US Intel

Robust and redundant manufacturing spread across the world with more opportunity for innovation?

Trillions of dollars spent just for redundancy? Most wouldn't even succeed in building a working process, forget profitable.

Starfleet code requires a second backup?

In case the first backup fails.

What are the chances that both a primary system and its backup would fail at the same time?

Sounds like a huge infusion of cash to highly skilled workers, and supporting the building of skills that can be transferred between companies sounds like a good thing.

I think it depends on what the goal is. Like, lots of countries (and probably a few US state) could, I bet, do their own foundries for, like, 22nm. Process node names are bullshit of course, but we’re talking about stuff that Intel was doing in 2012, Global Foundries in 2015.

22nm is already overkill for a lot of applications. But, like, if your country gets embargoed, you should be able to make computer chips for cars and farming equipment. Top end GPUs? Not necessary. Some basic RISC-V cpu for compute appliances? That should be a capability that everybody has.

This is too glib: If you imagine a world where every critical industry is replicated in every large nation, often inefficiently or inadequately, that’s a world where the average person is much, much poorer.

And for what?

Security, perhaps.

It’s a tradeoff between resilience and efficiency.

You can go for full efficiency if you want, but then like the US auto manufacturers learned during Covid, you don’t have any way to handle disruptions to your business

The world collectively (mostly the US) spends trillions on national defense, that spending is unnecessary if we all just got along. I think you're right that everyone spending money on local semiconductor industries is even more wasteful.

In all seriousness, that’s basically what the Soviets thought they were doing—and why—from (at least) 1945 on.

It really didn’t work out, despite sometimes giving the appearance of a plausible alternative to the capitalist world.

Why? The efficiency gains are a matter of size of the average company, not a matter of the total number of companies.

If what you said were true, it would be cheaper for there to be only one flavor of soda (as Bernie Sanders might have put it) rather than dozens.

Competition is better for consumers than monopoly, and that applies even when the consumers are nations.

The premise of this thread is that efficient markets and comparative advantage won’t leave even a large nation with enough of the right competitive local industries for national security or whatever objective.

Thus to sustain those industries (semiconductor fabrication in this case) industrial policy (subsidies, tariffs, government investment, “Buy American” rules, … ) is essential.

That doesn't sound unreasonable. That is Ivy Bridge/Intel Core 3rd gen capabilities. You aren't running a generative AI but can do all manner of work loads. Combined with some software efficiency gains and you could be fairly comfortable.

This part of why I have been advocating for years that the open source/free software folks should be focusing on optimization and stability/security as long term it will probably be much more useful that adding features that can be dumped on top.

Unfortunately, that defense allows hoarding wealth. If the wealth was more evenly distributed globally, there would be little reason to defend against raids.

This is how places like the US despite having 4% of the population have about a quarter of the material and energy consumption. Not to single them out, I am in Australia, it is a similar ratio.

I am not defending this situation, just highlighting its role.

Whats wrong with redundancy? Not having redundant supply of anything is a problem as human history has repeatedly shown. I think this kind of modern "more profit = more better" is just a ticking time bomb for a massive disaster, and it isn't like we haven't had any warning signs about critical supply problems for any number of resources and goods.

I agree that industrial policy is essential for a nation that wants to ensure that competitive industries exist within the nation's economy.

But the justification I replied to was that the nation must inherently suffer material inefficiencies for a nation to do this, due to how economies work, which is not the case (or at least, no real justification was offered other than the heuristic that larger firms are somehow inherently more efficient, which if anything is opposite to my experience in a very large org).

A nation might well implement an industrial policy so as to pessimize its local industries that survive, but that is not required to happen either.

If you can print the money required with no bad consequences, go right ahead and build all the redundancies.

The problem with bleeding-edge fab is it's a (fast) moving target. It's not a solved problem. And customers can't simply migrate their designs to a different fab, as the designs are increasingly specific to a process.

I do think we need more fabs but not this kind. Very low cost fabs with standardized PDK and open(ish) tools, should be as simple as ordering a PCB. Not going to happen anytime soon though, needs old fabs to stop production and the bleeding-edge to hit a hard wall. Can't compete with fully depreciated legacy fabs/nodes.

Not all wars are about raiding, especially in the modern era. Putin isn’t interested in Ukraine’s wealth. Nor would a Chinese invasion of Taiwan be about money.

I don’t think the problem with the Soviets was doing everything themselves, which seems to be working okay for China. The problem is that centralized planning doesn’t work, and the system dehumanized people and destroyed incentives for people to innovate.

Why would a more even distribution of resources lead to less war?

Like, it might but if resources are equally distributed then raiding your neighbors for more is one of the best ways to get more of them.

Does no one study history? War wasn't invented in the 20th century.

Chimps in the damn jungle go to war with each other.

You are right. I was far to reductionist there.

"No wars have been more ruthless and ravaging than “just” wars, fought in “defense” of religion, honor, or principle. If war must be, give me rather a war to capture an enemy’s wealth and territory, based on honest greed, in which I shall be careful not to destroy what I want to possess. " - Alan Watts

Maybe instead of all the wealth flowing to a couple huge companies in a couple countries wealth would be distributed more broadly.