible example of the fallacy of division the same thing as “logic”?
For illustration, for a long time California’s net domestic outmigration has been composed of relatively high income domestic inmigration and slightly larger, lower-income domestic outmigration.
So (before considering the effects of natural population change and international migration), the population waa going down, but the population at the upper end of the income spectrum was actually increasing.
This would be consistent with (given the known correlation of income with IQ) high-IQ gain with net population decrease. The correlation is loose enough, and there’s enough other moving pieces of population dynamics, that it is consistent with other possibilities as well, but the point is you can’t generally conclude anything about change in a subgroup population from change in the larger group population.
Without any additional information the assumption that entropy rules the day is "logically" reasonable. Meaning that if out migration and in migration is random the proportion of High IQ people moving out and in will be random and on par with population proportions.
Trust in entropy and probability is a completely reasonable and logical assumption to make. In fact, our entire scientific establishment is built on these axioms. To assume a random correlation exists out of nowhere is the unreasonable claim. Don't twist words and make it sound illogical. It is illogical to think otherwise without presenting new evidence and a new claim.
So what you did here is introduce a new claim. You say there is a mechanism effecting natural entropy and that more intelligent people could be migrating in. This is not an illogical claim, but it is an extraordinary one.
If you were to make such an extraordinary claim. You need to provide equally extraordinary evidence as this trend isn't on the front page of every news organization.
So you say more higher income people tend to migrate into California and lower income people tend to migrate out. Do you have a source? Additionally I would like to know whether the standard deviation between the correlation of income and IQ fits with the incomes of people migrating out and into California. That would be strong evidence for "Brain Gain" if the trends show more intelligent people migrating in.
At this point I acknowledge your claim as a possibility. But the evidence you present (essentially no evidence, just a claim that evidence exists) makes it fuzzy enough that it is equally likely that natural entropy takes precedence here. There is also a lot of anecdotal/qualitative evidence working against your claim including coworkers who are moving out, more and more tech companies offering remote options and such and such.
It looks to me that you aren't really making a claim but your just being pedantic towards my "logic." I can slightly acknowledge the possibility there isn't Brain drain here, but let's be real. Until there's a study specifically targeting this theory it's just a random shot in the dark.
