China sabotaging ASML profit on to prevent decentralization of chip production from Taiwan and maintain leverage over the US in Taiwan sovereignty struggle.
ASML reports fire at its Berlin factory
121–130 of 319 posts
Re: ASML reports fire at its Berlin factory
#122Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sometimes, yes. Interestingly these ridiculously reactive materials aren't the ones that tend to contaminate the environment most; they don't last long enough outside a carefully controlled lab. It's, surprisingly, the almost nontoxic materials like perchloroethylene that tend to cause big headaches, because they're unreactive enough to survive in the environment for many years.
Elemental fluorine is nasty toxic, but it doesn’t really pollute the environment because it’s too busy oxidizing the first thing it finds and forming a never gonna let you go bond.
Kind of the reverse of mercury; elemental mercury is relatively non-toxic, but it seems like almost all mercury compounds are nasty.
[edit]
Chronic exposure to small amounts or acute exposure to large amounts of mercury vapor is toxic; it's just that most compounds are worse.
Re: ASML reports fire at its Berlin factory
#123Earlier quoted context omitted.
Doesn't litography use some pretty wild chemicals. Like Chlorine Trifloride? Thing that when burned emits hydrochloric acid and hydrofluoric acid. Aka thing that burns ashes. Again. I assume making those machines is pretty crazy as well.
For anyone interested in how terrible Chlorine trifluoride is, it's on perpetual HN favorite Derek Lowe's list of "Things I won't work with" https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/sand-won-t-save-yo...
Re: ASML reports fire at its Berlin factory
#124Earlier quoted context omitted.
They don’t have to lead though, just fast follow. Many companies were hit by digital trade secret theft that was sent to China, so they are more than capable of bypassing the billions of R&D by getting access to the designs and going from there with government backing.
Many companies sent their blueprints to China and asked them to find a cheaper way to build it, and so they did. The exclusivity guarantees must have been lost in translation.
Many ? Like who ? A secret stolen that way with company permission to stole and not just to a temporary permission to use the blueprint IMHO never happened and if happened has been a micro tiny fraction of stolen secrets ie by acquisitions, price dumping , expats coming back after having worked years in key jobs and then going in china to do a job where they can use what they learned without the restrictions of westerns laws
Re: ASML reports fire at its Berlin factory
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not that weird: "Since the US-China trade and technology confrontation spilled into public view in 2017, most of the attention has centered on trade conflict and the US campaign against Huawei, China's 5G leader and its most important global technology company. But recent US actions involving semiconductors present a more fundamental problem for China. Efforts to cut off the supply of cutting-edge semiconductors to H…
So where's the evidence? It's easy to spew conspiracy theories about anything. Intel could've started the fire in ASML's plant to slow down TSMC. I could've shorted ASML's stock and started the fire to profit from the other side of the world.
I don't believe any conspiracy was present here, or they would have done a better job.
This is some food for thought though:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/09/world/europe/Czech-Russia...
Re: ASML reports fire at its Berlin factory
#126Earlier quoted context omitted.
China will not have a domestically sourced EUV scanner with commercially viable throughput within 20 years, if not longer. They are lacking precursor technologies to the precursor technologies, supply chains, talent, etc for both light source and optics, and unlike the rear of the semiconductor industry, those ecosystems are today found within the US and Europe, not Asia.
Things move pretty fast in China, so even though they are slow to innovate they can quickly copy designs where enough detailed information exists in public. EUV took decades and billions of dollars in trial and error before the current techniques were figured out. Due to the West's tendency to publish successful techniques, China won't have to repeat these steps.
Things moved fast in China (rather Shrnzhen) due to a period of ultra-liberal economics that Xi is now dismantling.
Re: ASML reports fire at its Berlin factory
#127Earlier quoted context omitted.
> if we could do what China does, why do we go to China every time we need something done? Ricardian comparative advantage, which doesn't require the party you go to to be better at the thing you are going to them to do than you are, only that you are enough better at something else that doing the thing you are outsourcing would require giving up more of the other thing. It's about opportunity cost, not absolute prof…
While I've taken an intro to economics class, I've also taken Chinese bullet trains across the country, something I sadly cannot say for America. There are few metrics where they are somehow behind us in proficiency.
Not a great example. The Japanese will tell you that train technology was copied and/or stolen from them.
Re: ASML reports fire at its Berlin factory
#128Like water, food, and electricity, electronics have become an integral part of life. Every single country that can afford to bootstrap their own semiconductor manufacturing infrastructure should be scrambling to do so. This infrastructure doesn't have to be cutting edge. Even 90s-era tech should be enough to cover a country's basic needs in case of a global collapse or shortage. It's insane for humanity to continue p…
I have the exact opposite opinion.
Mandatory trade relationsips and closely interconnected supply chains are an important factor in preventing larger wars.
Re: ASML reports fire at its Berlin factory
#129Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is there a reason to assume the ability to ramp up in WW2 has any bearing on the ability to ramp up an operation like ASML today? You cannot just throw any bodies at a problem like creating ASML. You have to throw very specific bodies with each one having at least a decade or more of very specific expertise (it seems like, based on the comments and articles I have read). That is just ASML, not even getting into the d…
Manhattan Project? That wasn't a "just throw bodies at it" either...
Are you sure? They employed well over 100k people I thought, and maybe a handful of those people actually knew the full scope of the project.