Earlier quoted context omitted.
How much would it cost to set up TSMC inside US borders? One president cycle? 4 F-35s? One SLS? A nuclear submarine? According to this page, sorting by cost, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_semiconductor_fabricat... the most expensive fab is 33 Giga$. TSMC is 17G$. pennies on the dollar in our 1-3Trillion infrastructure bill. Make america fab again. EDIT: it appears this is in the 2T infrastructure bill. https:…
Building it is one thing. Making it operational without importing talent and running it profitably is another. Taiwan has some of the best fab engineers who work at US minimum wage salaries. Of course you can pull them away with higher pay like China is doing, but that means profitability will likely go for a toss.
Chip shortage: Toyota to cut global production by 40%
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Re: Chip shortage: Toyota to cut global production by 40%
#542Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes. One scary fact that I learned is that, in war games between China and the USA, China almost always wins due to superior production capacity. Those $100B American battle carriers and $40MM advanced fighter jets can be taken out by $50,000 rockets/missiles produced at a rate of hundreds or thousands per day.
The issue is that China needs energy and other natural resources to sustain production which the US and allies can effectively blockade. It always puzzles me why China is so antagonistic with its neighbours. Indochina is very difficult to invade, and the whole South China Seas situation means that China has no blue ocean access into the Pacific. In a global war, the only reliable lifeline into China is through Russia…
Re: Chip shortage: Toyota to cut global production by 40%
#543Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes. One scary fact that I learned is that, in war games between China and the USA, China almost always wins due to superior production capacity. Those $100B American battle carriers and $40MM advanced fighter jets can be taken out by $50,000 rockets/missiles produced at a rate of hundreds or thousands per day.
This is in line with my intuitions; do you have any sources so I can read more?
Re: Chip shortage: Toyota to cut global production by 40%
#544Earlier quoted context omitted.
Cost isn't the issue, it's that we have incompetent buffoons as presidents these days. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuW4oGKzVKc That's what a president sounds like.
It's not just incompetent presidents, it's incompetent politicians at every level.
Politicians like MTG and Boebert are part of the system just to cheapen it. The crazier they are, the more off-tilt they are, the better the strategy works, the more it weakens the average Americans faith in the system. This strategy started with Trump, but it's started permeating every level of politics. The more wild they act, the more they can insist that the other side is being just as crazy.
Re: Chip shortage: Toyota to cut global production by 40%
#545Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Every country props up its auto industry, so why worry about a domestic supply? War. In the event a war breaks out, a running auto plant can be re-tooled relatively rapidly into a light and heavy armor plant. It's not even a question of whether allies could supply tanks and troop transports; it's about having domestic capacity to make them because enemies could execute blockades and disrupt allied resource supply.
this. If you look at all the strategic industry subsidies, you will see this common denominator. Corn in the US is stupidly subsidized, so much corn that it ends up in car tanks. But guess who will not have a famine even if the worst war + disasters strike? Car factories might not make good tanks, but the mechanical engineers and tooling knowledge is invaluable and can't be scaled up overnight. Same with solar panels…
Worst? Really? You think corn fields survive nuclear war? An asteroid the size of you know what?
Re: Chip shortage: Toyota to cut global production by 40%
#546Earlier quoted context omitted.
How much would it cost to set up TSMC inside US borders? One president cycle? 4 F-35s? One SLS? A nuclear submarine? According to this page, sorting by cost, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_semiconductor_fabricat... the most expensive fab is 33 Giga$. TSMC is 17G$. pennies on the dollar in our 1-3Trillion infrastructure bill. Make america fab again. EDIT: it appears this is in the 2T infrastructure bill. https:…
Government can't make a website, let alone a chip fab. Talk to Intel and ask them why we've fallen behind. Do any VCs want to fund a direct Intel competitor? I doubt it. Making chips seems to be quite a bit more complicated than making and launching rockets, I don't think even Elon Musk could do it.
Re: Chip shortage: Toyota to cut global production by 40%
#547Many countries have a funny concept of strategic industries. In mine, dairy is a strategic industry that is coddled by government so that we can have a local source. But every country thinks that so there’s foes and allies that can supply us UHT or powder milk on a moment’s notice. And if our milk supply disappeared tomorrow, everyone over 1y could substitute with 10000000 different things for nutrition. Cars are ano…
How the essential farma became nearly 100% reliant on foreign manufacturers is I think the most exemplary case of this nonsense. I read some year ago that there were laws in US which at least somehow discouraged the pharma from shipping manufacturing abroad, and it was the big pharma itself which lobbied these laws out. This is how China held US at gunpoint in the early days of COVID — "Stay put, or we pull 90%+ of y…
Re: Chip shortage: Toyota to cut global production by 40%
#548Earlier quoted context omitted.
Government can't make a website, let alone a chip fab. Talk to Intel and ask them why we've fallen behind. Do any VCs want to fund a direct Intel competitor? I doubt it. Making chips seems to be quite a bit more complicated than making and launching rockets, I don't think even Elon Musk could do it.
> Government can't make a website, let alone a chip fab. Tbf, many (most?) government websites are built and maintained by private companies. Remember the ACA website debacle a few years back? The government was mad at the contractor for building a shoddy product. They claimed they would take action against them but I’m not sure anything happened. If the government should be held to task on anything it should be an i…
var a = 1; a = 2;
Before I got any further they blurted out “that’s false! The second line is false” and this was someone who had been writing production code for the government for the last five years.
I honestly just felt really bad for them, more than anything.
Re: Chip shortage: Toyota to cut global production by 40%
#549Earlier quoted context omitted.
On that matter, I think (just a not-so-well-informed opinion but still plausible) most countries should urgently protect their software development industry and dramatically reduce taxes on those companies. Because the day US/China automated-production AIs will get to its prime, nothing produced in your county will have any value whatsoever beside land. Ferrari and Rayban? Near-zero market value tomorrow.
"Because the day US/China automated-production AIs will get to its prime" I think this time is quite a bit far off. But eventually will have sourcing price of just the raw materials. That said and regarding your next point - "Ferrari and Rayban? Near-zero market value tomorrow." On this I disagree strongly. Current trend is that IP becomes constantly more important. So that while manufacturing costs for said items ma…
Re: Chip shortage: Toyota to cut global production by 40%
#550Earlier quoted context omitted.
They are indeed, in Arizona. First they are going to have employees train on-site in Taiwan (will get housing for themselves and their families for duration).
This makes it easier for the US to spin up more, since we gain more trained workers who understand these processes.
Given that they will return