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

[Deorum]

Thats the devils work

 

[JudoThrowFiasco]

Taiwan and Israel are untouchable.

 

[12ga.]

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

They were 6 months into the build last September.

Badly. Usual problems when Asian tigers try and throw us a bone back. American's lazy poor workmanship etc.

As far as invading they cant right now. Can't take out US NAVY yet and dont have enough amphibious landing craft. That's the hardest kind of invasion that's why we nuked Japan to submission instead.

 

[Cid]

China is stronger than the US man

 

[Deorum]

Badly. Usual problems when Asian tigers try and throw us a bone back. American's lazy poor workmanship etc.

As far as invading they cant right now. Can't take out US NAVY yet and dont have enough amphibious landing craft. That's the hardest kind of invasion that's why we nuked Japan to submission instead.

There's no semi equipment installed yet. It's mostly Mexican construction workers on that job site right now and I assure you they aren't lazy, lol. There IS concern about a possible "work culture" clash once the fab is operational compared to how things are run in Taiwan but that's being hashed out beforehand, the manager of the AZ fab(s) is going to be a white dude who has been with TSMC since 1997.

 

[Deorum]

I'm not big on counting chickens before they hatch and they certainly all haven't yet, but everything is in place for the city to rip through the firmament and become that. It has made the most of its natural advantages and taken initiative in various areas of education and infrastructure to foster the development of an entire industry ecosystem within its own metropolitan area. It'll be circa 2025 when things really start cooking.

TSMC didn't buy up 1,130 acres (of a rezoned 3,500 ac site for the purpose of an industrial tech park) because they're only planning on building a single fab; ASML didn't choose the city for its North American headquarters by throwing darts at a board map; Intel didn't invest an additional $20 billion capex into what is already its largest global manufacturing site last year because it intends on leaving anytime soon.

 

[Snowblindlove]

You wont be laughing when Chinese flags fly high in the US and America is fallen apart dismembereed and broken

 

[rob mafia]

You wont be laughing when Chinese flags fly high in the US

yeah, yeah. the embassy.

 

[Cirris]

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

They were 6 months into the build last September.

Chip fabs take years to setup. Takes less time to build a sports stadium.

Intel is also expanding their fabs in Arizona, but it'll take til 2024 before they're even ready.

 

[Jeffy37]

Badly. Usual problems when Asian tigers try and throw us a bone back. American's lazy poor workmanship etc.

As far as invading they cant right now. Can't take out US NAVY yet and dont have enough amphibious landing craft. That's the hardest kind of invasion that's why we nuked Japan to submission instead.

It would be the biggest amphibious assault ever attempted. Plus I think they would only have 2 landing spots if they tried since most of the coast of Taiwan would not be possible to land.

 

[moosaev]

To give more of an idea of the insane level of high technology we're talking about here in regards to a couple of the aforementioned industry leading western companies in the OP.

http://www.brookings.edu/techstream...e-at-the-center-of-chinese-dual-use-concerns/

An extreme ultraviolet lithography machine is a technological marvel. A generator ejects 50,000 tiny droplets of molten tin per second. A high-powered laser blasts each droplet twice. The first shapes the tiny tin, so the second can vaporize it into plasma. The plasma emits extreme ultraviolet (EUV) radiation that is focused into a beam and bounced through a series of mirrors. The mirrors are so smooth that if expanded to the size of Germany they would not have a bump higher than a millimeter. Finally, the EUV beam hits a silicon wafer—itself a marvel of materials science—with a precision equivalent to shooting an arrow from Earth to hit an apple placed on the moon.

This allows the EUV machine to draw transistors into the wafer with features measuring only five nanometers—approximately the length your fingernail grows in five seconds. This wafer with billions or trillions of transistors is eventually made into computer chips. An EUV machine is made of more than 100,000 parts, costs approximately $120 million, and is shipped in 40 freight containers. There are only several dozen of them on Earth and approximately two years’ worth of back orders for more. It might seem unintuitive that the demand for a $120 million tool far outstrips supply, but only one company can make them. It’s a Dutch company called ASML, which nearly exclusively makes lithography machines for chip manufacturing.

EUV machines are at the frontier of human technological capabilities. China has virtually no lithography experience or industry. Any Chinese firm trying to develop EUV lithography would have to start from scratch. It would have to close the gap with ASML’s billions of dollars, decades of experience, and the accumulated experience and tacit knowledge of their tens of thousands of employees. And it would have to succeed where experienced, billion dollar companies failed. There is little chance a Chinese company will make an EUV lithography machine in the foreseeable future.

Applied Materials, Inc. is an American corporation that supplies equipment, software and services for the manufacturing of semiconductor (integrated circuit) chips, flat panel displays for computers, smartphones and televisions, and solar products. The company develops and manufactures equipment used in the wafer fabrication steps of creating a semiconductor device, including atomic layer deposition (ALD), chemical vapor deposition (CVD), physical vapor deposition (PVD), rapid thermal processing (RTP), chemical mechanical polishing (CMP), and ion implantation.

ASML is a beast of a company, I’ve known about them for about a few yrs and it really was the first time I realized how there are companies out there that nobody has ever heard of but are absolutely vital to the world economy. If ASML disappeared tomorrow it would literally send the capital markets into free fall, incredible.

 

[Streeter]

As long as Taiwan makes most of the world's chips they are too important to the US to not interfere.

 

[TankAbbott4Eva]

You wont be laughing when Chinese flags fly high in the US and America is fallen apart dismembereed and broken

 

[Whippy McGee]

The economic and strategic importance of the semiconductor industry in Taiwan. That can’t be allowed to be disrupted as the economic damage would be enormously crippling. If China took it over, we would never be able to rely on their chips. Until we supplant Taiwan’s manufacturing power, they are too strategically important to fall into the hands of China.

QFT

 

[Arkain2K]

Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan are the three Asian allies that the U.S will come to aid - with overwhelming political and public support across the board - if they were invaded by Communist China, despite the fact that only two of them have an existing Mutual Defense Treaty with us. You can chalk it up to whatever you want - morals, ideals, philosophy, friendship, or economics, the bottom line is that their safety are too important, for our own national security and the world's stability as a whole.

Having said that, it's highly unlikely that we would see a Chinese military invasion of Taiwan in our lifetime, especially now that they watched how Russia embarrassed itself in Ukraine - and that's a ground-based invasion that Putin thought would be a piece of cake.

If China try to bring their troops across the Taiwan Strait, the sea floor would be littered with sunken Chinese ships.

 

[Bunk Moreland]

Is it an expensive issue when it comes to the level/complexity of chips that can be made here in the US? Or just shear cost of the endeavor?

 

[Bunk Moreland]

Spoiler: Side note

Anyone who thinks China will mop the floor with the US is crazy. All the analysis and intelligence has been called into question about our “adversaries” since Russian invaded Ukraine. Good thread BTW. BV

 

[rob mafia]

Is it an expensive issue when it comes to the level/complexity of chips that can be made here in the US? Or just shear cost of the endeavor?

tl;dr - there's a very finite amount of equipment necessary to make the cutting edge processors and also finite skilled engineers.

we can't currently make them in the usa, at least not as well as taiwan and with nowhere near the volume.

intel is paying tsmc to fab intel's 'chips,' for an example/anecdote of the situation.

 

[S Class]

Taiwan isnt a US concern it isnt the US issue or to defend and it factually as I recall belongs to China and half the population wants to be Chinese citizens.


Is it worth WW3? It isnt and the US will lose a conflict with China

+50 social credit points

China is stronger than the US man

+100 social credit points

You wont be laughing when Chinese flags fly high in the US and America is fallen apart dismembereed and broken

+1,000,000 social credit points!

President Xi is pleased!

 

[Deorum]

Oh, the same style as my penis.

PS Taiwan has some hot babes. My favorite pair of itty bitties are on a taiwanese babe.

RIP Rocco (Again).

That's like the third time in the last 12 months.