Economy Taiwan's Importance Can't Be Overstated - Or Can It? (+ TSMC US Mega-Site)

[Jeffy37]

lolwut?

that's not how any of this works. taiwan doesn't hold some mystical secret of fabbing - they just actually try to constantly push the envelope and buy the necessary tools to do so.

unlike intel, which pissed away ~$200B in stock buybacks instead of buying euv machines to actually make leading edge shit. hence, why they're now grifting taxpayers for billions due to this "chips act" scam.

From what I have watched and read it actually seems like something that's not easy to do hence why one country specializes in it.

 

[rob mafia]

From what I have watched and read it actually seems like something that's not easy to do hence why one country specializes in it.

i mean, they're good at it... and know-how is certainly important but what's even more important is having the proper tools/timetables - which are a pre-req. taiwan also has a crazy work culture that benefits it. tsmc basically has a slow and steady approach - versus the leaps that samsung and intel are attempting (the latter out of desperation) - and with spotty track records.

all the know-how doesn't mean shit without euv lithography. (i mean, unless one's aiming to produce chips that are generations behind, and then duv is needed).

only one company makes the euv machines and they're booked up for ages and they won't sell to china.

 

[Jeffy37]

Yeah I saw that response. Just the one I quoted seemed very dismissive.

 

[cottagecheesefan]

I think the official position has always been opposition to any unilateral effort that changes the status quo.

the position has always let Taiwan be Taiwan and we will do what we can to support that. Letting Taiwan decide their own independence is a clear shift to we do not support Taiwan independence. You’re a smart poster I guess, you should be able to see the shift, even if subtle in messaging, even though it really isn’t subtle, it is pretty direct.

 

[Deorum]

As expected. TSMC did not purchase all of that re-zoned land for an industrial tech park to only build a single fab and call it a day. There will ultimately be a half-dozen chip factories on that site, several of them with cutting edge tech. I also expect a dedicated stateside R&D center in the future.

 

[Whippy McGee]

The U.S.A should be passing laws that require 50% of any vital manufacturing be done in North America (US/Mex/Can). We are far too dependent on foreign entities that cannot be trusted with vital manufacturing in technology, medicine, and much more.

It's time to take care of our people, economy, and our security.

 

[Day Drinking]

So, business.

This is America where profit over people reigns supreme.

It would be a problem for people in a pretty big fucking way if China controlled almost all semiconductors.

 

[Deorum]

As expected. TSMC did not purchase all of that re-zoned land for an industrial tech park to only build a single fab and call it a day. There will ultimately be a half-dozen chip factories on that site, several of them with cutting edge tech. I also expect a dedicated stateside R&D center in the future.

 

[method115]

i think US may actually bomb the TSMC factories if it came to it, there is no way they’re going to let the ccp get their hands on so many fabs. They’d hold the semiconductor world supply hostage.

I think the leader of Taiwan has alluded to something like this as well but doing it himself.

 

[HOLA]

I posted this in the stocks thread a little while ago. Solid read on the topic for anyone really interested.

Solid article about Taiwan/China relations and the risk of war. Not directly related to investing but they touch on TSM and how it plays into everything.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/11/21/a-dangerous-game-over-taiwan

Most relevant section:

One of the most important deterrents to war is Taiwan’s role in producing semiconductors. Seventy per cent of the world’s most advanced chips are manufactured there, many of them at the Taiwanese Semiconductor Manufacturing Company. “Banks, iPhones, laptops, cars—almost every piece of modern equipment has a chip from Taiwan,” an executive in the industry told me. “A world without Taiwan is a world back to the Stone Age.” America has purchased some three hundred billion dollars’ worth of chips from Taiwanese factories in the past twenty years. “Apple, Dell, Google—they wouldn’t know how to function without them,” the executive said.

China is similarly reliant on the highest-end chips produced in Taiwan; it doesn’t have the equipment or the expertise to manufacture them. If China seized control of Taiwan’s semiconductor factories, it could conceivably force local workers to run them. But the factories depend on a constant flow of Western material, software, expertise, and engineers, without which production would cease in a matter of weeks. Pottinger told me, “If the Chinese took the factories, there’s no way the West would help run them.” The industry executive wasn’t so sure, given the harm that their loss would do to the global economy. “It’s mutually assured destruction,” he said. Colby, the former official in the Trump Defense Department, went so far as to suggest that perhaps it was best for the U.S. to destroy the plants itself: “If we’re going to lose them, we should blow them up.”

 

[SandisLL]

These plants for example are using...litography machines produced in " useless EU " to produce these chips.

This....
Netherlands and Co.

 

[Deorum]

How is TSMC's complex in Phoenix coming along? I haven't read anything about it in a while.

Tech War: China Slams US Chips Act in Beijing’s Latest Protest Against Washington’s Restrictions

Beijing has hit out again at the US’s efforts to boost its semiconductor industry via subsidies under the Chips and Science Act, saying that the actions manifest a “Cold War mentality” and severely disrupt the global chip supply chain. A Chinese representative slammed recent moves by the US on at a meeting of the World Trade Organization’s Committee on Subsidies and Countervailing Measures.

The Chips and Science Act, signed into law by US President Joe Biden in August last year, sets aside $53 billion to fund domestic semiconductor production and research, and is seen by Beijing as part of a plot by Washington to stymie China’s technological progress.

The representative said that such industry subsidies allow the US to “interfere with the allocation of market resources”, and shows how the US adopts “double standards” in this area as it is harsh on others but lenient on itself, according to Xinhua.



@S Class

 

[S Class]

Tech War: China Slams US Chips Act in Beijing’s Latest Protest Against Washington’s Restrictions

Beijing has hit out again at the US’s efforts to boost its semiconductor industry via subsidies under the Chips and Science Act, saying that the actions manifest a “Cold War mentality” and severely disrupt the global chip supply chain. A Chinese representative slammed recent moves by the US on at a meeting of the World Trade Organization’s Committee on Subsidies and Countervailing Measures.

The Chips and Science Act, signed into law by US President Joe Biden in August last year, sets aside $53 billion to fund domestic semiconductor production and research, and is seen by Beijing as part of a plot by Washington to stymie China’s technological progress.

The representative said that such industry subsidies allow the US to “interfere with the allocation of market resources”, and shows how the US adopts “double standards” in this area as it is harsh on others but lenient on itself, according to Xinhua.



@S Class

CCP is always bitter whenever the US tries to be more self-reliant or when the US is trying to improve its situation. Lol.

 

[Deorum]

CCP is always bitter whenever the US tries to be more self-reliant or when the US is trying to improve its situation. Lol.

The CCP's industrial espionage project in North Dakota was recently cancelled, then the state went ahead and outright banned foreign governments (along with the companies they control) from buying any Ag land going forward, lol. I told you it would put up a fight last year.

 

[S Class]

The CCP's industrial espionage project in North Dakota was recently cancelled, then the state went ahead and outright banned foreign governments (along with the companies they control) from buying any Ag land going forward, lol. I told you it would put up a fight last year.

Thank goodness. The CCP can 'fufeng' the hell outta there.

 

[slavomir]

I know, I know. It's left me somewhat conflicted. But this Ukraine situation has, alas, pushed me into definitive strategic and moral opposition to the West.
Plus, we're due to have protests/riots here tomorrow, over fuel price increases that have come about as a result of the West's self-destructive sanctions on Russia. African leaders are in talks with Russia to build trade paths around Western sanctions for food and fuel, but until those deals have been finalised and Russia can ride to the rescue, you bright-sparks are starving my neighbours.

I have a lot of problems with China, but they're not currently starving my countrymen or our neighbours, they're better positioned to be helpful than are the Western powers, their goal is a multi-polar world, and they have leaders who have at least some semblance of an idea of what's going on Planet Earth. As a resident of Africa, a multi-polar world is a better fit for my national interests than the uni-polar world the West hasn't the capability to hold on to. All else being equal, I am, by default, on the side of whoever's promoting a multi-polar world.

More on topic, Taiwanese importance to the West has always been temporary, because it's based on transitory circumstances, but it's important to the Chinese for cultural and historical reasons, so their interest isn't going away. And China is far more important to the world at large and to the economies of the West than Taiwan is.
It would be incredibly stupid for the Western powers to directly intervene in a Chinese attempt on Taiwan. I don't think China will tempt such an intervention though, because reunification is inevitable without military force and the Chinese are probably very aware of how bad that fight would hurt if the West decided to commit to it. It's more likely that the West will desperately force a confrontation in an attempt to offset the inevitable, much like they did in Ukraine. And the West can maybe pull a Ukraine, and convince the Taiwanese to suicidally resist unification - no matter how badly that might go for their country - but sending Western forces against the Chinese might well end the world, whether or not nukes are tossed. So, one can only hope that Western leadership is wise enough to recognise that the technological advantages represented by Taiwain are transient and not actually so significant that they're worth ending the world over.
Far wiser to work out a mutually beneficial backroom deal with the Chinese soon enough that Taiwanese sentiment toward the Chinese is based on a realistic understanding of their strategically precarious position - that is, that the promise of Western cavalry riding over the horizon, in a region in which the West's influence in diminishing, is probably not a realistic expectation. And that, even if it does come, it won't alter the inevitable.

The Western powers are already handing their asses to themselves in their economic war with Russia (to the point that they're having to circumvent their own sanctions while the Russian currency outperforms everyone else's), and the impacts of that squabble are already far-reaching enough; I think we've already seen two governments so far that have been toppled in the wake of the ongoing crisis? Many others are under serious strain. Imagine what a confrontation with China would do.
Unless there are some serious changes in the quality of Western strategic decision-making, and a reversal to the downward trajectory of the West's strategic capability, it's tragically and terrifyingly laughable trying to imagine them taking China on. Even if you think America would win (and it would have to be America, because no other Western power is at all formidable), there's a good chance that it would be a pyrrhic victory that would leave the survivors with a world that might no longer even be modern enough to take full advantage of the high technology that the war will have been fought over.

The West's already in an economic war with the world's commodities super power, picking a fight with the world's manufacturing super power is not a good idea. No matter how valuable Taiwan might temporarily be.
Sanctioning China like they've tried sanctioning Russia would be about as devastating to the world as a medium-scale nuclear war. Scary shit.

What exists of the tech gap between China and the West is going to be closed. That's just going to happen. It might take decades, it might take years. But it's not going to be prevented unless someone starts WW3 and kicks the modern world out from under all of us.

Who do you think is starving your neighbours?
You may have it all mixed up.

 

[Jeffy37]

So is this hard to produce or did what I watched on this topic make it seem harder than it is?

 

[Hdfi]

China has 4x more people and a higher IQ on average. It's only a matter of time before they surpass you technologically.

China overtakes United States on contribution to research in Nature Index
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-01705-7

 

[sverre054]

China has 4x more people and a higher IQ on average. It's only a matter of time before they surpass you technologically.

China overtakes United States on contribution to research in Nature Index
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-01705-7

Except they actually invent and create very little. They are great at stealing other's tech and building poor copies. They also have one of the fastest-aging populations, a significant gender imbalance due to the one-child policy, and have been overestimating their population by nearly 100 million people.

Here's an example of China's new carrier surveillance plane and new army helicopter. Almost complete copies of the Hawkeye and BlackHawk, which the USA developed and have been using for 40ish years. Wonder where they got these designs...

 

[Hdfi]

Except they actually invent and create very little. They are great at stealing other's tech and building poor copies.

China leads the world in international patent filings since 2019 according to WIPO.
https://www.wipo.int/pressroom/en/a...assed the,adherence activity and revenue base.
https://www.wipo.int/en/ipfactsandfigures/patents