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Germany paying $5.5B for Intel fab

electronicsweekly.com

271–280 of 593 posts

Re: Germany paying $5.5B for Intel fab

#271
post #171
post #2

Investing in local chip fabs is long overdue. These are incredibly important for geopolitical stability and should be distributed world-wide. We've centralized too many fabs in too few places in the search for low cost.

It is very important for national stability. A highly-interconnected global economy is arguably better at securing international stability.

This argument has been made before. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Illusion

Unfortunately, it didn't work out. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_I

Re: Germany paying $5.5B for Intel fab

#272
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Germany and strategic sovereignty… Looking at gas pipes, they have an alternative understanding of sovereignty.

Increasing trade with Russia is a good strategy. No need to follow America to WW3 or a new cold war.

Selling off allies in eastern europe to Russia is a good strategy? That's a good way to start WW3, on Russian side...

Re: Germany paying $5.5B for Intel fab

#273
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Germany and strategic sovereignty… Looking at gas pipes, they have an alternative understanding of sovereignty.

Well, if you have any alternative than gas pipes please let us know. Germany is already pushing for green techs. And, gas coming from another part of the continent is always more expensive than neighboring countries? Yes, they shouldn't have dismantled Nuclear Power. But after an incident in Japan, many people were nuclear phobic so can't blame politicians alone? That being said, I do agree that paying 5.5bn of taxpa…

Germany could have been using existing pipes through eastern europe. That would have been damn nice insurance from Russian aggression.

And for nuclear, IMO „nuclear phobia“ was financed from the same pockets as sea pipeline.

Re: Germany paying $5.5B for Intel fab

#274

Once again EU taxpayer money bankrolling US tech dominance. When will we ever learn to build up our domestic tech industry? And before the chip hipsters crawl all over my back to prove we ackshually have a powerful domestic semi industry, please name me another EU company, other than ASML (a company 90% of people here never heard of before the chip shortage), that has the same margins, dominance and ability to shape…

If you want Europe to be as attractive as headquarter location of mega-companies as USA is, you may have to compete with USA on a lot of policies (taxes, labor laws, etc) that would turn Europe into a different kind of society. Do we really want that?

Many of these mega-companies are publicly listed. Norway alone owns a significant amount of stock in some of these companies. I'm not sure we have a problem. But I'm not gonna complain about trying to change this and get giant high-margin tech company going here in Europe. I'm just not sure how to do it.

Re: Germany paying $5.5B for Intel fab

#275
post #263
post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's about national security. A fab is necessary for national security How does germany funding a foreign/non-german company's fab part of national security? What about expelling a foreign occupying force? If the germans cared about national security, shouldn't they be looking in that first? If germany was funding a german company's fab, it would be national security. What germany is doing is paying tribute to a do…

The US and Germany are allies. In fact, I believe “German” is the largest ancestry group in the US. Besides which, it’s extremely common for entities to invest in mutually beneficial agreements with other entities.

This idea that policy should be set based on a grossly oversimplified wrapping up of a huge surface area of agreements into the term "ally" and vague notions of ethnic similarity needs to die.

It gives the ruling class a mechanism to excuse war crimes of our supposed "allies" and drop bombs on supposed "enemies" for perceived minor infractions.

Re: Germany paying $5.5B for Intel fab

#277
post #16
post #2

Investing in local chip fabs is long overdue. These are incredibly important for geopolitical stability and should be distributed world-wide. We've centralized too many fabs in too few places in the search for low cost.

This will not do much with Taiwan being a single source for semiconductor manufacturing supplies. Much of critical blockers for chemicals, consumables, materials will still be in Taiwan just because the semi industry is that huge there. All 300mm fabs working outside of Taiwan are just few shipments of consumables away from stalling all the time. When Russia attacks Ukraine, the 3rd world is fucked. When China attack…

>Much of critical blockers for chemicals, consumables, materials will still be in Taiwan just because the semi industry is that huge there.

You mean like Linde, Air Liquide, Dow, Merck, BASF, Entegris, Shiply, Fujifilm, Wacker and so on?

Those are not Taiwanese.

Re: Germany paying $5.5B for Intel fab

#279
post #270
post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is very important for national stability. A highly-interconnected global economy is arguably better at securing international stability.

That was the main argument for global trade already in 1914. France was Germany's most important commercial partner, and vice-versa. All German rifles had stocks made from French walnut wood! All French locomotives had German-made tubing! This stupid mantra was repeated ad nauseam after 1991, too, with silly op-eds from Friedman and friends about how two countries with McDonald joints in both can't be at war and simi…

A connected world is not a guaranteed sufficient condition for peace. But that does not mean it's not a necessary condition for peace. One could argue that without economic interconnectivity, Europe could have fought WW1 much earlier, or would have had wars much more often.

Re: Germany paying $5.5B for Intel fab

#280
post #2

Investing in local chip fabs is long overdue. These are incredibly important for geopolitical stability and should be distributed world-wide. We've centralized too many fabs in too few places in the search for low cost.

Will it make much of a difference, though? Sure they can fabricate the chips, but a lot of the raw material needed will come from places like China.

China is getting a fair bit of the precursors from Africa. European countries are in a fairly good position to do business with African countries.
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