This really saddens me and shows how we’re going backwards as a species… When we study history we always learn about “trade routes” and when we learn economics we hear all about “free trade” and I never really understood the way that word “trade” was being used.
Here’s what it means: wherever you are in the world you have different conditions: natural resources, weather, population count, sea access, etc and these conditions make you better at some things than others.
Probably, your unique set of conditions makes you the best in the world at one or two things. What if everybody in the world only focused on the one or two things they’re best at? And then we all shared around our products?
That’s “trade.”
Taiwan has obviously crushed the chip manufacturing industry. They’re simply the best at it. Ideally the US should just let them be the best and focus our energy on other things that we can be the best at.
But because we can’t come together as one global people, and have all these asinine geopolitical dramas, now the US has to make its OWN chips. Because Russia is an imperial asshole, they don’t get to enjoy American good and have to settle for their own second rate shit.
We talk about “chip independence” like it’s a good thing, but it only is in the context of these insoluble geopolitical conflicts. If we could get along peacefully, it wouldn’t be necessary for every country to master every industry. We could all specialize and then benefit from each others strengths.
Instead we tussle stupidly with each other like kids in the back seat of a car. And that car is our planet Earth, which we are ruining all the while as we obsess over whether someone is one inch on our side.
I mean, that’s a pretty idea but really it’s just accepting monopolies outside of your personal means to affect. What the US is doing here is clearly profit and security focused, but Taiwan supremacy from what I can tell isn’t the byproduct of its location or assets, but instead decades of investment and support in producing chips which inexorably lead to it being the best. Really if anyone else is willing to invest that to become comparable it’s a good thing. It prevents a single entity dictating terms for everyone. In an ideal world we would just collectively share resources and things would cost a fair price for what it takes to produce them, sadly in a capital focused society its really whatever you make of it.
I think you’d be surprised how much of even modern capacities can be traced back to simple things like the availability of water and shipping access. Sure, Taiwan isn’t a world leader in chips because of their weather today. But their climate is key to their population size via how many people they can feed, which is quite weather dependent. Having robust food supply is what allowed a society to specialize its labor into technology areas. And why is Taiwan in an entrepreneurial mode to make such investments at all? Because of their geography - as an island they were not so easily taken by the CCP and the PRC have been able to hold out there for many decades.
Basically, yes, it’s just several decades of investment that has led to their dominance. But they were only in a position to do all of that because of their starting conditions. They played their conditions masterfully. But for example the DRC couldn’t go do the same thing tomorrow.
The reason the world (China and Europe are both building up their own chip manufacturing industries) can’t just leave it to Taiwan is because China threatens the very existence of Taiwan with its hostile rhetoric of invasion.
You can blame the yanks all you want, but they’ve always been the most happy to outsource all industry to save a dollar.
Yes I’m well aware. I’m not blaming the Americans at all. They’re just being smart and trying to prepare. China are being major motherfuckers about it all.
Not trying to pile on here, but I think you’re also forgetting that the international supply chain hiccups caused by COVID were a major impetus for the US to increase domestic production capacity. Entire sectors of the economy, like the auto industry, were brought to a standstill waiting on chips to be imported.
Yes but supply chain disruption applied to virtually everything, yet we don’t see the US seeking to become entirely vertically integrated for every good and resource. Supply chain disruptions of pandemic magnitude would also disrupt US production, anyway. So I don’t know if your observation really adds anything. No, the US is spinning up chip foundries because of what is happening between China and Taiwan, which is fueled by bald Chinese imperialism and old scores that the CCP wants to settle with the PRC. It’s humans being assholes at the highest level.
And water is wet? Did anyone actually believe it could happen faster than “years”?
8 months, tops
No, but it was embarrassing neoliberal nonsense to ever be in question in the first place.
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The great news is that I’m independent of nVidia for my personal GPU needs.
But I need my cuda :(
Yeah, so start now(although 20 years seems like a stretch)
Why would we pay fair wages in the US when we can make slaves do all the work for us?
-nVidia probably
What in the hell are you talking about? Microchips are the most advanced technology in production and you think slaves are assembling them? And what, you just assume that anything not produced in the United States is produced by slave labor?
Not at all, slave labor is happening within the United States as well.
If there was no difference in labour costs or materials, why weren’t they already being produced domestically?
There aren’t enough people with the skills required. It’s highly specialized, both for designing the process itself as well as implementing it and designing chips for that process. It’s not like coding where anyone can do it with the help of Google and falling quality of code is covered by increasing quality of chips.
And the foundry is only one part of it. It doesn’t take raw materials as input, so you need another plant to make silicon wafers. And it doesn’t give chips ready to be stuck into a PC as output, you need packaging and qualification, and then maybe another step where the package is attached to a board, depending on the chip. None of these steps are simple and in some cases, even janitorial work wouldn’t be unskilled because a spec of dust can turn a $1000 chip into a $200 chip or even a $2 decoration.
Each of those steps takes a different set of specialized skills to pull off well. And the skills that can do these jobs are already in high demand, so it’s not like there’s a bunch of unemployed people waiting to do these jobs. Some might like the challenge of starting something new, but many would have to be offered more money to pull them away from their current job.
It’ll take time to educate enough people to fill those roles.
environmental laws, tax laws, benefits requirements, subsidies, regulations, approval processes…
So in other words, it would have been more expensive.
Microchip fabrication is the most advanced manufacturing process on the planet.
They don’t just let anyone do that. It’s skilled labor.
Not everyone working for nVidia is a microchip fabricator/engineer. Any large company is going to be made up of a huge roster of people of varying degrees of talent and skill sets. You have to look at the big picture. Most of the people working at any manufacturing plant are assembly line workers.
