alt Hacker News"AI has a physical dependency in Taiwan that can be easily destroyed by Chinese missiles, even without an invasion" ?
Arguably false. Why do you think the US has encouraged TSMC foundries, now inside Arizona ? It's obviously to protect against the scenario that China takes Taiwan. In that case, give it 6 months or less for US TSMC foundries to produce the finest. China taking Taiwan will likely not result in the CCP getting any technology, certainly Taiwanese have "contingency plans" to vaporize all tech in the event they are invaded.
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TSMC's Arizona fabs (edit: need to qualify this with "today" and in the near future) are wholly inadequate to shift wafer volume out of Tawian if that were to ever happen. TSMC themselves have been candid about this - both the fact there is insufficient skilled labor and insufficient economics (materials supply chain, construction costs/process, subsidies, OPEX). If TSMC was serious about this they'd have invested heavily both in staff pipeline (university programs and hiring onramps), domestic executive function and supply chain - aside from taking subsidies and building tiny fabs that trail their Taiwan process nodes considerably, they've done little to diversify their fabs.
90% of TSMC's capacity is still in Taiwan. A substantial amount of global high end chip capacity is also in South Korea and Japan, which would likely get pulled in.
A war would not wipe out chip production, but the squeeze would be immense for many years.
In 6 months TMSC US foundries would grind to a halt without consumables from TW who still has many sole source suppliers. The reason for CONUS TSMC fabs is because that's all US industrial policy can really manage, CHIPS never pretended to be able to reshore the entire semi supply chain (unlike PRC) and until US does, or at least reshores everything sole source off TW, will remain exquisitely vulnerable.
Also TW politicians have objected to notion they'd vaporize their fabs / golden goose. That meme started by US Army War College + Colby who said US should blow up the fabs, as in it shouldn't be a TW decision. Which TW have rebuked said they will defend against US attacks. Also other shenanigans like when US suggest they would paperclip TW semi engineers, and TW basically said there's no way they'd send semi engineers to safety before children. AKA TW not retarded, they know not to toast their golden goose, because golden goose for PRC still gives TW leverage even if TW forced to capitulate. They'd still rather be wealthy semi producers than pine apple farmers under PRC.
>In that case, give it 6 months or less for US TSMC foundries to produce the finest.
It's really a blind belief in american exceptionalism that makes you think this is even possible.
No, the chip factory that has had dozens of years of experience and local talent scaling up to make the most complicated products in human existence doesn't magically get up to par in 6 months. At best in 6 months they've figured out how to be less sensitive to vibrations and reach a low yield. The US doesn't have the trained workforce for this job, nor the infrastructures _around_ the fab (specialized hardware, electronics and engineering schools, various bits and bobs).
US TSMC doesn't get properly running in less than 5 years, and even that would be a miracle. You're also assuming that US TSMC has the current N2P or even N3E processes, and that agent orange doesn't burn bridges with europe hard enough that ASML stops selling to anyone related to the US.
I don't even know what it means. "even without an invasion"? The author think China will destroy TSMC just because? To slow down AI progress?
> if we got to a situation where only the U.S. had the sort of AI that would give us an unassailable advantage militarily, then the optimal strategy for China would change to taking TSMC off of the board.
Lmao it's not. The author doesn't know what they're talking about at all. Let's be realistic: the current TSMC technology will be accessible to China, likely via espionage. The question is just how soon. It has already happened before. China's 7nm process was developed with the help from one of the highest level ex-TSMC researcher[0].
The Arizona fab's not supposed, per wiki, to start producing 3nm until 2028. Are you suggesting that the only reason it can't be done by summer is a lack of motivation and resources?
>China taking Taiwan will likely not result in the CCP getting any technology, certainly Taiwanese have "contingency plans" to vaporize all tech in the event they are invaded.
He didn't suggest anything like that, did he?
The overwhelming bulk of production, in a massively oversubscribed industry, is in Taiwan. If Taiwan's production went offline, there would be enormous turmoil.
"certainly Taiwanese have "contingency plans" to vaporize all tech in the event they are invaded"
Given the way things are going, a rationalist would surmise that Taiwan is likely in talks with China for a peaceful reunification, Hong Kong style. The old way is very much over, the US is a worthless if not negative-value ally, and it's pretty clear to every living human with a functioning brain that this is going to be China's century.
Indeed, the article casually says "Taiwan is claimed by China, which has not and will not take reunification-by-force off of the table", which is technically true it isn't contextually informative. For those not fully up to date on the history of this conflict, for decades Taiwan claimed all of China (and most Western countries treated Taiwan as the singular government of all of China), and held out for reunification-by-force. This isn't as simple and straightforward like Trump's "we have a military ergo we get to steal better countries because they make us look bad".
That's over-optimistic.
> Why do you think the US has encouraged TSMC foundries, now inside Arizona ? It's obviously to protect against the scenario that China takes Taiwan. In that case, give it 6 months or less for US TSMC foundries to produce the finest.
American business culture works pretty strongly against "give it 6 months or less for US TSMC foundries to produce the finest."
I think it's most likely those fabs will stagnate and the American MBAs running them will just milk them for short-term profits. Why invest in technology when you can buy back shares? After all, your only goal is number-go-up.
> China taking Taiwan will likely not result in the CCP getting any technology, certainly Taiwanese have "contingency plans" to vaporize all tech in the event they are invaded.
Not necessarily. Technology isn't so much the machines, it's the know-how. TMSC employees will still need jobs, post invasion, and I'm sure China will pay them very well. Some fraction will go to work for Chinese fabs, and teach them TMSC's tricks and knowledge.