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Japan's gamble to turn island of Hokkaido into global chip hub

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211–220 of 485 posts

Re: Japan's gamble to turn island of Hokkaido into global chip hub

#211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't Europe the source of almost all the tooling that goes into brand new fabs?

I think chinnese already made their own "ASML"

With very bad results. I was walking a fab in China a few years ago: all machines are German, Japanese and Dutch. I asked why they don't have Chinese ones: the cto said they exist for the German and Japanese machines but they break much faster so it is not worth it and the asml machines are not there at all in any type of competitive form. It will happen, just not yet I guess.

Re: Japan's gamble to turn island of Hokkaido into global chip hub

#212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

European countries are willing to make big bets. The issue is with incompetent leadership. For example they made very big bets on quantum computing and particle accelerators for HEP, both of which have close to zero ROI. Meanwhile, up till very recently AI was sneered at as not "scientific" enough. This is a problem with leadership. The issue is mostly that we put people in leadership positions, who are experts in pa…

non sense Google deepmind headquarter is located in Europe, US tech dominance just that good to attract talent all of europe You can see list of AI researcher that comes from europe+asia

That is incompeten5 leadership no? If your talent wants to move...

Re: Japan's gamble to turn island of Hokkaido into global chip hub

#213
post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Taiwan intends to violently and militarily resist if it comes to that I sincerely wonder if the people who live there agree. I sure as hell wouldn't put up much fight if china tried to invade my country; just the opposite. If anything I wonder if voluntary unification is on the table in today's climate

> I sincerely wonder if the people who live there agree ... I wonder if voluntary unification is on the table One of the benefits of a free democratic society is that you can ask; and people vote according to their preferences. A recent study suggests ~13% of the public support unification with China: https://www.tpof.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/20250214-TPO... . Taiwan's politics are dominated by the KMT and DPP…

>> Perhaps you have an unusual opinion?

That or a remarkably flexible sense of morality, coupled with a supine nature and a total lack of balls.

Re: Japan's gamble to turn island of Hokkaido into global chip hub

#214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not even a tough call if you had to lay odds on which would go offline first. Is "politically unstable" once again an acceptable euphemism for a small democracy being threatened with destruction by a totalitarian superpower? I thought we decided that was gauche. After, say, the German invasion of Czechoslovakia.

It's been in vogue since the American invasion of Vietnam

right, another reason China shouldn't invoke it to invade a free country.

Re: Japan's gamble to turn island of Hokkaido into global chip hub

#215
post #2

Is Hokkaido defensible? Once China solves the Taiwan problem they're going to turn their sights on Korea and Japan.

Yes. But I will entertain the idea that Hokkaido is not defensible. Now, with Hokkaido not being defensible, please explain why it has been an Japanese territory since the 15th century?

Re: Japan's gamble to turn island of Hokkaido into global chip hub

#216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Europe desperately needs to secure its own semi conductor supply chain. To be fair, Europe does have ASML which has something like 2/3 market share in DUV and almost monoplistic in EUV. The moat is enormous, so they are unlikely to face any serious competition for at least a decade if not more.

China is already catching up. They have a desktop-sized 14nm EUV machine, and Xiami is setting up a 3nm manufacturing line, both entirely with local tech. Thanks USA for the export ban.

Xiami have designed a 3nm chip, however I am not convinced SMIC have a process for them to build the chip at any scale yet. Let's see - eventually China will obviously have a process comparable to TSMC but I think currently they are at least 18 months behind. They were 5 years behind before the sanctions so they are catching up fast.

Re: Japan's gamble to turn island of Hokkaido into global chip hub

#217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is indeed somewhat similar (though the sea is a better barrier + they don't have a major fifth column on their territory). And I would smell rat if it was a Chinese CCP official uttering the words about "political instability", but that would exactly be the change of context necessary. If a HW/SW engineer speaks about "political instability", they simply acknowledge that there is no way to tell what will happen in…

Ahhahah. For SWEs I think the phrase is "undefined behavior". FWIW, my friend, I'm a Jew and I spent 5 years in France, Spain and Germany before coming to Prague. Czechia was the one place I felt welcome and safe in the EU. The noble history of the Czechs played a big role in that, but you could feel it every day in the way people treated each other. There is something incredible there about the people, the family, t…

Czechia is the most Jewish-friendly country in the EU, and will likely stay so. Our Jewish community used to be very vibrant and it is sorely missed.

We should indeed defend Taiwan, but we (as "the entire EU") seem to be lukewarm even about defending Ukraine which is much closer to us and in a hot war. Some people just prefer sticking their head in the sand.

Maybe the Jewish people are better at discerning building-up danger, because of their long history of persecution.

Re: Japan's gamble to turn island of Hokkaido into global chip hub

#218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Taiwan intends to violently and militarily resist if it comes to that I sincerely wonder if the people who live there agree. I sure as hell wouldn't put up much fight if china tried to invade my country; just the opposite. If anything I wonder if voluntary unification is on the table in today's climate

Fascinating! Why not? Why would you just lay down and let someone else rule over you?

In terms of survival strategies, letting someone else rule over you was sort of the OG Christian thing before they got control of the Roman Empire. It's kind of the default in most places. Declaring independence and actually succeeding at it and governing yourself is remarkably rare. The question isn't what you think is wise, or what you would do (because no one knows until they're in that situation). It's whether you feel you have anything worth preserving when you are conquered. Some people don't, evidently. Other people do.

Re: Japan's gamble to turn island of Hokkaido into global chip hub

#219
post #2

Is Hokkaido defensible? Once China solves the Taiwan problem they're going to turn their sights on Korea and Japan.

The Soviets trivially took the Kuril Islands and they can trivially defeat Japan if they so desire. China's also really interested in Okinawa independence. Both countries have appealed to arguments on liberating indigenous populations to hint at future military action against Japan. It's a future war zone through and through, especially now that their PM is LARPing as Hirohito reincarnate.

Japan defeated the Russian navy in 1905. I guess that means that the Empire of Japan can trivially defeat the Russian Empire if such political entities cared to exist anymore and if the result of a past confrontation was a true benchmark of the current capabilities of the respective armies and economies.

Re: Japan's gamble to turn island of Hokkaido into global chip hub

#220
post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By force. Because Taiwan doesn't want to be a part of Beijing's China.

Both points are not really true. For the China part: Yes, the "by force" part certainly exists as a position, in competition to the peaceful unification approach. It's important to keep in mind, though, that the confrontative position of the first Trump administration and afterwards the Biden administration significantly helped the "by force" faction. There was an interesting piece in Foreign Policy about that, a soc…

>> the confrontative position of the first Trump administration and afterwards the Biden administration significantly helped the "by force" faction

This is the argument that you hit your wife because someone on the telephone made you angry.

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