Germany squandered so much money on nonsense, when they could have simply driven the few kilometers over to Eindhoven and bought an ASML machine for "Silicon Saxony".
Sure, it would have taken years and years and serious commitment by the government and private sector to make that a successful move. But instead of putting in the hard work with a clear vision for the future, we mostly spend our time whining and wailing. It's a shame.
What you are suggesting is vertical integration. If Europe goes crazy, can do that. From start to finish this chip thingy can become "magic crystals from Europe" as they already have control over the tooling. How many billions it will take to build the fabs with these tools and hire the talent from all over the planet and put all that in special economical zones? I don't know but I bet its less than those who don't have and end up buying the tools.
Europe is already a great place to build your life and despite the narrative about "EU killing businesses with over regulations", Europe is an exporter, that is EU makes physical things in large quantities(that's why USA is able to blackmail EU with tariffs). EU produces and exports so much, more than it consumes. Its closer to China than USA in this regard, you can check out the recent stats here: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-euro-indicators/w...
The infrastructure is in place and there are both many nuclear reactors that were decommissioned early or not yet commissioned but canceled/put on hold as well as regions with plenty of sunshine or hydro power opportunities and also has all the expertise to re-work those quickly.
It's really a political decision to push for something like that or not. Geopolitics may eventually make it happen, who knows? At this time it makes more economical sense to make the tools and send them close to the larger supply chain of electronic products production.
>Meanwhile Europe only got 40k WSPMs of 12+ nm capacity
EU leaders and VCs gave up on the electronics industry 20+ years ago and just kept offshoring it to the cheapest suppliers to lower costs and increase shareholder value.
You can validate this by looking at which sectors pay the highest EU wages and you'll see that hardware and electronics are not in the top.
And working in the electronics industry requires highly skilled knowhow and academic specialization, and you're not gonna attract people there if you don't pay them top wages if they can get more money and an easier job somewhere else like writing CRUD SW or pushing pencils in a bank.
EU never had significant chip fabrication (instead having a lock on the tooling) whereas Japan and the US essentially pioneered high-end chip manufacturing before losing ground to Taiwan and Korea.
Taiwanese politicians, like those under American-style democracy in many regions, only care about safeguarding their own interests and have no concern for how to protect the interests of the public. Once TSMC’s factories are completed in Japan and the United States and the technology is secured, Taiwan will no longer have any value worth protecting. Of course, the politicians can always take planes and leave in advance.
Not necessarily. If TSMC doesn’t build these fabs in Japan or USA, these governments might just mandate that chips are manufactured elsewhere. Intel could have a big comeback.
This keeps ppl locked in to the TSMC universe. The Japan and US fabs produce just a fraction of what these countries need.
Right now is an AI goldrush. They can get crazy lucrative investments and lock in amazing deals. In a decade the Chinese tech will catch up and the AI boom will slow down and the Taiwanese will have to coast on what they have. They have to capitalize on this moment as much as they can b/c it's not going to last long. Things are going to get much tougher very soon
The US protected Taiwanese sovereignty for decades before they even had a single semiconductor fab. This idea of "the silicon shield" just shows a complete ignorance of the history of Taiwan and its place in the geopolitical order.
TSMC can shut the fabs down whenever they want. If the US think they can take over a fab like it's a t-shirt factory and keep it running without TSMC's cooperation they are sorely mistaken. What are you going to do when none of the Taiwanese workers turn up for work, or worse they do turn up and sabotage the fab.
More so a damage control move. In the eventuality Taiwan, and its factually on Chinese land production sites get affected, it won't affect as much the supply chain as it otherwise would.
The U.S and Japan indeed will have less incentive to defend the sovereignty of Taiwan, but other reasons remain to ensure the statu quo remains. Purely geopolitical, not just industrial.
I would argue the chips don't even matter (important, but not as a reason for defending Taiwan.) It's a strategically important location that is a stone's throw from Japanese islands. If Japan feels the need, then nukes may be on the table. If that were to happen, S. Korea may not be far behind. And the cycle spirals.
America selectively gets into conflicts worldwide to deter China from invading China
As soon as we get the right semiconductor supply chain stateside can switch up on that island and reach parity with the rest of the world’s contribution to that issue: none.
Isn’t this an erosion of the silicon shield Taiwan is protected by? If they make semiconductors everywhere else then the world has less economic incentive to protect Taiwan from war.
The silicon shield became a slogan that has only been popularized in recent years. The potential crisis of war has been there for more than half a century (even before semiconductors became a thing). The real value proposition of the status quo is the freedom of navigation between the northeastern Asian countries and the SEA (the Strait of Malacca, aka the lifeline of energy imports), and the consequential domino effect of the entire western Pacific.
Also, not sure why everyone forgets about it. People should have learned from the experience of the pandemic that the cutting-edge foundry nodes are not really the crucial ones, as being the bottleneck of industrial infrastructure. A delay of the next-gen iPhone or RTX gaming card isn't that catastrophic. But a shortage of embedded MCUs, which are actually fabricated by mature nodes, could stall the entire industrial base of a country.
The world won’t allow a dependence on a single geopolitically threatened entity in the long run, so either they defuse that risk themselves or risk a competitor filling that role. This move is better for TSMC itself.
America doesn't defend taiwan for its semiconductors - it's all american IP anyways. They defend it for the same reason they defend japan and Phillipines - to control the pacific "frontier" these three countries form before guam. Typically against China, but they would do the same nonetheless.
Disagree. Making the world less centralized to TSMC chips makes less incentive to invade at the near future. There is no strategic upside to do it right now. If nothing else, to me it seems china is a strategic mover, and will not sacrifice anything for no strategic value.
But it will happen one way or another. Taiwan's Sovereignty is completely depending on one single country, the US. It's not like that Taiwan can just say no if the US demands more diversified chip production.
Pretty clear these days that the bottlenecks in technology manufacturing are now weaponising their monopolies/duopolies / triopolies.
They’ve become the trolls under the bridge and will squeeze every passerby for every dollar they’ve got.
The days of cheap computing have been in decline and are now dead, replaced with giga profits for this companies who managed to the the indispensable links in a chain with no or minimal competition.
Is this a decision took in light of the new prime minister’s party winning 2/3 lower house majority and her statements about protecting Taiwan against China?
I was going to ask if TSMC just have some weird earthquake fetish.
Realistically it's probably just that Japan is politically stable and safer than the other options in the area, while remaining fairly close to the rest of the supply chain.
China has many faults. Invading other countries is not one of them. They haven’t dropped bombs on foreign soil in over 40 years. The Chinese playbook here is to first copy then out-scale and out-innovate until eventually nobody remembers why Taiwan was so important.
If this was just about semiconductors then this would be a reasonable take but I doubt semi-conductors are anything more than a minor footnote in China’s strategic calculus vis-a-vis Taiwan.
Reunification with Taiwan has been a major policy goal of the CCP since the civil war and is one of Xi’s explicit policy goals. He just reaffirmed this commitment as part of his New Year’s speech.
Historically China has lacked force projection capability. However it has had a multi-decade modernisation and military build-up which has drastically changed this situation.
Further we’ve seen significant tightening of CCP control over society and in particular the military in Xi’s term.
A straight forward analysis of these events, in line with Xi’s public statements and past Chinese actions,
is that the ground work is being laid for encirclement of Taiwan followed by China taking over, by force if necessary.
> China has many faults. Invading other countries is not one of them
Literally have ongoing border disputes with practically all of their neighbors, a few of which they’ve been shooting at (India) and ramming at sea (the Philippines) in the last few years.
I don't understand what China want with Taiwan, they should just throw the biggest Uno reverse card in modern history and recognize Taiwan as an independent nation and win Xi the Nobel peace price next year.
In 1962 China launched a surprise war against India. They did it in the same week as the Cuban missile crisis, ensuring that the US and USSR would be too distracted to intervene.
This was after 13 years of friendship between India and China, where India had supported China in many ways including supporting the Communists getting the UN Security Council seat reserved for China. China and India had signed a friendship pact just a few years before.
> Perhaps there are not many instances in history where one country has gone out of her way to be friendly and cooperative with the government and people of another country and to plead their cause in the councils of the world, and then that country returns evil for good
That’s how India’s PM described this barbarous act of betrayal.
This was a good demonstration of how China views its neighbours. As vassals to be brought to heel from time to time, rather than equals. And China will use violence to achieve these aims. That’s the Mao doctrine, followed by every Chinese leader since.
And before you try any nonsense of “oh that’s old news”, China is annexing Bhutan today to put pressure on India to make territorial concessions. (https://youtu.be/io8iaj0WYNI). China is annexing international waters in the South China Sea. China is attempting to annex islands controlled by Japan. China also has border disputes with Russia.
Educate yourself instead of uncritically spreading Chinese propaganda.
kyboren|21 days ago
Meanwhile Europe only got 40k WSPMs of 12+ nm capacity: https://overclock3d.net/news/software/bringing_advanced_semi...
avhception|21 days ago
mrtksn|21 days ago
Europe is already a great place to build your life and despite the narrative about "EU killing businesses with over regulations", Europe is an exporter, that is EU makes physical things in large quantities(that's why USA is able to blackmail EU with tariffs). EU produces and exports so much, more than it consumes. Its closer to China than USA in this regard, you can check out the recent stats here: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-euro-indicators/w...
The infrastructure is in place and there are both many nuclear reactors that were decommissioned early or not yet commissioned but canceled/put on hold as well as regions with plenty of sunshine or hydro power opportunities and also has all the expertise to re-work those quickly.
It's really a political decision to push for something like that or not. Geopolitics may eventually make it happen, who knows? At this time it makes more economical sense to make the tools and send them close to the larger supply chain of electronic products production.
joe_mamba|21 days ago
EU leaders and VCs gave up on the electronics industry 20+ years ago and just kept offshoring it to the cheapest suppliers to lower costs and increase shareholder value.
You can validate this by looking at which sectors pay the highest EU wages and you'll see that hardware and electronics are not in the top.
And working in the electronics industry requires highly skilled knowhow and academic specialization, and you're not gonna attract people there if you don't pay them top wages if they can get more money and an easier job somewhere else like writing CRUD SW or pushing pencils in a bank.
chvid|21 days ago
insane_dreamer|21 days ago
yanhangyhy|21 days ago
earthnail|21 days ago
This keeps ppl locked in to the TSMC universe. The Japan and US fabs produce just a fraction of what these countries need.
contrarian1234|21 days ago
KK7NIL|21 days ago
zarzavat|21 days ago
hirako2000|21 days ago
The U.S and Japan indeed will have less incentive to defend the sovereignty of Taiwan, but other reasons remain to ensure the statu quo remains. Purely geopolitical, not just industrial.
gexla|21 days ago
yieldcrv|21 days ago
As soon as we get the right semiconductor supply chain stateside can switch up on that island and reach parity with the rest of the world’s contribution to that issue: none.
ekianjo|21 days ago
SilverElfin|21 days ago
typ|21 days ago
Also, not sure why everyone forgets about it. People should have learned from the experience of the pandemic that the cutting-edge foundry nodes are not really the crucial ones, as being the bottleneck of industrial infrastructure. A delay of the next-gen iPhone or RTX gaming card isn't that catastrophic. But a shortage of embedded MCUs, which are actually fabricated by mature nodes, could stall the entire industrial base of a country.
david2ndaccount|21 days ago
porridgeraisin|21 days ago
AlexCoventry|21 days ago
[1] https://www.youtube.com/shorts/p-4nFgs9fRE
stingraycharles|21 days ago
tzahifadida|21 days ago
raincole|21 days ago
But it will happen one way or another. Taiwan's Sovereignty is completely depending on one single country, the US. It's not like that Taiwan can just say no if the US demands more diversified chip production.
unknown|21 days ago
[deleted]
dd_xplore|21 days ago
3eb7988a1663|21 days ago
coffinbirth|21 days ago
[deleted]
trvz|21 days ago
andrewstuart|21 days ago
They’ve become the trolls under the bridge and will squeeze every passerby for every dollar they’ve got.
The days of cheap computing have been in decline and are now dead, replaced with giga profits for this companies who managed to the the indispensable links in a chain with no or minimal competition.
unknown|21 days ago
[deleted]
etrvic|21 days ago
qwertytyyuu|21 days ago
mrweasel|21 days ago
Realistically it's probably just that Japan is politically stable and safer than the other options in the area, while remaining fairly close to the rest of the supply chain.
sbinnee|21 days ago
RobertoG|21 days ago
engelo_b|21 days ago
[deleted]
cynicalsecurity|21 days ago
Herring|21 days ago
jeeeb|21 days ago
Reunification with Taiwan has been a major policy goal of the CCP since the civil war and is one of Xi’s explicit policy goals. He just reaffirmed this commitment as part of his New Year’s speech.
Historically China has lacked force projection capability. However it has had a multi-decade modernisation and military build-up which has drastically changed this situation.
Further we’ve seen significant tightening of CCP control over society and in particular the military in Xi’s term.
A straight forward analysis of these events, in line with Xi’s public statements and past Chinese actions, is that the ground work is being laid for encirclement of Taiwan followed by China taking over, by force if necessary.
JumpCrisscross|21 days ago
Literally have ongoing border disputes with practically all of their neighbors, a few of which they’ve been shooting at (India) and ramming at sea (the Philippines) in the last few years.
mrweasel|21 days ago
robinwhg|21 days ago
testdelacc1|21 days ago
This was after 13 years of friendship between India and China, where India had supported China in many ways including supporting the Communists getting the UN Security Council seat reserved for China. China and India had signed a friendship pact just a few years before.
> Perhaps there are not many instances in history where one country has gone out of her way to be friendly and cooperative with the government and people of another country and to plead their cause in the councils of the world, and then that country returns evil for good
That’s how India’s PM described this barbarous act of betrayal.
This was a good demonstration of how China views its neighbours. As vassals to be brought to heel from time to time, rather than equals. And China will use violence to achieve these aims. That’s the Mao doctrine, followed by every Chinese leader since.
And before you try any nonsense of “oh that’s old news”, China is annexing Bhutan today to put pressure on India to make territorial concessions. (https://youtu.be/io8iaj0WYNI). China is annexing international waters in the South China Sea. China is attempting to annex islands controlled by Japan. China also has border disputes with Russia.
Educate yourself instead of uncritically spreading Chinese propaganda.