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Apple to increase spend with Broadcom to produce billions more U.S. chips

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Re: Apple to increase spend with Broadcom to produce billions more U.S. chips

#171
post #19

30B investment for "hundreds" of US jobs seems like a weird number to brag about

The jobs part of the announcement is just for political PR.

This is still just making parts of an AI server rack at TSMC Arizona or Intel or Samsung fabs on US soil. Broadcom was likely going to do this anyway.

Re: Apple to increase spend with Broadcom to produce billions more U.S. chips

#172
post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

can you explain more on this "demographic crash" because I am not in the loop. Are you talking about population decline which I'm sure will have some effect but elimination?

Even if they mandated non-stop births from all capable females by law, it still wouldn't catch up to declines. https://www.piie.com/research/piie-charts/2024/chinas-popula... Massive immigration (on a scale never seen in human history) would be required. I don't see that happening with one of the most xenophobic cultures on Earth. This isn't a problem confined to China, they just have the worst numbers. The entire "f…

Massive immigration would cause the system to completely collapse as imported people will not respect the local economy, culture, etc. in the same as natural citizens that originally built the nation. That's not xenophobic, just reality. Importing people means importing their culture, which might be incompatible with the state.

It's a reason they began to be called nation-states - states without a nation backing it tended to flop, and nation's without a state tended to slowly (or quickly) be absorbed into the dominant culture.

Re: Apple to increase spend with Broadcom to produce billions more U.S. chips

#174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every time I trust my memory it betrays me.

I treat my technical memories in discussions like the Russian proverb Reagan popularized in the disarmament negotiations with the Soviets. доверяй, но проверяй “Trust, but verify.” Meta: Yes, I did a quick search to verify some of this before replying.

I am getting into the questionable habit of arguing my point with an LLM before contributing it these days.

> доверяй, но проверяй

I wasn't aware of the source phrase, nor how much better it sounds phonetically in Russian (doveryay, no proveryay)

Re: Apple to increase spend with Broadcom to produce billions more U.S. chips

#175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Steel is particularly sensitive in rich countries. Ask yourself: Why haven't all steel plants closed in rich countries and moved to poor countries? Military.

Sure, steel is important to keep in a country for many reasons. It doesn't mean tariffs are the most effective way to meet that goal.

    > It doesn't mean tariffs are the most effective way to meet that goal.
What is a more "effective way to meet that goal"?

Re: Apple to increase spend with Broadcom to produce billions more U.S. chips

#176
post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any company should definitely be planning for the inevitable decline or elimination of China as a production and/or trading partner. If not caused by politics, then by demographic crash.

Over what timescale? Is the presumption that China, the country of one child policy, will do nothing about the problem?

China has ALREADY transitioned from an "aging society" (7% of the population over 65) to an "aged society" (14% over 65).

There are roughly five working-age adults to support every retiree today. This is going to crater. United Nations projections show that by 2050, that ratio will more than double, climbing past 50%. At that point, China will have fewer than two working-age adults for every retiree. The west grew rich before growing old. China, Vietnam, Brazil are aging as middle income countries.

The one child policy was like doing speed, it temporarily freed up massive amounts of capital and labor. But China's work force peaked over a decade ago. The bill is now due, and all the those "single children" know that they are expected to support 2 parents and 4 grandparents.

Aside from the dubious wisdom of similar interventions, cruelly forcing abortions was a lot easier policy to enforce then it would be to try to shove pro-natalist policies on people increasingly overburdened with caregiving for elders because of earlier interventions.

Re: Apple to increase spend with Broadcom to produce billions more U.S. chips

#177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious why you think China will decline or be eliminated, I always thought that China was a reliable as a production/trading partner and that they planned for decades ahead with programs like Belt and Road Initiative unlike western politics that only looks as far as the next election. Very open to correction on this though, thinking about it not sure what formed my opinion on this.

The Belt and Road initiative is a nice try, but it's not a roaring success. The flaws of democracies are easy to see because of the openness, and whatever goes wrong usually do so over a long time. Dictatorships go wrong in more dramatic ways.

I think it's also worth noting that China today is not China from twenty years ago. The communist party ran the country but there was some form of "internal quasi democracy" and leadership changes happened, with term limits.

This changed under Xi Jinping and no one knows what the effects will be.

Re: Apple to increase spend with Broadcom to produce billions more U.S. chips

#178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Small note of clarification. HF in a radio frequency (RF) context actually refers to what we would now consider fairly low frequencies between 3 and 30mhz where wavelengths are in the tens of meters. The black magic is mostly in UHF AND microwave regions where wavelengths start to measure closer to the size of circuit elements. Although I have also heard it said “RF physics is black magic” to cover all the bases

Yes, radio found out naming is hard before software did, in very old times there was High Frequency (HF), but then circuits got fast enough to go higher, oops, ok no problem, let's call the new frequencies Very High Frequency (VHF) whew that was close, but wait they got even faster! Ugh! Ok let's call the new frequencies Ultra High Frequency (UHF), but wait, we're still not in the Ghz range yet! Thankfully they did n…

Uhm.. Super High Frequency (SHF) and Extremely High Frequency (EHF) would like to have a word.

Though yes in my experience, at those frequencies people stop using ITU designations, and switch to IEEE (S,C,X-band etc).

Re: Apple to increase spend with Broadcom to produce billions more U.S. chips

#179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are the current administration's education policies that you think will have the most negative impact on our domestic manufacturing capabilities?

Nuking international students and then making it so they can't stay after getting degrees here is one huge issue: https://www.piie.com/publications/policy-briefs/2026/class-d...

but wouldn't that give more opportunities for local students? The disadvantage is, they come, learn, leave, and take what they've learned to benefiting a competing nation, sort of training your replacement. Also, there is the security and IP theft aspect. What are the benefits?

Re: Apple to increase spend with Broadcom to produce billions more U.S. chips

#180
post #19

30B investment for "hundreds" of US jobs seems like a weird number to brag about

That merely hundreds of people can make a $30B investment return Apple/Broadcom-level profit margins is amazing.

This is what technology does: More output for less labor input.

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