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TSMC says employees tried to steal trade secrets on iPhone 18 chip process

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Re: TSMC says employees tried to steal trade secrets on iPhone 18 chip process

#81

Post by jmpman »

llm_nerd wrote: post #64
sneak wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is insanely valuable, both commercially and strategically. If it weren’t that hard to replicate, several countries (and Bezos/Blue Origin) would have replicated it by now. I think you vastly underestimate how difficult rocketry is. There’s a reason “rocket science” is colloquially a metaphor for an extremely difficult and technical task.

>If it weren’t that hard to replicate, several countries (and Bezos/Blue Origin) would have replicated it by now. There is a 100% chance multiple countries/companies will have replicated it in the next decade. If SpaceX never existed, they likely would have achieved it at the same pace regardless. This is the same with EVs. If Tesla never rose, the world EV market outside of Tesla would have seen precisely the same r…

I question your EV take. Tesla proved a business model, the technology and path from niche sports car to the best selling car on earth, and now on to the lowest cost per mile robotaxi. Simply knowing that a solution exists and is financially viable, is enough to motivate the competition.

Re: TSMC says employees tried to steal trade secrets on iPhone 18 chip process

#83

Post by onlyrealcuzzo »

dmbche wrote: post #19
bitzun wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you explain why? I have pretended to be multiple kinds of Christian with success despite being none of them.

Harder to pretend when speaking with colleagues that are the real deal. Also very likely to "step out of line" accidentally over time as lot of time is spent with colleagues. It's not hard to pretend to be anything for 5 minutes to someone who doesn't know anything about what you're doing.

Naively, I was assuming TSMC would still operate like TSMC, not the Taliban, and that they'd focus on doing their work, not religious performance, but I guess anything is possible!

Suggesting TSMC start operating like the Taliban to protect their trade secrets seems like an obviously bad idea, though.

But we don't live in a vacuum, so I guess it's all just opinion pieces.

Re: TSMC says employees tried to steal trade secrets on iPhone 18 chip process

#84

Post by khuey »

93po wrote: post #67
duxup wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems to me companies ... don't care out side some easy to do basic things. But when push comes to shove if manufacturing is cheaper in a country where lots of folks want to steal your things. -shrug- Short term profits win.

am i crazy for not caring if a company in a foreign country obtains trade secrets and manufactures the same thing? like we're all humans and we all want access to whatever it is they're building, it seems like more people building the thing is a good thing. if that impacts Samsung's profits, why do I care? its not like corporations give a shit about me

Well who are you? Maybe there is no reason for you to care.

TSMC alone is 12% of Taiwanese exports. The entire semiconductor industry is 25% of Taiwan's GDP. It's obvious why the Taiwanese government and society, to say nothing of TSMC's shareholders, would care.

Re: TSMC says employees tried to steal trade secrets on iPhone 18 chip process

#85

Post by zozbot234 »

echelon wrote: post #79
93po wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

am i crazy for not caring if a company in a foreign country obtains trade secrets and manufactures the same thing? like we're all humans and we all want access to whatever it is they're building, it seems like more people building the thing is a good thing. if that impacts Samsung's profits, why do I care? its not like corporations give a shit about me

Some countries have all the talent and manufacturing and sourcing advantages. Once they take the lead, you might never be able to keep up. Your engineers lose their jobs, your businesses go bankrupt, you exit that entire field entirely for your entire population. Slowly your ability to do work begins to evaporate. It's happened before and it'll continue to happen.

> Slowly your ability to do work begins to evaporate.

To be clear about this, you can still physically do the work same as before, it's just become uneconomic/not competitive. It's not all bad though. Having another country take the bulk of the market leaves you free to differentiate and specialize in one or more profitable niches that are not being served well by what is now the main supplier. You might end up dominating some fraction of what's now a vastly bigger market, with improved economies of scale that you're free to exploit as well.

Re: TSMC says employees tried to steal trade secrets on iPhone 18 chip process

#86

Post by seanmcdirmid »

Cyph0n wrote: post #74
tjpnz wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just knowing how the thing is built doesn't seem to be enough. Comac still sources its jet engines from Pratt and Whitney for instance, despite many years of trying no local manufacturer has been able to build them to the same spec.

Are P&W and Rolls Royce the only companies in the world capable of manufacturing high-end jet engines end-to-end?

No, but they provide the best efficiency/performance for the buck. China can produce its own jet turbines, but they have to trade off performance or longevity to do it.

Re: TSMC says employees tried to steal trade secrets on iPhone 18 chip process

#87

Post by voxadam »

mschuster91 wrote: post #5

Reminds me of the now-infamous "capacitor plague" [1] of 1999-2007 that keeps cropping up in electronics repair. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague

Asianometry has an interesting video on the topic titled What Happened to the Capacitors in 2002? [1]

[1] https://youtu.be/rSpzAVpnXo4

Re: TSMC says employees tried to steal trade secrets on iPhone 18 chip process

#88

Post by ryanjshaw »

sgarland wrote: post #32

Right before I left Samsung Austin Semiconductor (Samsung’s fab in the U.S.), in 2019, they were phasing out local share drives in favor of a self-hosted cloud that Samsung created. The supposed reason was better security, though it’s unclear to me why they couldn’t globally apply whatever rules they wanted to enforce to all office locations, instead of forcing everyone to use a remote endpoint. The throughput was ab…

This abuse of Excel might be in the running for a new form of esports.

Re: TSMC says employees tried to steal trade secrets on iPhone 18 chip process

#89

Post by echelon »

zozbot234 wrote: post #85
echelon wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some countries have all the talent and manufacturing and sourcing advantages. Once they take the lead, you might never be able to keep up. Your engineers lose their jobs, your businesses go bankrupt, you exit that entire field entirely for your entire population. Slowly your ability to do work begins to evaporate. It's happened before and it'll continue to happen.

> Slowly your ability to do work begins to evaporate. To be clear about this, you can still physically do the work same as before, it's just become uneconomic/not competitive. It's not all bad though. Having another country take the bulk of the market leaves you free to differentiate and specialize in one or more profitable niches that are not being served well by what is now the main supplier. You might end up domin…

That's a bit like an exercise left to the reader. Or wishful thinking.

We hope that it works out that way, but there's simply no guarantee. It's not an economic law.

If the country supplying said thing can have domestic companies deliver at lower margin, you're still kind of screwed. Their internal competition fills out the niches, which they can then export.

Re: TSMC says employees tried to steal trade secrets on iPhone 18 chip process

#90

Post by prussian »

tjpnz wrote: post #23
ants_everywhere wrote: post #6

Industrial espionage has to be totally insane to defend against these days.

Just knowing how the thing is built doesn't seem to be enough. Comac still sources its jet engines from Pratt and Whitney for instance, despite many years of trying no local manufacturer has been able to build them to the same spec.

Which Comac? I thought they all used GE (CFM for Comac 919) or Russian/Chinese sourced engines.
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