Germany squandered so much money on nonsense, when they could have simply driven the few kilometers over to Eindhoven and bought an ASML machine for "Silicon Saxony".
Sure, it would have taken years and years and serious commitment by the government and private sector to make that a successful move. But instead of putting in the hard work with a clear vision for the future, we mostly spend our time whining and wailing. It's a shame.
High-end chips should be more of a EU concerted effort rather than every country for itself.
The problem is that unlike Airbus, which (highly inefficiently) can be made in multiple countries, you can't really spread out parts of a fab that way. The most you can do is fab machines + chips + chip packaging. Netherlands already has fab machines and in packaging there isn't a high margin.
That leaves chips, and you can be sure that whoever gets the fabs, the other EU countries will throw a shit fit and demand counter investments to compensate. And on top of that there is also regional animosity. So even if it makes logical sense to pop the fab down in the middle of the blue banana, it won't make political sense because France and all of South and East EU will be angry about "the rich getting richer".
>High-end chips should be more of a EU concerted effort rather than every country for itself.
And how are we gonna do that exactly? EU runs on national interests of those footing the bill, mainly France and Germany as the largest net contributors.
When you're relying on national subsidies to build and run a factory and adjacent infrastructure in a country, you're tied to national interests and demands of those countries footing the bill for all that infrastructure.
So the likes of France and Germany aren't gonna give billions in subsidies from their taxpayers' money to semiconductor companies so that they can incorporate in Netherlands to dodge taxes and then create jobs in low-cost Poland and Romania instead of at home, even though that's already been happening to an extent in other industries over the last 20+ years.
It's the same with arms purchases now. France blocked Ukraine from using its money to buy British made weapons that are already available, since it expects that money to go back into the French economy, not to the economy of a competitor, even if the much needed weapons will arrive much later.
Yeah I know, UK isn't EU anymore, but the point still stands, as EU nations are still economically competitors to each other and they're not gonna spend their tax money to fund competing economies even in the EU block.
> And how are we gonna do that exactly? EU runs on national interests of those footing the bill, mainly France and Germany as the largest net contributors.
The top net contributors are countries like Denmark, Sweden, The Netherlands, etc., I'm not sure where you get the idea that France and Germany are.
I will say you point out another big problem with the EU: its budget is tiny compared to the member states themselves. I do think as time goes on and millenials get in real positions of power, the idea of a more unified EU will get much broader support. So more of an EU army, much more of a single market, etc., but this will be a 25-50y timescale. I would have said it might have taken much longer, but the US and China bullying single EU countries has really displayed how exposed the current situation is.
> It's the same with arms purchases now. France blocked Ukraine from using its money to buy British made weapons that are already available, since it expects that money to go back into the French economy, not to the economy of a competitor, even if the much needed weapons will arrive much later.
> Yeah I know, UK isn't EU anymore, but the point still stands, as EU nations are still economically competitors to each other and they're not gonna spend their tax money to fund competing economies even in the EU block.
No, that is just reasonable. Theoretically I am all for open trade in the name of efficiency, but in the coming multi-polar world, there is real advantage to having more onshored production. This also really makes me want to integrate Ukraine into the EU. Their troops are very battle-hardened at this point, and would bring ample experience to EU armies. Especially in the field of drone warfare.
The solution is to make the EU more like an actual unified economic and monitary union- with a central fiscal authority, unified public debt, all member states joining the Eurozone, unified tax system, etc.
Since when is the quality of arguments and the understanding of economics and politics tied to the age of your account? Is this how arguments are won here? Age discrimination goes against HN rules. Your opinion on global events is not automatically more correct than others just because you've been on HN 10 years longer than others.
>posting doubious takes like this
Universally recognized and factually proven facts = dubious to you?
What (counter-)arguments do you actually bring to this discussion, other than throwing ageism and baseless accusations at people as your strategy to discredit their opinions you dislike?
They're trying to imply that fresh accounts might be used to steer opinions, IOW, they're trying to imply that you are a politically motivated kind of bot...
I agree, its a rather shady approach. But here you go, we'll get more and more of this, its a conveneient method to discredit discussion partners with unwanted opinions.
Your response is, completely expected, an appeal to outrage.
You’re asserting that account age shouldn’t matter, and that any scrutiny is morally illegitimate.
Nobody is discriminating against you. It’s just that account age is one of the few signals that an online platform has to go by.
HN absolutely recognizes this in their policy, considering that they give new accounts an entirely different color to make them stand out from the rest, and that they don’t allow downvotes unless your account has achieved a certain karma level.
>Your response is, completely expected, an appeal to outrage.
How do you react towards ageism and discrimination?
>It’s just that account age is one of the few signals that an online platform has to go by.
None of that invalidates or even addresses my arguments. It's still about exclusion of people based on account date rather than WHAT they say.
>HN absolutely recognizes this in their policy, considering that they give new accounts an entirely different color to make them stand out from the rest, and that they don’t allow downvotes unless your account has achieved a certain karma level.
Except that my account is not green, and I AM allowed to downvote.
The EU is exactly the image of a central government and worse of it all, its bureaucrats are not elected by anyone so you get bullshit like the zombie Chat control coming back every 2 months. The most dysfunctional system of all.
Do the same what? I don't position my personal opinions as statements of truth that "we" all believe, if that's what you mean.
The Eurobarometer and other surveys clearly show the majority of EU citizens want further integration in lots of fields including defence, foreign policy, fiscal matters, etc. Further integration, such as the adoption of the Euro, is legally mandated and pretty much inevitable.
So when you say "we", you should clarify who you're claiming to represent, because it's not most of us.
So in your opinion, the solution is that individual national serenity should be abolished and the EU should have the liberty, nay, the authority to fleece its highest payers into the system, like France and Germany, and then redistribute their money to whoever and whatever it sees fit, for the
"greater good" of the union, with no accountability or obligation to provide them equal benefits in return?
How is this not communist tyranny with extra steps?
How do you expect those people footing most of the bill to give up their status quo and voluntarily sign up for something like this? Oh wait, I remember, that's why they're pushing chat control and digital-ID on us.
> So in your opinion, the solution is that individual national serenity should be abolished and the EU should have the liberty, nay, the authority to fleece its highest payers into the system, like France and Germany, and then redistribute their money to whoever and whatever it sees fit, for the "greater good" of the union, with no accountability or obligation to provide them equal benefits in return?
There indeed won't be equal benefits, but instead France, Germany etc are going to benefit a lot more in this kind of situation than without the integration. We've already seen the massive benefits of the single market integration for example for the German economy and industry. It'd be strange to think that further erosion of barriers and better integration wouldn't bring further benefits to the economies involved.
> How is this not communist tyranny with extra steps?
Um, by the fact that the EU wouldn't be taking over the means of production when it'd be integrating? Like come on, this is just silly, to call a block dedicated to free market principles and social capitalism "communist tyranny".
I swear, this kind of economic illiteracy is going to be the end of us all.
> How do you expect those people footing most of the bill to give up their status quo and voluntarily sign up for something like this? Oh wait, I remember, that's why they're pushing chat control and digital-ID on us.
The EU isn't pushing for the Chat Control and whatever, it's only certain member countries like Denmark doing that. They should absolutely be reprimanded for that, but nevertheless the difference is important.
Also, the people "footing most of the bill" would also be benefiting massively, for example by making sure that we would no longer have a situation like the Greek debt crisis messing everything up for the entire currency block.
> How do you expect those people footing most of the bill to give up their status quo and voluntarily sign up for something like this?
If you do not see how someone like US or China can play 27 individual countries and divide Europe by propping one nation and discrediting another, for example recent Trump admin meddling with Poland, or Musk fiddling with German and Spanish government, then it's going to be difficult having this discussion with you.
Another aspect... Spain stopped being a dictatorship 51 years ago, half of the continent was under Soviet influence until something like 35 years ago, communist for that matter. The continent has been consolidated over the last half a century. Painting EU as the root of all evil is not a way forward.
Secondly, even if the US as a country is tighter integrated and more financially successful than the EU as a union, the US is not a successful model example of a well functioning society that people in the EU would aspire to emulate, on the contrary, they'd rather preserve the status quo than turning into something resembling what the US has become.
>Ok, well I guess if Europe is fine with a continued slide in global economic relevance, they can keep their status quo.
EU citizens understood and recognize that economic supremacy of some private sector industries is pointless if the gains all go to the hands of a few tax dodging trillionaires with sex trafficking private islands, while the externalities get outsourced to the environment and the public sector to deal with leading to increased wealth inequality, homelessness, crime, drug addiction, etc
That's why they want to see policies that will first address the environment and quality of life, before shareholder returns, even if that makes them less economically dominant.
EU people don't want to live in a world of fent zombies on the streets, cars with smashed windows from petty crime, food deserts, homeless people, all in the name of economic superiority.
Right. That's exactly what I'm claiming, that the EU has to become more like a confederation, more closely integrated than it is now but less integrated than modern federations like the USA or Germany. Closer to the early USA (where the states had more power compared to today and the federal government less).
>that the EU has to become more like a confederation, more closely integrated than it is now but less integrated than modern federations like the USA or Germany. Closer to the early USA (where the states had more power compared to today and the federal government less).
Do you see the perfectly exemplified contradiction here? Centralized government power always tends to want more and more control, more and more power over time, while shedding any and all forms accountability. It never stops and says "ok, we have just the right amount of control now, we can start back off and leave everyone be". That never happened in history of humanity.
The evolution of the US central government you gave is the perfect example of this overreach that grew with time and the best argument why we shouldn't try to emulate that. Because so is the EU compared to how it was 30 years ago, and it will just keep growing and swallowing more control and influence over its members, with less and less accountability, and it won't just stop when you think the right balance has been achieved. It will only stop when IT decides it wants to, but by that point it will be too late for you to have a choice in this.
Plus, even ignoring all that, what worked in the US 200-300 years ago, can't simply be applied to Europe now. You can't simply copy-paste policies across continents, cultures and time, and imagine it will simply Just-Work™.
>Isn’t this exactly how the United States and every other country works?
EU is not a country. It's a political and economic union. And I think it can't become a country since peoples of member states desire to keep a degree of national sovereignty.
> Yeah I know, UK isn't EU anymore, but the point still stands, as EU nations are still economically competitors to each other and they're not gonna spend their tax money to fund competing economies even in the EU block.
Uh, no the point doesn't stand anymore if your example isn't actually a reflection of it - at least not anymore then any other unfounded opinion pieces with no collaborating evidence
>Uh, no the point doesn't stand anymore if your example isn't actually a reflection of it
What part of my original statement you quoted
"EU nations are still economically competitors to each other and they're not gonna spend their tax money to fund competing economies even in the EU block"
do you think does not stand anymore and why?
>unfounded opinion pieces with no collaborating evidence
Maybe reading comprehension or understanding of international politics within the EU is not your strength, but I gave you the evidence and arguments in the comment you quoted. Maybe you don't like to hear what I said, but that's another thing entirely.
You again brought no argument when I asked you to. How can anyone have a conversation out of this when you refuse to play ball and are only interested in throwing hissy fits at comments you disagree with?
okay,the preceding paragraph I referenced of yours was
> It's the same with arms purchases now. France blocked Ukraine from using its money to buy British made weapons that are already available, since it expects that money to go back into the French economy, not to the economy of a competitor, even if the much needed weapons will arrive much later.
Which you the followed up with
> Yeah I know, UK isn't EU anymore, but the point still stands, as EU nations are still economically competitors to each other and they're not gonna spend their tax money to fund competing economies even in the EU block.
To which I responded with (just in case your ability to recall that fails you again) with
> Uh, no the point doesn't stand anymore if your example isn't actually a reflection of it - at least not anymore then any other unfounded opinion pieces with no collaborating evidence
>unfounded opinion pieces with no collaborating evidence
My evidence was (as you typed it yourself) that with the war in Ukraine and arms demand flourishing, France only spends money on subsidies with the guarantee that money is going back towards its own economy, as does every other major EU economy, not just for arms, but for semiconductors too.
If you were too thick to get that, or you refuse to belive it on some ideology, or want to die on a hill over a technicality, then I'm sorry, but nothing more I will do or say will convince you, when you've already made up your mind otherwise.
Yes, and you then followed it up with pointing out yourself how this is just your unfounded opinion because the example you cited doesn't actually reflect the situation you extrapolated to, because the UK is not part of the EU
EU has a solid path of a lot of money to be spent in the next 5-20 years. Chips, AI, advanced weaponry, more advanced weaponry etc. If there was a program where everyone gets a slice, I'm sure it would work - a bit like ESA. It is doing it piecemeal that runs into the very problem you describe.
Airbus was never born as a European giant. It was a merging of many national champions (Aérospatiale, DASA and CASA) that were each already making full airplanes. They figured out how to spread out the manufacturing later.
Airbus currently has two factories finalizing the airplane assembly: one in Toulouse and one in Hamburg. You could copy this model and just open different fab in different countries to spread production.
Also, another model is one country making wafers, one country making EUV-lithography machines and parts, one country mining and refining silicon, etc.
There's no "one country making lithography machines". The mirrors come from Germany already. Other parts from about 160 other countries around the world. The EUV tech itself is an American invention and was picked up by ASML. That is why USA has the say in who gets it.
Good point, but gotta remember that people don't buy chips, they buy products. There's plenty of stuff to be produced. From components to PCBs to casing to packaging.
China didn't become the manufacturing giant it is because of a single product, they did because the whole supply chain was moving there while the EU and US were only concerned about higher-margin products and activities.
I'm sure some town in Italy wishes it was still the world's #1 diode manufacturer or something.
>I'm sure some town in Italy wishes it was still the world's #1 diode manufacturer or something.
Except that's exactly what happened. EU semi fabs like the ones in Italy mostly make diodes, mosfets, microcontrollers and other such low margin products. Nobody here tapes out GPUs and CPUs, that's all Korea, Taiwan and US.
I wish more people understood this. Or perhaps they do, but it doesn't fir their political pitches or something.
Funding an enormously complicated semiconductor facility from a blank sheet of paper somewhere in Europe is a very expensive way to accomplish little, if the rest of the supply chain from materials to products is in non-friendly nations.
The way to bring in an industry the same way you do anything complicated: You start small. Get the specialized diode factory up and running again, and then build out supporting industries and value chains as needed. Complex lithography equipment can wait until last.
It wasn't long ago we built mobile phones in Europe. Ericsson, Nokia, Siemens, Alcatel and Bosch all had production and most if not all components were sourced from Europe or the US. Two decades ago is the blink of an eye in the larger scheme of things, not even a generation, and many who worked on this are still in their working years.
Without being directly related, it would also be a good opportunity to chisel out a crack in the Android/Apple monopoly. Then maybe in a decade or so you could actually live as a functioning citizen without giving remote root to the oligarchs and self proclaimed supranational kingmakers.
That seems a bit too simple. I saw one particular graph [0] once that really stuck with me illustrating just how decisively Europe was ejected from the semiconductor market. It takes more than just inaction to achieve results like that. In many ways it could be called an impressive feat that only the Europeans could achieve. 44% of production to 9% - losing a steady 1% of the market every year, largest to smallest player. No other region is even in a position to do that badly even if they tried.
It is possible. But that seems out of character for the Europeans, they're pretty consistent about going the distance to make absolutely sure that the next new thing doesn't happen in Europe.
It seems much more likely they had a suite of environmental, social and trade policies carefully calibrated to move semiconductor manufacturing somewhere else.
Part of it is simply the Euro being too strong. Taiwan has a (deliberately) undervalued currency that makes exports a lot more competitive, the EU does not.
It's a super simple strategy with profound effects but somehow still very underappreciated
>when they could have simply driven the few kilometers over to Eindhoven and bought an ASML machine for "Silicon Saxony"
That's not at all how it works. You're talking as if you're buying a plug-and-play Xerox copy machine that you can just unbox and start printing copies of your work and make money.
Buying the latest EUV machines doesn't get you the latest nodes and economically viable yields.
Intel, Samsung also have the latest ASML machines that TSMC has and yet they haven't caught up to TSMC because there's a lot more to semi manufacturing that just the machine itself.
If Germany just buys an ASML machine it would be an expensive paperweight without the process know-how that engineers at TSMC have amassed over the decades in order to get the most economically competitive yields.
It is so absurd to think that an investment in even the most uncompetitive fab while one has currently none is uneconomical.
Even if this fab is 3 times more expensive then other ones, the result of not having one will tank the entire economy and GDP of a nation if things go bad.
We speak here about trillions of damage while a fab costs only a few billions.
> Even if this fab is 3 times more expensive then other ones, the result of not having one will tank the entire economy and GDP of a nation if things go bad.
That's hogwash. Sorry. Human society won't simply stop working just due to the lack of 2nm chips.
There are plenty of chip manufacturers around the world, including EU ones. Taiwan only has the quasi-monopoly over the cutting edge process.
What are you talking about? There's a lot of fabs in Europe, just on much older nodes than Taiwan, US and Japan or even China have.
>We speak here about trillions of damage
Where did you get the trillions from?
>a fab costs only a few billions
Billions just to build, but then who's gonna foot the bill for running it, if the fab is not economically competitive to those from Taiwan and Japan, at EU domestic wages, EU environmental regulations and lacking knowhow supply chains that needs to be built up in the EU? The taxpayers again?
The German government (meaning the taxpayers) are still subsidizing energy costs to keep manufacturing from collapsing or leaving the country altogether because it's not internationally competitive anymore.
So how much more of the private sector should the taxpayers subsidize before we take a look at ourselves in the mirror that everything is FUBAR and that endless taxpayer funded subsidies(aka corporate welfare) are just disguising the endemic rot while not actually fixing the problem?
The only forward facing government that actually had a drive to change anything useful for the future broke apart with internal squabbles, with a big part of it by the market liberals torpedoing things left and right. And now we're back to a government of stand still, like we did the almost two decades before.
Not sure what you're talking about. The last "forward facing" government was about 50y ago, the last one at least driving meaningful reforms almost 25y ago. To me it seems the more Europe got integrated, the more Germany lost the plot.
This standstill mostly started happening when the capitalism took hold too deep and wide, look at Sweden and its golden age that lasted until all the restrictions on capitalism were silently removed.
While capitalism is a good model, it needs to be kept balanced, restricted..
Shareholder primacy is ruining everything, too much influence in politics from too many external sources.
If every time you’re shown an inkblot you see right wing talking points materialize in front of your eyes, it may be time to take a break from social media.
Bringing up net zero in a thread about semiconductor manufacturing is a complete non sequitur. Fabs run on electricity which is quite easy produce without emitting any CO2.
What you are suggesting is vertical integration. If Europe goes crazy, can do that. From start to finish this chip thingy can become "magic crystals from Europe" as they already have control over the tooling. How many billions it will take to build the fabs with these tools and hire the talent from all over the planet and put all that in special economical zones? I don't know but I bet its less than those who don't have and end up buying the tools.
Europe is already a great place to build your life and despite the narrative about "EU killing businesses with over regulations", Europe is an exporter, that is EU makes physical things in large quantities(that's why USA is able to blackmail EU with tariffs). EU produces and exports so much, more than it consumes. Its closer to China than USA in this regard, you can check out the recent stats here: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-euro-indicators/w...
The infrastructure is in place and there are both many nuclear reactors that were decommissioned early or not yet commissioned but canceled/put on hold as well as regions with plenty of sunshine or hydro power opportunities and also has all the expertise to re-work those quickly.
It's really a political decision to push for something like that or not. Geopolitics may eventually make it happen, who knows? At this time it makes more economical sense to make the tools and send them close to the larger supply chain of electronic products production.
> Europe is already a great place to build your life
Agreed. Its countries' long-standing equivalents of America First policies mean that they spend far more on their own citizens, import far fewer people, and leave most of the charitable, defence, and research spending to the US taxpayer. Good for them.
I kind of agree that "America First" policies tend to be Europeanization type policies and as a result quite un-American and that's also why USA will end up like Europe if it keeps course.
Europe is great in many ways but lacks the dynamism exactly because of its highly controlled immigration policies instead of free market ones. Bureaucrats actually are terrible at picking who should come. A major example are the Turkish immigrants to Germany, where they imported huge numbers of Turkish immigrants for their booming car industry in the 60s and instead of just treating them like normal people they did this "guest worker" thing and as a result those Turks failed to integrate and remained in the low socioeconomic status with exception for some high profile cases like the inventors of the mRNA vaccine or the Crysis founders. In other places like UK or USA, Turkish immigrants tend to have much higher socioeconomic status.
If EU end up doing its chip and energy industry push, better be following the pre-Trump era immigration policies because that's how USA got is all the workforce that make USA leap ahead in many industries. Some French or Swedish immigration officer would not be picking people better than industrialists or startup founders. Immigration and its integration are not Europe's strong traits.
>Meanwhile Europe only got 40k WSPMs of 12+ nm capacity
EU leaders and VCs gave up on the electronics industry 20+ years ago and just kept offshoring it to the cheapest suppliers to lower costs and increase shareholder value.
You can validate this by looking at which sectors pay the highest EU wages and you'll see that hardware and electronics are not in the top.
And working in the electronics industry requires highly skilled knowhow and academic specialization, and you're not gonna attract people there if you don't pay them top wages if they can get more money and an easier job somewhere else like writing CRUD SW or pushing pencils in a bank.
If Trump was European he would have long ago said “i only allow export of ASML machines if openai/nvidia/tsmc build 5gw urgently here in Europe with advanced nodes”. Fair if you ask me tbh
Well there you go. The EU talks the big talk on "domestic sovereignty" but never puts their money where their mouth is, or when they do, it's breadcrumbs, just enough to keep it on life support, let alone to be in the top contenders.
Taiwanese politicians, like those under American-style democracy in many regions, only care about safeguarding their own interests and have no concern for how to protect the interests of the public. Once TSMC’s factories are completed in Japan and the United States and the technology is secured, Taiwan will no longer have any value worth protecting. Of course, the politicians can always take planes and leave in advance.
Not necessarily. If TSMC doesn’t build these fabs in Japan or USA, these governments might just mandate that chips are manufactured elsewhere. Intel could have a big comeback.
This keeps ppl locked in to the TSMC universe. The Japan and US fabs produce just a fraction of what these countries need.
Right now is an AI goldrush. They can get crazy lucrative investments and lock in amazing deals. In a decade the Chinese tech will catch up and the AI boom will slow down and the Taiwanese will have to coast on what they have. They have to capitalize on this moment as much as they can b/c it's not going to last long. Things are going to get much tougher very soon
You speak like the Chinese catching up with the technology is inevitable. The Chinese aren't behind in semiconductor and airplane technology for lack of trying. They are constantly trying to catch up to a moving goal post.
There is an established playbook that the Chinese have used for decades when taking over an industrial sector from other countries. They funnel vast amounts of state funding into it, sell at or below cost for decades, win the low end market, and then slowly and gradually move up the technology chain. It's worked for almost everything, but it's this last part that just isn't working for them with semiconductors and aviation. They aren't capable of catching up fast enough in these two fields. These are sectors that are both too large for any one country to do well on their own. Even for someone as large as China. It requires a global supply chain.
If there aren't significant changes in the trajectory of world politics the people in charge might just be planning their exit to the fabs they're building in Japan and the US.
TSMC can shut the fabs down whenever they want. If the US think they can take over a fab like it's a t-shirt factory and keep it running without TSMC's cooperation they are sorely mistaken. What are you going to do when none of the Taiwanese workers turn up for work, or worse they do turn up and sabotage the fab.
If you don’t think the US security apparatus will come up with a reasonable plan for doing just that within 2 months of it opening, I don’t think you’re thinking hard enough about this.
> What are you going to do when none of the Taiwanese workers turn up for work, or worse they do turn up and sabotage the fab.
You’re going to offer them a lot of money, citizenship, and exfiltration of their family to turn up at work, and threaten them with lifetime in supermax if they sabotage anything.
What US judge isn’t going to allow you to do what the hell you want under national security provisions if it comes to that?
> You’re going to offer them a lot of money, citizenship, and exfiltration of their family to turn up at work, and threaten them with lifetime in supermax if they sabotage anything.
This is exactly the attitude I'm talking about. You can't operate a fab based on coercion. It requires positive relationships. There are simply too many people involved doing things that the would-be coercers don't understand.
The idea that an entire TSMC fab is going to commit treason en mass is about as believable as thinking that NASA faked the moon landings and covered it up en mass. Large groups of people don't behave the same way as small groups of people.
If the US wants a fab, just give Intel money to build one. Trying to steal one from TSMC is a nonsensical plan. At least Intel would know how to operate their own fab.
> If you don’t think the US security apparatus will come up with a reasonable plan
Have you seen the US security apparatus's track record at coming up with reasonable plans for what happens after the military victory? See Iraq, Afghanistan, etc.
> If you don’t think the US security apparatus will come up with a reasonable plan for doing just that within 2 months of it opening, I don’t think you’re thinking hard enough about this.
The current US security apparatus is led by highly incompetent and corrupt people willing to sell the country down the river, so I would not count on them coming up with a plan, much less a reasonable plan, for anything.
The US protected Taiwanese sovereignty for decades before they even had a single semiconductor fab. This idea of "the silicon shield" just shows a complete ignorance of the history of Taiwan and its place in the geopolitical order.
Decades in which China started as peasant army(US admin view) and wasn't mostly a peer adversity. But, that changed almost a decade ago and defending Taiwan will become more costly and time passes. New American security document, mostly focusing on America, even acknowledges this.
Trump has openly stated that there would be no military retaliation by the US in case of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. Only an economic one. And we have seen what that is worth after the Krim was taken. It lasted a few years and then sanctions started getting dropped.
So the time of military US protection is behind us.
More so a damage control move. In the eventuality Taiwan, and its factually on Chinese land production sites get affected, it won't affect as much the supply chain as it otherwise would.
The U.S and Japan indeed will have less incentive to defend the sovereignty of Taiwan, but other reasons remain to ensure the statu quo remains. Purely geopolitical, not just industrial.
I would argue the chips don't even matter (important, but not as a reason for defending Taiwan.) It's a strategically important location that is a stone's throw from Japanese islands. If Japan feels the need, then nukes may be on the table. If that were to happen, S. Korea may not be far behind. And the cycle spirals.
America selectively gets into conflicts worldwide to deter China from invading China
As soon as we get the right semiconductor supply chain stateside can switch up on that island and reach parity with the rest of the world’s contribution to that issue: none.
the move to decentralize tsmc's footprint to japan is such a massive play for supply chain resilience. from a macro risk standpoint, having advanced node capacity outside of the immediate geopolitical tension zone is basically the ultimate catastrophic insurance policy for the global tech economy. it's interesting to see how the 'just in case' logic is finally starting to override just in time efficiency.
Is this a decision took in light of the new prime minister’s party winning 2/3 lower house majority and her statements about protecting Taiwan against China?
I was going to ask if TSMC just have some weird earthquake fetish.
Realistically it's probably just that Japan is politically stable and safer than the other options in the area, while remaining fairly close to the rest of the supply chain.
Is it, though? Japan and America also have good relations, despite the latter nuking the former twice. Germany and other EU states are close now despite being on opposite sites in two world wars. Some/most countries manage to move on from past conflicts.
Pretty clear these days that the bottlenecks in technology manufacturing are now weaponising their monopolies/duopolies / triopolies.
They’ve become the trolls under the bridge and will squeeze every passerby for every dollar they’ve got.
The days of cheap computing have been in decline and are now dead, replaced with giga profits for this companies who managed to the the indispensable links in a chain with no or minimal competition.
Isn’t this an erosion of the silicon shield Taiwan is protected by? If they make semiconductors everywhere else then the world has less economic incentive to protect Taiwan from war.
The silicon shield became a slogan that has only been popularized in recent years. The potential crisis of war has been there for more than half a century (even before semiconductors became a thing). The real value proposition of the status quo is the freedom of navigation between the northeastern Asian countries and the SEA (the Strait of Malacca, aka the lifeline of energy imports), and the consequential domino effect of the entire western Pacific.
Also, not sure why everyone forgets about it. People should have learned from the experience of the pandemic that the cutting-edge foundry nodes are not really the crucial ones, as being the bottleneck of industrial infrastructure. A delay of the next-gen iPhone or RTX gaming card isn't that catastrophic. But a shortage of embedded MCUs, which are actually fabricated by mature nodes, could stall the entire industrial base of a country.
The world won’t allow a dependence on a single geopolitically threatened entity in the long run, so either they defuse that risk themselves or risk a competitor filling that role. This move is better for TSMC itself.
She didn't give a security guarantee. And even if she wanted she can't.
Japan can't even sell arms to Taiwan right now. Even starting selling arms would be a huge change, let alone a mutual defensive pact.
It's extremely hard to change the constitution of Japan. It's the only constitution that has never been revised since WWII. LDP has been pushing this agenda for decades and nothing really happened.
Japan's foreign policy about Taiwan includes the notion that an attack on Taiwan is an "existential threat" to Japan, enabling a constitutional reasonning for a war in such a case.
Japan giving a security guarantee to Taiwan would be major news!
In reality no such thing happened and one YouTube video of a handful of protestors doesn’t make it so.
What she did say is that a Chinese attack on Taiwan _could_ clearly become an existential threat to Japan. Note that key word _could_
Which… of course it could!
Japan hosts multiple US military bases. If it developed into an armed conflict between the US and China then it’s exceedingly likely that Japan would be attacked. Think Chinese missiles aimed
At Yokosuka, just south of Tokyo.
Not only that but Japan and China have multiple territorial disputes. It’s not hard to imagine China deciding to go all in and settle those as well.
Despite what Takaichi says, if there is a war in Taiwan, Japan can only defend itself and it's interests in its sovereign territory. Japan's pacifist constitution only allows defense, even building an aircraft carrier was very controversial because it's considered to be too offensive. It's highly unlikely that Japan will actively help Taiwan defend itself
My guess: Japan deletes the pacifist promises in its constitution, fully rearms, announces nuclear weapons capability (or does an Israel and ‘refuses to confirm or deny’), and signs a mutual defense pact with Taiwan.
Disagree. Making the world less centralized to TSMC chips makes less incentive to invade at the near future. There is no strategic upside to do it right now. If nothing else, to me it seems china is a strategic mover, and will not sacrifice anything for no strategic value.
That’s a deeply oversimplified understanding of Taiwan and reunification. There’s so much good reading on the topic out there and it’s really worth even just skimming the surface of it.
But it will happen one way or another. Taiwan's Sovereignty is completely depending on one single country, the US. It's not like that Taiwan can just say no if the US demands more diversified chip production.
America doesn't defend taiwan for its semiconductors - it's all american IP anyways. They defend it for the same reason they defend japan and Phillipines - to control the pacific "frontier" these three countries form before guam. Typically against China, but they would do the same nonetheless.
China has many faults. Invading other countries is not one of them. They haven’t dropped bombs on foreign soil in over 40 years. The Chinese playbook here is to first copy then out-scale and out-innovate until eventually nobody remembers why Taiwan was so important.
If this was just about semiconductors then this would be a reasonable take but I doubt semi-conductors are anything more than a minor footnote in China’s strategic calculus vis-a-vis Taiwan.
Reunification with Taiwan has been a major policy goal of the CCP since the civil war and is one of Xi’s explicit policy goals. He just reaffirmed this commitment as part of his New Year’s speech.
Historically China has lacked force projection capability. However it has had a multi-decade modernisation and military build-up which has drastically changed this situation.
Further we’ve seen significant tightening of CCP control over society and in particular the military in Xi’s term.
A straight forward analysis of these events, in line with Xi’s public statements and past Chinese actions,
is that the ground work is being laid for encirclement of Taiwan followed by China taking over, by force if necessary.
> China has many faults. Invading other countries is not one of them
Literally have ongoing border disputes with practically all of their neighbors, a few of which they’ve been shooting at (India) and ramming at sea (the Philippines) in the last few years.
Don't forget Vietnam. There's a reason the PLAVN has been buikding artificial islands on Truong Sa in order to build airstrips and deploying missile systems.
I don't understand what China want with Taiwan, they should just throw the biggest Uno reverse card in modern history and recognize Taiwan as an independent nation and win Xi the Nobel peace price next year.
In 1962 China launched a surprise war against India. They did it in the same week as the Cuban missile crisis, ensuring that the US and USSR would be too distracted to intervene.
This was after 13 years of friendship between India and China, where India had supported China in many ways including supporting the Communists getting the UN Security Council seat reserved for China. China and India had signed a friendship pact just a few years before.
> Perhaps there are not many instances in history where one country has gone out of her way to be friendly and cooperative with the government and people of another country and to plead their cause in the councils of the world, and then that country returns evil for good
That’s how India’s PM described this barbarous act of betrayal.
This was a good demonstration of how China views its neighbours. As vassals to be brought to heel from time to time, rather than equals. And China will use violence to achieve these aims. That’s the Mao doctrine, followed by every Chinese leader since.
And before you try any nonsense of “oh that’s old news”, China is annexing Bhutan today to put pressure on India to make territorial concessions. (https://youtu.be/io8iaj0WYNI). China is annexing international waters in the South China Sea. China is attempting to annex islands controlled by Japan. China also has border disputes with Russia.
Educate yourself instead of uncritically spreading Chinese propaganda.
>This was a good demonstration of how China views its neighbours. As vassals to be brought to heel from time to time, rather than equals. And China will use violence to achieve these aims. That’s the Mao doctrine, followed by every Chinese leader since.
This is the Chinese way since at least Zheng He and treasure ship voyages.
You make it to look like if, out of the blue, they attacked they neighbor. Not mention of what the reason of China (right or wrong) could be. Then you complain of uncritically spreading propaganda.
From Wikipedia: "There had been a series of border skirmishes between the two countries after the 1959 Tibetan uprising, when India granted asylum to the Dalai Lama. Chinese military action grew increasingly aggressive after India rejected proposed Chinese diplomatic settlements throughout 1960–1962, with China resuming previously banned "forward patrols" in Ladakh after 30 April 1962."
Japan and America have now both gotten TSMC to commit to a decent level of domestic advanced-node fabrication.
Meanwhile Europe only got 40k WSPMs of 12+ nm capacity: https://overclock3d.net/news/software/bringing_advanced_semi...
Germany squandered so much money on nonsense, when they could have simply driven the few kilometers over to Eindhoven and bought an ASML machine for "Silicon Saxony". Sure, it would have taken years and years and serious commitment by the government and private sector to make that a successful move. But instead of putting in the hard work with a clear vision for the future, we mostly spend our time whining and wailing. It's a shame.
High-end chips should be more of a EU concerted effort rather than every country for itself.
The problem is that unlike Airbus, which (highly inefficiently) can be made in multiple countries, you can't really spread out parts of a fab that way. The most you can do is fab machines + chips + chip packaging. Netherlands already has fab machines and in packaging there isn't a high margin.
That leaves chips, and you can be sure that whoever gets the fabs, the other EU countries will throw a shit fit and demand counter investments to compensate. And on top of that there is also regional animosity. So even if it makes logical sense to pop the fab down in the middle of the blue banana, it won't make political sense because France and all of South and East EU will be angry about "the rich getting richer".
>High-end chips should be more of a EU concerted effort rather than every country for itself.
And how are we gonna do that exactly? EU runs on national interests of those footing the bill, mainly France and Germany as the largest net contributors.
When you're relying on national subsidies to build and run a factory and adjacent infrastructure in a country, you're tied to national interests and demands of those countries footing the bill for all that infrastructure.
So the likes of France and Germany aren't gonna give billions in subsidies from their taxpayers' money to semiconductor companies so that they can incorporate in Netherlands to dodge taxes and then create jobs in low-cost Poland and Romania instead of at home, even though that's already been happening to an extent in other industries over the last 20+ years.
It's the same with arms purchases now. France blocked Ukraine from using its money to buy British made weapons that are already available, since it expects that money to go back into the French economy, not to the economy of a competitor, even if the much needed weapons will arrive much later.
Yeah I know, UK isn't EU anymore, but the point still stands, as EU nations are still economically competitors to each other and they're not gonna spend their tax money to fund competing economies even in the EU block.
> And how are we gonna do that exactly? EU runs on national interests of those footing the bill, mainly France and Germany as the largest net contributors.
The top net contributors are countries like Denmark, Sweden, The Netherlands, etc., I'm not sure where you get the idea that France and Germany are.
I will say you point out another big problem with the EU: its budget is tiny compared to the member states themselves. I do think as time goes on and millenials get in real positions of power, the idea of a more unified EU will get much broader support. So more of an EU army, much more of a single market, etc., but this will be a 25-50y timescale. I would have said it might have taken much longer, but the US and China bullying single EU countries has really displayed how exposed the current situation is.
> It's the same with arms purchases now. France blocked Ukraine from using its money to buy British made weapons that are already available, since it expects that money to go back into the French economy, not to the economy of a competitor, even if the much needed weapons will arrive much later.
> Yeah I know, UK isn't EU anymore, but the point still stands, as EU nations are still economically competitors to each other and they're not gonna spend their tax money to fund competing economies even in the EU block.
No, that is just reasonable. Theoretically I am all for open trade in the name of efficiency, but in the coming multi-polar world, there is real advantage to having more onshored production. This also really makes me want to integrate Ukraine into the EU. Their troops are very battle-hardened at this point, and would bring ample experience to EU armies. Especially in the field of drone warfare.
>The top net contributors are countries like Denmark, Sweden, The Netherlands, etc.,
Not by raw amount of euros no. By % of GDP or per capita maybe.
The solution is to make the EU more like an actual unified economic and monitary union- with a central fiscal authority, unified public debt, all member states joining the Eurozone, unified tax system, etc.
Be aware that you are discussing with a 48-days old account that is almost exclusively posting doubious takes like this.
>48-days old account
Since when is the quality of arguments and the understanding of economics and politics tied to the age of your account? Is this how arguments are won here? Age discrimination goes against HN rules. Your opinion on global events is not automatically more correct than others just because you've been on HN 10 years longer than others.
>posting doubious takes like this
Universally recognized and factually proven facts = dubious to you?
What (counter-)arguments do you actually bring to this discussion, other than throwing ageism and baseless accusations at people as your strategy to discredit their opinions you dislike?
That's exactly the opposite of the HN rules.
They're trying to imply that fresh accounts might be used to steer opinions, IOW, they're trying to imply that you are a politically motivated kind of bot...
I agree, its a rather shady approach. But here you go, we'll get more and more of this, its a conveneient method to discredit discussion partners with unwanted opinions.
It's also a little bit more prevalent since after 5 or 6 comments you get soft-banned for hours, cannot have a decent discussion here anymore.
Your response is, completely expected, an appeal to outrage.
You’re asserting that account age shouldn’t matter, and that any scrutiny is morally illegitimate.
Nobody is discriminating against you. It’s just that account age is one of the few signals that an online platform has to go by.
HN absolutely recognizes this in their policy, considering that they give new accounts an entirely different color to make them stand out from the rest, and that they don’t allow downvotes unless your account has achieved a certain karma level.
>Your response is, completely expected, an appeal to outrage.
How do you react towards ageism and discrimination?
>It’s just that account age is one of the few signals that an online platform has to go by.
None of that invalidates or even addresses my arguments. It's still about exclusion of people based on account date rather than WHAT they say.
>HN absolutely recognizes this in their policy, considering that they give new accounts an entirely different color to make them stand out from the rest, and that they don’t allow downvotes unless your account has achieved a certain karma level.
Except that my account is not green, and I AM allowed to downvote.
Hey it's not just ageism, you're also anonymous!
Did you check what zodiac sign the account was created under too? That's another signal for you.
No thanks.
Look across the Atlantic for what will eventually happen once you concentrate the power.
I say the power should remain close to the people, decentralized and democratic, not centralised and concentrated.
The EU is exactly the image of a central government and worse of it all, its bureaucrats are not elected by anyone so you get bullshit like the zombie Chat control coming back every 2 months. The most dysfunctional system of all.
I'll take the EU over US, China, UN or any other bit bureaucracy you can think of. And I'll take the EU over ni EU as well.
Of all the things that are never going to happen, this one will never going to happen the most.
No, thanks, we really don't need a US of E.
Speak for yourself.
That's a funny reply coming from a "data journalist". I hope you do the same when publishing your stuff.
Do the same what? I don't position my personal opinions as statements of truth that "we" all believe, if that's what you mean.
The Eurobarometer and other surveys clearly show the majority of EU citizens want further integration in lots of fields including defence, foreign policy, fiscal matters, etc. Further integration, such as the adoption of the Euro, is legally mandated and pretty much inevitable.
So when you say "we", you should clarify who you're claiming to represent, because it's not most of us.
>The Eurobarometer and other surveys clearly show the majority of EU citizens want further integration
Where, when and how were the samples for that barometer taken?
If they're really so confident those number being accurate, why don't we have referendum and we can decided there and ink it to make it official.
> Where, when and how were the samples for that barometer taken?
This is all publicly-available information, I trust you can find it.
> why don't we have referendum
Referendums are the prerogative of member states, the EU doesn't have the legal powers to organise a referendum. If you want one, speak to your MP.
So in your opinion, the solution is that individual national serenity should be abolished and the EU should have the liberty, nay, the authority to fleece its highest payers into the system, like France and Germany, and then redistribute their money to whoever and whatever it sees fit, for the "greater good" of the union, with no accountability or obligation to provide them equal benefits in return?
How is this not communist tyranny with extra steps?
How do you expect those people footing most of the bill to give up their status quo and voluntarily sign up for something like this? Oh wait, I remember, that's why they're pushing chat control and digital-ID on us.
> So in your opinion, the solution is that individual national serenity should be abolished and the EU should have the liberty, nay, the authority to fleece its highest payers into the system, like France and Germany, and then redistribute their money to whoever and whatever it sees fit, for the "greater good" of the union, with no accountability or obligation to provide them equal benefits in return?
There indeed won't be equal benefits, but instead France, Germany etc are going to benefit a lot more in this kind of situation than without the integration. We've already seen the massive benefits of the single market integration for example for the German economy and industry. It'd be strange to think that further erosion of barriers and better integration wouldn't bring further benefits to the economies involved.
> How is this not communist tyranny with extra steps?
Um, by the fact that the EU wouldn't be taking over the means of production when it'd be integrating? Like come on, this is just silly, to call a block dedicated to free market principles and social capitalism "communist tyranny".
I swear, this kind of economic illiteracy is going to be the end of us all.
> How do you expect those people footing most of the bill to give up their status quo and voluntarily sign up for something like this? Oh wait, I remember, that's why they're pushing chat control and digital-ID on us.
The EU isn't pushing for the Chat Control and whatever, it's only certain member countries like Denmark doing that. They should absolutely be reprimanded for that, but nevertheless the difference is important.
Also, the people "footing most of the bill" would also be benefiting massively, for example by making sure that we would no longer have a situation like the Greek debt crisis messing everything up for the entire currency block.
> How do you expect those people footing most of the bill to give up their status quo and voluntarily sign up for something like this?
If you do not see how someone like US or China can play 27 individual countries and divide Europe by propping one nation and discrediting another, for example recent Trump admin meddling with Poland, or Musk fiddling with German and Spanish government, then it's going to be difficult having this discussion with you.
Another aspect... Spain stopped being a dictatorship 51 years ago, half of the continent was under Soviet influence until something like 35 years ago, communist for that matter. The continent has been consolidated over the last half a century. Painting EU as the root of all evil is not a way forward.
> How is this not communist tyranny with extra steps?
Isn’t this exactly how the United States and every other country works?
Firstly, NO, the US is a country, the EU is not.
Secondly, even if the US as a country is tighter integrated and more financially successful than the EU as a union, the US is not a successful model example of a well functioning society that people in the EU would aspire to emulate, on the contrary, they'd rather preserve the status quo than turning into something resembling what the US has become.
Ok, well I guess if Europe is fine with a continued slide in global economic relevance, they can keep their status quo.
But something tells me that's not what Europeans generally want...
>Ok, well I guess if Europe is fine with a continued slide in global economic relevance, they can keep their status quo.
EU citizens understood and recognize that economic supremacy of some private sector industries is pointless if the gains all go to the hands of a few tax dodging trillionaires with sex trafficking private islands, while the externalities get outsourced to the environment and the public sector to deal with leading to increased wealth inequality, homelessness, crime, drug addiction, etc
That's why they want to see policies that will first address the environment and quality of life, before shareholder returns, even if that makes them less economically dominant.
EU people don't want to live in a world of fent zombies on the streets, cars with smashed windows from petty crime, food deserts, homeless people, all in the name of economic superiority.
European here, you can keep your US of E stuff... We dont need more concentration of power, we need less of it. The EU is a hopeless cause anyway...
Right. That's exactly what I'm claiming, that the EU has to become more like a confederation, more closely integrated than it is now but less integrated than modern federations like the USA or Germany. Closer to the early USA (where the states had more power compared to today and the federal government less).
It has zero to do with communism.
>that the EU has to become more like a confederation, more closely integrated than it is now but less integrated than modern federations like the USA or Germany. Closer to the early USA (where the states had more power compared to today and the federal government less).
Do you see the perfectly exemplified contradiction here? Centralized government power always tends to want more and more control, more and more power over time, while shedding any and all forms accountability. It never stops and says "ok, we have just the right amount of control now, we can start back off and leave everyone be". That never happened in history of humanity.
The evolution of the US central government you gave is the perfect example of this overreach that grew with time and the best argument why we shouldn't try to emulate that. Because so is the EU compared to how it was 30 years ago, and it will just keep growing and swallowing more control and influence over its members, with less and less accountability, and it won't just stop when you think the right balance has been achieved. It will only stop when IT decides it wants to, but by that point it will be too late for you to have a choice in this.
Plus, even ignoring all that, what worked in the US 200-300 years ago, can't simply be applied to Europe now. You can't simply copy-paste policies across continents, cultures and time, and imagine it will simply Just-Work™.
>Isn’t this exactly how the United States and every other country works?
EU is not a country. It's a political and economic union. And I think it can't become a country since peoples of member states desire to keep a degree of national sovereignty.
> Yeah I know, UK isn't EU anymore, but the point still stands, as EU nations are still economically competitors to each other and they're not gonna spend their tax money to fund competing economies even in the EU block.
Uh, no the point doesn't stand anymore if your example isn't actually a reflection of it - at least not anymore then any other unfounded opinion pieces with no collaborating evidence
>Uh, no the point doesn't stand anymore if your example isn't actually a reflection of it
What part of my original statement you quoted
do you think does not stand anymore and why?>unfounded opinion pieces with no collaborating evidence
Maybe reading comprehension or understanding of international politics within the EU is not your strength, but I gave you the evidence and arguments in the comment you quoted. Maybe you don't like to hear what I said, but that's another thing entirely.
The preceding example to the quotes excerpt. I was just under the seemingly mistaken assumption you'd remember the contents of your own comment.
You again brought no argument when I asked you to. How can anyone have a conversation out of this when you refuse to play ball and are only interested in throwing hissy fits at comments you disagree with?
okay,the preceding paragraph I referenced of yours was
> It's the same with arms purchases now. France blocked Ukraine from using its money to buy British made weapons that are already available, since it expects that money to go back into the French economy, not to the economy of a competitor, even if the much needed weapons will arrive much later.
Which you the followed up with
> Yeah I know, UK isn't EU anymore, but the point still stands, as EU nations are still economically competitors to each other and they're not gonna spend their tax money to fund competing economies even in the EU block.
To which I responded with (just in case your ability to recall that fails you again) with
> Uh, no the point doesn't stand anymore if your example isn't actually a reflection of it - at least not anymore then any other unfounded opinion pieces with no collaborating evidence
>unfounded opinion pieces with no collaborating evidence
My evidence was (as you typed it yourself) that with the war in Ukraine and arms demand flourishing, France only spends money on subsidies with the guarantee that money is going back towards its own economy, as does every other major EU economy, not just for arms, but for semiconductors too.
If you were too thick to get that, or you refuse to belive it on some ideology, or want to die on a hill over a technicality, then I'm sorry, but nothing more I will do or say will convince you, when you've already made up your mind otherwise.
Yes, and you then followed it up with pointing out yourself how this is just your unfounded opinion because the example you cited doesn't actually reflect the situation you extrapolated to, because the UK is not part of the EU
Specialization takes away a lot of the competitive pressure.
What do you mean by this?
EU has a solid path of a lot of money to be spent in the next 5-20 years. Chips, AI, advanced weaponry, more advanced weaponry etc. If there was a program where everyone gets a slice, I'm sure it would work - a bit like ESA. It is doing it piecemeal that runs into the very problem you describe.
Airbus was never born as a European giant. It was a merging of many national champions (Aérospatiale, DASA and CASA) that were each already making full airplanes. They figured out how to spread out the manufacturing later.
Airbus currently has two factories finalizing the airplane assembly: one in Toulouse and one in Hamburg. You could copy this model and just open different fab in different countries to spread production.
Also, another model is one country making wafers, one country making EUV-lithography machines and parts, one country mining and refining silicon, etc.
There's no "one country making lithography machines". The mirrors come from Germany already. Other parts from about 160 other countries around the world. The EUV tech itself is an American invention and was picked up by ASML. That is why USA has the say in who gets it.
Fabs are so expensive and profit from local knowlage. 2 full leading node fabs seems optimistic.
Good point, but gotta remember that people don't buy chips, they buy products. There's plenty of stuff to be produced. From components to PCBs to casing to packaging.
China didn't become the manufacturing giant it is because of a single product, they did because the whole supply chain was moving there while the EU and US were only concerned about higher-margin products and activities.
I'm sure some town in Italy wishes it was still the world's #1 diode manufacturer or something.
>I'm sure some town in Italy wishes it was still the world's #1 diode manufacturer or something.
Except that's exactly what happened. EU semi fabs like the ones in Italy mostly make diodes, mosfets, microcontrollers and other such low margin products. Nobody here tapes out GPUs and CPUs, that's all Korea, Taiwan and US.
I wish more people understood this. Or perhaps they do, but it doesn't fir their political pitches or something.
Funding an enormously complicated semiconductor facility from a blank sheet of paper somewhere in Europe is a very expensive way to accomplish little, if the rest of the supply chain from materials to products is in non-friendly nations.
The way to bring in an industry the same way you do anything complicated: You start small. Get the specialized diode factory up and running again, and then build out supporting industries and value chains as needed. Complex lithography equipment can wait until last.
It wasn't long ago we built mobile phones in Europe. Ericsson, Nokia, Siemens, Alcatel and Bosch all had production and most if not all components were sourced from Europe or the US. Two decades ago is the blink of an eye in the larger scheme of things, not even a generation, and many who worked on this are still in their working years.
Without being directly related, it would also be a good opportunity to chisel out a crack in the Android/Apple monopoly. Then maybe in a decade or so you could actually live as a functioning citizen without giving remote root to the oligarchs and self proclaimed supranational kingmakers.
There is one: https://www.european-processor-initiative.eu/
Cultural failure on a massive scale
That seems a bit too simple. I saw one particular graph [0] once that really stuck with me illustrating just how decisively Europe was ejected from the semiconductor market. It takes more than just inaction to achieve results like that. In many ways it could be called an impressive feat that only the Europeans could achieve. 44% of production to 9% - losing a steady 1% of the market every year, largest to smallest player. No other region is even in a position to do that badly even if they tried.
[0] https://www.visualcapitalist.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/...
I think it can just take inaction, because it's a market that moves so fast and requires constant enormous investment to keep up.
If you just do nothing within half a decade or so you'll be far behind the cutting edge and at that point the decline gains its own momentum
It is possible. But that seems out of character for the Europeans, they're pretty consistent about going the distance to make absolutely sure that the next new thing doesn't happen in Europe.
It seems much more likely they had a suite of environmental, social and trade policies carefully calibrated to move semiconductor manufacturing somewhere else.
Part of it is simply the Euro being too strong. Taiwan has a (deliberately) undervalued currency that makes exports a lot more competitive, the EU does not.
It's a super simple strategy with profound effects but somehow still very underappreciated
I wonder what that would look like on an absolute scale instead of relative %. Might be that just the market grew really big, really fast.
Wow, I had no idea. Thanks for sharing!
>when they could have simply driven the few kilometers over to Eindhoven and bought an ASML machine for "Silicon Saxony"
That's not at all how it works. You're talking as if you're buying a plug-and-play Xerox copy machine that you can just unbox and start printing copies of your work and make money.
Buying the latest EUV machines doesn't get you the latest nodes and economically viable yields.
Intel, Samsung also have the latest ASML machines that TSMC has and yet they haven't caught up to TSMC because there's a lot more to semi manufacturing that just the machine itself.
If Germany just buys an ASML machine it would be an expensive paperweight without the process know-how that engineers at TSMC have amassed over the decades in order to get the most economically competitive yields.
It is so absurd to think that an investment in even the most uncompetitive fab while one has currently none is uneconomical.
Even if this fab is 3 times more expensive then other ones, the result of not having one will tank the entire economy and GDP of a nation if things go bad.
We speak here about trillions of damage while a fab costs only a few billions.
This is like a complete non brainer.
> Even if this fab is 3 times more expensive then other ones, the result of not having one will tank the entire economy and GDP of a nation if things go bad.
That's hogwash. Sorry. Human society won't simply stop working just due to the lack of 2nm chips.
There are plenty of chip manufacturers around the world, including EU ones. Taiwan only has the quasi-monopoly over the cutting edge process.
> Taiwan only has the quasi-monopoly over the cutting edge process
Not really. Taiwan has commanding market share in legacy process nodes (28nm and above) as well.
>while one has currently none
What are you talking about? There's a lot of fabs in Europe, just on much older nodes than Taiwan, US and Japan or even China have.
>We speak here about trillions of damage
Where did you get the trillions from?
>a fab costs only a few billions
Billions just to build, but then who's gonna foot the bill for running it, if the fab is not economically competitive to those from Taiwan and Japan, at EU domestic wages, EU environmental regulations and lacking knowhow supply chains that needs to be built up in the EU? The taxpayers again?
The German government (meaning the taxpayers) are still subsidizing energy costs to keep manufacturing from collapsing or leaving the country altogether because it's not internationally competitive anymore.
So how much more of the private sector should the taxpayers subsidize before we take a look at ourselves in the mirror that everything is FUBAR and that endless taxpayer funded subsidies(aka corporate welfare) are just disguising the endemic rot while not actually fixing the problem?
The only forward facing government that actually had a drive to change anything useful for the future broke apart with internal squabbles, with a big part of it by the market liberals torpedoing things left and right. And now we're back to a government of stand still, like we did the almost two decades before.
We get what we deserve.
Not sure what you're talking about. The last "forward facing" government was about 50y ago, the last one at least driving meaningful reforms almost 25y ago. To me it seems the more Europe got integrated, the more Germany lost the plot.
This standstill mostly started happening when the capitalism took hold too deep and wide, look at Sweden and its golden age that lasted until all the restrictions on capitalism were silently removed.
While capitalism is a good model, it needs to be kept balanced, restricted..
Shareholder primacy is ruining everything, too much influence in politics from too many external sources.
Who knew that forcing 'green everything, at all costs' and importing millions of unskilled people who don't share your values might not work.
If every time you’re shown an inkblot you see right wing talking points materialize in front of your eyes, it may be time to take a break from social media.
If you think net zero’s failures are a right wing talking point it might be you failing the Rorschach test
Bringing up net zero in a thread about semiconductor manufacturing is a complete non sequitur. Fabs run on electricity which is quite easy produce without emitting any CO2.
What you are suggesting is vertical integration. If Europe goes crazy, can do that. From start to finish this chip thingy can become "magic crystals from Europe" as they already have control over the tooling. How many billions it will take to build the fabs with these tools and hire the talent from all over the planet and put all that in special economical zones? I don't know but I bet its less than those who don't have and end up buying the tools.
Europe is already a great place to build your life and despite the narrative about "EU killing businesses with over regulations", Europe is an exporter, that is EU makes physical things in large quantities(that's why USA is able to blackmail EU with tariffs). EU produces and exports so much, more than it consumes. Its closer to China than USA in this regard, you can check out the recent stats here: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-euro-indicators/w...
The infrastructure is in place and there are both many nuclear reactors that were decommissioned early or not yet commissioned but canceled/put on hold as well as regions with plenty of sunshine or hydro power opportunities and also has all the expertise to re-work those quickly.
It's really a political decision to push for something like that or not. Geopolitics may eventually make it happen, who knows? At this time it makes more economical sense to make the tools and send them close to the larger supply chain of electronic products production.
> Europe is already a great place to build your life
Agreed. Its countries' long-standing equivalents of America First policies mean that they spend far more on their own citizens, import far fewer people, and leave most of the charitable, defence, and research spending to the US taxpayer. Good for them.
I kind of agree that "America First" policies tend to be Europeanization type policies and as a result quite un-American and that's also why USA will end up like Europe if it keeps course.
Europe is great in many ways but lacks the dynamism exactly because of its highly controlled immigration policies instead of free market ones. Bureaucrats actually are terrible at picking who should come. A major example are the Turkish immigrants to Germany, where they imported huge numbers of Turkish immigrants for their booming car industry in the 60s and instead of just treating them like normal people they did this "guest worker" thing and as a result those Turks failed to integrate and remained in the low socioeconomic status with exception for some high profile cases like the inventors of the mRNA vaccine or the Crysis founders. In other places like UK or USA, Turkish immigrants tend to have much higher socioeconomic status.
If EU end up doing its chip and energy industry push, better be following the pre-Trump era immigration policies because that's how USA got is all the workforce that make USA leap ahead in many industries. Some French or Swedish immigration officer would not be picking people better than industrialists or startup founders. Immigration and its integration are not Europe's strong traits.
>Meanwhile Europe only got 40k WSPMs of 12+ nm capacity
EU leaders and VCs gave up on the electronics industry 20+ years ago and just kept offshoring it to the cheapest suppliers to lower costs and increase shareholder value.
You can validate this by looking at which sectors pay the highest EU wages and you'll see that hardware and electronics are not in the top.
And working in the electronics industry requires highly skilled knowhow and academic specialization, and you're not gonna attract people there if you don't pay them top wages if they can get more money and an easier job somewhere else like writing CRUD SW or pushing pencils in a bank.
Not everyone is motivated by the highest wage they can get.
Good enough can be good enough and then aim for fun/interesting/challenging/fulfilling work instead of a fatter check.
ASML and its mostly European suppliers is still the key chokepoint that prevents highend semiconductor fabrication from moving to China.
If Trump was European he would have long ago said “i only allow export of ASML machines if openai/nvidia/tsmc build 5gw urgently here in Europe with advanced nodes”. Fair if you ask me tbh
Except China has fabs on smaller nodes than Europe, so why can't Europe?
Because they don't invest. It's always the same problem. Lack of capital directed in that field.
Well there you go. The EU talks the big talk on "domestic sovereignty" but never puts their money where their mouth is, or when they do, it's breadcrumbs, just enough to keep it on life support, let alone to be in the top contenders.
Taiwanese politicians, like those under American-style democracy in many regions, only care about safeguarding their own interests and have no concern for how to protect the interests of the public. Once TSMC’s factories are completed in Japan and the United States and the technology is secured, Taiwan will no longer have any value worth protecting. Of course, the politicians can always take planes and leave in advance.
Not necessarily. If TSMC doesn’t build these fabs in Japan or USA, these governments might just mandate that chips are manufactured elsewhere. Intel could have a big comeback.
This keeps ppl locked in to the TSMC universe. The Japan and US fabs produce just a fraction of what these countries need.
Right now is an AI goldrush. They can get crazy lucrative investments and lock in amazing deals. In a decade the Chinese tech will catch up and the AI boom will slow down and the Taiwanese will have to coast on what they have. They have to capitalize on this moment as much as they can b/c it's not going to last long. Things are going to get much tougher very soon
You speak like the Chinese catching up with the technology is inevitable. The Chinese aren't behind in semiconductor and airplane technology for lack of trying. They are constantly trying to catch up to a moving goal post.
There is an established playbook that the Chinese have used for decades when taking over an industrial sector from other countries. They funnel vast amounts of state funding into it, sell at or below cost for decades, win the low end market, and then slowly and gradually move up the technology chain. It's worked for almost everything, but it's this last part that just isn't working for them with semiconductors and aviation. They aren't capable of catching up fast enough in these two fields. These are sectors that are both too large for any one country to do well on their own. Even for someone as large as China. It requires a global supply chain.
If there aren't significant changes in the trajectory of world politics the people in charge might just be planning their exit to the fabs they're building in Japan and the US.
TSMC can shut the fabs down whenever they want. If the US think they can take over a fab like it's a t-shirt factory and keep it running without TSMC's cooperation they are sorely mistaken. What are you going to do when none of the Taiwanese workers turn up for work, or worse they do turn up and sabotage the fab.
Of course you’re right, but it’s a hell of a lot easier than when the fabs are located exclusively in Taiwan.
If you don’t think the US security apparatus will come up with a reasonable plan for doing just that within 2 months of it opening, I don’t think you’re thinking hard enough about this.
> What are you going to do when none of the Taiwanese workers turn up for work, or worse they do turn up and sabotage the fab.
You’re going to offer them a lot of money, citizenship, and exfiltration of their family to turn up at work, and threaten them with lifetime in supermax if they sabotage anything.
What US judge isn’t going to allow you to do what the hell you want under national security provisions if it comes to that?
> You’re going to offer them a lot of money, citizenship, and exfiltration of their family to turn up at work, and threaten them with lifetime in supermax if they sabotage anything.
This is exactly the attitude I'm talking about. You can't operate a fab based on coercion. It requires positive relationships. There are simply too many people involved doing things that the would-be coercers don't understand.
The idea that an entire TSMC fab is going to commit treason en mass is about as believable as thinking that NASA faked the moon landings and covered it up en mass. Large groups of people don't behave the same way as small groups of people.
If the US wants a fab, just give Intel money to build one. Trying to steal one from TSMC is a nonsensical plan. At least Intel would know how to operate their own fab.
> If you don’t think the US security apparatus will come up with a reasonable plan
Have you seen the US security apparatus's track record at coming up with reasonable plans for what happens after the military victory? See Iraq, Afghanistan, etc.
I mean these things sit on opposite ends of the “organising a pissup in a brewery” to “teaching a fish to ride a bike” continuum.
> If you don’t think the US security apparatus will come up with a reasonable plan for doing just that within 2 months of it opening, I don’t think you’re thinking hard enough about this.
The current US security apparatus is led by highly incompetent and corrupt people willing to sell the country down the river, so I would not count on them coming up with a plan, much less a reasonable plan, for anything.
The US protected Taiwanese sovereignty for decades before they even had a single semiconductor fab. This idea of "the silicon shield" just shows a complete ignorance of the history of Taiwan and its place in the geopolitical order.
Decades in which China started as peasant army(US admin view) and wasn't mostly a peer adversity. But, that changed almost a decade ago and defending Taiwan will become more costly and time passes. New American security document, mostly focusing on America, even acknowledges this.
The US historically did not threaten military action against NATO allied nations as well.
The past is of no value in predicting the future right now.
Trump has openly stated that there would be no military retaliation by the US in case of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. Only an economic one. And we have seen what that is worth after the Krim was taken. It lasted a few years and then sanctions started getting dropped.
So the time of military US protection is behind us.
> The US protected Taiwanese sovereignty for decades before they even had a single semiconductor fab.
That was before the current administration wiped out the very idea of "soft power" and put everything including NATO up for disposal.
There is, frankly, no way for anyone to trust the US again until the US undergoes steps similar to post-1945 Germany.
More so a damage control move. In the eventuality Taiwan, and its factually on Chinese land production sites get affected, it won't affect as much the supply chain as it otherwise would.
The U.S and Japan indeed will have less incentive to defend the sovereignty of Taiwan, but other reasons remain to ensure the statu quo remains. Purely geopolitical, not just industrial.
I would argue the chips don't even matter (important, but not as a reason for defending Taiwan.) It's a strategically important location that is a stone's throw from Japanese islands. If Japan feels the need, then nukes may be on the table. If that were to happen, S. Korea may not be far behind. And the cycle spirals.
America selectively gets into conflicts worldwide to deter China from invading China
As soon as we get the right semiconductor supply chain stateside can switch up on that island and reach parity with the rest of the world’s contribution to that issue: none.
Nobody was ever going to war with China over TSMC. Whoever believed that has been conned.
the move to decentralize tsmc's footprint to japan is such a massive play for supply chain resilience. from a macro risk standpoint, having advanced node capacity outside of the immediate geopolitical tension zone is basically the ultimate catastrophic insurance policy for the global tech economy. it's interesting to see how the 'just in case' logic is finally starting to override just in time efficiency.
Is this a decision took in light of the new prime minister’s party winning 2/3 lower house majority and her statements about protecting Taiwan against China?
Isn’t Japan even more earthquake prone than Taiwan? Is that a good idea for the most sensitive electronics known to man?
I was going to ask if TSMC just have some weird earthquake fetish.
Realistically it's probably just that Japan is politically stable and safer than the other options in the area, while remaining fairly close to the rest of the supply chain.
Not surprising from the fact that Taiwanese like Japan
A fact that is itself quite surprising, if you think about it.
Is it, though? Japan and America also have good relations, despite the latter nuking the former twice. Germany and other EU states are close now despite being on opposite sites in two world wars. Some/most countries manage to move on from past conflicts.
Pretty clear these days that the bottlenecks in technology manufacturing are now weaponising their monopolies/duopolies / triopolies.
They’ve become the trolls under the bridge and will squeeze every passerby for every dollar they’ve got.
The days of cheap computing have been in decline and are now dead, replaced with giga profits for this companies who managed to the the indispensable links in a chain with no or minimal competition.
Isn’t this an erosion of the silicon shield Taiwan is protected by? If they make semiconductors everywhere else then the world has less economic incentive to protect Taiwan from war.
The silicon shield became a slogan that has only been popularized in recent years. The potential crisis of war has been there for more than half a century (even before semiconductors became a thing). The real value proposition of the status quo is the freedom of navigation between the northeastern Asian countries and the SEA (the Strait of Malacca, aka the lifeline of energy imports), and the consequential domino effect of the entire western Pacific.
Also, not sure why everyone forgets about it. People should have learned from the experience of the pandemic that the cutting-edge foundry nodes are not really the crucial ones, as being the bottleneck of industrial infrastructure. A delay of the next-gen iPhone or RTX gaming card isn't that catastrophic. But a shortage of embedded MCUs, which are actually fabricated by mature nodes, could stall the entire industrial base of a country.
The world won’t allow a dependence on a single geopolitically threatened entity in the long run, so either they defuse that risk themselves or risk a competitor filling that role. This move is better for TSMC itself.
Seems likely that Takaichi has given Taiwan a Japanese security guarantee. [1] This may be a quid pro quo.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/shorts/p-4nFgs9fRE
She didn't give a security guarantee. And even if she wanted she can't.
Japan can't even sell arms to Taiwan right now. Even starting selling arms would be a huge change, let alone a mutual defensive pact.
It's extremely hard to change the constitution of Japan. It's the only constitution that has never been revised since WWII. LDP has been pushing this agenda for decades and nothing really happened.
Japan's foreign policy about Taiwan includes the notion that an attack on Taiwan is an "existential threat" to Japan, enabling a constitutional reasonning for a war in such a case.
> It's extremely hard to change the constitution of Japan.
It’s easy to ignore or work around it though, just like it routinely happens for every other constitution in the world.
She just won a super majority in their legislature, she can even amend the constitution now.
No, she can't.
The process to amend the constitution of Japan [0]:
1. two thirds of the house
2. two thirds of the senate
3. referendum
LDP just won the house. IF all LDP house representatives agreed with Takaichi then she could pass the first stage. Only two left!
[0]: https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%97%A5%E6%9C%AC%E5%9B%BD%E6...
Can she? As far as I've understood it, the LDP isn't a particularly united party.
Japan giving a security guarantee to Taiwan would be major news!
In reality no such thing happened and one YouTube video of a handful of protestors doesn’t make it so.
What she did say is that a Chinese attack on Taiwan _could_ clearly become an existential threat to Japan. Note that key word _could_
Which… of course it could!
Japan hosts multiple US military bases. If it developed into an armed conflict between the US and China then it’s exceedingly likely that Japan would be attacked. Think Chinese missiles aimed At Yokosuka, just south of Tokyo.
Not only that but Japan and China have multiple territorial disputes. It’s not hard to imagine China deciding to go all in and settle those as well.
Despite what Takaichi says, if there is a war in Taiwan, Japan can only defend itself and it's interests in its sovereign territory. Japan's pacifist constitution only allows defense, even building an aircraft carrier was very controversial because it's considered to be too offensive. It's highly unlikely that Japan will actively help Taiwan defend itself
Laws and rules can be changed.
Or defending taiwan can be PR'd into a self-defending message.
> Japan's pacifist constitution only allows defense
She just won a super majority in the legislature that allows her to change the constitution.
My guess: Japan deletes the pacifist promises in its constitution, fully rearms, announces nuclear weapons capability (or does an Israel and ‘refuses to confirm or deny’), and signs a mutual defense pact with Taiwan.
Yes, it is. The unfortunate reality is that western societies care more about TSMC than Taiwan, and they’re hedging their bets this way.
Disagree. Making the world less centralized to TSMC chips makes less incentive to invade at the near future. There is no strategic upside to do it right now. If nothing else, to me it seems china is a strategic mover, and will not sacrifice anything for no strategic value.
China doesn't want to invade Taiwan for TSMC.
If TSMC didn't exist, China would probably have already invaded Taiwan.
That’s a deeply oversimplified understanding of Taiwan and reunification. There’s so much good reading on the topic out there and it’s really worth even just skimming the surface of it.
Who would protect Taiwan anymore? I have my doubts that any prior defense agreement would be upheld today.
What defense agreements?
Yes.
But it will happen one way or another. Taiwan's Sovereignty is completely depending on one single country, the US. It's not like that Taiwan can just say no if the US demands more diversified chip production.
America doesn't defend taiwan for its semiconductors - it's all american IP anyways. They defend it for the same reason they defend japan and Phillipines - to control the pacific "frontier" these three countries form before guam. Typically against China, but they would do the same nonetheless.
But why should the world depend on a single country or entity? Everything should be diversified.
No. To get to Taiwan, Mainland Taiwan first has to go through China, the ocean, and Taiwan. They’ll be fine without anyone else’s help.
Nature is healing.jpg
China has many faults. Invading other countries is not one of them. They haven’t dropped bombs on foreign soil in over 40 years. The Chinese playbook here is to first copy then out-scale and out-innovate until eventually nobody remembers why Taiwan was so important.
If this was just about semiconductors then this would be a reasonable take but I doubt semi-conductors are anything more than a minor footnote in China’s strategic calculus vis-a-vis Taiwan.
Reunification with Taiwan has been a major policy goal of the CCP since the civil war and is one of Xi’s explicit policy goals. He just reaffirmed this commitment as part of his New Year’s speech.
Historically China has lacked force projection capability. However it has had a multi-decade modernisation and military build-up which has drastically changed this situation.
Further we’ve seen significant tightening of CCP control over society and in particular the military in Xi’s term.
A straight forward analysis of these events, in line with Xi’s public statements and past Chinese actions, is that the ground work is being laid for encirclement of Taiwan followed by China taking over, by force if necessary.
> China has many faults. Invading other countries is not one of them
Literally have ongoing border disputes with practically all of their neighbors, a few of which they’ve been shooting at (India) and ramming at sea (the Philippines) in the last few years.
Don't forget Vietnam. There's a reason the PLAVN has been buikding artificial islands on Truong Sa in order to build airstrips and deploying missile systems.
I don't understand what China want with Taiwan, they should just throw the biggest Uno reverse card in modern history and recognize Taiwan as an independent nation and win Xi the Nobel peace price next year.
Have you ever heard of Tibet?
This is more than 40 years ago and they likely didn't need many bombs for it.
Have you heard of Hong Kong?
In 1962 China launched a surprise war against India. They did it in the same week as the Cuban missile crisis, ensuring that the US and USSR would be too distracted to intervene.
This was after 13 years of friendship between India and China, where India had supported China in many ways including supporting the Communists getting the UN Security Council seat reserved for China. China and India had signed a friendship pact just a few years before.
> Perhaps there are not many instances in history where one country has gone out of her way to be friendly and cooperative with the government and people of another country and to plead their cause in the councils of the world, and then that country returns evil for good
That’s how India’s PM described this barbarous act of betrayal.
This was a good demonstration of how China views its neighbours. As vassals to be brought to heel from time to time, rather than equals. And China will use violence to achieve these aims. That’s the Mao doctrine, followed by every Chinese leader since.
And before you try any nonsense of “oh that’s old news”, China is annexing Bhutan today to put pressure on India to make territorial concessions. (https://youtu.be/io8iaj0WYNI). China is annexing international waters in the South China Sea. China is attempting to annex islands controlled by Japan. China also has border disputes with Russia.
Educate yourself instead of uncritically spreading Chinese propaganda.
>This was a good demonstration of how China views its neighbours. As vassals to be brought to heel from time to time, rather than equals. And China will use violence to achieve these aims. That’s the Mao doctrine, followed by every Chinese leader since.
This is the Chinese way since at least Zheng He and treasure ship voyages.
You make it to look like if, out of the blue, they attacked they neighbor. Not mention of what the reason of China (right or wrong) could be. Then you complain of uncritically spreading propaganda.
From Wikipedia: "There had been a series of border skirmishes between the two countries after the 1959 Tibetan uprising, when India granted asylum to the Dalai Lama. Chinese military action grew increasingly aggressive after India rejected proposed Chinese diplomatic settlements throughout 1960–1962, with China resuming previously banned "forward patrols" in Ladakh after 30 April 1962."
1- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Indian_War
I’ve still never seen a good analysis for why Mao did that in ‘62 other than stupidity.
Like, the centre of the world would be Asia today if Mao hadn’t needlessly (and profitlessly) trashed that goodwill.