91–100 of 170 posts
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Well we did it for the F-35. Defense pork/corruption is a liability in economic war. We need to wake up and realize that China is kicking it into high gear.
Do note that there is also plenty of pork/corruption in China. Massive amounts. We just understand the US pork/corruption better because we can read English-language news sources.
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Are you saying that the Chinese government is subsidizing the entire semiconductor industry to drive US companies out of business?
Are you saying that the Chinese government is not subsidizing the entire semiconductor industry in China to drive companies outside of China out of business? They have a documented history of doing this in multiple industries over the course of many years. Notice how substantially all of the consumer electronics devices that used to be made in the US or Japan or Korea or Germany are now made in China.
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The DoD's Industrial Capabilities report to Congress[1] that got posted on HN last week recommended exactly this: > "Outside of the United States, foreign governments and their citizens pay the lion’s share, one way or another, of the cost of building the fab. The companies do not. They take on the other massive set of costs: running the fab. The hard truth is that if the United States does not start doing the same,…
The Chinese government is willing to spend what it takes to win and this is the reason why they will win. The US government is way too reluctant to spend in this regard. The Chinese government is investing hundreds of billions in artificial intelligence, hundreds of billions more in renewables, and so on. I don't see Congress giving a blank check to scientists and engineers, like China does.
What are you on about? Have you seen the defense budget in the us? It’s massive by any metric you look at. A huge chunk of that is pure R&D.
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...citation?
Just hours ago [1] H.R.5 — 116th Congress (2019-2020) was passed in the house. Also known as the Equality Act. It appears well intentioned, great name, but some of the demands are gonna be a challenge, specifically, bathroom accomodations, and potential to disrupt traditional women's programs. [1] https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/5/te...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are you saying that the Chinese government is subsidizing the entire semiconductor industry to drive US companies out of business?
Are you saying that the Chinese government is not subsidizing the entire semiconductor industry in China to drive companies outside of China out of business? They have a documented history of doing this in multiple industries over the course of many years. Notice how substantially all of the consumer electronics devices that used to be made in the US or Japan or Korea or Germany are now made in China.
As for the Chinese government's massive spending and subsidization of key industries, it's largely due to being free of the particular ideological constraints which force the US government to entrust everything to the market (except the military industry) which has predictably led to brittleness and vulnerability.
The American approach does resemble the Chinese one in a sense. Whereas the Chinese government prefers to directly subsidize e.g. semiconductors, the US government pours unfathomable quantities of capital into a military capable of dissuading any country from capitalizing on the US's dependency on any of their industries. When this approach breaks down, as in the case of China, things tend to get very dicey.
Given the strategic importance of semiconductors and how expensive new fabs are and how long they take to start production (if you start planning a new state of the art fab now it'll take ~5 years before it's ready to produce chips) it seems like perhaps we need to look a public-private partnerships here in the US. The Chinese government is funding fabs. While we tend to be squeamish about such things here in the US,…
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You mean, like manufacturing electronics? It takes about 1MWh to manufacture a laptop, the same energy needed to drive a Tesla for 3000 miles. https://www.networkworld.com/article/2229029/computer-factor...
So probably 10MWh to build a Tesla, before even driving it?
In that regard even the raw materials for the car are orders of magnitude over.
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Are you saying that Chinese semiconductor companies are outcompeting US semiconductor companies because they have greater access to capital? That doesn't seem right to me.
It is right. US public companies are judged by the efficiency and timeframe of their returns on capital, which means that big long-term projects have to be carefully planned and justified. That's not the case when the government gets involved. We've already seen China build a lot of other infrastructure for no reason. Highways, skyscrapers... Additionally, Chinese companies operate in an environment where it's OK to…
China urbanized 550 million people in the last 30 years.
They aren't building cities and highways to stand empty. They are building them in advance of demand. Sometimes the demand arrives a few months, or a few years after the infrastructure is in place. [1]
All those ghost cities you read about last decade? Most of them are now brimming with people.
In contrast, here in the US, we don't build housing until a decade after we need it (and when we do, the supply is anemic), so we have a crippling housing shortage in all major metro areas, which leads to sky-high rents. And through all that, we still have the occasional real estate bubble exploding, in a way that takes the entire world's economy down with it.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Under-occupied_developments_in...
Given the strategic importance of semiconductors and how expensive new fabs are and how long they take to start production (if you start planning a new state of the art fab now it'll take ~5 years before it's ready to produce chips) it seems like perhaps we need to look a public-private partnerships here in the US. The Chinese government is funding fabs. While we tend to be squeamish about such things here in the US,…
> I'm not sure we have the time to wait to see if Intel will decide to go big into the foundry biz - they seem to vacillate on this pretty regularly. Historically, that's because the "foundry biz" has been small. If you check the revenue numbers in that chart, you'll note that TSMC is now larger than the rest of the foundry industry combined. They brought in almost $13B last year. Intel 2020 revenue was $78B. There j…
Oh wow that's tiny for the largest foundry. And I gather that they are not just in the fab business but trying to integrate vertically into being an OSAT as well.
Edit: I mistook the number as revenue, not earnings. For apples-to-apples comparison, TSMC's annual revenue is closer to $40B.
While the demand is cyclic and volatile in this industry (compared to software), the huge demand and influx of capital is very exciting for those who care about the advancement of computing. Note that there are only major shortages of leading edge nodes, not basic electronics on older nodes that people aren't as excited about using. So if some critical safety system needs a basic sensor, there is plenty of 65nm capac…
> Note that there are only major shortages of leading edge nodes Is this true? Do automotive companies use leading edge nodes, because they're experiencing a shortfall too.