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In a war scenario with China it doesn't matter since no chips produced under the war will be used.
The risk isn’t war between China and the US, but China and Taiwan, which China has 100% chance of winning. That then makes the the US extremely dependent on China for semiconductor supply.
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In a war scenario with China it doesn't matter since no chips produced under the war will be used.
The risk isn’t war between China and the US, but China and Taiwan, which China has 100% chance of winning. That then makes the the US extremely dependent on China for semiconductor supply.
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Ummm if the government does the investing they get all the returns. If google does the investing they get the returns. If they are lobbying rather than investing, this suggests they think the ROI would be negative.
That's not how government funding of sports stadiums work, why would fabs be any different?
From here: https://www.johnlocke.org/policy-position/publicly-funded-st...
The problem for sports stadiums seems to be a monopsony relationship. That wouldn't be true for a fab, which can sell to anyone.
It seems like this relationship is desirable because a sports team can't benefit from all the profit they generate, for example at restaurants near the sports stadium, whereas the city can, by taxing those businesses. I suppose there might be an equivalent relationship with respect to a fab, but I'm not sure what it is.
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The risk isn’t war between China and the US, but China and Taiwan, which China has 100% chance of winning. That then makes the the US extremely dependent on China for semiconductor supply.
China only has 100% chance of winning in a war with Taiwan if the west and allies do not join.
Even if this consortium constructs a North American fab, a single natural disaster near that fab could wreak the same follow-on effects in the headlines today; the underlying problem isn't only that we've outsourced our critical manufacturing, but also that we keep so little buffer that any disruption could cause today's headlines. The MBAs running US manufacturers need to scrap their JIT strategies, build some wareh…
> The MBAs running US manufacturers need to scrap their JIT strategies, build some warehouses, and start keeping a store of the essentials. Just the other day here on HN I read an account from a founder who did just that- in early 2008. He ended up having a warehouse full of raw materials and no cash to make payroll. That's one way a business dies. So, this talking point sounds good, those damn MBAs and their JITs!,…
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Hm, it certainly looks a lot like "improve the quality of the threads" == suppress industry critique.
"Industry critique" fills virtually every HN thread. With suppression like that, who needs amplifiers? Most people who see a moderation decision they dislike leap straight to the idea that the moderators secretly hold $VIEW, ignoring (or not noticing) all the moderation decisions going the opposite way. In reality, we just don't care— I don't have words to describe how profoundly we don't care about commenter opinion…
But here, I find it particularly ironic that these companies want all the protection of govt regs like Section 230, insulating them from responsibility of content they host and platform, but now want the govt to step in, far too late, and fix the shortage that is harming them.
They are all "libertarian" scolds about govt interference, until they could use some.
Since they collectively have something on the scale of more money than the USG, and they think the USG is a waste of time, they should implement such a consortium themselves.
I say that not merely out of annoyance at the hypocrisy, but I really think that such a consortium of FAANG, Intel MS, Tesla, Micron, and others could much more rapidly and effectively setup such an innovative chip fab co-op or some other structure, and could really kick ass in global manufacturing.
If they really believe their patter, they should just do it.
The best time was 10 years ago, the second best time is now.
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> Companies tend to do what is in their economic interest to do It will be in their economic interest when the PLA will show up at TSMC's door. Of course, that won't probably happen in the next few quarters, so on that you are correct, it's not in their short economic interest. What these companies are basically doing is asking the US government to subsidise the costs incurred by geo-politics.
>It will be in their economic interest when the PLA will show up at TSMC's door. Not necessarily, maybe those companies can just make a deal with the CCP to keep access to TSMC's fabs.
If the US tax payer gets a significant stake in the chip fab venture, I would be OK with this. We want to secure national security via chip manufacturing and you want billions of dollars? Give us some upside. I don't want to hear it creates jobs, it generates blah blah blah, a real equity stake and possibly repayment of the capital. Creating jobs should be a happy by-product of subsidizing an industry that is probabl…
These corporations are the ones whom benefited from exporting the production infrastructure at the expense of the labor market. Now, they want the labor market to fund the redevelopment of the infrastructure for their benefit.
I'm confused as to why the US government needs to be involved capital investment when these companies are boasting historic profit margins.
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My exact reaction as well. Or how about all that money used for stock buy backs over the last decade? Intel especially. It's been mismanaged and now it's putting its hand out for government money while having spent billions on stock buy backs. No more but of course it'll happen because the politics of it. Socialism for the rich and corporations, capitalism for the rest of us.
Stock buy backs are just more tax efficient dividends for investors. If the company is suffering from mismanagement, dividends are good, because it returns capital to investors rather than letting managment destroy it. Intel has been building fab capacity pretty much always, it's just that their 10nm process doesn't work as intended, and they haven't really been able to fix it, so their development is stalled and the…