[HN Gopher] Germany paying $5.5B for Intel fab
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Germany paying $5.5B for Intel fab
Author : throwaway4good
Score : 388 points
Date : 2022-06-07 14:22 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.electronicsweekly.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.electronicsweekly.com)
| jupp0r wrote:
| It's really common for chip companies to shop around and start a
| bidding war to see where they can get the highest subsidies.
| mmastrac wrote:
| Investing in local chip fabs is long overdue. These are
| incredibly important for geopolitical stability and should be
| distributed world-wide. We've centralized too many fabs in too
| few places in the search for low cost.
| explaingarlic wrote:
| Doesn't feel to me like microchips are in such short supply
| that any more would significantly contribute to the economy. Am
| I just unaware of the crisis going on all around me?
| IfOnlyYouKnew wrote:
| That wasn't the parent's argument. But, incredibly enough,
| there really is a shortage in microchips that has lead, among
| other problems, to shutdown of whole production lines for
| cars.
|
| It doesn't necessarily matter to have local fabs: at least in
| the current situation, the worldwide chip production is still
| a mostly free market with products being sold to the highest
| bidder independent of location (as long as it's not Russia).
| But the confidence of this state continuing is certainly
| lower than it was a few years ago.
| _trackno5 wrote:
| Will it make much of a difference, though?
|
| Sure they can fabricate the chips, but a lot of the raw
| material needed will come from places like China.
| [deleted]
| baja_blast wrote:
| copper, silicon, gold, aluminum are sourced from many
| countries so they wouldn't need any raw materials from any
| particular country. Also the machines used to make the Fabs
| are sourced right next door in the Netherlands
| audunw wrote:
| Which raw material specifically?
|
| Norway is the fifth largest exporter of Quartz. Turkey is
| third. I think there's enough Quartz in Europe for silicon.
|
| For silicon wafer manufacturing there's Okmetic Oy in Finland
| and Siltronic AG in Germany.
| myself248 wrote:
| Right now, the raw material will come from China because
| that's where the resources are developed. But once a fab is
| in place, it makes sense to push more to develop local
| resources, or at least among more diverse allies.
|
| It doesn't make sense to do that now, because you'd just be
| shipping local resources to a foreign fab, so that's still a
| bottleneck. But I think having a local fab is the tipping-
| point.
| [deleted]
| sounds wrote:
| It's a move back down the supply chain. Fine, they haven't
| completely verticalized the entire supply chain. It's still a
| strategic move.
| cromka wrote:
| omginternets wrote:
| China is getting a fair bit of the precursors from Africa.
| European countries are in a fairly good position to do
| business with African countries.
| exyi wrote:
| In the very least I think it's easier to stockpile resources
| than chips.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Why is the local fab specifically important? They're still
| going to fly the wafers to Malaysia or wherever for packaging,
| right? And the tools and chemicals will all be made elsewhere,
| won't they? It's not as simple as having a steady supply of
| apples from your local orchard.
| arlort wrote:
| They're also creating a packaging center in Italy
|
| https://gamingnews.cyou/here-is-intels-plan-for-europe-a-
| pac...
|
| And an R&D center in France
|
| https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/newsroom/news/eu-
| new...
| sva_ wrote:
| I think sourcing those things would be a lot easier than
| building a fab, on a time scale.
| KptMarchewa wrote:
| There's a lot of assumptions there. Why don't you assume that
| it's about having as much of the supply chain locally?
| mojzu wrote:
| I'd imagine it won't replace the entire supply chain in one
| go (although I think quite a bit of semiconductor tooling is
| already manufactured in the EU), but I think it's a step on
| the path towards that. Which is probably a good thing
| considering how fragile it appears some of our hyper-
| efficient globalised supply chains can be
| dkjaudyeqooe wrote:
| Self sufficiency for products that are the lifeblood of your
| economy is attractive to governments.
|
| Any of the things you describe can easily be replicated
| locally, fabs much less so.
|
| Even more to the point is that it gives countries the chance
| to develop a high value competitive advantage that others
| cannot replicate.
|
| Places like the EU would argue that they have the human
| capital to compete globally but they don't have the industry
| because of historical factors.
| ezsmi wrote:
| Assembly services are all over the place. Here's a large one
| in Escondido, CA which is commonly used.
| https://www.qptechnologies.com/about-us/company-info-bios/
| ChemSpider wrote:
| That part is solved:
|
| (1) German BASF is one of the manufactures for "semiconductor
| chemicals".
|
| (2) More important: Getting parts from Malaysia (etc) is no
| issue as I don't think they plan to attack any neighboring
| countries in the next decade. Also, they did not start a
| trade boycott against Lithuania just over the name of an
| trade office.
| ratww wrote:
| Exactly.
|
| Malaysia can still be a partner, however this is a big step
| that opens the door for replacing labor in distant
| countries with another EU neighbour. This is good for the
| entire EU.
| coffeeblack wrote:
| If there is a conflict with China, maritime routes will
| become much less reliable than they are now, after 75+
| years of peace and 30+ years of a unipolar international
| system.
| paganel wrote:
| Plus, I suspect that in a The West vs China war a country
| like Malaysia will think twice before choosing a side,
| and I'm afraid they won't choose the West by default.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| And the possibility port blockades.
| throwaway4good wrote:
| Most of Intel's fabs are in the US.
| phkahler wrote:
| >> Investing in local chip fabs is long overdue.
|
| Nah, this is a bargain. Rather than chasing the technology for
| 50 years, they just waited until it's already mature (2nm may
| be the end of the road?) and spend a few billion after all the
| development has happened elsewhere. BTW Germany is already home
| to some fairly advanced non-EUV fabs with Global Foundries.
| dorgo wrote:
| > (2nm may be the end of the road?)
|
| from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bremermann%27s_limit :
|
| >However, it has been shown that access to quantum memory in
| principle allows computational algorithms that require
| arbitrarily small amount of energy/time per one elementary
| computation step.[6][7]
|
| Not the end of the road.
| baybal2 wrote:
| This will not do much with Taiwan being a single source for
| semiconductor manufacturing supplies.
|
| Much of critical blockers for chemicals, consumables, materials
| will still be in Taiwan just because the semi industry is that
| huge there.
|
| All 300mm fabs working outside of Taiwan are just few shipments
| of consumables away from stalling all the time.
|
| When Russia attacks Ukraine, the 3rd world is fucked.
|
| When China attacks Taiwan, the 1st world is fucked.
| [deleted]
| dkjaudyeqooe wrote:
| Your argument sounds like one for local investment in fabs.
| The point is that you develop industry (with subsidies) and
| the ancillary industries follow and then you (and the rest of
| the world) are not dependent on a single source.
|
| Of course it's not enough to just pay Intel to open a fab you
| have to compete successfully with places like Taiwan and have
| a growing industry, otherwise that won't happen. That's the
| main risk here.
| _fat_santa wrote:
| > When China attacks Taiwan, the 1st world is fucked.
|
| China would be shooting themselves in the foot by invading,
| because it would equally fuck them. I've read in may places
| that as soon as China invades, Taiwan will blow up all the
| fabs and supporting supply lines. So even if China takes
| control of Taiwan, the semiconductor industry will be a
| smoldering pile of nothingness.
|
| This article[1] does a great job in describing why this would
| be the case. Even if China prevents the destruction of those
| fabs and factories, there would still be tons of obstacles.
|
| [1]: https://doxa.substack.com/p/why-a-chinese-invasion-of-
| taiwan
| vvladymyrov wrote:
| We just have example of another country shooting itself in
| the foot and attacking Ukraine despite a wealth of widely
| known arguments against doing this. Unfortunately logic and
| common sense sometimes take back sit in politics.
| n00bface wrote:
| Especially when it comes to despotic life-long leaders.
| After 2018, Xi no longer has to worry about the pretense
| of term limits. We can only hope the state of Russia
| after the Ukrainian conflict is a convincing enough
| lesson.
|
| Invading Taiwan...the risks are substantial and the gain
| is legacy. Hardly a convincing for a nation, but
| potentially convincing for a man facing mortality.
| severino wrote:
| > We can only hope the state of Russia after the
| Ukrainian conflict is a convincing enough lesson
|
| We can also hope that the US refrains from creating
| another conflict to try to provoke China the same way
| they have been doing in Ukraine for the last 8 years.
| This "Pacific NATO" is the next thing. I am very
| pessimistic because the US is not going to allow China to
| overtake them in any way, and they have been behaving
| like that in their entire history.
| colejohnson66 wrote:
| I've heard the "TSMC self-destruct" story a lot, but I
| haven't found a source. All I can find are people repeating
| the claim. Is there a source anywhere?
| dirtyid wrote:
| It's been internet meme for few years when TSMC node lead
| was evident, and recently someone at US Army War College
| picked up on concept and wrote a paper suggesting TW
| should blow up their own fabs to deter PRC invasion when
| PRC had eyes on invading TW before semiconductors even
| existed. I guess TW media saw this as serious traction
| and pushed some articles basically saying "leave TSMC
| alone". The idea is flawed because preserving TSMC is the
| only barginning chip for TW, especially post war
| reconstruction. It's the difference between rebuilding
| from a advanced/developed economy to rebuilding from a
| agrarian one. Even with chip act and all the expansion on
| going, TW is projected to hold onto 90% of advanced node
| production for a while. It's not in TW/US interest to
| burn this. Nor PRC but direction of profits and reliant
| industry means it affects west more. Imagine being the TW
| leadership asking to be evacuated to US for protection
| after destroying supply chains of US companies worth
| trillions. Guessing in 5-10 years when PRC has semi
| sufficient domestic production, even if a few nodes
| behind, the meme will be PRC will preemptively destroy
| TSMC to make TW less desirable to protect.
| vimy wrote:
| I talked to Chinese people about Taiwan. They are very
| emotional about it (anger and hate). Don't expect China to
| act logical.
| pphysch wrote:
| Please don't make such generalizations.
|
| The average Chinese person is no more responsible for
| Chinese foreign policy than the average American is for
| American foreign policy.
| vimy wrote:
| The point was that China's leaders are emotional about it
| too. They grew up with the same propaganda.
| pphysch wrote:
| Beijing's interest in Taiwan is not emotional. It's as
| realist as it gets.
|
| During the Opium Wars, foreign invaders occupied many of
| the mainland's ocean ports.
|
| Taiwan, as part of the First Island Chain, represents a
| critical strategic asset for those wishing to control
| mainland China.
| tick_tock_tick wrote:
| What!!! The average American's views absolutely have a
| huge impact on foreign policy... Why would you assume
| it's different in China?
| pphysch wrote:
| phkahler wrote:
| >> China would be shooting themselves in the foot by
| invading, because it would equally fuck them. I've read in
| may places that as soon as China invades, Taiwan will blow
| up all the fabs and supporting supply lines. So even if
| China takes control of Taiwan, the semiconductor industry
| will be a smoldering pile of nothingness.
|
| That sounds incredibly stupid. If China invading is
| shooting themselves in the foot, then Taiwan blowing up
| their (worlds most advanced) fabs would be suicide. Nobody
| ever won a conflict by doing that.
| hammock wrote:
| > semiconductor manufacturing supplies
|
| Which supplies specifically? Aren't the big ones just silicon
| and solvents?
| kken wrote:
| >Much of critical blockers for chemicals, consumables,
| materials will still be in Taiwan just because the semi
| industry is that huge there.
|
| You mean like Linde, Air Liquide, Dow, Merck, BASF, Entegris,
| Shiply, Fujifilm, Wacker and so on?
|
| Those are not Taiwanese.
| Pxtl wrote:
| Resource extraction and refinement are much lower capital-
| cost infrastructure than a chip fab. If, God forbid, all the
| eggs in that one basket get smashed, it's far more feasible
| for that infrastructure to be developed elsewhere.
|
| It would still suck in the interrim, of course.
| lm28469 wrote:
| What makes Taiwan inherently better than somewhere else ? If
| it's just for historical and/or economical reason I don't see
| why Europe or the US couldn't build their own chemical
| plants.
|
| You have to start somewhere, it took us decades to delocalise
| everything to Asia, it'll take decades to build these
| industries locally.
| baybal2 wrote:
| You have just asked why we can't "just move manufacturing
| out of China:"
|
| There are no individual chemical plants, there are huge
| chemical complexes owned by many companies with own well
| guarded know hows. There may be 2-4 suppliers in a row
| producing some intermediary product used in making of only
| 1 output.
|
| Just to make the semiconductor grade hyperpure propanol you
| need ultrapure catalysts, ultrapure sulphuric acid,
| ultrapure water, and ultrapure input hydrocarbon stock. Ah,
| forgot, you also needs an ultrapure tare manufacturer,
| because bottles you ship ultrapure materials are single
| use.
|
| You need decades just to replicate this. Now you need to
| move 100+ of such material chains.
|
| > If it's just for historical and/or economical reason
|
| Simple answer, yes! Taiwan has quietly swallowed near an
| entirety of the wider precision manufacturing industry.
|
| It been consistently swallowing very capital intensive
| industries producing exportable niche products one after
| another simply because nobody else been taking such hard,
| and risky ventures. Yes, their profitability is not high,
| but their "moat" is gigantic.
|
| Taiwan been an industrial titan for 20+ years, and the US
| only finds out about it now.
| JoachimS wrote:
| Excellent explanation.
| wtetzner wrote:
| > You need decades just to replicate this. Now you need
| to move 100+ of such material chains.
|
| Better get started right away then.
|
| "The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago. The next
| best time is today."
| mlyle wrote:
| > You need decades just to replicate this. Now you need
| to move 100+ of such material chains.
|
| I think decades is a stretch. Keep in mind most of these
| chains sprung up in the last 3 decades organically in
| Taiwan and China (and many of them are still elsewhere--
| e.g. BASF is still a titan.)
|
| If it's a national priority, you can get some production
| going a lot faster than this.
| baybal2 wrote:
| > If it's a national priority, you can get some
| production going a lot faster than this.
|
| Defeating CoVID was too a national priority. Did they
| manage to build a single new mask manufacturing line?
|
| No, but they actually tried really hard. Dozens of
| companies were recruited for the effort, and they just
| gave up after realising that they can't even get a single
| part in the blowing machine to be made in the US.
| ratww wrote:
| So Europe needs to start making supply factories, too.
|
| With a fab, that's still difficult, but necessary.
|
| Without a fab, however, that would have been deemed
| impossible and unrealistic.
| curiousgal wrote:
| ASML is in the Netherlands though.
|
| Edit: Yes ASML is obviously not a chip fab but they supply the
| machines that actually fabricate the chips.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| ASML also makes their high end lithography machines (the ones
| that cost $100M+ a pop) in Connecticut, USA:
| https://www.asml.com/en/company/about-
| asml/locations/wilton-...
| ren_engineer wrote:
| ASML's core IP was developed and is owned by the US
| government, that's why they can't ship anything to China
| without the US's permission. ASML has some fancy stuff but is
| entirely dependent on the US at the end of the day
|
| from all the way back in 1999 - https://www.eetimes.com/u-s-
| gives-ok-to-asml-on-euv-effort/
| [deleted]
| ezsmi wrote:
| Manufacturing anything large is an international affair these
| days.
|
| https://www.asml.com/en/news/stories/2020/inside-high-
| tech-m...
|
| "ASML has five manufacturing locations worldwide. Our
| lithography systems are assembled in cleanrooms in Veldhoven,
| the Netherlands, while some critical subsystems are made in
| different factories in San Diego, California, and Wilton,
| Connecticut, as well as other modules and systems in Linkou
| and Tainan, Taiwan."
|
| And you can assume those factories depend on sub-assemblies
| from lower tier factories which are made in even more places.
| floxy wrote:
| >Manufacturing anything large is an international affair
| these days.
|
| ...or even the humble pencil:
|
| https://genius.com/Leonard-e-read-i-pencil-annotated
| joker99 wrote:
| Correct, but ASML is not a chip fab
| amelius wrote:
| I think the point was that high-tech shouldn't be
| concentrated in one location. What if ASML was in China?
| himlion wrote:
| ASML is prohibited from shipping its newest machines to
| China by the Dutch government, because of heavy US
| pressure. I'm sure China would love ASML to be fully
| based there.
| rmah wrote:
| Well, as far as I can tell, China is seems willing to
| sell just about anything to anyone as long as they can
| pay.
| dkjaudyeqooe wrote:
| No but it is the monopoly supplier of the single most
| important device for fabs.
|
| If ASML (and all their knowledge) disappeared off the face
| of the earth today progress in semiconductors would
| probably be set back a decade or two.
|
| The fact they are a single company in one country that the
| global industry depends on for progress in semis should be
| of concern.
| eternauta3k wrote:
| What company has the next-best litho machines after ASML?
| [deleted]
| voxic11 wrote:
| > As of 2022, ASML Holding is the only company who
| produces and sells EUV systems for chip production
| gpvos wrote:
| Okay, so still: what is the company making the next-best
| chip making machines, using the next-best technology
| after EUV?
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| Nikon and Canon, in that order. Neither has managed to
| produce EUV machines, but they were somewhat competitive
| at higher nodes.
| phkahler wrote:
| That's really interesting, I had not heard those names in
| this space before. I would have expected Applied
| Materials. Maybe Nikon and Canon are suppliers of optics
| to the more industry specific companies?
| dkjaudyeqooe wrote:
| I think historically it's been a challenge mostly related
| to precision optics, given that semi production is more
| or less like exposing photographic paper from a negative,
| through a lens using a light source.
|
| With EUV the challenge is the crazy difficulty of
| generating the required light source at the right
| intensity and focusing it. At that wavelength things
| behave differently, to say the least.
| LeanderK wrote:
| what if there are none that are really comparable? I
| don't think we can go back to those huge transistors
| [deleted]
| Sakos wrote:
| There is no alternative. Without EUV machines (produced
| solely by ASML), anything below 10nm is infeasible until
| we find a different way that works at scale.
| erikpukinskis wrote:
| Would it be? Or would it be one step back for a few years
| and then two steps forward by the 10 year mark due to
| renewed competition?
| dkjaudyeqooe wrote:
| It took decades for ASML to successfully develop EUV
| lithography. It was widely thought to be impractical
| prior to that. No one else was willing to even try.
| dathinab wrote:
| But it doesn't only have factories in the Netherlands and
| is as much controlled by a single "entity" as Intel is
| (e.g. the US doesn't control Intel).
|
| Most relevant as far as I can tell this situation was
| intentionally created that way to be able to better keep
| China off the high end chip market.
| qweqwerwerwerwr wrote:
| Slartie wrote:
| ASML is not a leaf in the dependency tree of the global
| semiconductor fab supply chain. It does in turn rely on
| several other highly specialized partners to supply them
| with custom-developed components for lithography
| machines, well-known ones are for example Zeiss and
| Trumpf (both based in Germany). These partners probably
| duplicate a significant amount of knowledge necessary to
| build EUV machines, considering that their components
| were developed in tight partnership with ASML.
| iancmceachern wrote:
| There are tons of these.
|
| Intel FLIR DeBeers Westinghouse for nuclear stuff Lots of
| specialty suppliers for aerospace where there is only one
| or two companies that do a particular thing.
|
| Its actually super common.
| toss1 wrote:
| Yup
|
| May have had something to do with these tweets [1] from Emily
| Haber @GermanAmbUSA German Ambassador to USA:
|
| >> "The current geopolitical situation and its impact on supply
| chains has triggered a discussion about "technological
| sovereignty" in the US and Europe. For us, it means being able
| to help shape future technologies in line with our values. We
| see the USA as natural partners in this."
|
| >> "It's one reason our Minister for Education and Research is
| visiting Washington. Welcome, Minister @starkwatzinger . Your
| visit will deepen our cooperation as we face intense global
| challenges! 2/2"
|
| https://twitter.com/GermanAmbUSA/status/1534236635562491905
| ISL wrote:
| It is very important for national stability. A highly-
| interconnected global economy is arguably better at securing
| international stability.
| trashtester wrote:
| For generic trade, yes. But 2020-2022 taught us about what
| happens to supply chains in emergencies.
|
| In March 2020, I made the following predictions:
|
| 1) National governments will do what it takes short to
| provide for their citizens, even if they have to print money
| to do so, and risk inflation. Check.
|
| 2) Supply chains will be shaken up, costs for most goods will
| go up. Check
|
| 3) National governments in Western countries will seek to
| have strategic industries moved back to domestic or friendly
| territories. Check.
|
| 4) International trust will detoriate, and international
| conflict will become more likely. Check.
|
| 5) As inflation goes up, central banks will try to raise
| interest rates, but too slowly and too little. Check.
|
| 6) At some point, interest rates will rise to a level that
| causes a severe recession, with rising unemployment, even
| though inflation still remains higher than the interest rate.
| As people take to the street, central banks are forced to
| lower the interest rate, and possibly resume QE. Still open.
|
| 7. As interest rates go down, inflation goes even higher than
| before step 5. It will remain like this for the best part of
| 10 years (with high volatility), before some countries are
| willing to take the Volcker medicine for real.
|
| 8. As the economic forest fire ends, debts are erased,
| retirees have lost their savings and the next super-cycle
| begins.
| exyi wrote:
| Interconnected yes, centralized somewhere out of your
| control? preferably no.
|
| In this case, you don't want to be dependent on one
| geopolitically unstable island. If there is a war, it won't
| be the EU's decision to start/stop it. You'd want China to be
| dependent on EU and vice versa, to make it costly to start a
| war. But if China has nothing to loose by attacking Taiwan
| and the West would loose all advanced electronics... This is
| not going to bring any kind of stability. You might only be
| forced to buy those chips from China, giving the potential
| aggressor even more leverage (and money)
| benreesman wrote:
| I think the parent makes a better point in concrete terms.
| Geopolitically interconnected trade is all well and good in
| theory, but putting two superpowers at odds over the
| consolidation of oxygen right off the coast of one of them,
| with a long-standing grudge between them into the bargain has
| obvious implications for stability.
|
| All of economics looks great on paper until basically any
| little happenstance quirk utterly breaks the whole thing.
| andrekandre wrote:
| > Geopolitically interconnected trade is all well and good
| in theory, but putting two superpowers at odds
|
| one impression i get is that perhaps economists and leaders
| thought they could just leave everything to the market -
| interconnectedness economically through world-wide ("free"
| market) capitalism - and then they could politically hang
| up their hats so-to-speak (everything would take care of
| itself) because everyone would reach great prosperity
|
| obviously, as we have seen in the past 40 years, both
| within and without there has been alot of economic turmoil
| (economic crisis) instead of pure prosperity and it turns
| out politicians couldn't outsource their jobs to the market
|
| countries and regions need to politically strive for peace,
| cooperation and friendship, the market and trade isn't
| enough imo
| grn wrote:
| I used to believe that but have started to serious doubt it.
| Some counter-arguments:
|
| 1. It's reasoning a'la "It's economically inefficient
| therefore it's less likely to happen". In my opinions,
| governments are absolute experts in implementing economically
| nonsensical policies, international conflicts included.
|
| 2. Any link between nations can be weaponized, i.e. imposing
| tariffs, banning imports/exports, and so on. The greater your
| dependency on me the more ways I have to harm you.
|
| 3. Such weaponization will naturally harm your own citizens
| but you, as a decision maker, will bear very little cost.
|
| 4. The easier it is for me to replace you with an alternative
| the more likely I am to use that against you -- this is
| classic BATNA. You don't like my export quota? So what, I've
| got more interest than I can handle and you can build your
| batteries without lithium if you don't like that.
| [deleted]
| wazoox wrote:
| That was the main argument for global trade already in 1914.
| France was Germany's most important commercial partner, and
| vice-versa. All German rifles had stocks made from French
| walnut wood! All French locomotives had German-made tubing!
| This stupid mantra was repeated ad nauseam after 1991, too,
| with silly op-eds from Friedman and friends about how two
| countries with McDonald joints in both can't be at war and
| similar inanities. Surprise surprise, such wars happened many
| times since then (the latest being, of course, Russia vs
| Ukraine).
| nradov wrote:
| McDonald's is now leaving Russia. A local company is taking
| over operations there and will operate under a different
| brand name.
|
| https://www.npr.org/2022/05/16/1099079032/mcdonalds-
| leaving-...
| shlurpy wrote:
| The McDonald's leaving thing was always totally absurd to
| me for this reason. There are real examples of economic
| dependence that could and do cause problems. The owners
| withdrawing ownership though is a pure benefit to Russia.
| Threemployees get paid by the customers and get supplies
| from suppliers and all of that is totally unaffected. The
| only thing that changes is they pay less money to
| American buisness owners, so if anything, pay might go up
| or prices might drop as less is skimmed off the top.
| jhgb wrote:
| How is it a benefit? I somehow doubt that with the supply
| chains interrupted, the new owners will be anywhere as
| efficient at their business as their predecessors.
| colechristensen wrote:
| The economic sanctions against Russia really do seem to be
| creating quite a lot of internal pressure to stop the war
| in Ukraine which is not going so well.
|
| Without those sanctions, it is quite conceivable that a
| troubled war effort would not be nearly so much of a
| problem, but because of the trade dependency Russia feels
| quite threatened by the consequences of war. Not enough to
| have prevented it in the first place, but they overreaced.
| Dma54rhs wrote:
| Its the same for Ukrainians since EU big powers want the
| end of war because of economies even if it means Ukraine
| giving away their territories. You could argue without
| globalism and a lot of trade that pressure wouldn't
| exist.
| eastbound wrote:
| Entering war in 1914, one of the French traditional soldier
| costume included bright red pants (that made them easy to
| spot and shoot into on the field). The dye came from
| Germany. And it was very cheap!
| gumby wrote:
| You can and should have both. It's a form of defense at
| depth.
|
| The theory of comparative advantage (David Ricardo) means
| it's worth specializing. But the counter argument (local
| resiliency) is also important -- but it may mean less
| efficiency in the short run, as a kind of investment
| against risk.
|
| All that is fine, but it opens up the opportunity for
| short-sighted decisions (basically a mercantilist view that
| exports = good and imports = bad) like tariffs to protect
| local mfrs (which removes incentives for them to be
| efficient).
|
| In short, like everything in life, there's not a sharp
| decision.
| mike_hock wrote:
| See, that's the problem with franchises. If every
| McDonald's was run directly by McDonald's HQ, then surely
| McDonald's would have pressured Putin not to attack
| Ukrainian cities with McDonald's restaurants in them.
| andruby wrote:
| How many _more_ wars would there have been without this
| interconnectedness?
| lazide wrote:
| When we find a solid way to A/B test the universe, we
| might know. Otherwise, good luck!
| BurningFrog wrote:
| This is the same logic that because some vaccinated people
| get Covid, vaccines are stupid and don't work.
| thomasz wrote:
| It is actually pretty easy to provide a proof of
| effectiveness for vaccines. The theory of peace through
| interconnected and colonies is more complicated. All we
| have are arguments, and these are not even that
| convincing. Every trade connection requires compromise,
| and risks one party feeling taken advantage off. Often
| rightfully so.
| jhgb wrote:
| I'd like to think, though, that today's economic
| connections are less replaceable than wooden stocks or
| steel tubes. Try replacing modern electronics with local
| resources when you're Russia, for example.
| rowanajmarshall wrote:
| And in 1812 the UK was the US's biggest trading partner.
| And that created major tensions in the US, with New England
| almost threatening secession over it. But the war still
| happened.
| mywittyname wrote:
| The economic relationship between New England and the UK
| had historically been adversarial up to this point in
| time. New England was in direct competition with the UK,
| as both regions were industrial and educated. The
| monarchy did everything in their power to starve New
| England of the resources and tradesmen they needed to
| succeed. This is in contrast to the rest of the USA,
| which was supplying raw resources for industry.
|
| Trade needs to be fair and mutually beneficial.
| verve_rat wrote:
| In 1812 the monarchy of the UK wasn't doing shit. The
| Government of the UK called the shots.
| FooBarWidget wrote:
| A connected world is not a _guaranteed sufficient_
| condition for peace. But that does not mean it 's not a
| _necessary_ condition for peace. One could argue that
| without economic interconnectivity, Europe could have
| fought WW1 much earlier, or would have had wars much more
| often.
| [deleted]
| nautilius wrote:
| Easily disproven by all the countries that were not
| constantly at war despite low connectedness.
|
| In the (absurd) limit: There was no war between Australia
| and the Roman Empire in 100BC.
|
| More practical: existence of a Cold War in the 20th
| century.
| christkv wrote:
| Eh have you looked at the list of wars in Europe in the
| 19th century?
| FooBarWidget wrote:
| Well multiply that by 3x if there were no
| interconnectedness.
| madrox wrote:
| While I ultimately believe you're correct (along with
| open borders and travel) I wish there were more rigorous
| proofs that this were the case.
|
| I think about the line in West Wing: "Free trade is
| essential for human rights...the end of that sentence is
| 'we hope because nothing else has worked.' ...Chinese
| political prisoners are going to be sewing soccer balls
| with their teeth whether we sell them cheeseburgers or
| not, so let's sell them cheeseburgers."
|
| While war and human rights are different, they're also
| pretty correlated.
| alldayeveryday wrote:
| FooBarWidget wrote:
| Human rights is more than just political rights or
| speech. Hundreds of millions of Chinese lifted out of
| poverty is a huge win for human rights. When you're poor,
| you're not free. Having grown up with dirty streets and
| beggars, you can't possibly imagine how big a deal it is
| for me to see my hometown transforming into a modern
| metropolis, and how my grandparents-in-law (in a
| different city, in a rural area) finaly have... Wait for
| it... A fscking _toilet_ instead of a hole in the ground,
| as well as free health insurance. To me and millions of
| Chinese, these matters much more than being able to vote
| for the president.
|
| A recent study by the Democracy Perception Index shows
| that Chinese feel that their country is democratic. But
| this is ludicrous, how can this be? It's because Chinese
| define democracy by whether they believe their government
| works for their interest and whether they yield good
| results, not by how their government is elected. It's not
| just propaganda; this result is consistent with earlier
| studies by Harvard and York University, as well as by my
| own experience on the ground.
|
| https://latana.com/democracy-perception-index/
|
| The concept of Min Zhu is much more in line with the
| 19th century definition of democracy, when the concept
| was brought to China. It was only in the latter half of
| the 20th century that (in the west) democracy became
| synonymous with electorialism.
|
| So, not commenting on any other countries. But in case of
| China, Chinese view democracy and human rights
| differently. I think we should let them.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > It's because Chinese define democracy by whether they
| believe their government works for their interest and
| whether they yield good results, not by how their
| government is elected.
|
| And here is the crux of China's zero-covid policy. Follow
| the Western lead and run covid run its course? That would
| be millions of deaths even with Omicron being not as
| deadly, simply because Sinovax is nowhere near as
| effective as the mRNA vaccines are. It's too late (and
| politically unwise, given how CCP propaganda praised its
| selfmade vaccine) to mass-rollout mRNA vaccines, so the
| only option that prevents millions of deaths (and so,
| keeps the "social contract" of freedoms vs. wealth) is to
| brutally suppress Covid.
|
| The interesting thing will be when the Chinese public
| deems the zero-covid policy "not good enough"...
| FooBarWidget wrote:
| Actually, Sinovac work as well as Pfizer when it comes to
| preventing hospitilization and death, but requires
| sufficient boosters. This is shown by this research
| paper: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.03.22
| .22272769v...
|
| The "Chinese vaccine don't work" talking point is a bad
| faith myth created by western mainstream media, which
| misrepresented this study by comparing single- or two-
| dose Sinovac with 3-dose Pfizer. This sort of
| misrepresentation is unfortunately common practice in
| mainstream western media.
|
| What _is_ true however is that Chinese population has
| less immunity against omicron due to lower vaccination
| rates, especially among the elderly. For one, the Chinese
| don 't see vaccination as really necessary because
| lockdowns work. Second, the Chinese worry a lot more
| about vaccine side effects. Here in the Netherlands,
| vaccines are sold as "100% safe, everyone should get it",
| whereas in China doctors would recommend against getting
| a vaccine if you have another medical problem such as
| heart problems. My other grandparents in law choose not
| to get vaccinated because they have many other health
| problems due to old age.
|
| Finally, the Chinese public is by and large very
| supportive of lockdowns despite the Shanghai mess. Rather
| than "don't lock down" they now just believe "lock down
| earlier, don't turn into the next Shanghai".
| oivey wrote:
| > The "Chinese vaccine don't work" talking point is a bad
| faith myth created by western mainstream media, which
| misrepresented this study by comparing single- or two-
| dose Sinovac with 3-dose Pfizer. This sort of
| misrepresentation is unfortunately common practice in
| mainstream western media.
|
| This isn't true, and if you look at table 2 in the paper
| you link it is obvious. With equal dosing, SinoVac is
| less effective than Pfizer in basically all categories.
|
| SinoVac doesn't start to have _any_ protection against
| mild/moderate disease until 3 doses, and even then, it's
| significantly worse than Pfizer. It's hard to know how
| that relates to disease transmission, but it's probably
| fair to guess that less protection against mild/moderate
| disease means increased viral loads and faster disease
| spread.
| FooBarWidget wrote:
| Yes with equal dose _before the third dose_ it 's less
| effective, but why would one compare the two vaccines
| based on number of dosis to get effective?
|
| Back when there were fewer variants, the Janssen vaccine
| only required 1 dose; was Janssen "better" than mRNA, and
| did "mRNA vaccines not work very well"?
|
| Here in the Netherlands, once Omikron arrived, the Dutch
| CDC advised everyone to get a booster (third dose).
| Nobody here counts on Pfizer having enough protection
| with just 2 doses. Why would anyone then compare 2-dose
| Pfizer with 2-dose Sinovac?
|
| What matters is the eventual efficacy after sufficient
| boosters. Besides, we already live in a "booster
| subscription" reality. Here in the Netherlands, the
| elderly are encouraged to get a booster every 3 or 4
| months. In light of all this, I'd say it's very
| disingenuous to compare based on number of dosis instead
| of eventual efficacy.
|
| And you say "even [after 3 doses] it's significantly
| worse than Pfizer". Where in table 2 do you see that?
|
| Severe/fatal disease:
|
| - Three-dose BNT162B2: 99.2 for 60-69 yr, 99.5 for 70-79
| yr, 95.7 for >= 80 yr
|
| - Three-dose Coronavac: 98.5 for 60-69 yr, 96.7 for 70-79
| yr, 98.6 for >= 80 yr
|
| Mortality:
|
| - Three-dose BNT162B2: 98.9 for 60-69 yr, 96.0 for >= 80
| yr
|
| - Three-dose Coronavac: 98.7 for 60-69 yr, 99.2 for >= 80
| yr
|
| I'm sorry, these numbers look nearly identical to me?
| They're all >= 96% for the elderly.
|
| I think you're looking at the "mild/moderate" section.
| Yes the numbers there are lower for Sinovac. But so what?
| Protection against severe/fatal disease and mortality is
| the most important. That it's less effective at
| mild/moderate disease prevention doesn't make "Chinese
| vaccine don't work very well".
|
| Heck if we go back in time before there were so many
| variants, various studies showed Sinovac as having
| roughly 70% protection against mild/moderate COVID
| (depending on country; efficacy is context-dependent).
| That 70% was then branded by western media as "Chinese
| vaccines are junk, they don't work at all, because our
| mRNA vaccines provide 90%+ protection against mild
| disease". And now Pfizer has _only_ 70% protection
| against mild omikron but it 's still represented as "mRNA
| vaccines are much superior, the Chinese are fscked until
| they get their hands on mRNA". Yes, what's wrong with
| that narrative?
|
| For some reason, outside of the context of comparisons
| with China, everybody agrees that Pfizer works kinda
| "meh" against omikron; it's merely "good enough to get
| the job done". But when comparing with China, all sorts
| of people are suddenly inclined to represent mRNA as the
| holy grail that can end the pandemic, which the Chinese
| unfortunately don't have.
| striking wrote:
| I don't totally disagree with you here. There's certainly
| something to be said about systems that make people
| happier than no system at all or the wrong system
| entirely, e.g. the soft power of surveillance being
| better than a total lack of enforcement of certain rules
| or heavy-handed and expensive policing efforts that don't
| work or make people any more free.
|
| That being said, I think there are limits to this
| philosophy. It's pretty clear by now that not everyone in
| China is getting a fair shake, to the extent that perhaps
| it is time for other countries to evaluate their
| relationships with the output of those in China who are
| experiencing something that goes beyond the pale in terms
| of human rights violations i.e. the Uyghur population and
| the work that they are being "voluntold" for as well as
| the "re-education" they are experiencing.
|
| I think that for as much sense as it makes for China to
| do whatever it does, it makes sense for Western countries
| to do something about the obvious misalignment of values
| between the two groups. The West not accepting / becoming
| dependent on economic conditions that result from
| violations of their views on human rights or democracy is
| a very reasonable action to take from an ethical and
| moral standpoint, just as an example.
| FooBarWidget wrote:
| There may be limits to that philosophy (or any philosophy
| for that matter). There are no doubt inequalities in
| China. I just don't think the Xinjiang issue is
| representative of the problem you're thinking of, because
| the issue is heavily politicized by western mainstream
| media and governments, leaving out or mispresenting
| important facts (as is usually the case with China
| reporting), and/or representing allegations as final and
| proven facts even in the absence of evidence.
| Matl wrote:
| > Human rights is more than just political rights or
| speech.
|
| > When you're poor, you're not free.
|
| I appreciate someone 'qualified' making this point.
| Whenever I tried to argue this in the past, I inherently
| got dismissed as being in a privileged European position
| not knowing what I am talking about, (even as an Eastern
| European), so thanks for your post.
| FooBarWidget wrote:
| Happy to hear this.
| oezi wrote:
| This is all fine and good until the Chinese government is
| leading China down a path of aggression abroad or to a
| genocide such as in Xinjiang.
|
| As a German believe me if I tell you that being under a
| totalitarian regime can backfire pretty quickly. It took
| Hitler only 6 years. Putin took longer but hundreds of
| thousands are dead for just this year alone.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| The Chinese lived (well, far from all did...) 27 years
| under Mao.
|
| They know about murderous totalitarian regimes!
|
| The Mao background may also mean they appreciate even
| minor progress more than us.
| imbnwa wrote:
| This is interesting to read, I'm curious how this
| diverges/converges from the observation that:
|
| In the West the words for referring to someone formally
| are words that used to refer to the nobility exclusively
| (Mister, Misses in English comes from 'Master, Mistress',
| Monsieur, Madamme in French, Senor, Senora in Spanish,
| derive from 'My Lord, My Lady' respectively).
|
| So in the West, the cultural transformation was more than
| mere equality of political voice, but more, that ' _we
| are all nobles_ ', and (domestic?) political history in
| the West is the ever expanding circle of this inherent
| nobleness of all (arguably right down to trends in
| current American social issues).
|
| 'Rights' was something that, in the West, was first
| contested between the nobility and the King, then in the
| modern period between the wealthy merchant class and the
| nobility/royalty. James Madison, one of the American
| Revolution leaders, writes explicitly about how the
| masses are incapable of the requirements of absolute
| democracy. So there's definitely something to it when you
| point out that 'Democracy' in the West wasn't immediately
| interested in conferring a voice onto every Tom, Dick,
| and Harry (we'll just set aside the status of women and
| slaves)
|
| You might be off about 'latter half of the 20th century'
| bringing electorialism to bear, rather the late 19th
| century/early 20th century was when, finally, the
| proletariat started demanding its rights, e.g. The
| Mexican Civil War that saw the establishment of
| collective farming lands, the struggle of labor and
| unions in America and Europe to secure worker's
| conditions backed by the threat of socialism (which, from
| Marx himself, is about endignity [ennoblement] of
| _everyone 's time_), all of which, funny enough, have
| been desolving since the 90s (NAFTA eradicatd collective
| farming in Mexico).
|
| Democracy in the West is more than a mere political
| configuration, its also the cultural precept (however
| divergent in interpretation), in stark contrast to what
| you're describing is the history of this idea in China,
| where, dare I say, the idea of ennoblement stops at a
| hard boundary unlike in the West.
|
| P.S. I don't know a Chinese language so it may be that
| the words for formally addressing someone also share this
| genealogy of descending from terms formerly meant
| exclusively for nobility.
| madrox wrote:
| > It's because Chinese define democracy by whether they
| believe their government works for their interest and
| whether they yield good results, not by how their
| government is elected.
|
| I'm going to be thinking about this sentence for the rest
| of my life
| MrLeap wrote:
| That sentence stuck out to me too. It makes me wonder if
| the nature of America's representative democracy lowers
| the threshold by which our elected officials actually
| have to do a good job / serve the will of the people.
|
| They constantly fall short, even of the narrow interests
| of whatever their particular constituency is. But there's
| kind of a floor where we just throw up our hands and say
| "WELL THEY WERE VOTED IN"
|
| Do our officials receive less psychic pressure? Does the
| Chinese government work harder to align the populous'
| desires with their actions?
|
| Pretty fascinating rabbit holes.
| markvdb wrote:
| I'm open to any system of government that systematically
| tries to pass John Rawls' veil of ignorance[0] test. In
| theory, it doesn't even have to be democratic. In
| practice though, I haven't yet seen any non-democracy get
| even close.
|
| Yes, the Chinese state has made some remarkable positive
| material achievements for most Chinese. No, it does an
| absolutely shit job for many of them. Imagine being
| Uyghur, critical of Xi, religious, lgbti+, black or a
| combination of the above.
|
| What would it take for a national government to get more
| passable results on the veil of ignorance test? Try the
| thought experiment!
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_position
| azinman2 wrote:
| eddieplan9 wrote:
| Why the false dichotomy? Does political freedom
| automatically contradict with economic prosperity for
| some reason now? Born and raised in China, I fail to see
| how the last 10 years of erosion in freedom has yielded
| any better results economically.
|
| Please don't buy the government propaganda that
| legitimizes everything from stupid to evil as a price
| that has to be paid to raise people out of poverty.
| FooBarWidget wrote:
| Nowhere did I say that economic freedom and political
| freedom are mutually exclusive. What I do protest however
| is the idea that only political freedom can be considered
| a legitimate form of freedom. I am making the case that:
|
| - economic freedom is an equally valid form of freedom.
|
| - societies can make up their own minds on what sort of
| freedoms they value most.
|
| As for "erosion of freedom in the last 10 years in
| China": this is the mainstream western narrative, but the
| Chinese people don't view it that way. By and large, they
| view China as way better off now than 10 years ago. All
| the data and on the ground talks show this. What else is
| there it argue about?
|
| It sounds like you are like me, born and raised in China
| but having lived in the west for a long time. If you live
| in the west and all you hear is liberal thought and
| western ideas on political freedom, then after a while it
| seems like that is all there is that matters.
|
| But I am saying no: what we think here don't matter at
| all, what the people _there_ think is all that matters.
| We here can consider China 's government illegitimate for
| whatever reason, but that doesn't make them illegitimate.
| The Chinese people have way more right to consider what
| sort of government is legitimate, for whatever reason
| they want, even reasons that we don't agree with.
| dwallin wrote:
| - societies can make up their own minds on what sort of
| freedoms they value most.
|
| This is only possible peacefully if you have political
| freedom.
| makoz wrote:
| > As for "erosion of freedom in the last 10 years in
| China ... the Chinese people don't view it that way
|
| Really? My girlfriend and her friends would strongly
| disagree with that statement. From my understanding they
| grew up in a time when internet in China was a lot
| younger and they actually had an ability to discuss
| political discussions, or items that highlight the
| government in a negative manner.
|
| Now everything that isn't the government's view is
| incredibly censored/filtered online. It might hard to not
| see the erosion of freedom when it's being prevented from
| being communicated online.
|
| Fwiw I'm not disagreeing with your statement on economic
| freedom and I find the amount of people lifted out of
| poverty and the growth China has gone through in the last
| few decades to be incredible but it seems a bit
| disingenuous to say certain "freedoms" haven't been
| eroded in the last 10 years comparatively.
| jltsiren wrote:
| The "economic freedom" you describe is not freedom. A
| better description is "bread and circuses", after the way
| Roman emperors supposedly kept people happy. The West is
| familiar with societies like that, because it also
| describes most of our history. When the elites try to
| keep the people they depend on prosperous and happy, it's
| not freedom. It's just common sense for them.
|
| Freedom is not about the freedom of the well-off and the
| majority. It's always about the freedom of the
| minorities, the oppressed, and the different. Only their
| opinions matter. You can only determine the degree of
| freedom in the society by asking those who don't fit in.
|
| I know many people who come from small towns and rural
| areas. Places where everyone knows everyone, everyone is
| part of the community, and everyone helps those in need.
| Places that are toxic to people who are different. For
| many of those people, freedom started when they moved to
| a big city. A city where nobody cares what you are and
| what you do, where you can safely be yourself, and where
| you can find other people like you.
| IfOnlyYouKnew wrote:
| Ah... _West Wing_. Even the cynicism was better than it
| is in reality.
| munk-a wrote:
| Interconnectedness exposes your countrymen more to other
| countries cultures - it is much harder to war against a
| people who you can't paint as a demonic "other". I don't
| really think that the private industrial sourcing
| concerns have any real pressure to apply against war -
| those industries aren't the government and, even with
| modern supply chain minimalism, it'll take a while for
| one or two industry sectors to really cause widespread
| pain to an economy. Those personal connections across
| borders, though, those are the best defense against war.
| eastbound wrote:
| There are ethnic rivalries today in France. I'll spare
| you the list, but lowly are paying with their life for
| some, and girls with their intimacy. It's systematic in
| most big cities, anyone who hasn't been bullied isn't
| really living the diversity (spare me the "I know a guy
| and he's very nice" - you haven't lived the real
| diversity, the unchosen one).
|
| Sometimes, when it doesn't touch you, you have some fancy
| theoretical poetry about it; the closer you are, the more
| you notice how the other is, indeed, wow, gruesome.
|
| Not all cultures _can_ mix.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _wish there were more rigorous proofs_
|
| It's a deep area of research with conflicting results
| [1][2].
|
| [1] https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10
| .1.1.85...
|
| [2] https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=oRbfdWw4o
| zUC&oi=...
| mlyle wrote:
| Interconnectedness means that there's additional price
| everyone pays for (even a small) conflict erupting, and
| social ties that can disarm smaller conflicts before they
| get large.
|
| On the other hand, the cost of significant armed conflict
| is already very, very high.
| makin17 wrote:
| abledon wrote:
| more interconnectedness = less % chance of war
|
| not absolute 0 % chance of war
| alldayeveryday wrote:
| > more interconnectedness = less % chance of war
|
| What evidence do you have to make this claim? A simple
| thought experiment proves the counter. Let's say there is
| a population on one island, and another population on
| another island, and these populations have no way of
| reaching each other or even knowing of each others
| existence. These not-connected populations are guaranteed
| not to go to war. However, give one of them the means of
| reaching the other population, and most assuredly the
| chance of war has gone up not down.
| avh02 wrote:
| If you like ad absurdum arguments: if you connect the
| countries together so much, they eventually decide to
| become one country and the chance of war goes down, not
| up (excluding civil war)
| shlurpy wrote:
| I don't think they like ad absurdum arguments. But
| without systematic evidence, there is not way to
| determine if if such an argument is actually any less
| valid then the initial claim.
| hinkley wrote:
| Austria, World War II. Some people saw annexation, others
| saw reunification, others still saw a bunch of cowards
| surrendering without firing a single shot.
|
| With all of these things, context matters. If memory
| serves, Austria being an independent state was one of the
| terms of the Treaty of Versailles, so if that had been
| the last act instead of the opening chapter, there still
| would have been hell to pay. Perhaps not on a par with
| Caesar crossing the Rubicon, but definitely starting
| something that requires a resolution.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| I like how everyone here is doing precise statistics on
| something so imprecise as geopolitics.
| mgfist wrote:
| If Taiwan didn't have the world's most advanced
| semiconducter industry, which China (and all other nations)
| rely on, China would have long ago attacked it.
|
| So that's an easy example of how trade helps keeps peace.
| shlurpy wrote:
| Counterfactual imaginings make for poor evidence. But
| ideology can make a fool of anyone.
| noselasd wrote:
| That's a made up scenario, it provides no example. We
| don't know what china would or wouldn't have done in that
| situation.
|
| One may as well argue if Taiwan didn't have the world's
| most advanced semiconducter industry, it would have
| voulentarely joined China.
| ezsmi wrote:
| This argument has been made before.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Illusion
|
| Unfortunately, it didn't work out.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_I
| hypertele-Xii wrote:
| Economics is relative. If you go to war and win, you are
| wealthier than the enemy who lost. If you are confident of
| victory, the "cost of war" thus matters less, because you
| get on top anyway.
|
| Of course this only applies in a vaccuum. If there are any
| nations you _don 't_ attack and win, they can just build up
| their economy while you tank yours fighting and then swoop
| in to defeat you on the cusp of your victory.
|
| Basic strategy in the game of Civilization. The rest of the
| world gangs up against a warmonger and unless they can
| promptly achieve world domination, ultimately self-
| destruct.
| pmontra wrote:
| Given the recent news I think that there is no correlation.
| Russia and the EU are giving each other the finger and no
| amount of mutual trade changed Russia's long standing
| attitude of taking all they can get (of course all global
| powers do that.) Actually, no trade at all between Russia and
| the EU would have made that area of the world more stable:
| the EU won't have to scramble to replace energy providers and
| no sanction could harm Russia. There would still be a war but
| nothing else.
| PontifexMinimus wrote:
| The more interconnected the global economy is, the more
| single points of failure there are. No thanks, I'd rather
| society be more resilient.
| hypertele-Xii wrote:
| > more single points of failure
|
| Multiple single points of failure is an oxymoron. Either
| there is one point of failure and it's "single", or there
| are multiple and by definition no longer "single".
| dwallin wrote:
| You are being pedantic. The expression "multiple points
| of failure" is commonly used to refer to a single system
| that can be disrupted in multiple ways. They are are
| clearly referring to multiple independent systems where
| each system has its own singular point of failure.
| munk-a wrote:
| And, in particular, the monopoly Taiwan has over precision
| chip making is deeply important to their national stability.
| teakettle42 wrote:
| It's also very good at securing international ossification,
| creating a stultifying society of sameness, with the same few
| billionaires, multinationals, and technocrats running the
| show, pushing societal and international stability in service
| of profits.
|
| I don't think the result is a net positive. It looks more
| like keeping a lid on justified dissatisfaction while
| preventing any upset of the status quo.
| hh3k0 wrote:
| > A highly-interconnected global economy is arguably better
| at securing international stability.
|
| Happy to read that you woke up from your coma but I need to
| bring you up to speed with regard to 2020, 2021, and 2022 (so
| far).
| bakuninsbart wrote:
| There's no contradiction in interconnected economies being
| both better for global stability and more volatile to
| global instability. On a populist level, these kinds of
| questions are always presented as either-or, when in
| reality it is a pretty delicate balancing act. No, we
| shouldn't be completely reliant on potentially adversarial
| states for our basic well-being, but intertwined economies
| change the cost-benefit-analysis of a lot of adversarial
| geopolitical actions, and that has led to a lot less war in
| the world.
| baja_blast wrote:
| The USSR and United States had zero trade and never went
| to war. And since the fall of the USSR the number of
| conflicts has not gone down. Ukraine and Russia were very
| interconnected, but that did not prevent the invasion.
| nradov wrote:
| The United States sold huge amounts of grain to the USSR.
| Did this prevent a war, or make a war more likely? Who
| knows?
|
| https://coldwarheartland.ku.edu/documents/foes-or-friends
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Uh, we sold them grain, and they sold oil, and let's
| leave aside the NEP period...
| tshaddox wrote:
| If you're talking about global supply chain disruption,
| isn't that more about lack of robustness than it is about
| interconnectedness? I don't see how preemptively reducing
| global trade in the years leading up to this pandemic would
| have helped, unless you just mean that we would have gotten
| used to doing without certain things earlier.
| pasabagi wrote:
| > highly-interconnected
|
| I think the problem is, decision makers need to understand
| what interconnectedness _means_ , and not just on an abstract
| level. If you make things, you're intimately familiar with
| just how many components come from China. You're deeply aware
| of the fact the machines you use are made in basically every
| country in the globe. That the materials you consume come
| from literally every corner of the planet.
|
| People tend to think about globalization as a matter of
| buying discrete commodities from different places: bananas
| from panama. They don't understand that essentially all
| products today are amalgams from different factories
| scattered across the globe. That leads to crazy weird
| decisions like Brexit, silly trade wars, etc. People don't
| realize that cutting a country out of the system is less like
| not talking to somebody, and more like cutting out a big
| chunk of one of your organs.
| ajmurmann wrote:
| This is also the problem with something like the Buy
| American Act. I recently heard about a case where pipes(?)
| had to be pulled back out of the ground because it was
| discovered that the steel for the bolts had come from
| China. All this creates enormous overhead and worsens
| inflation, not make it better.
| Frost1x wrote:
| You have a little feedback loop here because if you optimize
| only at a global scale and ignore local scale, you could
| create unstable local scale systems which destablize the
| global system as well. Hence the many current failures of
| neoliberalism.
|
| And of course, as you point out, if you only optimize on the
| local scale and ignore the global scale, you'll also create
| an unstable system. Hence the failures of extreme nationalism
| we've seen historically.
|
| Both cases can lead to instability because of their
| relationship to one another (the global system is composed of
| localized systems). You need to look at balance across the
| entire picture, which means you can't just ignore your own
| country and its people but you also can't ignore the rest of
| the world, either. It's tough trying to create a good stable
| global system that isn't disenfranchizing some large segment
| of the population.
| cinntaile wrote:
| I don't think this is why fabs were centralized. I think this
| is because when you start to decrease node size, the fab costs
| go up astronomically so to keep the cost in check you need
| economies of scale and with the current manufacturing
| techniques you can achieve this by centralizing manufacturing.
| sephlietz wrote:
| Didn't you and parent both say "to keep costs low"?
| bottled_poe wrote:
| Seems to me that most software is horribly inefficient
| anyway. If push came to shove we might just consider making
| better software?
| sneak wrote:
| The cutting edge of software that mostly uses these
| advanced process node sizes is not horribly inefficient.
| The new applications enabled by, for example, GPU-
| accelerated ML are not the same as running 400 chrome tabs
| on an M1.
|
| The hot paths in most important high-end computing are
| mostly quite efficient.
| colinsane wrote:
| > The hot paths in most important high-end computing are
| mostly quite efficient.
|
| it's hard to determine the lower bound on a lot of these
| things. in scientific computing (e.g. physics sims) i
| still run across a lot of runtime branching that could
| easily be compiled out if we were using languages that
| had stronger type systems/templates. we use linear
| approximations for a lot of things, but it's been shown
| that smarter interpolation can let you decrease your
| resolution without losing accuracy/stability. there's an
| easy 2x or more perf gain every time you do that
| successfully. there's also the boundary conditions: we
| always simulate more volume of space than we're actually
| interested in so as to avoid certain types of distortion
| (reflections from the boundary of the simulation). over
| time we've learned tricks for reducing those reflections:
| we've applied a lot of general-purpose optimizations, but
| there's evidence that we can go further if we encode more
| simulation-specific information at these boundaries. this
| whole area has just been slow, steady, compounded
| optimizations.
|
| i don't work in ML, but i find it very unlikely that (a)
| optimizing neural networks is a completely solved problem
| or (b) that you all know how to train them using the
| fewest iterations.
|
| you make sweeping statements that just aren't obvious to
| me.
| lrem wrote:
| You seem to be arguing against "optimal", while quoting
| parent's "mostly quite efficient". The reality is that
| while everything is converging to a locally optimal point
| on the tradeoff curve, a _lot_ of software out there runs
| in the "hardware is my driving cost" locale. This makes
| companies squeeze epsilons out of their servers. There's
| also the "selling hardware is my profit centre", which
| end-users get to pay for.
| rat9988 wrote:
| Software engineers are expensive too.
| baja_blast wrote:
| It's depressing how bloated and slow some software is
| despite running on way faster machines. The software
| engineering accomplished in the 90's was nothing short of
| astonishing.
| mike_hock wrote:
| No, it wasn't. It was passable. The software
| "engineering" "accomplished" today is just nothing short
| of pathetic.
| Patrol8394 wrote:
| Germany always enforce EU rules on all other members, but when it
| comes to them, they couldn't give two f ...
| LatteLazy wrote:
| I think one of the lessons the EU has learnt from the last 10
| years is you cannot rely on international trade. Trump and now
| Putin mean the EU needs domestic weapons, chips, energy and a few
| other things...
| Shadonototra wrote:
| EU is funding american companies now... what a joke this is
|
| Couldn't Volkswagen build their own foundation for a sovereign
| and independent ecosystem?
| Zigurd wrote:
| I have to wonder if deglobalization and expensive onshoring is as
| much of herd mentality as glocalization and offshoring have been.
| Sure, if the no college white males of the US get their
| demographic last hurrah and elect a populist isolationist who
| pulls America out of NATO, then, yeah, it's bad times for a
| rational set of international interdependencies.
|
| Or, if the Taiwan and Korean foundries are the best on the
| planet, everyone should contribute to the international stability
| it takes to maintain access to those resources. Almost every part
| of the tech industry benefits from global low-friction trade.
|
| Brexit regret is a solid majority opinion in the UK. The US
| recently lowered trade barriers to solar panels from China.
| Hopefully sanity prevails. While it is possible to overdo the
| offshoring and JIT inventories, increased trade volume makes
| everyone more prosperous.
| robk wrote:
| 39/47 regretting brexit is not a solid majority.
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/987347/brexit-opinion-po...
| outside1234 wrote:
| Honestly, this is good policy. We can't have our complete global
| supply chain held over our heads when China goes and does
| something crazy inevitably.
| alaricus wrote:
| This is a very bad policy. We should instead invest in local
| companies, not a American monopoly like Intel.
| tester756 wrote:
| > We should instead invest in local companies, not a American
| monopoly like Intel.
|
| but they'll bring CPU/Semico talent to germany and other eu
| countries
|
| then with talent you can start building your own start ups,
| dont ya?
| wongarsu wrote:
| Having an established player that trains and employs workers
| creates a pool of experienced workers in the area. Those are
| exactly the kinds of people to get a local competitor
| started.
| alaricus wrote:
| There are lots of local semiconductor companies (Infineon,
| Bosch). This money would be better spent on them.
| f6v wrote:
| Why? Germany doesn't pursue political objectivity anyway.
| alaricus wrote:
| I don't want my tax money filling the coffers of an
| American monopoly.
| dgellow wrote:
| Why do you care about the origin of the company?
| cute_boi wrote:
| People living on democracy have right to question when
| their money is being spent in enriching the country which
| has habit of meddling foreign policy?
| dgellow wrote:
| You can question whatever you want. That doesn't answer
| why it matters that Intel has their HQ in the US.
|
| It's not like there is such a large choice of companies
| if you want to be able to produce chips in Europe.
| alaricus wrote:
| I consider it unethical for my tax euros to subsidize an
| American company.
| fromeroj wrote:
| where you think your tax euros go anyway? Now that
| germany will re-militarize, just expect to be a much
| larger amount going to american companies.
| f6v wrote:
| Understandable, but that's why western liberal
| democracies have been established. G7 summits leave no
| room for this kind of reasoning.
| outside1234 wrote:
| The alternative is that they take $5.5B from France and
| you lose the jobs.
|
| Strategically, you want the semi jobs to seed local
| expertise.
| alaricus wrote:
| You can invest 5.5 billion to create local companies,
| instead of subsidizing an American one.
| BeetleB wrote:
| 5.5 billion will barely let you build a fab, if even
| that.
| dgellow wrote:
| If you want to create an Intel competitor from scratch
| that will be way, way more than 5.5 billions and will
| take a ridiculous amount of time.
| alaricus wrote:
| You don't need to create an Intel competitor from
| scratch. For example the same money can be better
| invested in Infineon, ASML, Bosch or a number of local
| companies that work on chips. Or it could be put into
| RISC-V work.
| BeetleB wrote:
| Investing in those (other than ASML) just means the money
| will go to Taiwan/China. It's no more likely to stay in
| the EU.
| dgellow wrote:
| I don't get your point. What you describes sounds exactly
| like the goal of such a subsidy. With new Intel factories
| in Europe that means more demand for ASML and other
| European companies, given that they already collaborate.
| With the addition that you can now train Europeans and
| develop the industry locally.
| alaricus wrote:
| My point is that as a taxpayer in Germany, I don't want
| to subsize an American company. Better to invest in local
| companies like Infineon or Bosch.
| outside1234 wrote:
| I don't know about Infineon, but Bosch would boat anchor
| that money and then you'd just be out $5.5B. No way Bosch
| is going to be a world class fab provider.
| adventured wrote:
| Americans feel your pain, given the subsidies German
| automakers have received to build plants in our country
| over the decades.
|
| Mercedes got $260m in Alabama in the early 1990s, BMW got
| $150m in South Carolina in the early 1990s, Volkswagen
| got $570m in the late 2000s in Tennessee. That's close to
| $1.6 billion inflation adjusted from just three examples
| of it.
|
| The US economy is six times the size of Germany's
| economy, so those are massive subsidies in relation.
| ezsmi wrote:
| What market is Intel a monopoly in?
|
| They don't even have all of the x86 market.
| https://www.extremetech.com/computing/335650-amd-
| achieves-al...
| alaricus wrote:
| If you want to buy a laptop/server than you pretty much
| have to choose between Intel and AMD. Thankfully, the
| world is slowly changing.
| april_22 wrote:
| Yes, also at 18Bn it is a HUGE factory ehich will make the
| area more attractive for smaller players. I think and hope
| they know what they are doing
| Tade0 wrote:
| We are - indirectly. Intel uses EUV machines provided by
| ASML.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| The ASML machines Intel uses use EUV tech wich ASML
| acquired through their acquisition of Cymer, California and
| use licensed tech from Sandia Labs, also a US lab, meaning
| the US has full veto rights over to whom ASML gets to sell
| their EUV machines (spoiler alert, not to China).
| audunw wrote:
| > meaning the US has full veto rights over to whom ASML
| gets to sell their EUV machines (spoiler alert, not to
| China).
|
| That's false. For USA to be able to block exports of the
| technology, more than 25% (if I remember correctly) of
| parts has to be of US origin. When the EUV program
| started, the share of US technology was much higher, but
| as the program progressed, it was diluted.
|
| USA could still block sale of EUV machines, by refusing
| export/licensing of critical components, but they'd have
| to change their laws first.
|
| Fact is that ASML voluntarily chose to block exports to
| China. In part because they want to keep good relations
| with USA. It's the US that funded the EUV program in the
| beginning after all. But I'm sure ASML was tired of China
| copying their stuff too, so it probably wasn't hard to
| convince them.
| alaricus wrote:
| Intel was going to buy them anyway, regardless of where the
| fab is built.
| outside1234 wrote:
| Intel is far from a monopoly in the foundry business and is
| frankly, the only realistic option outside of TSMC to make
| this happen.
|
| And the US does the same thing in terms of tax breaks for
| German automotive companies building manufacturing plants.
|
| Which again, makes sense, because you want to make sure you
| have manufacturing across continents in case Russia invades
| Germany and blows up all of the auto plants (for example).
| alaricus wrote:
| Russia is not going to invade Germany. Stop spreading
| nonsense.
| adventured wrote:
| You probably shouldn't be downvoted for that. Russia of
| the present, and for at least the next few decades, is
| entirely incapable of getting anywhere near staging an
| invasion of Germany. Russia and it's hyper incompetent
| military can't even make it a quarter of the way through
| Ukraine.
|
| The best Russia could do is bomb Germany from a distance,
| which could pose a small threat to valuable
| infrastructure like fabs.
| trasz wrote:
| Unless they manage to do that zerg rush trick again.
| outside1234 wrote:
| You are very confident of that. I wouldn't be so
| confident of that.
| happyopossum wrote:
| Frankly, with NATO around they don't Have to invade
| Germany to get Germany involved in a war - if they invade
| any NATO member, Germany will get involved, which means
| Germany is a target for retributive strikes.
| dontbenebby wrote:
| > This is a very bad policy. We should instead invest in
| local companies, not a American monopoly like Intel.
|
| The origin of the company is irrelevant if they respect basic
| norms.
|
| How exactly is "intel" a monopoly when Advanced Micro Devices
| Inc. is also American?
| alaricus wrote:
| > The origin of the company is irrelevant if they respect
| basic norms.
|
| This is not correct. American govenment has a habit of
| using American companies to push foreign policy objectives.
| vegai_ wrote:
| That hardly matters as American and EU foreign policy are
| almost completely aligned.
| shankr wrote:
| dontbenebby wrote:
| I don't think such a person would live the full term.
|
| Look how stressful it was for Trump after folks like
| myself declared we don't kill him or go to his casino,
| but go right ahead and keep him the hell away from me.
| dontbenebby wrote:
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| rob74 wrote:
| Pssst! Don't tell anyone I told you: they are already doing
| crazy stuff, but we shouldn't complain too loudly, or else...
| KptMarchewa wrote:
| There's a difference between internal and external genocide.
| Not morally, but realistically.
|
| As we've seen with Iraq and many other times, trying to stop
| internal genocide is not really doable.
| [deleted]
| dontbenebby wrote:
| > Honestly, this is good policy. We can't have our complete
| global supply chain held over our heads when China goes and
| does something crazy inevitably.
|
| American/Italian and agreed.
|
| Though I worry what will happen is they just spin up plants in
| the various totalitarian states of SE Asia in parallel.
|
| (Eg: Vietnam is communist, Thailand is a kingdom, on the ground
| they are allegedly very similar, but I haven't been to either
| _personally_.)
| trasz wrote:
| waterlaw wrote:
| Intel spent tens of billions on stock buybacks and now they're
| getting subsidies to build fabs.
|
| Why does the middle class taxpayer have to bail everyone out,
| with lower living standards due to taxation and inflation.
| [deleted]
| em500 wrote:
| This sounds almost like a parody of an uninformed rant against
| capitalism.
|
| Stock buybacks are a simple standard way to distribute company
| profit to it's owners (alternative options are dividends,
| retaining the profits in the balance sheet, or reinvesting
| them). This is decided by Intel's management and overseen by
| the board who represent the interest of the stock owners (who
| are widely dispersed and include lots of pension funds of
| commoners, not just billionaire fatcats).
|
| The EU by way of the European Commission appears to have
| decided that it's of strategic interest to subsidize Intel fabs
| as a way to induce them to build in Europe, as opposed to Asia
| (which according to Intel is 30%-40% cheaper). The European
| middle class is not "bailing out" anyone here.
|
| If you want to rant, a better starting point IMO is to 1)
| contemplate whether the European Commission is acting in the
| interest of the German/European citizen (and if not, how to fix
| this democratic deficit) 2) check if Intel's claims are
| truthful, and if so, why Asia is so much cheaper and whether
| that is worth doing something about that
|
| In any case, I don't see what Intel's stock buybacks has to do
| with European taxation and inflation in this case.
| olalonde wrote:
| Subsidies are always bad for the common citizen so no, it is
| not acting in the interest of German/European citizen.
| Subsidies are the product of flawed economical thinking even
| when "national interest" is used as a BS justification.
| onepointsixC wrote:
| Is it really necessary to establish the necessity of
| strategic domestic manufacturing capabilities in a post
| COVID world? We saw what happened when there was enormous
| need for masks, then later vaccines. The fact is that
| Germany as a nation that has so much of its economy linked
| to high tech manufacturing uniquely would benefit from
| securing a most domestic chip supply. The evidence for why
| it is necessary has already been laid bare in the past few
| years. The Chinese are already massively subsidizing their
| fabs. So is South Korea, Taiwan, and all the other major
| players. If you want fabs you must subsidize or die.
| IfOnlyYouKnew wrote:
| Subsidies such as this are a net-loss for the average
| citizen of Germany and whatever country would have
| otherwise been host to this factory. It may well be in the
| interest of the German citizen, and it happening means that
| this is indeed the believed by people who studied the
| specifics.
|
| A better example for wasteful subsidies may be the
| competition for their new HQ Amazon ran between US cities,
| only to place it where they wanted to go in the first
| place. There, as well as in the Intel case, a deal
| prohibiting competition by subsidy would be in everyone's
| interest.
| ezsmi wrote:
| They stopped doing that in Q1 of 2021 for obvious reasons.
|
| Notice all the zeroes https://www.intc.com/stock-
| info/dividends-and-buybacks
|
| Also, "Upcoming Dividends: There are no future dividends
| presently declared for INTC as of Jun 7th, 2022. The
| declaration and payment of dividends are at the discretion of
| the Company."
|
| I suppose one could argue that they shouldn't have done that in
| the quarters before now but they are where they are.
| redtriumph wrote:
| I think, declaring dividend is linked to their earnings
| report. For ex. last ER was on 4/28 and few days before that,
| they declared their dividend. So, its not given that there
| won't be any dividend in 2022 or so. Next earnings is in Jul,
| so we would get to know that sooner. As a side note, if any
| company declares dividend reduction or stops them altogether,
| I would expect the stock to drop like a rock. see AT&T in
| last year.
|
| https://seekingalpha.com/symbol/INTC/dividends/history edit:
| added history
| jakobov wrote:
| It's about national security. A fab is necessary for national
| security
| lordnacho wrote:
| A decade of basically zero interest rates. Can't they borrow
| the money?
| qiskit wrote:
| > It's about national security. A fab is necessary for
| national security
|
| How does germany funding a foreign/non-german company's fab
| part of national security? What about expelling a foreign
| occupying force? If the germans cared about national
| security, shouldn't they be looking in that first?
|
| If germany was funding a german company's fab, it would be
| national security. What germany is doing is paying tribute to
| a dominating foreign empire. No different than india sending
| their goods to britain during the colonial period.
| dqpb wrote:
| The US and Germany are allies. In fact, I believe "German"
| is the largest ancestry group in the US.
|
| Besides which, it's extremely common for entities to invest
| in mutually beneficial agreements with other entities.
| colordrops wrote:
| This idea that policy should be set based on a grossly
| oversimplified wrapping up of a huge surface area of
| agreements into the term "ally" and vague notions of
| ethnic similarity needs to die.
|
| It gives the ruling class a mechanism to excuse war
| crimes of our supposed "allies" and drop bombs on
| supposed "enemies" for perceived minor infractions.
| dqpb wrote:
| I agree, and this is not an argument I would normally
| make.
|
| But I think it's the quality of response the parent
| deserved, given their ridiculously hyperbolic framing of
| "a foreign occupying force".
| qiskit wrote:
| > The US and Germany are allies.
|
| An ally doesn't firebomb a nation, murder thousands of
| innocent people and forcibly occupy it. Germany is a
| vassal.
|
| > In fact, I believe "German" is the largest ancestry
| group in the US.
|
| Who cares? We are not a german nation. We are an anglo
| nation. Germans don't have much political power in the
| US. If they did, we would have been allied with germany
| during ww2.
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| > What about expelling a foreign occupying force? If the
| germans cared about national security, shouldn't they be
| looking in that first?
|
| *looks over at Ukraine*
|
| Yes, I'm sure the Germans are eager to expel American
| troops right now.
| qiskit wrote:
| > _looks over at Ukraine_
|
| What? It's only wrong for russia to occupy a foreign
| nation?
|
| > Yes, I'm sure the Germans are eager to expel American
| troops right now.
|
| If the germans were smart, they'd take this as an
| opportunity to liberate themselves. Besides what do they
| care? Trading one foreign master for another.
| Pxtl wrote:
| Keeping their nuclear plants running is also necessary for
| national security and yet look where we are.
| alaricus wrote:
| Subsidizing an American company is not necessary for
| Germany's security. In fact, it undermines it.
| ikinsey wrote:
| Would you mind explaining why you think this is the case?
| PKop wrote:
| They are dependent on and subservient to the US and its
| geopolitical interests. We see this right now with
| Germany self-sabotaging it's own economy and industrial
| power by cutting off cheap Russian energy at the
| direction of US policy interests (Nord Stream 2 was
| agreed upon for years between Russia and Germany but
| thwarted at every turn, sanctioned etc by US).
| WoahNoun wrote:
| It was also hated by other EU countries:
|
| >President of the European Council Donald Tusk said that
| Nord Stream 2 is not in the EU's interests.[19] Italian
| Prime Minister Matteo Renzi and Hungarian Prime Minister
| Viktor Orban have questioned the different treatment of
| Nord Stream 2 and South Stream projects.[19][20] Some
| claim that the project violates the long-term declared
| strategy of the EU to diversify its gas supplies.[21] A
| letter, signed by the leaders of nine EU countries, was
| sent to the EC in March 2016, warning that the Nord
| Stream 2 project contradicts the European energy policy
| requirements that suppliers to the EU should not control
| the energy transmission assets, and that access to the
| energy infrastructure must be secured for non-consortium
| companies.[22][23]
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nord_Stream_2
| PKop wrote:
| Diversify the gas and oil supplies after you lock in a
| consistent steady supply, not before lol. Now European
| industrial capacity will crater. They need energy to fuel
| their economy. No nation ever became strong or a world
| power by consuming less energy, or paying more than their
| peers.
|
| And, just because they _want_ to diversify, doesn 't mean
| the present geological and economic reality allows for
| it. Utopian policy in place of realpolitik is foolish.
| Same with ESG and insane green anti hydrocarbon, anti-
| nuclear policies.
| alaricus wrote:
| Nord Stream 2 was opposed by Americans who want to sell
| overpriced LNG to Europe.
|
| It was also opposed by Eastern Europeaners such as Tusk
| who (understandibly) dislike Russia.
| rat87 wrote:
| It wasn't thwarted at every turn. Maybe we should have
| but we didn't, at least not at _every_ turn.
|
| We did warn then it was a bad idea. Other countries
| especially countries in Eastern EU warned them it was a
| bad idea. And lo and behold trying to bring peace through
| trade didn't work with Russia.
|
| Unless Germany wants to exit the EU like the UK it does
| have to take the interests of other EU countries into
| account, many of them are much more anti Russia then
| America for obvious reasons. And even if Germany were to
| leave, not sanctioning Russia now would still be bad even
| if only considering German interests
| PKop wrote:
| US sanctioned Swiss and Russian suppliers constructing
| the pipeline, and debated in Congress and Whitehouse
| various policies to ban it's activation.
|
| >it was a bad idea
|
| It isn't a bad idea. It's a very good idea for Europe.
| Cheap plentiful energy supply from your neighbor and
| expanded economic relations would be a very good thing
| for making Europe economy strong.
|
| Sanctioning Russia is hurting Europe severely. They have
| massive gas and oil needs supplied by Europe. The
| sanctions hurt German industry and this energy cannot be
| replaced by other sources anywhere near similar prices or
| volumes
| lrem wrote:
| It was a very bad idea. "We don't need nuclear power, we
| have Russian gas" is pretty hard to defend as an idea,
| really. Especially after Russia went pretty overt in its
| ambitions to re-establish the empire. And the invasion of
| Georgia was _years before construction of Nord Stream 1
| started and Nord Stream 2 went into planning_. The
| annexation of Crimea years before the construction of
| Nord Stream 2 started.
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| Ah yes, the US interest of not funding Russia's invasion
| of Ukraine.
|
| Heaven forbid any Europeans have any interest themselves
| in not helping a warmonger. Obviously they can only do
| this at the behesr of Uncle Sam.
| PKop wrote:
| It is only my claim that their interests are not
| completely aligned. US is much more energy independent
| and gepolitically secure across the ocean from whatever
| happens on the "world-island" [0].
|
| Whereas Europe might directly suffer from instability and
| chaos, as well as loss of Russian energy supplies, the US
| would not and in relative terms becomes stronger if
| Europe is severed from Russian energy, and the continent
| is in conflict and chaos.
|
| Europe having tight relations with Russia, economically
| especially energy-wise, is greatly beneficial to Europe
| and detrimental to US hegemony.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Geographical_Pivot_
| of_Hist...
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| > Europe having tight relations with Russia, economically
| especially energy-wise, is greatly beneficial to Europe
|
| You're once again excluding any calculations of Russia
| using the money to run around overthrowing democracies.
| "It's greatly beneficial if you ignore all the mass
| murder."
|
| The whole reason why they're now cancelling NS2 is
| because of this. Germany likes cheap energy, sure, but
| they're less than enthused about the money paying for
| that cheap energy going into executing and raping
| civilians in Ukraine.
| alaricus wrote:
| The world doesn't revolve around "America vs Russia".
| There are lots of other things going on.
|
| And if you are looking for a mass murderer, is there a
| bigger mass murderer than USA after 20 years of mass
| murder in the Middle East?
| systemvoltage wrote:
| That would be the Middle East itself:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_State
|
| To fight ISIS, it is mostly a joint effort of US + NATO +
| Allies: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combined_Joint_Task
| _Force_%E2%....
|
| > The United States accounts for the vast majority of
| airstrikes (75-80%), with the remainder conducted by
| Australia, Canada, Denmark, France, Jordan, Belgium, the
| Netherlands, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, the United Arab
| Emirates, and the United Kingdom.
| alaricus wrote:
| This made me laugh.
|
| Isis was a direct consequence of American invasion of
| Iraq. You can't do what America did in Fallujah and not
| expect some kind of blowback.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| > Since at latest 2004, a significant goal of the group
| has been the foundation of a Sunni Islamic state.
| Specifically, ISIL has sought to establish itself as a
| caliphate, an Islamic state led by a group of religious
| authorities under a supreme leader - the caliph - who is
| believed to be the successor to Prophet Muhammad.
|
| Furthermore, it is worth studying the Arab Spring and
| what the underlying causes were:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_Spring#Causes
| rat87 wrote:
| Yes it doesn't revolve around America vs Russia
|
| You have to consider the EU vs Russia.
|
| It's not in EU's or Germany's intrest to keep trading
| with Russia
| PKop wrote:
| It is though, they get something like 40% of their gas
| from Russia, and 30% of oil imports.
|
| It is immensely in the interest of Germany to have good
| relations and continued trade with Russia.
| rat87 wrote:
| No it's in Germanys interest to f*ck Russia up as much as
| they can financially (and in terms of weapon shipments (
| in the hope it ends the war sooner. And diversify their
| energy.
|
| Germany's intrest is for Ukraine to win as quick as
| possible
|
| Before the war Germany at least had a reasonable sounding
| argument (peace through trade) but it's been proven
| totally wrong they need to admit they were wrong and move
| on
| PKop wrote:
| >Ukraine to win as quick as possible
|
| It is not possible for Ukraine to win, they are slowly
| but methodically getting their country destroyed. What
| does Germany lighting money on fire funding this
| destruction do for German interests?
|
| How does this solve their energy needs? It doesn't, it
| along with sanctions makes energy more expensive. Where
| they used to be able to buy all energy in Euro's, now
| some of these purchases now require buying Rubles. Thus
| Ruble exchange rate is up and Russia's trade surplus is
| growing.
|
| Germany's alliance with NATO expansion and US meddling in
| Ukraine along with following US lead to cancel Nord
| Stream 2 is crushing their economy. Self-sanctioning out
| of Russian cheap energy supplies will further destroy
| their industrial output.
|
| >hope it ends the war sooner
|
| hope. That's all they have. It will only impoverish them
| sooner. Diversification of energy is a worthy goal, but
| it insane to do this now by first cutting off their
| primary cheap energy supply. First, continue to buy as
| much cheap energy as Russia will sell them (instead of
| selling it to the East). Then, cancel ESG green insanity
| and pursue oil/gas investments and nuclear expansion
| wherever possible. But at the end of the day if your
| neighbor wants to have good trade relations with you, you
| shouldn't throw that away in service to your "ally"
| across the ocean.
| w7 wrote:
| Maybe in the short term, but it's become clear from this
| conflict that Russia uses its economic exports as
| political leverage-- as does any nation.
|
| The problem comes from what they've decided to use their
| exports as leverage for.
|
| Economic interests don't have to perfectly align for one
| nation's relationship and favor to be preferable over
| another.
|
| Economic interests don't exist in a space devoid of
| cultural, ideological, or emotional ones.
|
| Reaching the conclusion that relationships should be
| normalized is only truly ideal if you're viewing it: A)
| in an economic only vacuum and B) from a lens of
| maximizing Russia's resource based leverage, because
| that's all they have.
| Shadonototra wrote:
| It is in EU's interest to keep trading with Russia
|
| It is not in US's interest to let EU keep trading with
| Russia
|
| USA wants the EU to be their giant marketplace where they
| can sell their culture and products
|
| USA also wants to weaken Russia so they can finally
| contain China North, East, West and South
|
| Seems like you were sleeping the past century, blurry
| days ahead!
| alaricus wrote:
| alaricus wrote:
| America is not part of Europe. No reason to spend
| European money supporting American companies.
| parkingrift wrote:
| European money for European manufacturing staffed
| exclusively with Europeans and making chips for European
| products used by Europeans in Europe.
|
| The question OP asked is why it matters to you that the
| company that owns the fab is not European? The local
| investment is what should matter, no?
| alaricus wrote:
| Local investment is good. Subsidies to American companies
| is not.
| Sakos wrote:
| Ideally, the EU would be trying to build its own
| semiconductor industry. I don't see that kind of foresight
| in any of our political leaders, much less mine in Germany.
| So the next best thing is to ensure that the current
| company we're reliant on builds local production.
| riedel wrote:
| Germany used to have a semiconductor industry like
| Intermetall (acquired by micronas acquired by TDK). The
| problem is that IMHO German automotive industry is not
| willing to pay a cent more than necessary.
|
| They do only care about short term profit. They triggered
| the chip crisis in Germany by stopping there orders and
| then restocking. I am not sure if any government can fix
| this.
| kken wrote:
| >Germany used to have a semiconductor industry like
| Intermetall (acquired by micronas acquired by TDK). The
| problem is that IMHO German automotive industry is not
| willing to pay a cent more than necessary.
|
| How about the three fabs that Bosch has in Germany? Or
| Infineon, X-Fab, Globalfoundries, TI, Prema, Elmos (now
| Siltech), Vishay, Nexperia?
| formerly_proven wrote:
| Silicon on hacker news pretty much always means latest
| and smallest logic node, because most commenters aren't
| aware of semiconductor applications beyond computer parts
| and assume everything is about 7 5 3 nm because that's
| what gets in the news.
| riedel wrote:
| Sorry for being imprecise: I ment a much larger
| specialized semiconductor industry, that did not survive
| the market pressure. True that Bosch, Osram and Siemens
| (now Infineon) have survived. But I think things like RAM
| production moved out of Germany. Global foundries
| (formally th AMD fab) is an example of a non-European
| company, although certainly there fabs and are no clones
| of US fabs. However, afaik the industry used to be much
| more diversified and innovative at a time. Actually there
| is still some interesting exception in the list: https://
| en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_semiconductor_fabric...
| lrem wrote:
| Which of them can make a 2010-level ARM chip?
| kken wrote:
| GF in FDX22, possibly also with eMRAM noadays. Surely not
| sure fathers 2010 cmos process...
| morsch wrote:
| Infineon doesn't count?
| ezsmi wrote:
| And there's this:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-Fab
|
| "The X-FAB Silicon Foundries is a German group of
| semiconductor foundries, with headquarters in Erfurt
| (X-FAB Semiconductor Foundries AG is located in the south
| east industrial area between Melchendorf and
| Windischholzhausen). The group specializes in the
| fabrication of analog and mixed-signal integrated
| circuits for fabless semiconductor companies, as well as
| MEMS and solutions for high voltage applications."
|
| And:
|
| https://www.apple.com/uk/newsroom/2021/03/apple-to-
| invest-ov...
|
| "Apple will invest over 1 billion euros in Germany and
| plans European Silicon Design Center in Munich"
| alaricus wrote:
| Some of the current German leaders (like Annalena
| Baerbock) are too subservient to American corporate
| interests.
| fasteo wrote:
| They are on it [1], but it takes time.
|
| [1] https://on5g.es/en/ec-sets-targets-for-european-
| digital-sove...
| mike_hearn wrote:
| Note that the act of giving subsidies to foreign
| companies automatically kills any case for investing in a
| truly local chip company, because you can't easily
| compete against that.
| justapassenger wrote:
| Competing with Intel is out of the question for any local
| chip company.
|
| But semiconductors is much much much more than high end
| CPUs. There's totally a huge opportunity for local chip
| companies to grow. And having company like Intel may
| help, as people who work there will get a lot of know how
| that they can take to smaller local companies to help
| them grow.
| alaricus wrote:
| > Competing with Intel is out of the question for any
| local chip company.
|
| Why? Intell lost the mobile, and is currently losing
| desktop/server. RISC-V is more promising each passing
| day. If India can do this, why can't Europe:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31243674
| wwtrv wrote:
| > If India can do this Can do what exactly? AFAIK they
| haven't actually built anything yet. It's going to be
| years until they have anything competitive with current
| gen CPUs. And even if they build something useful there
| is no guarantee it won't end up like Russian Elbrus (way
| to expensive and 10 years behind Intel/ARM).
|
| Intel never really had the mobile market and was
| seemingly never particularly interested in it. They are
| currently heavily pressured by AMD and ARM based cpus
| both in the consumer and server markets.
| rat87 wrote:
| https://www.theregister.com/2022/04/27/india_it_would_be_
| fab...
|
| India is hoping it can convince Intel and TSMC to set up
| fabs in the country as part of their multibillion-dollar
| manufacturing expansion blueprint.
|
| Bloomberg reported Tuesday that India's government is
| making pitches to both companies, backed with a $10
| billion subsidy plan that can be used to cover up to half
| of the cost of a new chipmaking plant. The plan also
| covers new plants for display manufacturers.
| julianozen wrote:
| I mean in theory but not in practice
| qiskit wrote:
| aliswe wrote:
| wow, first time on HN ive seen both arguments and
| counterarguments this ridiculous. but wait, what am i
| saying, they are claims devoid of proof, references or
| even arguments.
| qiskit wrote:
| We invaded germany in 1940s and we've been occupying it
| ever since. You know like how the soviet union invaded
| germany in the 1940s. But then they eventually left. We
| didn't. We are still there. Hopefully germany will become
| a free nation one day. We talk so much freedom and
| sovereignty and yet we deprive so many of freedom and
| sovereignty.
|
| > they are claims devoid of proof, references or even
| arguments.
|
| It's basic history. Do you need references for ww2 and
| the occupation of germany? You are only responding like
| this because it's the obvious truth which you don't want
| to confront.
|
| Imagine if china or russia was occupying germany and
| forced them to subsidize chinese or russian companies.
| l33t2328 wrote:
| We aren't remaining there by force. Germany wants our
| base there.
| hnusersarelame wrote:
| anon2020dot00 wrote:
| HN is turning more like Twitch chat, I feel like. People
| just throw-out the most ridiculous opinions without any
| effort.
|
| At least Twitch chat has more fun memes.
| bpodgursky wrote:
| I mean, the fab is physically in Germany. That's what
| matters for national security.
|
| As an American, would I (hypothetically) rather have a
| Germany company building F-35s in the US than an American
| defense contractor building F-35s in Indonesia? I think the
| answer is obviously "yes".
| Panoramix wrote:
| That's a silly and naive take. This investment will
| tremendously boost the semiconductor ecosystem in Germany.
| In the long run, this will do wonders when German companies
| want to or have to expand their capabilities, find more
| employees, design, package or assemble chips, buy wafers,
| equipment, supply chain, you name it.
|
| It's about building an ecosystem, much like SV. People on
| HN of all places should know this.
| k__ wrote:
| Really?
|
| I didn't read anything good about working for Intel.
| nine_k wrote:
| You likely didn't hear much about any great Intel chips
| for the last nearly decade.
|
| This is why they have changed the top management, and are
| changing internally, as much as I can judge by the press.
| solarkraft wrote:
| The fab is still here. Ownership can change in the worst
| case. It would be nice to have a leading EU-owned chip
| maker, but we just don't have that yet. For the short term
| and the worst of cases, just _having_ the thing matters a
| lot more than the profits staying here.
| alaricus wrote:
| That fab won't make any sense without Intel's suppy
| chain.
| ezsmi wrote:
| 42e6e8c8-f7b8-4 wrote:
| There will be a huge knowledge transfer into Germany during
| this process. Fab's are fabulously intricate and difficult
| to run. $5.5 billion to teach your populace how to make
| chips? Worth it.
| phkahler wrote:
| >> $5.5 billion to teach your populace how to make chips?
| Worth it.
|
| Germany already has advance chip fabrication - see Global
| Foundries (formerly AMD fab). It's not EUV, but even
| Intel still needs to figure out how to make those chips.
| dataangel wrote:
| The fab is in Germany. In a scenario where the US and
| Germany are at odds Germany is the one with a fab. I doubt
| it weakens Germany's position unless they sacrificed
| funding some German chip maker, but I don't think they have
| anything near as huge as Intel.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| malchow wrote:
| It will be clear that this money was wasted within ten years.
|
| What a government needs to do to attract real manufacturing
| entrepreneurs:
|
| - pro family policies (for people)
|
| - pro immigration (for people)
|
| - cut environmental laws (for capex make-right)
|
| - cut business taxes (for gm make-right)
|
| - cut personal taxes (for people)
|
| - fight back against china-sponsored economic maneuvering at the
| multilateral level (to create a competitive market)
| onepointsixC wrote:
| And watch as your fledgling local business dies due to hundreds
| of billions of subsidies for foreign fabs. South Korea alone is
| subsidizing Semiconductors with $450Bn [1]. If you want local
| fabs, you need to spend money. Or you get to watch your
| automotive assembly lines stop because of chip shortages.
|
| [1]: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-05-13/korea-
| unv... [1 Non paywalled]: https://archive.ph/9Gs8q
| IfOnlyYouKnew wrote:
| Germany hasn't been doing any of that except immigration, and
| it has fared exceptionally well over the last decades. Taiwan's
| chip industry is the result of massive subsidies that got it
| started.
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| > - cut environmental laws (for capex make-right)
|
| I'm with you on all but this. Cleaning up the environment is a
| very expensive, time consuming process. There's still about
| _20_ superfund sites in Santa Clara County due to its heyday of
| tech manufacturing.
|
| Our local community has been fighting for the cleanup of a 60
| year old disaster. That they agreed to clean up 20 years ago.
| But they've barely started.
| rat87 wrote:
| I'm not saying this won't be wasted but in also skeptical of
| your policy? And why do we care so much about manufacturing
| anyway?
| debesyla wrote:
| Sorry, I am a bit confused about these parts - how does it help
| manufacturing enterprises? (I am not saying it doesn't, I just
| don't understand, hah.)
|
| > pro family policies (for people); cut personal taxes (for
| people)
| mcdermott wrote:
| It's too late for Intel. x86 doesn't have a future, ARM64 SoC
| architectures like Apple's M1 (TSMC) are the future of computing.
| Just as fast (and often faster in many benchmarks) with only
| 20-25% the power consumption and heat. Even Microsoft is
| preparing for the shift to ARM, at Build 2022 they announced
| project Voltera, an ARM Windows 11 PC loaded with Visual Studio
| 2022 and .NET 7 all for ARM to give devs a head start for the
| coming ARM Microsoft systems. Microsoft will partner with
| Qualcomm and have their own custom SoC like the M1. Intel is
| toast (because their CPUs are too hot). This is going to be a
| massive shift in the PC industry.
| raxxorraxor wrote:
| And the desktop will die as well. Even the fans of x86 say that
| it sucks but it still remains the main target for serious
| software.
|
| Microsoft first needs to recapture their developers. They still
| have those that target their platform with Visual C++.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| Desktop will never die.
|
| The form factor might change. We might go from a large box to
| a docking station for a tablet or laptop, but the mouse +
| keyboard + monitor(s) is never going away.
| jotm wrote:
| Been thinking for a while - I need some serious BGA rework
| equipment and some training because I'd rather die in a ditch
| than not be able to replace any components in my computer :D
|
| At that point, might as well start my dream recycling
| business where we desolder, test everything and sell them as
| parts. They do it in China at scale, why not Europe... Main
| question is, would there be enough buyers? Small repair shops
| are also dying...
| tyrfing wrote:
| > Microsoft will partner with Qualcomm and have their own
| custom SoC like the M1
|
| Microsoft partnered with Qualcomm 6 years ago and there have
| been a number of terrible systems released. You probably
| haven't heard of them because of how bad they are. If there's
| any progress for Windows+ARM, it's really from Qualcomm's
| exclusive agreement expiring. They're hyping the Nuvia team
| right now, but Qualcomm's track record is ridiculously bad, and
| there's a bit more work involved here than incanting "ARM".
| freemint wrote:
| Intel protects itself against x86_64 becoming deprecated by
| investing into RISC-V.
| machinekob wrote:
| But Intel is investing in ARM/RISC-V and x86 will be with us a
| bit longer (probably even 10+years). I would be more concerned
| about AMD then I'm about Intel tbh.
| bilger321 wrote:
| AMD recently acquired Xilinx, who makes ARM SoCs
| https://www.xilinx.com/products/silicon-devices/soc.html
| nereye wrote:
| Intel acquired Altera in 2015, Altera has been producing
| FPGAs with ARM cores since 2011 at least
| (https://www.embedded.com/altera-integrates-arm-processor-
| in-...).
|
| The Xilinx devices above are also FPGAs with ARM cores (a
| natural evolution from FPGAs with soft cores, MicroBlaze in
| the case of Xilinx and Nios in the case of Altera).
| 0des wrote:
| than
| paganel wrote:
| Stupid move by Germany, giving even more money to the US
| corporations. In fact, the EU as a whole is presently doing just
| that, those Next Generation EU funds will, for a great part, find
| their place in the coffers of the big US tech companies.
|
| It goes like this: EU gives billions of dollars to EU national
| governments but with many strings attached -> an important part
| of those strings is related to digitisation -> the EU national
| governments redirect the money they received from Brussels to
| digitisation implementations -> US tech companies get even more
| wealthy, as there's almost no local European competitor that can
| compete when it comes to the cloud, hardware and even software
| (just think of all the EU funds that will go almost directly to
| paying Oracle licenses).
|
| Similar thing happens with re-directing EU money into China's
| coffers, as most of the EV batteries are now produced in China
| and there's a big push at the EU level for us, EU, citizens, to
| purchase EVs.
| [deleted]
| alfalfasprout wrote:
| It's not very well stupid though if there isn't a great viable
| alternative, is it?
|
| The issue with there being no good local competitors is a more
| fundamental one-- it's extremely difficult to spin up a viable
| tech business in the EU, period. In part, this boils down to
| regulatory issues including tech companies needing to abide by
| a myriad of complex regulations but also things like fairly
| costly labor regulations.
| leonry wrote:
| Why Magdeburg? I have a really hard time to find an argument that
| puts the city in an advantageous position relative to other
| competitor places (like Dresden, Munich agglomeration, Rhein/Main
| area, Hamburg agglomeration).
| dmitrij wrote:
| Already prepared grand space for industrial use with energy,
| water and public transport; 100% carbon neutral wind energy and
| very soon also water-neutrality were a few of the reasons
| given.
| FinnKuhn wrote:
| Cheap place to build, cheap place to live, cheap labour, pretty
| good infrastructure. All of the cities you mentioned are very
| expensive to built in, but also to live in.
| wafriedemann wrote:
| If the government pays subsidies they will combine it with
| strengthening economically weaker areas. No one needs more high
| quality jobs in the overcrowded and overly expensive Munich
| area.
| davidktr wrote:
| Why not? Cheap, Uni Magdeburg is pretty good in STEM, water
| (yes that is an issue!), close enough to Berlin and Wolfsburg
| (Volkswagen), good transportation.
| cynusx wrote:
| Can't they just give them a subsidy to invest in a friendly
| country instead? This factory will die the moment the subsidies
| stop
| throw457 wrote:
| Just wait 10 years until we get rid of it again like we did with
| AMD and Infineon.
| dhoe wrote:
| This is spot on and I feel a lot of the comments here miss this
| context. Germany has tried this before and it was a gigantic
| waste - they build a fab somewhere at massive cost, claim it as
| victory because it's "invested locally", zero ecosystem
| materializes around it, and ten years later the fab is obsolete
| and shuts down. It helps nobody except the chip company.
| flohofwoe wrote:
| Erm, maybe I'm out of the loop, but hasn't Dresden developed
| into a fairly healthy technology "hotspot" (at least for
| "German standards")?
|
| (e.g. AFAIK the former AMD fab is now GlobalFoundries:
| https://www.silicon-saxony.de/nc/mitglieder/mitglieder-
| foerd...)
| ahartmetz wrote:
| GloFo is still producing at maximum capacity (of course,
| like ~every fab right now), a small ecosystem has
| developed, and Intel is... oops, not quite moving to the
| same area - 230 km away is not commuting distance.
| guerrilla wrote:
| That's what I've always heard and searches seem to confirm
| [1]
|
| 1. https://www.seedtable.com/cities/dresden
| dontbenebby wrote:
| If they're willing to build a lot of processors rather than add
| dangerous features to use one chip or core or whatever maybe
| they can make it multiples of ten years this time ;-)
|
| Wenn sie bereit sind, viele Prozessoren zu bauen, anstatt
| gefahrliche Funktionen hinzuzufugen, um einen Chip oder Kern
| oder was auch immer zu verwenden, konnen sie dieses Mal
| vielleicht ein Vielfaches von zehn Jahren schaffen ;-)
| april_22 wrote:
| Yes, Bosch just built a huge factory in Saxony
| dontbenebby wrote:
| I hope they treat the workers well.
|
| Maybe their chips will end up in my next laptop.
|
| (I think I can keep repairing this one for a while, sorry
| I'm a bad capitalist or whatever.)
| flohofwoe wrote:
| > Maybe their chips will end up in my next laptop.
|
| Unless your laptop is also a car that's probably unlikely
| ;)
|
| (AFAIK the new Bosch fab will mainly produce chips for
| the car industry)
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Well I never thought the Transformers would be big with
| Germans
| biztos wrote:
| No comment on the actual content, but I love how the German
| version is almost 30% longer ;-)
| topspin wrote:
| Fab operators are hedging against future geopolitical conflict
| with China and how that will impact Taiwan. Many will scoff at
| this, but Intel, Samsung and others are putting serious money
| on it. The people that can still make devices when Taiwan is
| blockaded by Chinese battle fleets will make bank.
| klysm wrote:
| It's unfortunate that there will be an economic incentive for
| that to occur.
| DeathArrow wrote:
| Why can't everyone get a help from the German government to start
| a business? I want to grow cucumbers, so it would be nice for
| Germany to pay to help me start a cucumber growing business.
| stnikolauswagne wrote:
| I mean germany/the EU does pay subsidies to (cucumber)-farmers
| [0], there is literally billions each year flowing into keeping
| farmers somewhat afloat.
|
| [0]https://www.zeit.de/wirtschaft/2013-11/agrarreform-
| landwirts...
| DeathArrow wrote:
| Maybe I am an US citizen and I want to start a business in
| Germany.
| stnikolauswagne wrote:
| Okay, in that case you are eligible for a variety of loans,
| up to 40% of the costs of establishing the business,
| granted you are willing to establish it in the more rural
| eastern regions [0], additionally there is a wide variety
| of relatively lenient credits available for founding
| companies [1].
|
| [0] https://www.iamexpat.de/career/entrepreneur-
| germany/start-up...
|
| [1]
| Aerroon wrote:
| The trick that he's missing is that first you hire a lawyer
| to figure out all the subsidies you can get and then you see
| whether the business is viable!
| raxxorraxor wrote:
| Ensuring a strategic supply against encroaching French
| cornichons?
| [deleted]
| freemint wrote:
| Joke is on you. Germany kinda does that for the unemployed
| https://www.arbeitsagentur.de/arbeitslosengeld/existenzgruen...
|
| And in case you want to do something larger there is
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KfW which at least gives you
| loans.
| Simon_O_Rourke wrote:
| I was under the impression that this would count as direct
| government investment in a private company and would breach EU
| competition rules?
| samwillis wrote:
| I honestly think this is something the UK should be doing too,
| however with the current political environment it wouldn't be
| possible.
| throwaway4good wrote:
| What is even funnier is that Intel has plenty money and is
| profitable and dividend paying even though nearly all of Intel's
| fabs are in the US (and thus suffering from the high cost level
| compared to Asia is a part justification for these subsidies).
| IfOnlyYouKnew wrote:
| They lost $ 20 billion in the last year.
| phkahler wrote:
| Intel earnings per share is still positive. Do you mean they
| made less than before?
| colinmhayes wrote:
| They made $20 billion last year.
| verisimi wrote:
| Wow. These deals amaze me.
|
| Imagine you got given subsidies to live somewhere. I'm not
| talking about your wages - I'm talking about something extra.
| Well that is a direct equivalent here.
|
| How any governance structure can think this is ok boggles the
| mind.
|
| Is it not clear how we already live in a fascist state - where
| government + corporations are working together at the people's
| expense?
|
| $5.5 billion.
| mikkergp wrote:
| Serious question - How do you propose governments encourage
| companies to do what they want? Yes it's a subsidy but it also
| seems like the government in this case is essentially buying a
| service. I guess Germany would hire people to build this
| factory directly rather than paying a foreign company to do it?
| Which I imagine would be more expensive if it's even possible
| to do.
|
| Do you think there are better ways to do this within capitalism
| or are you proposing we dismantle capitalism?
| trasz wrote:
| >Serious question - How do you propose governments encourage
| companies
|
| In some countries capitalism simply works the opposite way.
| mikkergp wrote:
| Companies pay governments to do business there? I mean this
| sounds great, I would love my grocery store to pay me to
| shop there. How do we make this happen? It seems to me
| sometimes like waiting for these kind of things to happen
| is cutting off your nose to spite your face.
| trasz wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolving_door_(politics)
| verisimi wrote:
| Do you think governments are trying to encourage companies to
| do what they want?
|
| Or are companies telling companies what they want?
|
| Why do we have a situation where companies have so much and
| are given so much, and the people have so little. But pay for
| government largesse.
|
| If you ask me, Intel and all those companies should never
| have grown so large. But, if you have to spend that money,
| why not use it to create a genuine home grown solution? Where
| is the German Intel? Wouldn't a German Intel provide the
| resilience you really want?
| mikkergp wrote:
| I think Germany is using the $5 billion dollars to
| encourage intel to build there plant in Germany rather than
| somewhere else, but I think your ideas sound great too. can
| Germany grow an intel for $5 billion? It seems to me it's
| like hiring a contractor. I could learn plumbing but it
| would be a lot more expensive than hiring someone.
|
| I don't disagree with you that companies are given so much
| and have so much. I just wonder if it's idealistic to think
| it's easy to just "create your own intel". Maybe not it's
| not like Intel is without competitors. But just like the
| Plumber example, even if it's not about the money, do they
| want to spend the time on developing a skill that may not
| be one of their core competencies? It's not that I don't
| get where you're coming from ideologically, I'm just not
| sure where you're coming from practically. But I'm no
| expert, maybe they should try!
| onepointsixC wrote:
| So what's your plan when China makes good on their promise of
| trying to take Taiwan and either seize or inadvertently destroy
| TSMC's 54% share of global chip market[1]? German automotive
| industry would grind to a halt as they run out of chips. Better
| yet, if America comes to the aid of Taiwan, China would likely
| strike US bases in Japan and Korea, threatening even more of
| the global chip supply.
|
| [1]:https://www.techspot.com/news/94856-economist-china-must-
| sei...
| verisimi wrote:
| You're right! Give Intel and Tesla much more!! lol
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| Once again EU taxpayer money bankrolling US tech dominance. When
| will we ever learn to build up our domestic tech industry?
|
| And before the chip hipsters crawl all over my back to prove we
| _ackshually_ have a powerful domestic semi industry, please name
| me another EU company, other than ASML (a company 90% of people
| here never heard of before the chip shortage), that has the same
| margins, dominance and ability to shape the market, as much as
| the US based Intel, Quallcomm, AMD, Nvidia, Apple. I 'll wait.
|
| The thing is, other than ASML, most of our domestic semi
| companies (NXP, ST, Ericsson, Nordic, Infineon, Bosch, AMS, etc.)
| are only competing for relatively low margin chips with high
| competition, therefore bring home relatively little money,
| compared to their US counterparts which have monopolized high
| margin sectors (general compute, AI, graphics, etc) and rake in
| the big bucks.
|
| Don't get me wrong, it's great we have our own semi industry, and
| we make great chips to boot, but I wish we could do more high
| margin products, as Chinese companies are hot on our heels with
| massive support from their government.
|
| Remember the failed attempt from the merger of ST-Ericsson to
| take on QUALCOMM's ARM Snapdragon SoCs and modems in the mobile
| space 10 years ago? I was talking to a former Dutch manager who
| had a stint there and his reply dropped my jaw: "Yeah, that
| merger was never meant to ship any chips that can beat Quallcomm,
| it was just a vehicle designed to suck up as money as possible
| and funnel it into the right pockets, while some managers pad
| their resumes so they can move up at other companies later."
|
| Source: Former EU semi engineer.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| Does it really matter which country is the headquarters for the
| corporate owner? It's still a German plant hiring Germans and
| subject to German laws. The rule of law exists in both Germany
| and the US. German citizens can invest in Intel.
|
| And, in the event of a US/German war, that plant is and will
| remain German, not American.
|
| I think there's an excellent case for distinguishing that from
| companies from China, where non-Chinese citizens have a great
| risk of confiscation of their assets by investing, Chinese
| companies are subject to a lot of other rules even when
| operating outside China, etc.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| I'd say it's German economic (and more and more political)
| dominance over the EU and US geopolitical dominance over
| Germany...
| igravious wrote:
| Intel's first fabs outside the US were in Ireland, Israel,
| and China (since sold). So, false.
| ferruck wrote:
| The difference is that patents for inventions made for Intel
| by Intel employees go to the US, whether or not that employee
| is an US person. Those inventions, if made by Germans, could
| instead help the German - or European - tech sector. That's
| kind of brain drain without actually leaving your country and
| sustainably hurts European competitiveness.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| That just kicks the question down the road. It's not like
| patents don't share the exact same argument. There are US
| and German patents that only apply in their own countries.
| What difference does it make where the multinational that
| owns them receives mail.
|
| Unless you think Intel will refuse to do business with a
| European company vs a US one.
| tut-urut-utut wrote:
| > Does it really matter which country is the headquarters for
| the corporate owner? It's still a German plant hiring Germans
| and subject to German laws. The rule of law exists in both
| Germany and the US.
|
| Of course it matters. The profit goes in the direction of
| headquarters, tax is paid in the country of headquarters, and
| the government of the country of headquarters has much bigger
| influence to the company.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| _> tax is paid in the country of headquarters_
|
| Tax havens have something to say about that.
|
| The French semi giant, ST, is financially incorporated in
| the Netherlands (STMicroelectronics N.V.), as is the French
| giant Airbus (Airbus Group N.V.).
|
| There seems to be a pattern here. It's almost as if
| companies don't want to pay taxes, regardless if it's their
| home country.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| Following the merger between Peugeot and Fiat-Chrysler
| the new company (Stellantis) is also headquartered in the
| Netherlands, though I believe that Fiat-Chrysler already
| was.
|
| That's a recurring issue for France because they are not
| business-friendly. It's not even a question of being a
| tax-heaven (the Netherlands are not) but simply to make
| everything unduly complex and costly. We've also seen
| that following Brexit: Banks would move from London to
| Paris! Err, no they didn't move or moved to Amsterdam...
| sofixa wrote:
| > but simply to make everything unduly complex and costly
|
| I disagree with that characterisation, doing business in
| France is not _that_ complex. Amsterdam has a giant
| advantage though - the English language is widely spoken
| and accepted, which really isn 't the case in Paris. If
| an international organisation is looking to move from
| London, Amsterdam makes _much_ more sense than Paris,
| even if we disregard the taxes side of things.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| Not _that_ complex... Right.
|
| It's complex and costly enough enough that France keeps
| losing out. It's ridiculous, really, because there is no
| good reason for this. It's a mix of lack of self-
| awareness and ideology.
|
| France is not an isolated case, though. Many countries
| are like that, sadly.
| sofixa wrote:
| > It's a mix of lack of self-awareness and ideology
|
| Respectfully disagree. The current president, who was
| just reelected, literally won his first campaign on "i'll
| improve things for business, make it easier, enable
| startups, optimise government expenditures". And he
| enacted many business-oriented reforms that have enabled
| quite a startup boom ( for the French and EU standards,
| of course it's nowhere close to the US due to a myriad of
| factors like available financing). There's awareness of
| the challenges, and what ideology would that be?
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| They always win campaigns by promising a lot of things
| and then rarely deliver. He is no exception, overall the
| 'reforms' have been minimal and the 'old recipes' (I.e.
| hand government subsidies as soon as people complain)
| have not changed.
|
| Ideology, well just with my comments here many would
| label me 'liberal', which in France is borderline
| derogatory for some people with the meaning of ' _free
| market capitalist bent on exploiting the working-class_
| ', simply for stating that there may be no need for
| millions of civil servants, myriads of taxes, and red
| tape for everything... the far left dominates the left at
| the moment, after all.
|
| Self-awareness because many people in France do not even
| realise this or how simple things could be. For instance,
| the 'attestation' people needed to fill in to leave their
| homes during Covid lockdowns. From abroad it looked like
| pointless red tape madness, while in France someone
| obviously seriously thought that was a good idea and they
| were very serious about it.
| sofixa wrote:
| > as is the French giant Airbus (Airbus Group N.V.).
|
| Airbus are _not_ a French giant. They 're the result of a
| merger of Spanish, French, German and British aircraft
| companies. The HQ of Airbus civil aircraft is in France,
| but for Military aircraft it's in Spain, for helicopters
| it's in Germany. Wings are made in the UK. There are
| factories all over those places ( which presents unique
| challenges in terms of logistics, there's a lot of
| material out there on how they handle shipping various
| parts to the correct factory for final assembly, it's
| fascinating).
|
| The Netherlands is a nice neutral location ( of course
| with a good tax regime and simple corporate structures)
| to have the registration.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| The taxes issue is why the EU added a bunch of VAT taxes.
| Intel pays less taxes (excluding VAT and property taxes)
| than the amount of this subsidy anyway.
|
| I agree that China impacts its companies beyond its
| borders, but the US government does not. The US government
| has enough trouble regulating the US operations of US
| companies,
|
| Unless you bribe someone. They seem to actually care about
| that.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| It's all interconnected, Intel fabs are worthless without ASML,
| you can think of Intel as almost like a general contractor at
| this point pulling capabilities from everywhere.
| amelius wrote:
| ASML should demand 30% of profits, like Apple does with its
| App Store.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| They do.
|
| https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/ASML/asml-
| holding/...
| amelius wrote:
| Profit margin is a different thing.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Ah, I missed "of" in 30% of profits. In which case, I
| thought Apple's take was 30% of gross on the app store,
| not profit?
| tester756 wrote:
| We will have more semico experienced people how actually worked
| with state of art / bleeding edge stuff
|
| with them you'll be able to build start ups, etc.
| oytis wrote:
| It would maybe make more sense if it was a foundry offering
| their services to numerous fabless companies. Having an
| advanced one in the EU would be beneficial regardless of where
| the headquarters of the foundry is. But this one is just going
| to produce Intel chips as I understand, so basically it's just
| workplaces, and not a huge lot of them compared to the
| investment made.
| april_22 wrote:
| there was a strong chip industry in saxony decades ago, but
| they became way too expensive when china came. they are slowly
| starting to built back there, but progress is slow.
|
| Bosch and Infinion have the fabs there
| april_22 wrote:
| sorry, misspelled infineon
| DocTomoe wrote:
| You are refering to Robotron, which mostly is known for their
| Z80s knockoffs (which often were less buggy than the
| originals.) Given that they did not create chips of their new
| design, I would not describe them as having been 'strong',
| though.
| Matthias247 wrote:
| Maybe more about AMD having had fabs there, which then
| transitioned into Globalfoundries?
| DocTomoe wrote:
| Hm, "decades" implies GDR ... AMD eventually bought some
| of Robotron's facilities, though.
| Matthias247 wrote:
| Possibly. But start of 2000 when AMD and Infineon in
| Dresden where in vogue is also more than a decade ago.
| DocTomoe wrote:
| True. I like to avoid thinking that way. It makes me feel
| old.
| raverbashing wrote:
| > domestic semi companies (NXP, ST, Ericsson, Nordic, Infineon,
| Bosch, AMS, etc.) are only competing for relatively low margin
| chips with high competition
|
| Then maybe they should compete? (though those are not small
| companies - and with most products that are not as popular with
| Intel but are popular in other areas)
|
| I think they missed the ARM boat, possibly. But they should go
| and ask for a slice of that money.
| DocTomoe wrote:
| > please name me another EU company
|
| There isn't any. That's because EU taxes and regulations make
| running a large-scale business less attractive - and because
| there really is no market for another big-chip manufacturer; if
| you want to break into that segment (even if it was a 'fair'
| market), the only way to compete is on the price, and that
| China can do better.
| DSingularity wrote:
| That's called interest on the Marshall plan.
| jagger27 wrote:
| If Intel's new EU fabs operate under the TSMC foundry model, is
| that not a good thing for the EU? Let's say I'm a smaller
| company in France looking to get a chip made on a bleeding edge
| node. I don't have existing contacts in Taiwan. Surely I just
| go next door to Intel, right? If Global Foundries couldn't pull
| off the leap to 7nm even with ASML next door, who do you
| suggest is capable of doing so other than Intel, Samsung, and
| TSMC, and is EU based?
|
| I have some confidence that the EU would set favourable terms
| for given the level of investment.
| [deleted]
| jimbob45 wrote:
| Ideally, this brings a great deal of domain-specific knowledge
| to the EU and then the workers of this Intel plant are able to
| go create their own EU plants with their new knowledge.
|
| Whether or not that extremely ideal scenario actually happens
| remains to be seen.
| raxxorraxor wrote:
| Should have just bought AMD a few years ago...
| audunw wrote:
| If you want Europe to be as attractive as headquarter location
| of mega-companies as USA is, you may have to compete with USA
| on a lot of policies (taxes, labor laws, etc) that would turn
| Europe into a different kind of society. Do we really want
| that?
|
| Many of these mega-companies are publicly listed. Norway alone
| owns a significant amount of stock in some of these companies.
| I'm not sure we have a problem. But I'm not gonna complain
| about trying to change this and get giant high-margin tech
| company going here in Europe. I'm just not sure how to do it.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| _> If you want Europe to be as attractive as headquarter
| location of mega-companies as USA is, you may have to compete
| with USA on a lot of policies (taxes, labor laws, etc) that
| would turn Europe into a different kind of society. Do we
| really want that?_
|
| No, but do you really have a choice? When you're selling tech
| products, you're competing on the international market,
| against everyone, including USA and China. If you work
| 35h/week and you get outmatched by a team who worked
| 60h/week, the end user will not care, they go for the best
| one, and the others loose. That's how international
| competition works.
|
| And if they can deliver a better product at a cheaper price,
| they get the customers. The customers don't care if the devs
| who worked on that product are from US, China, or Europe and
| if they worked 35h/week or 60+.
|
| That's why Europe is so underrepresented in big-tech
| internationally and the biggest wealthiest European companies
| are fashion related(LVMH) where the selling point is the name
| brand without any substance. That's why EU has not developed
| the iPhone and why Nokia, Ericsson, Sagem, Alcatel are gone
| from the mobile space.
| welterde wrote:
| > That's why Europe is so underrepresented in big-tech
| internationally and the biggest wealthiest European
| companies are fashion related(LVMH) where the selling point
| is the name brand without any substance.
|
| Not sure market cap is really the metric here (and only 2
| of the top 10 are currently fashion related, the rest is
| pharma, semiconductor, food, ecommerce, banking, etc.),
| since those can be easily inflated to completely
| unreasonable levels and are more an indicator of marketing
| success than anything else. Maybe take a look at the export
| statistics and you'll find machines and chemicals taking up
| a very large fraction.
|
| However much more interesting is how much of the global
| economy depends on certain companies: Siemens automation
| (larger market share than the next two competitors
| combined). Chemicals - BASF is currently the largest
| chemical producer in the world (with also the largest
| chemical production complex in the world being located in
| Germany). Semiconductors - Without ASML, Zeiss and Trumpf
| (nevermind all the chemical companies) you will have a hard
| time producing the chips in your iPhone or any modern
| desktop/laptop. No matter how much I am not a fan, but SAP
| might also be of relevance in a few companies..
|
| Also Nokia and Ericsson are not gone from the mobile space,
| they just focus more on the backend stuff. So while your
| phone might no longer be from them, there is a decent
| chance that your phone will be talking to a Nokia or
| Ericsson device over the air (especially since Huawei hit a
| bit of a snag in the US and parts of the EU).
| mrtksn wrote:
| FTA: Whether or not additional funds are available from the EU
| is not known.
|
| This is just Germany paying Intel to make unreasonable business
| decision reasonable.
|
| These things usually happen for strategic reasons. For example,
| it could be possible that from purely business perspective it's
| the best to produce all the food in Africa, Russia or China but
| this leaves EU vulnerable to stuff going on in these places or
| conflicts with them, therefore you have common agriculture
| policy and food import-export controls.
|
| The decision makers probably decided that completely relying on
| foreign IC supply is a risk they cannot afford, therefore they
| will pay to make it fixed. I wouldn't be surprised if EU also
| chips in.
| nosianu wrote:
| Right...
|
| "TSMC, Samsung want slice of America's $52b chip subsidies" --
| https://www.theregister.com/2022/03/28/tsmc_samsung_chip_sub...
|
| "Intel and Micron pushing hard for subsidies from the US
| government" -- https://www.pcgamer.com/intel-and-micron-
| pushing-hard-for-su...
|
| "Subsidy Tracker: Intel" --
| https://subsidytracker.goodjobsfirst.org/parent/intel
|
| "Intel boss presses Congress for manufacturing subsidies" --
| https://www.theregister.com/2022/03/24/intel_chips_subsidy/
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| Sure, but that's US money propping up US companies, what's
| wrong with that?
| nosianu wrote:
| TSMC, Samsung are US companies?
|
| And what is wrong with Europe propping up a US company? You
| shifted the goal post from your original comment ("When
| will we ever learn to build up our domestic tech
| industry?"). I showed you that the US is doing exactly
| that, and now you jump to some other argument.
| birdyrooster wrote:
| Wow and you got downvoted too... preposterous. You made a
| great point.
| zymhan wrote:
| They were talking about EU domestic production, I think,
| not the US. Therefore your reply is off-point.
| [deleted]
| MoreSEMI wrote:
| Zeiss-makes all the highly complicated mirrors that go into
| asmls machines
|
| XFAB-specialty fab in germany
| [deleted]
| pmoriarty wrote:
| A more interdependent world is a friendlier and more secure
| world. When countries are completely independent of each other
| they will be able to more easily shrug off economic consequences
| of their aggression.
|
| Economic ties also foster greater cultural exchange and
| understanding, so the less of those there are the insular and
| navel-gazing the inhabitants of such countries will tend to be,
| which will also increase the likelihood of conflict as people
| tend to fear those who they aren't in close contact with and
| don't understand.
|
| As bad as the world is today, it'll get much worse as countries
| isolate.
| randomsearch wrote:
| I think that argument has been lost. Russia still invaded
| Ukraine and China still took Hong Kong backwards. America has
| invaded many countries. Taiwan is under threat.
| Interconnectedness doesn't seem to matter a great deal when you
| have either a ruthless dictator in power or a country has a
| strong military advantage.
| jotm wrote:
| That's true, but the other side of the coin is that richer/more
| developed countries take all the specialists and raw materials
| from poorer countries, set up low level factories for the
| remaining idiots, control the IP and sell them finished
| products.
|
| Leaving them in a perpetual "developing" state, unless they
| smarten up, which is really hard without all the smart people
| that left, and even harder because the people in power are more
| than happy to keep things as they are because they get paid for
| it.
| javcasas wrote:
| You can tell that to all the countries in Africa that are
| interdependently connected to Ukraine's grain.
| sofixa wrote:
| That has been the prevailing thought since before WWI, but
| multiple World Wars and Russia's invasion of Ukraine this year
| have proven otherwise.
|
| Do you know who was the biggest trading partner of Nazi Germany
| on the eve of Operation Barbarossa? You guessed it, the Soviet
| Union. It was responsible for the vast majority of imports of
| critical resources like various metals, oil, grain, etc. It
| didn't stop Hitler.
|
| Do you know who were the main buyers of Russian gas, and via
| which country that gas arrives to them? You guessed it, EU, and
| the main pipelines pass through Ukraine.
|
| On paper, yes, you're absolutely right. But you're assuming
| rationality where it's far from certain. Same as in the 1930s,
| we have a bunch of empty populists everywhere who are anything
| but rational, intent on blaming everything bad on "bad guys of
| today", be it the EU, migrants, Soros, the Jews, Nazis, have
| your pick. With those types of people, you can't assume
| rationality of actions. Brexit wasn't a rational decision, to
| give but one example. Poland infringing on press and human
| freedoms against the will of the EU, while receiving billions
| of aid from the EU, isn't rational.
| dv_dt wrote:
| The difficult thing about even very good prevention is that
| the absence of events is difficult to prove.
|
| Is interconnection perfect? obviously not. Does
| interconnection prevent more conflicts vs fully independent
| nations? Likely yes.
|
| I think what we are seeing is societies and governments
| forgetting how bad wars are for stability, on a backdrop of
| slowing or reversing quality of life for many modern nations.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > The difficult thing about even very good prevention is
| that the absence of events is difficult to prove.
|
| No, an inverse relation between propensity of dyads to go
| to war and their degree of trade integration wouldn't be
| hard to prove, if it were true.
| Sakos wrote:
| Your mistake is believing that financial interdependence is
| what prevents conflict instead of, say, shared values,
| political interdependence, cultural exchange, etc. Things
| that aren't money bind countries together far, far, far
| stronger than a stack of money ever could. That's the
| biggest reason why trying to bind Russia financially
| failed, and why it's been failing with China for the past
| 20 years. Ideology is such a powerful tool that I don't
| understand how people still think money is so important.
| dv_dt wrote:
| I don't think financial interdependence is exclusively
| what prevents conflict. Shared values and cultural
| exchanges develop when you spend more time interacting,
| and financial connections are one excuse to spend more
| time interacting.
|
| I actually wish more nations provided for a youth
| international travel trip as part of a high school post
| grad type public benefit. I think it would do a lot for
| long term peace in the world. It would be better if money
| weren't the primary driver for so much.
| Sakos wrote:
| > financial connections are one excuse to spend more time
| interacting.
|
| And it's not sufficient. Most people will buy products
| imported from China without _ever_ interacting with
| Chinese people (or their culture) and Chinese will export
| products to the rest of the world without _ever_
| interacting with foreign cultures and their ideas and
| viewpoints. Tell me how a gas pipeline between Russia and
| Germany helped build ties between the citizens of either
| country, aside from the politicians who got rich off of
| it and turned into apologists.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > A more interdependent world is a friendlier and more secure
| world.
|
| No, it's not. Wars between major trading partners aren't
| historically uncommon at all.
|
| > When countries are completely independent of each other they
| will be able to more easily shrug off economic consequences of
| their aggression.
|
| When countries (particularly those toward opposite ends of the
| extraction -> intermediate goods -> finished goods -> finance &
| services spectrum) are integrated with trade, it produces
| durable inequalities through ricardian specialization and
| strong resentments that are either subjugating through imperial
| domination, mollified through political union and welfare
| policies, or expressed in war. Sometimes the latter even after
| the former through political union.
| clivend wrote:
| good luck to Russia to make its own chip fab now that no one will
| buy its gas
| ho_schi wrote:
| Everyone is paying for chip fabs. This isn't new? Especially
| Intel and TSMC are in a position where they can require money for
| a fab. Together with Infineon, NXP or ASML we could built up own
| production lines but these will also cost a lot of money. Because
| China is doing the same. Europe just missed to do the same,
| strategic investment into the economy. Free trade...China never
| believed in and we shouldn't neither.
| omega3 wrote:
| > It has been suggested that already-allocated funds from the
| EUR95.5-billion Horizon Europe budget could be re-purposed. EC
| president Ursula Von der Leyen has said that, in addition, she'll
| find EUR12 billion from public/private sources.
|
| The rich get richer and stay rich. It's hard not to get cynical
| about the fact that the whole of Europe is working so that a
| couple of countries ensure their continuing wealth.
| [deleted]
| bell-cot wrote:
| Wow.
|
| For those old (or well-read enough in history) enough to have a
| sense of just _how_ dominant Germany once was, world-wide, in
| science, technology, chemistry, optics, etc. etc....this news
| feels kinda like a tombstone of German identity.
| finiteseries wrote:
| The median age in Germany is now 46 years old, ie closer to
| retirement than doing anything new/risky.
| bell-cot wrote:
| For those _really_ not familiar with the history - German 's
| global dominance ran from roughly the early 1800's to ~1930.
| We're talking the era of the German Customs Union -
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_customs_union That Union
| was mostly driven by the Kingdom of Prussia -
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Prussia
| flohofwoe wrote:
| Lol, Germany was _never_ anywhere close to being a leader in
| chip manufacturing (and why should it in a global market).
| Arguably, even East Germany had a better chip industry than
| West Germany in the 70s and 80s, but that was still 5..10 years
| behind the state of the art.
| audunw wrote:
| Umm, the German company Zeiss is the only company in the world
| capable of making the mirrors for the EUV machines used in this
| factory.
|
| They're still have world leaders in power semiconductors with
| Bosch and Infineon.
|
| This isn't the only fab in Germany btw. Global Foundries has a
| fab in Dresden doing advanced low-power FDSOI ICs.
|
| You can't expect a single country to lead a majority of
| technical fields forever. That's unrealistic. I'd say Germany
| is doing completely fine.
| cwkoss wrote:
| Elon Musk would be way cooler if he built 10 chip fabs instead of
| buying twitter
| tester756 wrote:
| doesn't one state of art fab cost more than that?
| dagurp wrote:
| Does fab mean factory here?
| _Microft wrote:
| Yes:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semiconductor_fabrication_plan...
| sylware wrote:
| ???
|
| Why intel??? Why not ASML???
| lkbm wrote:
| I wouldn't be surprised if Germany would also find value in an
| ASML facility, but as I understand it, ASML doesn't make fabs.
| They make the tools technology used in fabs. They're different
| parts of the supply chains.
|
| Even if they were both in the same business, it's not like
| ordering whichever brand you want from Amazon. If ASML wants to
| build something in Germany, they will, and Germany can
| incentivize that, but it's still up to them. Germany can't just
| tell them to do it anyway.
| sylware wrote:
| So the 50 billions euros fund which is supposed to be used to
| build a EU own top-notch chip foundry will be own and built
| by the US?
|
| Is this a joke?
| [deleted]
| adventured wrote:
| > Whether or not additional funds are available from the EU is
| not known.
|
| Fine it out of Google, give it to Intel.
| unfocused wrote:
| It's going to be a while before we are not depending on China. If
| you look at this 2020 Apple List of Suppliers:
| https://www.apple.com/supplier-responsibility/pdf/Apple-Supp...
| you can see the large variety of companies they they rely on for
| manufacturing.
|
| Plugging this into Excel, you get the following distribution:
|
| Country Count:
|
| China 156 Japan 40 US 30 Taiwan 26 South Korea 23 Vietnam 21
| Malaysia 15 Philippines 15 Thailand 15 Singapore 14 India 9
| Germany 8 United Kingdom 4 Austria 3 Mexico 3 Belgium 2 Brazil 2
| Czech Republic 2 France 2 Indonesia 2 Australia 1 Cambodia 1
| Costa Rica 1 Finland 1 Ireland 1 Israel 1 Italy 1 Malta 1
| Netherlands 1 Norway 1
|
| apologies for the formatting.
| seany wrote:
| China 156 Japan 40 US
| 30 Taiwan 26 South Korea 23
| Vietnam 21 Malaysia 15
| Philippines 15 Thailand 15 Singapore
| 14 India 9 Germany 8
| United Kingdom 4 Austria 3 Mexico
| 3 Belgium 2 Brazil 2
| Czech Republic 2 France 2 Indonesia
| 2 Australia 1 Cambodia 1
| Costa Rica 1 Finland 1 Ireland
| 1 Israel 1 Italy 1
| Malta 1 Netherlands 1 Norway
| 1
| unfocused wrote:
| Much love! Thanks for the formatting :)
| blackoil wrote:
| It is more complicated, all 9 companies in India are subsidiary
| on Chinese companies. Same is true for lot of companies in
| Vietnam, Malaysia. This gives diversification in case of a
| regional epidemic or natural disaster, but how will they behave
| in case of a geo-political crisis.
| [deleted]
| throwaway4good wrote:
| However the suppliers this fab with its EU-subsidies aims to
| outcompete are not in China but in Taiwan, the US, and South
| Korea.
| tester756 wrote:
| Nice, I hope I'll be able to get job there
|
| What kind of skillset is needed there?
| klelatti wrote:
| Open question. Will this be enough to support an ecosystem of
| related companies close by?
| hunglee2 wrote:
| German investment again going to foreign companies, the very
| opposite of strategic sovereignty. The Trump era should be enough
| evidence that there are no friends in geo-politics, just
| temporary alliances of convenience.
| mantas wrote:
| Germany and strategic sovereignty... Looking at gas pipes, they
| have an alternative understanding of sovereignty.
| alaricus wrote:
| Increasing trade with Russia is a good strategy. No need to
| follow America to WW3 or a new cold war.
| mantas wrote:
| Selling off allies in eastern europe to Russia is a good
| strategy? That's a good way to start WW3, on Russian
| side...
| alaricus wrote:
| Increasing trade with Russia is the most effective way to
| avoid a war. When goods and services don't cross borders,
| armies will.
| w7 wrote:
| Russia was one of Ukraine's largest trade partners, how
| did that work out for Ukraine?
|
| Not to mention in the case of Germany, Russia's army
| would be obliterated by NATO if the warfare was purely
| conventional.
| jagger27 wrote:
| A $10 billion pipe sitting empty is good strategy?
| alaricus wrote:
| Sitting empty due to American meddling.
| jagger27 wrote:
| Come on now.
| cute_boi wrote:
| Well, if you have any alternative than gas pipes please let
| us know. Germany is already pushing for green techs. And, gas
| coming from another part of the continent is always more
| expensive than neighboring countries? Yes, they shouldn't
| have dismantled Nuclear Power. But after an incident in
| Japan, many people were nuclear phobic so can't blame
| politicians alone?
|
| That being said, I do agree that paying 5.5bn of taxpayers
| money to foreign tech is silly. Such money can be easily used
| in investing local companies which will provide more
| employement and ROI to Germany.
| mantas wrote:
| Germany could have been using existing pipes through
| eastern europe. That would have been damn nice insurance
| from Russian aggression.
|
| And for nuclear, IMO ,,nuclear phobia" was financed from
| the same pockets as sea pipeline.
| hunglee2 wrote:
| an unstated and unrequited aspiration for sure.
| Pigalowda wrote:
| That was only 4 years, hardly an era.
| alaricus wrote:
| Trump was yet another demonstration that Americans can't be
| trusted.
| 0des wrote:
| Going a bit far there
| alaricus wrote:
| Not really.
| savagej wrote:
| hunglee2 wrote:
| we are living the Trumpian timeline, nonetheless
| krapp wrote:
| Also hardly anomalous. Trumpism didn't vanish just because
| Trump lost the election, rather it's become mainstream within
| the political establishment. Every four years now the world
| has to wonder whether the coin is going to land again on sane
| or crazy.
| [deleted]
| kristianpaul wrote:
| This could be a good chance for some universities with Chip
| Lab/Fab facilities across the world to start manufacturing even
| at small scale is important for every country self-sufficiency.
| Linda703 wrote:
| N19PEDL2 wrote:
| How many RISC-V research centers could be created with that
| money?
| MikusR wrote:
| And build those designs where?
| i5heu wrote:
| RISC-V research center do not build 5nm chips at industrial
| scale. And without 5nm chips at industrial scale, RISC-V
| research is useless.
| alaricus wrote:
| A lot.
| api wrote:
| Sounds like a bargain given the local skill base support and
| industrial autonomy.
|
| The most economical solution is to hand virtually all industrial
| expertise and capacity to China, who not coincidentally massively
| subsidizes its industrial base. China's government puts its thumb
| on the scale. Not doing the same is unilateral disarmament.
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(page generated 2022-06-07 23:01 UTC)